After Vietnam, specialists considered the essence of U.S. counterinsurgency strategy and doctrine sound, but concluded that it had not been applied properly in Southeast Asia. El Salvador thus did not require a radical revision of either strategy or doctrine, but simply better application. This was an accurate assessment. Despite some stark differences, Vietnam and El Salvador both occurred within the same strategic environment. In terms of the broad nature of the threat and the wider geostrategic concerns which shaped American decisionmaking, Vietnam and El Salvador shared more features than not. Today, U.S. counterinsurgency strategy continues to assume that the wisdom gained in Southeast Asia and Central America holds. El Salvador is thought to have proven the correctness of American strategy and doctrine. "The El Salvador experience," Victor Rosello writes, "generally validated the US Army's Foreign Internal Defense doctrine in countering insurgency. [76] Future counterinsurgency may not emulate the past-the similarities between Vietnam and El Salvador will be much greater than those between El Salvador and what comes after it. Since the strategic environment determines the form and salience of insurgency, the United States must now revise its counterinsurgency strategy and doctrine. Some trends in the post- Cold War strategic environment may inhibit insurgency, others will simply force it to mutate. Many of them, though, will alter the strategic calculus for the United States leading policyrnakers to reconsider where, when, why, and how they engage in counterinsurgency support. In his seminal book, Political Order in Changing Societies, Samuel Huntington argued that political development entails the creation and maintenance of institutions capable of dealing with demands on the state. [77] The contemporary Global South is undergoing mitosis, splitting into those able to craft adaptive and viable institutions and those unable. Success at institution-building often leads toward democracy. [78] Since functioning democracies are less susceptible to insurgency even if not altogether exempt, this is good news. Failed institution-building results, at best, in the division of states into subnational units with security the purview of warlords and militias. At worst, the outcome is anarchy and a Hobbesian war of all against all. Robert Kaplan, among others, contends that the trend toward anarchy will eventually win out and much of the Global South will see "the withering away of central governments, the rise of tribal and regional domains, the unchecked spread of disease, and the growing pervasiveness of war. [79] Afghanistan, where "there is no civil law, no government, no economy-only guns and drugs and anger," may portend the Third World's future. [80] While political results are mixed, macroeconomic trends favor fragmentation over sustainable democracy. Despite the economic take-off of a few states, most of the Global South seems unable to sustain a level of economic growth able to keep pace with population. Democracy can be born in a stagnant economy, but cannot grow to maturity. A second related trend is the routinization of violence. At best, this results in the omnipresence of crime. While crime is growing in nearly all countries, this trend is most threatening in developing countries where un- and under- employment are epidemic and police forces overwhelmed, ineffective, or corrupt. In much of the Global South, walls topped by concertina wire and backed by elaborate alarm systems are standard on even middle-class homes. In poorer neighborhoods, dirt-floored, single- room houses have thick bars on the windows. More and more businesses have their own heavily armed guards. In Panama, for instance, one sees frozen yogurt shops protected by men with M- 16s. At its worst, the global routinization of violence has spawned entire generations for whom protracted conflict is normal. Whether Lebanon, Gaza, Afghanistan, Cambodia, Colombia, Liberia, or the inner cities of the United States, youth see violence not as an aberration, but part an intrinsic aspect of life. It takes little to spark insurgency in such a context. On the positive side, the end of the Cold War and the evolution of global norms have diminished external sponsorship of insurgency or its use as an element of national security policy. For the present, at least, only pariah states dabble in the export of insurgency and terrorism. The Cold War notion of the moral legitimacy of support to armed struggle has thus abated. The end of the Cold War also allowed a surge in the ability of the United Nations to cobble together coalitions for peacekeeping and broker negotiated solutions to conflict. For the United States, the end of the Cold War did not end global engagement, but changed national interests. American leaders have long had little tolerance for military casualties in conflicts where they saw few serious national interests or chances of clear success-witness Reagan's withdrawal from Beirut. With the demise of the superpower competition, issues worth spilling American blood have become even rarer even while the U.S. military remains engaged around the world. As the strategic environment changes, insurgency itself is mutating. Distilled to its essence, a revolutionary strategy includes goals and methods. The goals of Maoist "people's war" were the seizure of political power and the revolutionary transformation of the political and economic systems. Its methods were political and guerrilla warfare followed, if necessary, by conventional military action. Post-Cold War insurgents may seek political, social, and economic transformation that is revolutionary in its extent, but not necessarily revolutionary in the Marxist sense of building a "new" system. For instance, reactionary insurgency, in which a religious-based group attempts to seize power from a secular, modernizing government as the Iranians did in 1979, will be common. In some ways this will also emulate Cold War revolutionary insurgency in that legitimacy will be the focus, control of the state the goal, and external support important, but tactically future reactionary insurgents will largely be urban with an emphasis on terrorism rather than rural guerrilla war. This type of insurgency will be most dangerous if it again becomes a technique of inter-state conflict with external sponsors using