'Are today's skirmishes only manifestations of a restlessness that has not come to

fruition?”
Fourth Generation Warfare in Nicaragua, El Salvador & the U.S.

“In trying to devour one dish they consider tasty they could lose the whole
Central American buffet. This is what could happen!” - Tomás Borge1

Introduction
William Lind may not have understood his own implications when he described
the future of world warfare before the collapse of the USSR. Lind, in his “The
Changing Face of War,” describes what the U.S. will be looking at for some time to
come.2 Fourth generation warfare emphasizes greater dispersion on the
battlefield, decreasing dependence on centralized logistics, and more emphasis
on maneuver all with the goal of collapsing the enemy internally rather than
physically destroying them. Fourth generation warfare is nonlinear, much to the
chagrin of established historians. Finally, fourth generation warfare is one of ideas
instead of technology and brute force. This kind of warfare is all too familiar since
September 11, 2001 and the US invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq. But the tools for
fourth generation war were laid bare as far back as the Vietnam War, and more
recently, in two guerrilla wars in Central America in the 1980s. Using the upheaval
of Nicaragua and El Salvador in the eighties, one will exam guerrilla tactics and
the advent (or onslaught) of fourth generation warfare in Latin America. In
detailing the organization, technological innovations, culture and strategy of both
rebel armies, one will witness the blurred lines dug by the United States in its
opposition to both forces and its ramifications today.

Guerrilla warfare history

In Robert Taber's The War of the Flea he made is clear that “the
counterinsurgency experts have yet to win a war. At this writing, they are
certainly losing one.”3 Taber was writing in 1965 and speaking of the US

1 Tomás Borge “Large Scale Aggression is Being Prepared,” in Speeches by Sandinista Leaders ed. Bruce Marcus (New
York: Pathfinder Press, 1985): 66.
2 William Lind, “The Changing Face of War: Into the Fourth Generation,” Marine Corps Gazette, October 1989.
3 Robert Taber, The War of the Flea (New York: Lyle Stuart, 1965): 173.
involvement in Vietnam. It was during this period another voice was being heard,
one who would have a huge influence in the revolutionary culture of the 1970s
and '80s. Following his experiences during the Cuban Revolution, Che Guevara
would implore his fellow revolutionaries to “create two, three Vietnams.” 4 Of
course, the history of Latin America is one intermixed with the United States (who
Che is implying Latin America create “Vietnams” with) from its role in vanquishing
Spain in the early nineteenth century to its “gunboat diplomacy” to its open
interference in military, economic and social affairs in almost every country from
Mexico to Argentina. It was almost during this time that J. William Fulbright, who
denounced the Bay of Pigs invasion in 1961 and US policy toward Vietnam, would
say, in his book, The Arrogance of Power: “The movement of the future of Latin
America is social revolution. The question is not whether it is to be a communist
or democratic revolution and the choice which Latin Americans make will depend
in part on how the United States uses its great influence.”5
Che, with help from Mao, developed what was to become known as the foco,
or “focus,” theory of guerrilla war, which ascertained that revolution could be
attained by a “small but dedicated band of combatants who would gradually
attract a mass following of peasants and workers.” Three conditions maintain this
warrior: “constant mobility, constant vigilance, constant distrust.”6 Che, who
admired the Vietnamese struggle against Western imperialism, was also
influenced by Mao's belief in the popular insurrections of towns and cities over
long periods. Yet even Mao would be tested in the 1980s. Was it true, as Mao
claimed, that there is little hope of squashing guerrilla movements after it has
survived its first phase and gained the support of the population? Is it true that a
guerrilla movement is organized and then begins?7 Regardless of the answers, the
US feared the implications of another Vietnam in its “backyard.” Following
President Reagan's invasion of Grenada in 1983 and the relief of the “Vietnam
Syndrome” the Report on the President's National Bipartisan Commission on
Central America stated in 1984: “The United States cannot afford to turn away

