What you’ll notice, so far, is we’ve really been talking about conflict between societies. But what we have not really discussed is conflict within societies — insurrection, revolution, that kind of thing. And as you’re getting that kind of progression in conflict between societies — from Sun Tzu, to Alexander, Napoleon, Guderian, Patton. There’s another, parallel progression happening, in how you engage in conflict within a society. So I want to discuss that now.
Marx and Lenin
And the place I want to start looking at this is, again going back to the 19th century, prior to World War I. Remember, we discussed all of the technological innovations of the late 19th century — the machine gun, repeating rifle, railroad, telegraph, quick-fire artillery. Well there were economic and social effects too. Industrialization, urbanization, mechanization of agriculture, factories, poor working conditions, concentration of wealth, and so on. Without going into too much detail, multiple writers, particularly Marx, find that:
The interaction of competition, technology, specialization (division of labor), concentration of production in large scale enterprises, and the profits and plowing them back into this interaction — produces opposing tendencies and periodic crises that leave in their wake more and more workers competing for jobs in fewer and fewer, but larger, firms that increasingly emphasize (percentage-wise) the use of more machines and less labor.
Low paid wage earners exhibit discontent and hatred for a system that permits others to live in comfort or luxury while they must live a life of toil, subject to strict and frequently harsh factory discipline.
Witnessing these unfolding circumstances, radical academics, bankrupt owners, and other disillusioned intellectuals take the side of the workers, as an enlightened vanguard, to mold the proletariat into a powerful opposition force.
Let’s pretend we’re some poor proletariats. We’re got nothing and we’re getting screwed over and we know it. And they tell us the only way out is to smash the capitalist system which oppressed it and replace it with a dictatorship of the proletariat. You can see why we might be into that.
Of course, it turns out the Marxists didn’t have a dictatorship of the proletariat. Instead it was a dictatorship over the proletariat. So they had a little mismatch between promises and reality — a rather serious mismatch. Had to go through extraordinary hops, skips and jumps trying to get their system sorted out. Still trying to get it sorted out.
Now the two terms they keep mentioning, and they’re very important — “crisis” and “vanguards”. They talk about it all the time. You read our American literature on the Soviets, we never even talk about these things. We don’t understand what they’re trying to do.
Let’s start with that first term — I bolded it earlier — “crisis”. Marx says it repeatedly, and Lenin and Mao too. They’ve all got it. You’ve got to have a crisis as a precondition for revolution. Now why is that?
Because people don’t do a goddamn thing unless there’s a crisis, perceived or otherwise. They recognize that a crisis is important. Because that crisis can be a danger, but as the Chinese say, it’s also what? An opportunity.
I always make that same point in science. Scientific progress depends upon anomalies. Without anomalies, you don’t have anything to work on. If you don’t pay attention to anomalies, you get mismatched. If you don’t pay attention to the mismatch, you get crisis. If you don’t pay attention to crises, you get revolution. Scientific revolution, political revolution, same story. No anomalies, no mismatch. No mismatch, no crisis. No crisis, no revolution.
Ok, now that other word, “vanguard”. They always bring that up — what’s a vanguard? Well Lenin has it from the French “avant-garde”. Meaning “advance guard”, as in an army, the advance guard, the troops who are leading the way. So Lenin’s using that metaphorically, that’s his vanguard. A disciplined hard core of revolutionaries that will lead and shape the masses into revolution.
And really, they’ve got a whole lot of vanguards. They talk about the proletariat being the vanguard of the revolution. And then later on, they talk about the Communist Party being the vanguard of the proletariat. Later on, they’ve got the Central Committee being a vanguard of the Communist Party. And the Politburo being the vanguard of the Central Committee. Vanguard inside vanguard inside vanguard. In other words, a very, very tight control over a very large ship.
[insert diagram here of many vanguards]
Now how do these two notions of “crisis” and “vanguard” work together? Very simple. Well a crisis happens, it creates discontent, anger — and gives you the preconditions to recruit members into your vanguard. Your vanguard then uses propaganda, politics, insurgent actions to create and exacerbate more crises — widen existing divisions in society and fan the flames. Exploit those new crises to build up the vanguard more. Use your expanded influence to create more crises. And so on. So you get this incestuous feedback loop, pull the whole society apart from the inside. It’s in all their literature. So that’s their strategy, very simple, but very effective.