insurgency to weaken an opponent. Other post-Cold War insurgent movements will not seek to seize the state in order to change the political, social, and economic system. Many regions of the Global South will suffer from what Larry Cable calls "defensive" insurgency where some subgroup within a state, whether ethnic, tribal, racial, or religious, seeks autonomy or outright independence. [81] Given the extent of primal conflict in post-Cold War world, such secessionist/sepatatist insurgencies may be the dominant form during the next decade. These are also the closest to traditional "people's war" since the insurgents will place great stock on the creation of "liberated zones." But where Maoists based mobilization and support on political ideology, secessionist insurgents will use primal ties. This will alter the essence of counterinsurgency. When the opponent was Maoist, the government could build legitimacy by offering the people a "better deal" than the insurgents. When the roots of the conflict are primal with the government controlled by a different group than the insurgents, legitimacy will be extraordinarily difficult, perhaps impossible, for the regime to win. As bitter struggles in Peru and Guatemala have shown, the tendency will be for the government to consider all members of the group supporting the insurgency as enemies. And from a regional perspective, secessionist/separatist insurgencies will be particularly dangerous since they can easily spill over state borders. What can be called commercial insurgency will also pose security threats without seeking the outright seizure of state power. [82] Commercial insurgency will be a form of what is becoming known as "gray area phenomena" -- powerful criminal organizations with a political veneer and the ability to threaten national security rather than just law and order. [83] In fact, many commercial insurgencies will see an alliance of those for whom political objectives are preeminent and the criminal dimension simply a necessary evil, and those for whom the accumulation of wealth through crime is the primary objective and politics simply a rhetorical veneer to garner some support that they might not otherwise gain. This political component distinguishes commercial insurgents from traditional organized crime. Most often, though, commercial insurgencies will not attempt to rule the state but seek a compliant regime that allows them to pursue criminal activity unimpeded. If that is impossible, they will use persistent violence to weaken and distract the state. In many ways, commercial insurgency has the longest historic lineage-quasi-political bandits and pirates, from Robin Hood to Carlos Lehder, have posed pervasive security threats throughout history. Another emerging form of insurgency will be aimed at multinational political organizations and military forces attempting to stabilize failed states. These insurgencies will emulate anticolonial conflicts in Algeria, Angola, and the first phase of Vietnam as the insurgents play on nationalism and, to an extent, racial divisions. Since public support in the nations providing the multinational force will often be precarious or weak, the insurgents will need only to create instability and cause casualties among the multinational force. Somalia is a prototype for this new type of insurgency. Within this array of goals, the methods used by insurgents will vary according to the nature of the regime they oppose and the extent of their support network. If the legitimacy of the regime is weak, insurgents may follow something like Maoist techniques. If the regime is a democracy with at least moderately strong legitimacy, insurgents may pursue what U.S. Army doctrine calls "subversive insurgency." This will combine a legitimate, above-ground element participating in the political process and an underground using political or criminal violence to weaken or delegitimize the government and thus can also be called camouflaged insurgency. The insurgents will camouflage the connection between the above-ground and underground elements to avoid alienating potential allies opposed to the regime but not in favor of violence, and to complicate attempts by the government to obtain outside assistance. It is much easier for a regime to acquire international support to fight an avowed revolutionary insurgency than a camouflaged insurgency that gives all the appearance of general disorder or widespread crime. When the underground element does destabilize the state and the above-ground element seizes power, the immediate problem for the new government will be reining in its violent wing. It will first attempt cooptation. Failing that, the government will have all of the intelligence needed to violently crush the underground, thus cementing its legitimacy by bringing order and stability. For the United States, subversive insurgencies may pose intractable strategic problems because they will strike at fragile democracies, and because their covert nature will make early intervention difficult. Like many forms of insurgency, camouflaged insurgency will be difficult to recognize until it is so far developed that cures are painful. In combination, changes in the strategic environment and mutations in insurgency undercut the basic assumptions of U.S. counterinsurgency strategy and doctrine. For example, during the Cold War American policymakers often assumed the costs of not acting when a friendly government faced a Marxist insurgency outweighed the potential risks and costs of engagement. In the post-Cold War strategic environment, this may not hold except when insurgents intend to destabilize their neighbors. Marxism was a proselytizing ideology. From Leon Trotsky to Daniel Ortega, its adherents linked their own political survival to spreading the revolution. Future insurgents may not automatically come to the same conclusion, particularly if they see that destabilizing neighbors and spreading the insurgency are likely to provoke serious international involvement and make them less secure rather than more so. This holds important implications for the United States. Victory by non-proselyting insurgents, even those ideologically hostile to the United States, is unlikely to threaten serious national interests. Existing policy and strategy suggests two reasons for U.S. concern for insurgency. One is an updated "domino theory." But if most