4 Che Guevara, “Message to the Tricontinental,” <http://marxsite.com/guevara.htm>

5 William Fulbright, Arrogance of Power (New York: Random House, 1966): 82-92.
6 Rolando E. Bonachea and Nelson P. Valdes, Che: Selected Works of Ernesto Guevara, (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1969).
7 Mao Tse-tung, On Guerrilla Warfare (New York: Dover Press, 2005): 27.
from that threatened region. Central America is in our crisis.”8
Yet the United States never openly invaded either Nicaragua or El Salvador,
two countries it had dominated before with relative ease. This is the complexity of
fourth generation warfare. Not only is guerrilla warfare, “terrorism” as it was
known to William Lind, complex, but the reactions of power centers had changed
since Vietnam. In short, third generation, “traditional,” warfare would have
decimated the two countries and while the US had dabbled in extrajudicial
meothods before, never had it invoked a military from the ground up like it did in
Nicaragua or fund so heavily the death squads in El Salvador. How “terrorists”
become “freedom fighters” and how guerrilla wars were won and lost in this
fourth generation will be discussed beginning with the Sandinista revolution of
1979, when the United States woke up to, as Ronald Reagan would say later, a
force that was “only [a] two days' drive to Brownsville, Texas.”9

Sandinista!
For the very first time ever, when they had a revolution in Nicaragua
There was no interference from America, human rights in America
Well the people fought the leader and off he flew
With no Washington bullets what else could he do?
- The Clash (“Washington Bullets”)

While that is not exactly how it happened, the consensus agrees that after the
Sandinstas gained traction in the late 1970s, the fall of Somoza was forseen and
he fell quickly. The Frente Sandinista de Liberación Nacional took control of
Nicaraguan political, economic and social life on 19 July, 1979. This was the first
social revolution in Latin America since Cuba in 1959. As discussed in class, the
Sandinista movement originally attempted to recreate Mao's general theories on
guerrilla warfare, which proved to be a disaster. By 1978, the FSLN was able to
induce large scale attacks from Somoza, as well as take advantage of
precipitating factors like a general strike, urban insurrection and a military
offensive in order to overthrow Somoza, his family's power propped by since the