Now, I wanted to include some quotes and key concepts from Lenin here on what he’s doing:
LENNIN’S PLAYBOOK FOR REVOLUTION
Preparing for Revolution:
Fan discontent/misery of working class and masses and focus it as hatred toward existing system.
Cause vacillation/indecision among authorities so that they cannot come to grips with existing instability.
“Confuse other elements in society so that they don’t know exactly what is happening or where the movement is going.” Exploit opposing tendencies, internal tensions to pull apart society from inside.
Convince “proletariat class they have a function—the function of promoting revolution in order to secure the promised ideal society.”
Initially, do not take the offensive. “Retreat when the enemy is strong … the object of this strategy is to gain time, to disrupt the enemy, and to accumulate forces in order later to assume the offensive.”
Look for “the moment for the decisive blow, the moment for starting the insurrection, so timed as to coincide with the moment when the crisis has reached its climax, when the vanguard is prepared to fight to the end, the reserves are prepared to support the vanguard, and maximum consternation reigns in the ranks of the enemy.”
You will know this moment has arrived when “all the class forces hostile to us have become sufficiently entangled, are sufficiently at loggerheads, have sufficiently weakened themselves in a struggle which is beyond their strength”. All the bourgeoisie have “sufficiently exposed themselves in the eyes of the people, have sufficiently disgraced themselves through their practical bankruptcy”. “Among the proletari, a mass sentiment in favor of supporting the most determined, supremely bold, revolutionary action. Then revolution is indeed ripe.”
Concentrate “the main forces of the revolution at the enemy’s most vulnerable spot at the decisive moment, when the revolution has already become ripe, when the offensive is going full steam ahead, when insurrection is knocking at the door, and when bringing the reserves up to the vanguard is the decisive condition of success.”
Once the revolution has begun:
“Never play with insurrection, but when beginning it firmly realize that you must go to the end.”
“Concentrate a great superiority of forces at the decisive point, at the decisive moment, otherwise the enemy, who has the advantage of better preparation and organization, will destroy the insurgents.”
“Once the insurrection has begun, you must act with the greatest determination, and by all means, without fail, take the offensive. 'The defensive is the death of every armed uprising.'”
“You must try to take the enemy by surprise and seize the moment when his forces are scattered.”
“You must strive for daily success, even if small (one might say hourly, if it is the case of one town), and at all costs retain the 'moral ascendancy'”
Goal:
Destroy capitalism as well as its offspring imperialism and replace it with a dictatorship of the proletariat.
Now look at all of this — what do you notice? Very high psychological/moral content. Really, it’s not a physical approach. It’s really about the mental and the psychological.
And what’s he trying to do here? He’s talking about this mistrust between the citizens and government. Mistrust between different classes. Wants it all to be confused, uncertain, anxious. What’s his goal there? To generate many non-cooperative centers of gravity. So in a way, very similar to what we looked at with the blitzkrieg, but through different means — to sever the tendons that allow the organism to function as a whole. But look how he’s doing it — propaganda, political actions, fanning disconent. Sometimes, using physical means, yes — but always his objective is the mental and the psychological.
American strategists, we read all this Lenin stuff, and we don’t give a damn. Whatever. Why doesn’t that stuff grab Americans? Why don’t we care?
The reason why is, we’re pretty well-off relative to other people. If I put you down there where you can’t get food and you’re being crapped on by everybody, you’re in a terrible goddamn position. Oh boy, then you understand this Marxist stuff, you’re going to be interested. You’re going to be prepared to accept this kind of stuff.
Under what circumstances do people care about ethics? It’s when they feel like they’re getting screwed. They’re going to get very interested in ethics because “I’m goddamned getting screwed.” And you use that to generate crises, to pull them apart — develop as many non-cooperative centers of gravity, so they can’t work as an organic whole.
Remember what I said — without a crisis, they don't have any chance at a revolution. They’ve got to have that crisis. No anomalies, no mismatch. No mismatch, no crisis. No crisis, no revolution. That crisis is important to them because then they can insert friction, work the propaganda, tear apart harmonies, generate these many non-cooperative centers of gravity, get the people to look at their own government and go oh, those dirty bastards.