post-Cold War insurgents do not seek to spread violence, this argument weakens. It is also true that it is easier to contain a radical state run by former insurgents than to prevent insurgent victory. The other reason for American concern is access to raw materials and markets. But, as Benjamin S. Schwarz writes, "America's essential interests very rarely depend upon which group controls resources or power within underdeveloped countries ... basic American economic interests seem relatively secure whatever happens politically in the Third World." [84] This does not mean that the United States has no economic interests in the Global South, but simply that who holds power there will have only a minimal impact. Since victorious insurgents must undertake post-conflict national reconstruction, they are unlikely to stop exporting raw materials. They may be more likely to close their markets, but these are often insignificant anyway. And, even if victorious insurgents did deny the United States access to a resource or market, the costs would ultimately be less than the burden of protracted counterinsurgency support. In the post-Cold War security environment, the costs and risks of counterinsurgency are increasingly altering the basic strategic calculus. Counterinsurgency always risks damaging American credibility, either by association with a repressive or corrupt regime, or by staking U.S. prestige on the outcome of a conflict and forcing policymakers to choose between the economic costs of engagement or the political costs of disengagement. Put simply, a government in serious danger of defeat by an insurgency is often a bad ally. Hypothetically, the United States could only engage in counterinsurgencies where the beleaguered government is not so bad. But this is extraordinarily difficult, mostly because of the way the United States usually becomes involved in counterinsurgency. Rather than making a rational costs-benefits assessment and then committing assistance until the end of the conflict, Americans stumble in and persist as the political costs of disengagement mount. During the Cold War, the United States often rushed in to bail out governments facing imminent defeat and then found that, rather than a bucolic summer romance, it had entered a fatal attraction. In the post-Cold War period, American involvement in counterinsurgency may grow out of peace operations, but will still be inadvertent more often than not. The Clinton administration's national security strategy does not specifically mention counterinsurgency other than "nation assistance" in Latin America, but its emphasis on global engagement, expanding democracy, and supporting peace operations opens the way for stumbling into long-term commitments. [85] Decisions such as the willingness to provide arms to the Cambodian government to fight Khmer Rouge guerrillas could be the first step. [86] American engagement in counterinsurgency also risks damaging the social, political, and economic system of the friendly state. For South Vietnam, the cure may not have been worse than the disease, but it was close. In El Salvador the United States was able to avoid damaging the state and society to the extent of Vietnam, but a regime may eschew badly needed reform and negotiation with insurgents if it thinks American assistance will allow outright victory. It is possible that the Salvadoran military recognized that the collapse of the Soviet Union spelled the end of massive U.S. support, and thus finally allowed a negotiated settlement that could have been reached several years earlier. American involvement in counterinsurgency, then, is often like lending money to a chronic gambler-it postpones real resolution of the problem rather than speeding it. Counterinsurgency can also damage American institutions and morale. The erosion of national purpose and respect for authority engendered by Vietnam has taken years to ameliorate and will never be fully cured. Future American engagement in counterinsurgency might also provoke domestic terrorism. With easy global transportation, the existence of a variety of emigre communities in the United States, and a perception of the American public's unwillingness to accept casualties from peripheral conflicts, insurgents may open an "American front" and target public health, financial networks, communications systems, and the ecology. During the Cold War, American policymakers often assumed that only the United States could provide effective counterinsurgency support. This was always questionable. Often the British and French better understood revolutionary insurgency than Americans did. In the post-Cold War security environment, the most effective counterinsurgency support may come from military institutions with extensive experience either fighting insurgents-the South Africans, Nicaraguans, Turks, Israelis, Peruvians, Filipinos, Colombians, and Salvadorans, for instance-or those such as the Zimbabweans with insurgent backgrounds. Thus there may be others both willing and able to provide counterinsurgency support in the post-Cold War security environment. U.S. effort might be better spent augmenting the planning, intelligence, sustainment, and mobility capabilities of these regional counterinsurgency powers than directly aiding a threatened regime. Finally, Cold War-era counterinsurgency strategy and doctrine assumed Americans understood insurgency better than the threatened regime. Whether this was true or not, there is little evidence that U.S. policymakers and strategists fully grasp the motives, fears, and hopes driving emerging forms of insurgency. Americans are particularly likely to fail against insurgents driven by intangible motives like justice, dignity and the attainment of personal meaning and identity. If, in Martin van Creveld's words, "future war will be waged for the souls of men," [87] the United States will face profound problems. As U.S. experience with "holy terrorists" in the Middle East shows, Americans are ill-equipped to deal with the "root causes" of religion-driven violence. [88] In the post-Cold War strategic environment, then, counterinsurgency is increasingly becoming a high risk/low benefit activity. The U.S. military and defense community must make policymakers aware of this while simultaneously watching for changes in the strategic calculus. 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