8 US Bipartisan Commission on Central America, The Report of the President's National Bipartisan Commission on
Central America (New York: Macmillan, 1984). See also: Jon Western, “Battling Vietnam Syndrome,” in Selling
Intervention and War (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press: 2005): 94-133.
9 Tina Rosenberge, “Nicaragua, 25 Years Are the Revolution, Is Still Struggling,” The New York Times, 24 July 2004.
1930s by the United States.10 In short, the Sandinistas were able to completely
embarrass the United States by, in the terms of the Cold War, being able to
dispose of “our son of a bitch” as Franklin Roosevelt said of Somoza Debayle's
father, Anastasio Somoza García, as well as set up a system of government at
odds to burgeoning US hegemony. Below, one will examine Nicaraguan culture
and how it gave rise to the FSLN and mass insurrection. One will inspect the FSLN
itself and explain the importance of technology, organization, and strategy in the
context provided, as well as view the effects in the United States (before the
Contra war) on the culmination of revolutionary triumph.
One important concept to take away in military matters, especially guerrilla
warfare, is that people act on their own perceptions of reality – their own
“individual needs, histories, aspriations.” 11
Without an extensive study of
Nicaraguan culture, it is fair to say that it is one of resistance. First, it was towards
Spain and the United States, then it was towards the Somoza dynasty. In the
1960s, the youth turned away from traditional power and embraced Marxist-
Leninist philosophies, as guerrilla testimonies concur. This philosophy influenced
everything around Latin America, including the powerful Catholic Church, whose
liberation theology stressed that when one's back is against the wall and the idea
of “liberation” is being accepted as a conditional aspect of life – the time is ripe
for military insurrection. The time would also be ripe for fresh minds to contribute
to a worthy case. Because there is more at stake, Wilson would agree, the culture,
especially students beginning the FSLN, would be more inclined to take risks in
order to succeed and thus be more egalitarian in its aspect. “There was growing
resistance [to Somoza] from all segments of the population,” said Humberto
Ortega, then soldier and later leader of the FSLN military. “While Somoza lost
more and more political and military authority, we gained it.”12 Samuel Griffith, in
his introduction to Mao's guerrilla tactics, states: “In the US, we go to considerable
trouble to keep soldiers out of politics, and even more, politics out of our soldiers.
Guerrillas do the opposite. They go to great lengths to make sure that their men
are politically educated and thoroughly aware of the issues at stake.”13
10 Humberto Ortega, “Nicaragua – The Strategy of Victory” in Sandinistas Speak (New York: Pathfinder Press, 1982): 77
11 Alvin Levie, Nicaragua: The People Speak (South Hadley, Massachusetts: Bergin and Garvery Publishers, 1985): xv.
12 Ortega, “The Strategy of Victory,” 56.
13 Mao, 8.
 It is important to appreciate the marriage between technology and
organization. The FSLN itself owes much of its successes in the later 1970s due to
its organization. With no weapons of logistics to speak of on the ground, their
organization and solidarity with one another helped them to succeed in the end.
Wilson advocates “participation” and “decentralization” as essential in order to
foster “honest debate within an organization that can affect societal changes.” 14
From 1970 to 1975 the FSLN committed terrorist actions which “freed prisoners,
gained ransoms and increased its political visibility,” but did not add credibility.15
Then, like Mao, the Sandinistas knew they needed to create a “proletariat
insurrection” - in short, they needed to people (workers) to rise up in arms in
major cities like Managua. To do something like this, they followed Mao's strategy
of turning from guerrilla terrorists to guerrilla soldiers. This did not happen
overnight. Many fractures of the original FSLN had to be organized into one unit.
For example, the Popular War (GPP) called for the continuation of guerrilla war in
the countryside, the Proletarian Tendency (TP) called for a concentration on urban
warfare, and the Terceristias (Third Force) called for the “immediate initiation of
widespread urban insurrections.” Combining these forces into one unit proved
complicated but, in their eyes, necessary. 16
Aspects of this can be seen in the
terminology and outlook at the time, for example Daniel Ortega and Tomás Borge
speak extensively in memoirs and interviews about “columns” and “infantry
battalions.” Unlike Lind's analysis, the FSLN very much used this language as a
legitimizing factor – to create the illusion of a legitimate war.17
While organizational ideas were at work behind the arms, supplied from
Cuba and the USSR, violence was a major part of revolutionary culture. 18 The FSLN
never had more than 15,000 men at arms at a single time before the massive
September 1978 insurrection. The National Guard under Somoza outnumbered
them ten to one.19 According to FSLN guerrilla Paulo Palencia, in the early 1970s,