So that’s what they’re trying to do — they’re trying to pull apart the regime fro the inside — subvert or pull apart a guy’s center of gravity. Note those words, “pull apart.” You want to find out what are those bonds, those connections that permit that organic whole to exist. You know, people aren’t glued together. There are certain bonds or connections or rules of conduct, codes of conduct, standards of behavior. You want to see what they are.
They say, okay, now, let’s look at the leadership and see if they’re abiding by those bonds, and then we’ll work the propaganda to highlight that mismatch. That’s the game they’re playing. Hey, look at your leader — he says one thing, but look what he’s actually doing. And then they show the government scarfing off funds and all that kind of stuff. They’re highlighting that rhetorical mismatch in a situation where people are getting screwed.
When you see these government officials playing these dirty games, corruption, talking out of both sides of their mouth — you’re building mistrust inside the organization, and it no longer can function as a whole. Mistrust and discord. You build that up and Christ, they’re going to come unglued. And what’s the quickest way you can destroy an organization? Anybody?
Mistrust.
That’s why your leaders at all level — you’ve got to set the example. You’ve got to be tougher on yourself than you are on your own people, and if you’re unwilling to do that, as far as I’m concerned you should get the hell out of leadership. You should be tougher on yourself. Because they’re observing you all the time. They’re not going to tell you, because they know you have authority, but they’re observing you. In other words, can they trust you?
Now you won’t be perfect. Of course you won’t be perfect. You may make some mistakes, but at least try to correct them. As long as your people observe you correcting your mistakes, you’re going to retain your following.
If you start playing games, say one thing and doing another, and your people observe you doing that, when the squeeze comes on, they’re not going to be there when you need them. I can’t overemphasize that.
Do you like it when somebody tells you one thing and does another? Maybe one or two times that doesn’t bother you, then you finally say, this guy’s really doing a number. I’m getting goddamn tired of it. You’re going to already sow seeds of mistrust. That’s what the guerrillas, they play that game. They want to sow mistrust between the people and the regime.
Why was the American will subverted, vis-à-vis Vietnam? It’s because our leadership was telling us one thing, and the soldiers were coming back and telling something else. That’s how you get mistrust. The generals, they said we’re winning the war. Goddamn, we’re going to win it by this date. Everything is going good. Christ, in the meantime, we’ve got Tet ‘68 and all this other stuff going on — and the guys are coming back saying it’s not so good over there.
You know what helped exacerbate that? The one-year tour. Because the guys are going over there and coming back, and what they’re doing is they’re spreading among their friends what’s going on out there, so the whole thing just builds up a groundswell. Whether it was their intention, the guerilla’s ended up doing it — they pulled us apart — the people and the government. And we had to get out.
Mao
All right, and now we get to Mao Tse-Tung, doing his guerilla actions against the Japanese in World War II, and then against the Kuomintang. Both times using a combination of conventional maneuver combat with guerilla warfare to take down a regime that had him severly outgunned.
And what he’s doing is he’s taking the modern guerilla warfare pioneered by T.E. Lawrence and Von Luttbeck and folding it into the Soviet-Marxist revolutionary strategy. And the result is he’s developing really a new way of waging war against the regime in power. I put some of his quotes here:
ON PROTRACTED WAR
“Our War of Resistance cannot be won quickly and can only be won through protracted war. In the early period of the war, we must avoid any major decisive battles, and must first employ mobile warfare gradually to break the morale and combat effectiveness of the enemy troops.
Our strategy should be to employ our main forces to operate over an extended and fluid front. To achieve success, the Chinese troops must conduct their warfare with a high degree of mobility on extensive battlefields, making swift advances and withdrawals, swift concentrations and dispersals.
Undoubtedly, if we are to avoid decisive engagements, we shall have to abandon territory, and we must have the courage to do so when (and only when) it becomes completely unavoidable. At such times we should not feel the slightest regret, for this policy of trading space for time is correct.”
