Instruments of Statecraft: U.S. Guerilla Warfare, Counter-Insurgency, Counter-Terrorism, 1940-1990 [Hardcover]

Michael Mc Clintock (Author)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

McClintock ( The American Connection ) takes a sweeping look at secret U.S. military operations during the past 50 years, particularly "special warfare." He notes that America learned techniques of secret warfare in WW II and utilized them early on to influence Third World governments that emerged from the postwar collapse of colonial empires. The book profiles Edward Lansdale, counterinsurgency adviser to President Kennedy who advocated psychological warfare in the Philippines and Vietnam. McClintock outlines the development of special warfare from the end of the Vietnam war to the last days of the Reagan administration, tracing U.S. actions in Central America and the Middle East. Factually reliable but lacking in interpretation, the survey is so broad in scope that one is not always certain what points are being made.
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Kirkus Reviews

The locale may have changed--Greece, the Philippines, Vietnam, Africa, Central America--but the strategy was the same: a proxy action by the US government fought on the cheap and on the sly against the Soviet Union. This cautionary history by McClintock (The American Connection, 1985--not reviewed) makes extensive use of declassified and previously unpublished documents, but never breathes life into this sordid tale. McClintock finds that unconventional warfare resulted largely from anticommunist fervor and studies of the new type of war waged by both Axis and Allied powers in WW II. With Third World brushfire conflicts breaking out in the postwar period, US policymakers saw guerrilla warfare as a means of striking back against the USSR by ``fighting fire with fire,'' yet without resorting to open intervention. American units, including the OSS, the CIA, the Green Berets, and the Delta Force, taught surrogates such techniques as assassination (the infamous contra manual), sabotage, kidnapping, coups, and torture. This isn't news, of course, having been covered in analyses of CIA excesses against Castro, counterinsurgency doctrine in Vietnam, and the Iran-contra scandal, but McClintock supplies a context and many new details, particularly on how special-warfare doctrine has been employed even in the post-cold war era, in fighting the Gulf War and Latin American druglords. And while McClintock's questions--is unconventional warfare consistent with American ideas of humanitarianism and liberty, and is it even effective in the long run?--are important, they lose their force amid his turgid prose and lumbering narrative. A controversial, often dismaying chapter in American history, examined with depth but not grace. -- Copyright ©1991, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 604 pages
• Publisher: Pantheon Books; 1st edition (March 31, 1992)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0394559452
• ISBN-13: 978-0394559452
• Product Dimensions: 9.4 x 6.1 x 1.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.9 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,080,902 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

20 of 23 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Engaging, illuminating and riveting May 31, 2000

By Jesse Alexander

Format:Hardcover

"Instruments of Statecraft" is a powerful and significant book that unveils how US counterinsurgency doctrine was consciously modelled on the practices and achievements of World War II fascism. In his review of US Army manuals of the 1950s, author Michael McClintock notes that there is a frightening similarity between the Nazi's perception of world politics and America's behavior in the Cold War.

McClintock reveals how the US has undertaken the worldwide task of removing anti-fascist resistance and other criminals (labelled "Communists" or "terrorists") from the theatre of national and international politics.

McClintock points out that in the struggle against "Partisan Communism" the killing of anyone furnishing aid or comfort, directly or indirectly, to such partisans, or any person withholding information on partisans, was well within the provisions of acceptable superpower behavior.

McClintock shows how the policies advocated by Kennedy's dovish advisors, and standard US practice in Central America were founded on the fundamental state terrorist policy of the utility of "evacuation of all natives from partisan-infested areas and the destruction of all farms, villages, and buildings in the areas following the evacuations" - standard US procedure in South Vietnam, for example.Engaging, illuminating and riveting,"Instruments of Statecraft" is a must-read for blind-faith patriots everywhere.

5.0 out of 5 stars Worthy Compendium of US Unconventional Warfare July 26, 2012

By Brett A. MccUlly

Format:Hardcover

Michael McClintock lays out the history of postwar US special warfare, both in practice and in official doctrine, and takes a critical approach to the subject. He begins with the origins of unconventional warfare, where US military historians drew lessons from the Nazi occupation -- often with a favorable view towards the conquerors.

Readers may feel lost in some of the history presented -- having more background knowledge of the Greek civil war in the late 1940s, for example, would have helped my reading.

McClintock further illustrates the evolution of US special warfare, from a counterguerilla focus in the early years to a focus on counterinsurgency in the 1960s, and more recently a shift to counterterror in the 1980s. The picture that emerges is an ugly one: that the US habitually ignored and willfully circumvented the Geneva conventions in special warfare, a domain viewed by military commanders to be outside of international law. That being said, such a picture is crucial to understanding both how the world see the US and how the US military projects power throughout the globe, often in "low-intensity conflict" to avoid the political costs of conventional wars.

Clearly a substantial amount of work has gone into this book; historical military documents are dusted off and used to illustrate the doctrine of special operations -- one that, at times, explicitly endorses the use of terror. However, the book would have benefited from some more interesting prose, as the above professional reviewers have noted.

The sheer density of information packed into this volume makes it well worth the read. Readers should take note of the lessons to be drawn from the facts presented; deployment of US unconventional forces often comes at the cost of our values.