14 Wilson ,214
15 Stephen M. Gordon, “Power and Consolidation in the Nicaraguan Revolution,” Journal of Latin American Studies 13,
no. 1 (May, 1981): 135.
16 Ibid.
17 Marcus, 303; Bruce, 75.
18 Even the arms from Cuba were not enough. Tomás Borge quipped: “We lack airplanes, and we do not have enough
weapons for each Nicaraguan soldier to shoulder a rifle. That is to say, our problem is not one of a lack of people willing
to fight, but a lack of arms.” (Marcus, 255).
19 George Black, Triumph of the People: The Sandinista Revolution in Nicaragua. London: Zed Press, 1981.
“we transported arms in the mountains, forests, on trails [using] wagons, horses,
and burros. Later, toward the end...we drove our weapons right down the
highway, past Somoza's Guardians [the National Guard] in rented cars.” 20 This
small detail, adopting technology to accomplish goals, speaks to the huge
difference the insurrectionary scope took in the mid-1970s. One amazing
innovation (“La Proletaria”) comes from an arms shortage in 1978. La Proletaria
was a weapon designed to fire .22 bullets and “constructed from a section of
metal tubing one-inch in diameter, and a fire mechanism built around a rubber
band.”21 It was the common guerrilla soldiers who would make the difference
during the final years of the war:
Without the monlithic united of the Sandinistas; without an insurrectional strategy
supported by the masses; without the necessary coordination between the guerrilla
fronts and the military fronts in the cities; without effective wireless communication
to coordinate all the fronts; without a radio broadcasting system to guide the mass
movement; without hard-hitting technical and military resources; without a solid
rear guard for introducing these resources and preparing the men, training them;
without previous victories and setbacks...without a flexible, intelligent, and mature
policy of alliances on both the national and international levels there would been no
revolutionary victory...22
First, one must produce a technology and organize it. What follows is the
implementation, the doctrine, of combat. The Sandinistas in the late-1970s
walked on a thin line. Too little violence and the cities would not take up arms (a
major organizational tool) but too much violence and they'd be inviting US
intervention. It was the Sandinista movement of the early 1970s that failed as it
tried to follow Mao's teachings in their entirety and it was not until they became
“tactically flexible, but strategically intransigent” that they began to win.23
The FSLN strategy embraced the major tenants of “insurrectional” guerrilla
warfare and their platform called simply for the overthrow of Somoza and the
implementation of a new government. One twist on the Sandinista strategy
included “total war,” a situation Mao advocates. According to John Keegan, “total

20 Levie, 185. (25)

21 Black, 135-6
22 Ortega, 78. (27)
23 Karp, Class Notes, 10 April 2008; Joshua Muravchik, “Nicaragua's Slow March to Communism,” This World, no. 13
(Winter 1986): 4.
war” or “true war” is a misnomer. Keegan alludes to the French, Germans and
Britons in World War I “fighting war for war's sake,” which is different than the
Nicaraguan experience. As stated above, one agrees with Clausewitz, in a sense,
in that the wars in El Salvador and Nicaragua were both political in their aim.24
According to Humberto Ortega, the idea was to “break up the maximum degree
possible the mercenary forces operating in the border and mountain regions”
which included securing war fronts, ensuring basic production and improving and
strengthening combat and mobilization readiness.25 They began anew in the late
1970s launching daring military strikes against Somoza – rapid fire campaigns
with little risk of failure. From there they gathered more military might which led
to widespread “thrusts” on military targets. A turning point came in September
1978, almost nine months before their victory. Without the help of the Sandinistas,
the town of Matagalpa rose up to an insurrection which prompted Somoza to
dispatch the National Guard. According to George Black, the FSLN faced “a stark
choice: either to block the insurrection or to support it and put themselves at its
head, to give it a political direction.” They chose to fight and Black describes it as
“the fusion of the military and the political, it was the first time [Nicaraguans] and
their political vanguard fought together in the barricades.” This was essential
strategically because although they would lose this insurrection, “the leadership
of the Nicaraguan Revolution was not longer in question. Everyone fought under
the banner of Sandinismo.”26
Without an “Washington Bullets,” Somoza drained the treasury and fled
Nicaragua in 1979 (he would meet his own violent end in Uruguay). While the US
did not play a role in Nicaragua empirically, it did play a role politically. By the
mid-1970s, Somoza had become an outcast – like Rafael Trujillo of the Dominican
Republic, “Papa Doc” Duvalier of Haiti, and Alfredo Stroessner in Paraguay – and
with the world against them, the US began to cut military funding for Somoza and
others with its increased emphasis on human rights. This, combined with an
earthquake that hit Managua in December of 1972 and the unrest that followed
after that, gave the FSLN favor in deposing the dynasty that began in the 1930s.