ON GUERILLA WARFARE
Guerillas may be compared to innumerable gnats, which, by biting a giant both in front and in rear, ultimately exhaust him. They make themselves as unendurable as a group of cruel and hateful devils. The Chinese peasants have very great latent power; properly organized and directed, they can keep the enemy army busy twenty-four hours a day and worry it to death.
In guerrilla warfare, select the tactic of seeming to come from the east and attacking from the west; avoid the solid, attack the hollow; attack; withdraw; deliver a lightning blow, seek a lightning decision. In guerilla strategy, the enemy's rear, flanks, and other vulnerable spots are his vital points, and there he must be harassed, attacked, dispersed, exhausted and annihilated.
The movements of guerrilla troops must be secret and of supernatural rapidity; the enemy must be taken unaware, and the action entered speedily. There can be no procrastination in the execution of plans; no assumption of a negative or passive defence; no great dispersion of forces in many local engagements. The basic method is the attack in a violent and deceptive form.Because guerrilla formations act independently and because they are the most elementary of armed formations, command cannot be too highly centralized. If it were, guerilla action would be too limited in scope. While general plans are made by higher commanders, the nature of actions is determined by inferior commanders. The former may suggest the nature of the action to be taken but cannot define it. Thus inferior groups have more or less complete local control.
When the situation is serious, the guerrilla must move with the fluidity of water and the ease of the blowing wind. Their tactics must deceive, tempt, and confuse the enemy. They must lead the enemy to believe that they will attack him from the east and north, and they must then strike him from the west and the south. They must strike, then rapidly disperse. They must move at night.
Guerrilla detachments have no rear, nor do they have a battle line. The very fact that most guerrilla groups are small makes it desirable and advantageous for them to appear and disappear in the enemy's rear. With such activities, the enemy is simply unable to cope.
ON DECEPTION
In order to achieve victory we must as far as possible make the enemy blind and deaf by sealing his eyes and ears and drive his commanders to distraction by creating confusion in their minds. Deliberately creating misconceptions for the enemy and then springing surprise attacks upon him are two ways of achieving superiority and seizing the initiative.
It is often possible by various ruses to succeed in leading the enemy into a morass of wrong judgements and actions so that he loses his superiority and the initiative. The saying, "There can never be too much deception in war", means precisely this.
Because guerrilla formations act independently and because they are the most elementary of armed formations, command cannot be too highly centralized. If it were, guerilla action would be too limited in scope. While general plans are made by higher commanders, the nature of actions is determined by inferior commanders. The former may suggest the nature of the action to be taken but cannot define it. Thus inferior groups have more or less complete local control.
ON THE SUPPORT OF THE PEOPLE
Because guerrilla warfare basically derives from the masses and is supported by them, it can neither exist nor flourish if it separates itself from their sympathies and co-operation.
Many people think it impossible for guerrillas to exist for long in the enemy's rear. Such a belief reveals lack of comprehension of the relationship that should exist between the people and the troops. The former may be likened to water, the latter to the fish who inhabit it. How may it be said that these two cannot exist together? It is only undisciplined troops who make the people their enemies and who, like the fish out of its native element cannot live.
The officers in a group should be inhabitants of the locality in which the group is organized, as this will facilitate relations between them and the local civilians.
The Eighth Route Army put into practice a code known as 'Three Rules and the Eight Remarks', which we list here:
Rules:
All actions are subject to command.
Do not steal from the people.
Be neither selfish nor unjust.
Remarks:
Close the door when you leave the house.
Roll up the bedding on which you have slept.
Be polite and courteous.
Be honest in your transactions.
Return what you borrow.
Replace what you break.
Do not bathe in the presence of women.
Do not without authority search those you arrest.
The Red Army adhered to this code for ten years and the Eighth Route Army and other units have since adopted it.
ON PROPAGANDA
Propaganda materials are very important. Every large guerrilla unit should have a printing press and a mimeograph stone. They must also have paper on which to print propaganda leaflets and notices. They must be supplied with large brushes.
All our strength must be used to spread the doctrine of armed resistance to the people, to organize self-defence units, and to train guerrilla bands. Their political instincts must be sharpened and their martial ardour increased. If the workers, the farmers, the lovers of liberty, the young men, the women, and the children are not organized, they will never realize their own emancipatory power.