24 John Keegan, A History of Warfare, (New York: Knopf, 1993): 17, 21.
25 Marcus, 304-5
26 Black, 128-9
The US was not thrilled about the Sandinistas gaining power, in fact, it helped
Ronald Reagan get elected in 1980. The mistakes in Nicaragua would not be
repeated in El Salvador. And with the Contra War looming, Daniel Ortega, after
taking power in July 1979, said: “In practice we are on the defensive [trying] to
overcome that situation while avoiding the twin pitfalls of adventurism and an
overly conservative analysis of this difficult and precarious situation.”27

Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front

“El Salvador doesn't really matter. We have to establish credibility because we're
in serious trouble.”
- Advisor to President Reagan28

Although the Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (FMLN) did not get an
album named after them, they were just as important in terms of fourth
generation warfare as our Nicaraguan example. The context of El Salvador varies
from the examples above. As the Sandinistas procured power in 1979, El Salvador
was about to blow up into a civil war lasting until early 1992. One saw the effect
of the United States on Nicaragua – small compared to the Contra War that was to
come. In El Salvador, the relationship with the US was distinct from the beginning.
The US, following the turmoil in Nicaragua, began to offer assistance to
governments to suppress their revolutions – all under the context of the Cold War
and fighting communism. In the Sandinistas, one saw a guerrilla force rise
against an oppressive regime that had lost all international backing. The
Sandinistas had become the “victim.” Although the FMLN would gain the support
of the international community in time, it fought against a massively funded and
well-armed and (US) trained National Guard (not to mention paramilitary death
squads). Those factors will be discussed below as contrasts with the Nicaraguan
experience become more evident, especially in the way that power relations
affect the eventual outcomes of these two revolutions. While there will be
continuity between these two strands, their differences are essential. Like the
FSLN, the FMLN decided to take up arms in the mid-1970s due to severe social,
political and economic reasons. The FMLN wanted land reform, political rights, and

27 Ortega, 57-8.
28 William M. LeoGrande, “A Splendid Little War: Drawing the Line in El Salvador,” International Security 6, no. 1
(1981): 27
a fair and inclusive economic system.
As Lind proposes, “the distinction between civilian and military may
disappear” and this was to be the story of the FMLN. One leading FMLN figure in
the early 1980s was Miguel Castellanos who, in his The Comandante Speaks,
described his Catholic faith and his desire to do well in school and help his
country. As the various factions of the FMLN (composed of five distinct, and at
times, contradictory, forces) came to power, Castellanos and others like him were
drawn to Marxist-Leninist ideology for its material and dialectical support for the
underprivileged – in short, the class they belonged to. “Decide if you are going to
fight for the people,” Castellanos would remember young revolutionaries saying,
“because in war there are no neutrals or spectators.” 29 Thus, the blurring of
civilian and military began in universities across El Salvador.
Just like the Sandinistas, the perception is more important than the reality.
Both groups were committed to fighting Western imperialism – an ideology think
in the history of Latin America. While a popular stand to take during the time, the
FMLN was still outnumbered by government supporters twenty-seven to one 30 and
without access to ballots, both the FMLN and FSLN had to resort to armed
revolution. Like the FSLN, each faction of the FMLN had its own personality and
opinion and in the late 1970s and early 1980s it was showcased in kidnappings,
political assassinations and bombings. Like the FSLN, the FMLN were more
interesting in the final stages of the insurrection before they reached it, even
going so far as to name their first attempt at capturing San Salvador in 1981 as
the “Final Offensive.” A military doctrine – a political ideology – existed in Latin
America in which guerrilla groups could neither win nor lose. The idea of “losing”
believed to be a truly Western one. Despite the “loses,” the FMLN continued to
control vast territories and, at one time, the entire Western half of the country.
Like the Sandinistas, the FMLN also had the flexibility which “allowed the
insurgents to make a 180-degree turn from large-scale, quasi-conventional war to
a more political struggle that would incorporate 'all the people'” 31 Both resistance
movements vowed to “resist, develop, advance” in the face of their perceived
29 Courtney Prisk, The Comandante Speaks: Memoirs of an El Salvadoran Guerrilla Leader (Boulder, Colorado: Westview
Press, 1991): 9. (36)
30 Hugh Byrne, El Salvador's Civil War: A Study of Revolution (Boulder: Westview Press, 1996): 77.
31 Byrne, 114.
oppressor, but words and actions took divergent paths.
The FMLN and the FSLN also shared differences. Organizationally, for
example, both were composed of various factions that looked out for separate
interests. “For the entire duration of the war, the five parties that made up the
FMLN maintained their own structures, organizations, and party finances...[which]
prevented the development of ongoing, unitary leadership bodies.” 32 Whereas the
Sandinistas dealt with their differences through pain and defeat in he mid-1970s,
the FMLN never evaluated their politics and thus became, according to Alegaría,
“a vanguard without an army.”33 This polarization bred “prolonged war.” Like
Greece in the late 1940s fighting for its independence, the FMLN would prolong its
war through outside effects on logistic supplies and the dispersion of forces.34
While the Sandinistas and the Cubans supplied arms, they could not affect the
structural weakness of the FMLN. The populaces, like San Salvador and Santa Ana,
did not rise up in 1981 as expected as they did in Managua. Yet, as the FMLN
gained more support, they threw away lives in poorly planned attacks on fixed
targets instead of mobile ones. They had already gutted their entire insurrection
to the point of abandoning “tactical waves (offensives) designed to provoke
insurrections, military coups, and instability.”35 Again, like Greece, the FMLN
gained military power within themselves (which were, of course, theoretically
divided five ways) and left behind the people, the most important aspect to
popular social revolution. In the end, while guerrilla war may have been
successful, the FMLN failed on the political end. The elections of 1984 ushered in
José Napoleón Duarte, who was supported by the United States. Thus, the
government gained “legitimacy” amid the violence in a way that Somoza did not.
As Lind mentions, one of the tenants of the next military generation will be
decentralized combat. It seems that the FMLN took “decentralization” to its
conclusion. Was this to be the highlight of the fourth generation soldier? Lind also

32 Byrne, 77.
33 Claribel Alegaría, They Won't Take Me Alive (London: Women's Press Limited, 1987): 19.
34 The parallels with Greece do not end their. Like that struggle, the FMLN also relied on markets that got squeezed during
the war. In this case, the FMLN got 60 percent of its arms through the black market, which includes Cuba and the USSR
(Prisk, 38). Like Greece, these outlets were closed and proved to be detrimental to the movement. According to Byrne,
quoting a revolutionary in El Salvador: “We had to achieve greater efficiency in the military terrain: to move from
defense positions to a war of movement, to move from the dispersion to the concentration of forces (84). Like Greece,
the lack of arms and the dispersion of forces were among the factors that would deny the revolution.
35 Prisk, 42.
states that “the distinction between war and peace will be blurred to the
vanishing point.” According to Byrne, by 1984, 50,000 civilians had been
murdered, 468,000 displaced (9.75 percent of the population) and 1.2 million
Salvadorans in the US (25 percent of the population). 36 After 1985, the war would
escalate, as it did in Greece and Cyprus in the late 1940s, into a bloodbath.
Whereas the Sandinistas held onto the idea of popular insurrection and gained the
title of “victim” across the international divide, when the FMLN came upon hard
times in the late-1980s, its dreams faded. Due to the lack of organizational unity
and military support, the FMLN ended up abandoning its major tenants and
abused human rights like the government was doing, losing credit that it once
had. Keegan states that cultures are not indefinitely self-sustaining and
technologies, including war-making technologies, have influence and cultures
either accept this or don't.37

Contra Wars and Propping up Governments

“On the other hand,” said Borge, “it is the law of history that revolution
necessarily produces counterrevolution.”
- Tomás Borge38

As followed in one's thesis, the way the US dealt with the two previous guerrilla
movements in its “backyard” set the tone for the situations America faces today
in Iraq and Afghanistan. Below, the western way of warfare will be expanded.
Nicaragua will be a major focus because of the “revolutionary” government and
the US policy of overthrowing the FSLN with a Contra army. The connections to El
Salvador will also be tied up as one examines their complete role during the
1980s. Both revolutionary movements went beyond Clausewitz's idea of war as an
extension of politics – they, like Mao in China, pushed the definition further to
encapsulate politics as the only reason for war. The activities in Nicaragua and El
Salvador were the United States' final battles of the Cold War, as well as their last
long term combatants until 2003. The US military and political response,
especially to the revolutionary Sandinistas, is a direct reflection of the current
geo-political landscape of today. With the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 (El