The political mobilization of the common people throughout the country will create a vast sea in which to drown the enemy, create the conditions that will make up for our inferiority m arms and other things, and create the prerequisites for overcoming every difficulty in the war.
How should we mobilize them? By word of mouth, by leaflets and bulletins, by newspapers, books and pamphlets, through plays and films, through schools, through the mass organizations and through our cadres. We must link the political mobilization for the war with developments in the war and with the life of the soldiers and the people, and make it a continuous movement. This is a matter of immense importance on which our victory in the war primarily depends.
Boyd’s Comments on Mao
So that’s what he’s doing here. You can see he’s pulling in a lot of ideas — Sun Tzu, Napoleon, Claueswitz — he read all of those guys, cites them all the time — and embedding it into the propaganda and revolutionar strategy. And he came up with this new way of waging war. Let’s look at some of these things:
First, on protracted war. You’ve got to give Mao credit. He understood what hte game have to be. Obviously the regime doesn’t want a protracted war, because it’s expensive, it’s frustrating, it makes them look incompetent. So then what does that mean? Well the guerillas want to do the opposite. If they can promote a protracted war, and the regime can’t handle it, the regime’s going to come unglued. Beautiful logic. If you can run a protracted war, Christ, the people say say the goddamn regime’s corrupt, incompetent, can’t even put these guys in the jungle down, makes the regime look like they don’t know what the hell they’re doing. Just pulling the regime’s socks down, drop by drop, piece by piece.
Second, look at Mao’s tactics. You can see he’s doing all of the maneuver combat stuff. Not just with the guerillas but with the conventional forces as well. He’s playing the concentration/dispersion game, talks about it all the time. And then cheng and ch’i. Come from the east then strike from the west. What does he say? You want to keep the other guy worried about you 24/7. He’s really got it going there. Deception, ambiguity, fluid battle lines. Very modern way of fighting.
Third, the support of the people. He’s got all that crap in there. Make your bed, close the door, no search and seizure, pay for your food, be polite and courteous. Now why is he making his guys do that? To be nice? No, he understands that it’s about the people. You have got to get the people on your side. In fact, what does he say? The guerillas and the people should be like a fish in water. Like a fish in water.
In other words, you must be able to blend in with the emotional-cultural-intellectual environment of the people until you become one with the people. Seamless with the people. So the result, the guerrillas become indistinguishable from the people, while the government is more and more isolated from the people. That’s what you’re trying to do there. Get the people on your side, isolate the regime, pull the society apart that way.
Fourth, on propaganda. Notice what he said, every guerilla unit, you have got to have a printing press. That’s how important it is to Mao. Propaganda of every form to mobilize the people and “create a vast sea in which to drown the enemy”. In fact, at the end there, he says that propaganda is “the primary matter upon which victory depends”. You can look at that other stuff he’s doing, making the bed and closing the door and all that — that’s a kind of propaganda too. In fact he talks about it with the Japanese. He says, when you capture prisoners, you have to let them keep their clothes, so they can see that we’re better than them morally. That we’re the good guys, we treat them nicer than their own guys do.
So look at all that, what do we find? Again, very high mental-moral content. It’s a new kind of warfare he’s waging here. As a matter of fact, it’s total war. It’s more total than blitzkrieg. Now why would I say that? You might be saying, Boyd, you goddamn lost your mind. How can that be?
Because what Mao’s doing, it encompasses the political, economic, social, all aspects. He’s involving the whole nine yards of it, the whole fabric of society and putting it to work against the regime. So in that sense, I don't care whether he’s using primitive instruments or not. The point is, he’s got all the people involved, as a result, he has a greater totality of effort. And that’s something we haven't come to grips with as Americans. In guerrilla wars, they have in many ways a greater totality than we do. We have to come to grips with that.
MODERN GUERILLA PLAYBOOK
All right, I want to take all of this guerilla stuff and kind of summarize it, pack it into one chart here summarizing modern guerilla warfare — what Mao was doing, and then same thing — what Giap did to us out there in Vietnam.
Capitalize on corruption, injustice, incompetence, etc., (or their appearances) as basis to generate atmosphere of mistrust and discord in order to sever moral bonds that bind people to existing regime.