36 Byrne, 115.
37 Keegan, 387.
38 Borge, 249
Salvador would sign a peace agreement a few months later in 1992; the FSLN
would be ousted in democratic elections in 1990 and not regain power until 2006),
the US' final decade before becoming the world's only superpower was a telling
one indeed.
As the Sandinistas took office in 1980, intervention by the United States was
imminent. President Daniel Ortega lamented: “The total cost of manufacturing the
US B-1 strategic bombers alone is sixty-two times greater than the annual budget
of the Republic of Nicaragua.”39 This makes it clear just how great the gap
militarily that divided the US and Nicaragua in the 1980s.
It is false to think of the contenders in Nicaragua's long civil war as frozen
monoliths or to conceive of their antagonism in static terms . Yet how frequently
people do that, particularly in the United States. Perhaps the truth of the saying that the
generals are always fighting the previous war derives from the fact that the politicians
compel them to do so.40
Yet in the end, importantly, the United States never did invade Nicaragua,
although it did train and fund a group called the Contras, literally
counterrevolutionaries, to do the work for them. Militarily, the main problem
became “how to defend threatened United States interests in conflict
environments short of conventional war...Ironically, our concentration on the need
to deter nuclear and conventional war has given rise to a lack of focus on low-
intensity conflicts around the globe.” The United States possessed an army
equipped for conventional warfare, and thus expatriates, as well as dispossessed
farmers, were recruited into the Contras and given a Western lesson in “modern”
warfare; i.e. third generation – “Scorpion tanks, A-37 aircraft, several dozen
fighter bombers and helicopters, plus a training program and organization of a
clearly offensive character aimed at Nicaraguans.”41 Strategically, the solution
was “low-intensity” warfare. This involved a war of destruction which included
health facilities, sawmills, coffee groves, and processing plants, as well as the
murders of isolated farmers and workers to sow the seeds of terror into the
countryside. The Contras consistently ambushed Sandinista strongholds from
Honduras, a US ally, where the government protected the Contras and allowed the
39 Borge, 248
40 Pardo-Maurer, R. The Contras 1980-1989: A Special Kind of Politics (New York: Praeger, 1990): 1.
41 Borge, 255
US to set up bases for training.42 For Ronald Reagan, the Contra War was an “open
war” fought in “military, diplomatic, and financial arenas.” This is how fourth
generation success was dealt with.43
Like in Nicaragua, the US never invaded El Salvador. Despite it not sending
tangible troops or arms per se, it did send encouragement and money. The US
believed in containment and the halting of communism before it crept slowly
toward the US. Thus the interim goals for the Salvadoran government imposed by
the US in 1981, following the failed “Final Offensive” included:
...prevention of the takeover of a friendly neighbor of the US by a Communist
guerrilla army...the maintenance in El Salvador of a government which shares our ideal of
democracy...and prevention of further deterioration of the economy of El
Salvador...that will reinstall citizens confidence and hope for the future.44
The negative aspects of US/El Salvador relations were caused by the Sandinistas.
Because of their ability to thwart the whims of the US, President Reagan began to
favor “outright military victory” and was skeptical “of any political settlements
with the rebels.” El Salvador “suddenly became a symbol – a vehicle with the
Reagan administration hope[d] to set the tone for its whole foreign policy. 45 Like
the Sandinistas, Reagan relied on other power structures to fight his war. Through
the 1980s, in addition to military aid, Reagan applied pressure on the right-wing
government to be more “aggressive” in crushing the FMLN. Thus, the US added a
complexity that the FMLN did no have, which stemmed from the massive amount
of military aide they gave the government of El Salvador. However, according to
Byrne, “rather than adopt a single approach that would integrate political, military
and economic strategies and tactics to achieve the overarching objective of
defeating the insurgents, the counterrevolutionary coalition developed a series of
piecemeal approaches to advance its interests.”46 This created, according to

42 “Using official figures, I can confirm that between August and October, Nicaragua has suffered 58 ambushes, 4 acts of
sabotage, 3 attacks on patrol, 14 infiltrations, and 19 incursions. As a result of these acts of aggression originating in
Honduran territory, we have suffered 120 casualties.” (Borge, 65).
43 For a great look at how the US dealt with the problem in Nicaragua, see: Central Intelligence Agency, The Freedom
Fighters Manual: Practical guide to liberating Nicaragua from oppression and misery by paralyzing the military-
industrial complex of the traitorous Marxist state without having to use special tools and minimal risk for the combatant,
(New York: Grove Press, 1985).
44 Byrne, 75.
45 Enrique A. Baloyra, “Negotiating War in El Salvador: The Politics of Endgame,” Journal of Interamerican Studies and
World Affairs 28, no. 1 (Spring 1986): 124; LeoGrande, 27.
46 Byrne, 88.
photographer Robin Anderson, “a new context” in which “struggle=death;
revolution=chaos; and change=pathology.”47 Whereas the Sandinistas relied on
international pressure to reduce US activity in the region, the US used these
tactics to create public-relation campaigns, diplomatic initiatives, and election
strategies to maintain government control and international backing.

Contra Wars and Propping up Governments

We do not start wars. We will never be the aggressor. We help our friends help
themselves.”
- Department of State48

What can be surmised from the US experience in these two countries? The major
overarching problem with both Nicaragua and El Salvador was the US reliance on
conventional military means (or the funding of conventional means) which only
allowed for certain structures and doctrines to be employed. Thus, the relations
with the rest of the world were skewed because of misunderstandings in warfare.
Yet how much did these experiences really change US policy? There is no doubt
that the US was able to use the Vietnam, Grenada and the Central American wars
to prepare for further offensives in Somalia in 1992, Bosnia in 1999 and Iraq in
2003. These wars taught the US that technology did not matter. As one has seen,
both insurrections relied on the weapons of the opposition – not nuclear weapons
of ICBM's, just bombs and guns. This confounded the US as Western ideas of war
originate with the State and are fought through military organizations, not
civilians. These wars are fought locally with the objective of conquest of political
power, not land or citizens. Thus, the US reacted to logistical lines and gave
credence to civilian innovations.
State warfare (terror), as discussed in class, cannot defeat fourth generation
warfare. It did not defeat the Sandinistas or the FMLN. It was economic, political,
electorate and international pressures which brought both revolutions to their
knees in the early 1990s. The US, with its technological identity, fought a truly
third generational war in El Salvador and Nicaragua. A third generational war is

47 Robin Anderson, “Images of War: Photojournalism, Ideology, and Central America,” Latin American Perspectives 16,
no. 2, Cultural Production and the Struggle for Hegemony (Spring 1989): 101.
48 US Department of State, “President Reagan: U.S. Interests in Central America,” Current Policy, no. 576 (9 May, 1984):
1-5.
that of “security,” which is still preached today in Iraq. In the 1980s, “securing”
both countries from communism defined the US role in Central America. With
security comes labor, and in El Salvador especially, the US “secured” the “ending”
of the civil war in 1992. This idea of beginnings and endings is a Western notion
tied to ones culture and military expectations. Third generation warfare is linear,
fourth generation is constant. So “by failing to focus on the socio-economic
causes of political turmoil,” the US (the West) commits itself to a “narrow military
conception of national security and a preference for using military means to
manage political problems.” The confluence of organization, technological and
cultural aspects of Nicaragua and El Salvador clashed with the anticommunist
military power of the State back by the US in support of its interests. Central
America became the last battleground of the Cold War, and its affects are still felt
today.

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