Set-up guerilla administrative and military organization, sanctuary, and communications network under the control of the guerrilla political leadership without arousing regime’s intelligence and security apparatus.
Build-up a shadow government, with “parallel hierarchies”, in localities and regions that can be made ripe for insurrection/revolution by infiltrating cadres (vanguards) who can not only subvert existing authority but also convert the regime’s officials and people to guerrilla cause and organizational way.
Use subverted officials and people to “blind” regime to guerrilla plans, operations, and organization while simultaneously tracking regime’s strengths, weaknesses, moves, and intentions.
Shape propaganda, foment civil disorders (such as rallies, demonstrations, strikes, and riots), use selected terrorism, sabotage, and exploit misinformation to expand mistrust and sow discord thereby magnify the appearance of corruption, incompetence, etc., and the inability of the regime to govern.
Employ tiny cohesive bands for surprise hit-and-run raids against lines of supply to gain weapons and materials as well as disrupt government communication, coordination, and movement. Retreat and melt into environment when faced by superior police and armed forces.
Play upon the grievances and obsessions of people (via propaganda, re-education, and selected successes) as well as encourage regime to indiscriminately take harsh reprisal measures against them in order to associate the regime with an expanding climate of mistrust, discord, and moral disintegration.
Simultaneously, show (by contrast) that guerrillas exhibit moral authority, offer competence, and provide desired benefits. In order to further erode government influence, gain more recruits, multiply base areas, and increase political infrastructure hence expand guerrilla influence/control over population and countryside.
Share existing burdens with people and work with them to root out and punish corruption, remove injustice, eliminate grievances, etc., as basis to form moral bonds between people and guerrillas in order to bind people to guerrilla philosophy and ideals.
Strike at regime in cheung/ch’i fashion, with small fluid bands and ever larger mobile formations, to split-up, envelope, and annihilate fractions of major enemy forces.
Penetrate the very essence of their adversary’s moral-mental-physical being, generate many moral-mental-physical non-cooperative (or isolated) centers of gravity, as well as subvert or seize those centers of gravity that adversary regime must depend upon, in order to magnify friction, produce paralysis, and bring about collapse.
Defeat existing regime politically by showing they have neither the moral right nor demonstrated ability to govern and militarily by continuously using stealth/fast-tempo/fluidity-of-action and cohesion of small bands and larger units in cooperation with political agitation/propaganda teams as basis to harass, confuse and ultimately destroy the will or capacity to resist.
It’s a damn insidious game, as you can see. And a very successful game, isn’t it? If you’ve got the right conditions for it. Where you’ve got those crises you can use to pump up friction, amplify already-existing tensions, highlight corruption, separate the people from the regime — all of it. Get it so the government can’t function, the regime can’t function as an organic whole.
GUERILLA RESULTS
Let’s look through the guerilla results. As you can see, there’s a lot of success here. Start with the American Colonies (1775-81), where we fought the red coats. Later down the list, in Vietnam (1958-75) we became the red coats. And we got kicked in the balls. Just like they did.
Of course, in between then, you’ve got the Spanish and Russian guerillas taking out Napoleon. Then like we talked about earlier, T.E. Lawrence and Lettow-Vorbeck in East Africa and Arabia. Then Mao against the Japanese, and also Russian and Yugoslavian guerillas against the Germans in World War II. Ho Chi Minh and the Algerians against the French, and then Fidel Castro in Cuba. Keep in mind, this is a very truncated list I’ve put because there’s so goddamn many of these guerilla successes.
Now, the interesting part, what I want to really look at is the unsuccessful, the cases where the guerilla’s lost and the regime won. How were they able to do it?
Philippine-American War (1899 - 1902). Now that’s an operation that should’ve been studied before going into Vietnam. We started out the wrong way over there — burning villages, killing civilians, martial law, torture, concentration camps, scorched earth — all that heavy handed bullshit. Finally, we figured out the right thing to do, started to build them schools and infrastructure, strengthen the government, get the people on our side, and our guys started to figure it out. There’s some good lessons in there. Would have been worth looking into that before going into Vietnam. But it happened at the turn of the century. So screw it. Who cares.
South Africa, Boer War (1900 - 1902). In a sense I could’ve probably put this one over on the successes side. Christ, the South Afs caused the British all kinds of problems. Not only that, the only way the British could get them to quit is they gave them very favorable terms. Not only that, later on, they got their independence anyway. So in a sense, they were successful, even though they signed the armistice.
Greece Civil War (1944 - 45). This one’s simple — the guerilla’s lost the support of the people, and also they did not have a clear political strategy. They were not able to show a credible alternative to the regime. So of course, they could not achieve victory.
Philippines, Huk Rebellion (1946-54). Now this one was won by Ramon Magsaysay. Very important figure there. He came on board and in two years reversed almost a certain defeat into absolute victory. Totally got rid of the guerillas. What did he do?
Well remember, Magsaysay started as a guerrilla himself initially, when the Japanese invaded the Philippines. So after World War II, now he became a guerrilla running the government. So he knew how to do it. He turned the tables on the Huks.
He got the military to go out there and build roads, schools, hospitals, electricity, running water. I mean he had his guys going out there doing dentistry. instead of doing all that search and destroy crap, they were fixing people’s teeth.
And he worked internal too, reformed his military and government. Very hard on government corruption, discipline, accountability, got his guys in line. And he led by example, lived frugally, didn’t take bribes, none of that. His presidential airplane, he didn’t have an air conditioner on it. And one of his officials asks him, why don’t you have an air conditioner, it’s so hot? And he said, the people have got to know that we’re not wasting their money. That we’re doing what’s best for them. It was symbolic, you see. So he really led by example. And his people, they loved him.
And he turned it around in two years, just drained the guerillas of all their support. There’s an essay from the communist side over there, the guerillas, how they lost in the Philippines. Magsaysay’s got them and the whole thing’s coming apart. They don’t know where to go. Boy, they’re being scarfed up so fast by the government. But they don’t know where to go because the government’s getting the villages on their side, see. So now they’re the ones that are being on the run and don’t know where to go. It’s an interesting story by one of the losers.
Counter-Guerilla
So let’s put it all together. How do you fight these guys? Really you’ve got to beat them at their own game.
Remember, the guerrillas need a cause, an illegitimate inequality and a crisis that they can use to rally the people. And the vanguard uses that crisis to pump up friction and strength itself. So really, the best way is to go after that root cause. As the government, instead of doing all that search and destroy stuff, you’ve got to look inward and fix the illegitimate inequalities and crises in your system that give guerilla’s their sway over the people. That's what we should be going after in Vietnam. Not all that search and destroy stuff in the weeds.
And Magsaysay and others showed us how to do it. We just weren’t paying any goddamn attention to them. Thought we could just thunder in there with our tanks and personnel carriers and shoot them all dead. Not that simple.
COUNTER-GUERILLA PLAYBOOK
Action
Demonstrating integrity and competence of government to represent and serve needs of people—rather than exploit and impoverish them for the benefit of a greedy elite.*
Take political initiative to root out and visibly punish corruption. Select new leaders with recognized competence as well as popular appeal. Ensure that they deliver justice, eliminate grievances and connect government with grass roots.*
Deploy administrative talent, police, and counter-guerrilla teams into affected localities and regions to build-up local government as well as recruit militia for local and regional security.
Engage in highly visible reform efforts — political, economic, and social — in order to demonstrate that the central government represents the hopes and needs of people, thereby gain their support and confirm government legitimacy.
Use spies/intelligence operatives to infiltrate guerrilla movement. Employ the population for intelligence about guerrilla plans, operations, and organization.
Seal-off guerrilla regions from outside world by diplomatic, psychological, and various other activities that strip-away potential allies and disrupt their communications with the outside world.
Use special teams in a complementary effort to penetrate guerrilla controlled regions. Employ (guerrillas’ own) tactics of reconnaissance, infiltration, surprise hit-and-run, and sudden ambush to: keep roving bands off-balance, make guerilla base areas untenable.
Expand these complementary security/penetration efforts region by region in order to undermine, collapse, and replace guerrilla influence with government influence and control.
* If you cannot realize such a political program, you might consider changing sides!
You’ll notice I’ve got this little asterisk on the first two bullets there. What I mean is, if you can’t do it, you better start thinking about getting onto the other side, otherwise life’s going to get goddamn uncomfortable pretty soon. Those two bullets are the most important because it really sets up everything else, doesn't it? That’s what Magsaysay understood. If you cannot demonstrate integrity and competence as a government, you cannot play this game. You can’t play any of the game and you’re going to lose. That's why the first two are very important.
So in a way, you can look at it as the government and the guerillas are competing for the support of the people. That’s the key resource here. There’s another reason why that’s so important I haven’t brought up yet.
In fact, there was an interesting case during World War II, which got me on to this, to see that so beautifully. It was a historical account of an American advisor with the Chinese communists, 8th Group Army over in China, during World War II. They were going against the Japanese at that time. And it's really interesting.
So the communist commander said, “I want you to look at my operation and critique it so you can tell me what I’m doing wrong.” The advisor has free access, he comes back and says, Jesus Christ, you’ve got no patrols, no reconnaissance, that's bullshit. You've got to get your guys out there so you can see what the enemy is doing. And the communist commander just smiled. He says, no we don't need reconnaissance. The guy says why not? The communist commander says, we get all the farmers out there, they’re all reconnaissance, we know exactly what the Japanese are doing. That was his intelligence, recce, all the farmers out in the countryside. He said, I don’t have to use my troops for that. The guy American goes, that's really interesting.
Because really what you’ve got there is, the people are a massive intelligence network that permits you to see into adversary operations while simultaneously blinding the adversary to your operations. If you’re the guerillas and you get the people on your side, the government is blind. Or if you're the government, and you get the people sucked away from the guerrillas, then the guerrillas become blind, they don’t know what’s going on. So you have got to have the people on your side.
How many people here saw the movie Platoon, by any chance? It can’t just be me. What was the central message that came out of that? There is a central message. What was the big event there?
Remember, it was the attack upon the village. Remember that? And a lot of Marines and other military people get mad. They say well, you shouldn’t be showing the American people that. You can’t call these guys murderers. That’s true. But it happened. It’s true. They’re not calling them murderers. But it happened.
I’m trying to hint and tell you something. We shouldn’t have been attacking those goddamn villages. We should’ve been in the villages to try to get the other guy to attack it. Then he’s the enemy. We worked the problem the wrong way. Exactly the wrong way. And Mike can tell you about when our guys were over there. That one time Mike, in Vietnam, when they pulled you out of the villages. Very important point.
Mike: — 1965 and we were working on the people. It was working, we were getting a good number of defectors to come in, and then using the defectors to go out and get other defectors. And as time went on, we put a message out to the people that the Marines were going to stay and protect the defectors.
Because it was a big question in the people’s mind. They used to ask me a lot of times when I’d operate in the villages. I was just a first lieutenant. Are the Marines going to stay here or not? Are you going to leave? And I went in to the Chief of Staff and then to the General, and get an answer. And finally, I was very naive. I was a first lieutenant. They kind of gaffed me off, oh, oh, we’re going to stay. We’re going to stay here. So I put that out in leaflets and by word of mouth, everything we could, Marines are here to stay.
And then one day, they sent us off into the hills to go do search and destroy —
Boyd: You were ordered to. You didn’t want to. You had no choice.
Mike: That’s right. No choice at all. They said it was orders from up top. Well, and then we came back again, the families of the people that had been working with me had been assassinated. And we never got any more defectors again. You know, we got zero cooperation from anyone in the villages.
Boyd: And now you have to attack the villages.
Mike: That’s in a nutshell. We didn’t understand what we were trying to do out there.
Boyd: And that’s why it was so important to have those teams inside the villages, working with the people, building up those bonds, so you can play the game instead of winning over the people, instead of running off and doing search and destroy.
That’s why we should’ve been in the village instead of attacking the village, like I said in the central scene in that movie Platoon. I looked at that, and I said there it is. That’s how we lost— soon as I saw that, I said now I can show you exactly why we lost. I thought it was beautiful. There’s the message why we lost the war. We’re attacking the very people we’re trying to defend.
I mean when you look at these things we’re talking about, the ideas are actually very simple, but for some reason we resist the goddamn thing in the West. I mean really, the ideas are very simple. Maybe that's why we don't like them. They're not sophisticated enough or something. I don't know.