Instruments of Statecraft: U.S. Guerrilla Warfare, Counterinsurgency, and Counterterrorism 1940-1990

by Michael Mc Clintock

Uses recently declassified documents to survey the American use of covert warfare against terrorists and adversarial states

Genres: History, American, War, Military Fiction, United States, Nonfiction, American History

604 pages, Hardcover

First published March 31, 1992

Reviews

[Brett · Rating 4 out of 5]

Lots of good information in this book, but boy is it a challenging read. It's concerned with U.S. counterinsurgency policy in the immediate aftermath of WWII (beginning with Greece) all the way through the numerous "low intensity" conflicts in Latin America in the 1980s.

McClintock pretty clearly has left politics, and doesn't shy away from noticing that U.S. counterinsurgency policy is pretty much as atrocity-friendly as the policies of any other nation, and is often written down in plain language in army manuals and the like. Apparently this rubs some people the wrong way, but I guess I'd say these are generally people that have a strong interest in not seeing the world too clearly.

I did like the book better as it went along, and found has discussion of the Carter years to be pretty interesting.

If you're like me though, it's easy to find your mind wandering as we read quotes from the nth internal military policy document. It can get somewhat tedious. It took me many weeks to complete this tome. I have to think there be a more reader friendly version of this book. But if this kind of thing is really your jam, this book might be up your alley.

[Tommy · Rating 5 out of 5]

A very valuable presentation of the development of American tactical thinking on "unconventional warfare" throughout the 20th century from early pre-WWII experience coming from the Marines to lessons learnt by pranksters such as General Edward Lansdale to Theodore Shackley from British/Nazi/Israeli/etc experience in fighting insurgent forces... as well as how euphemisms work. Cites government produced monographs, pamphlets, field manuals and all that which can mostly be easily tracked down online.

[Liam · Rating 3 out of 5]

When I first found this book I was pretty thrilled- I thought I had discovered a book that had somehow been overlooked by almost everyone in the Counterinsurgency field. Well, I guess the joke is on me: when I began to read it I quickly figured out that the reason it had not appeared in any bibliographies (none that I have seen, in any case) of other books on the same subject is the extremely biased viewpoint of the author. Essentially, Mr. McClintock uses his obvious skill as a researcher and writer to attack (and indict) the entire U.S. Counterinsurgency/Psychological Warfare & Special Operations establishments throughout their history. He also engages in a great deal of quite vicious character assassination against several of the most well known & respected figures in the field (Lansdale, Bohannon, McClure, Singlaub, etc.), recycling the ridiculous old characterisation of Lansdale as a hopelessly naive & amoral scam artist and making accusations of all kinds of reprehensible behavior up to and including war crimes. He takes aim at military & political figures from other nations as well (Magsaysay, Valeriano, Galula, Trinquier, Ngo Dinh Diem, etc.)in more or less the same fashion. Oddly, he barely mentions William Colby (Colby's name does not even appear in the index), who is, in many others' view as well as my own, one of the most important figures in the history of Counterinsurgency during the 1950s, 1960s & 1970s. I should have gotten a clue as to the attitude of the author from the biographical paragraph under his photo on the back cover flap (not to mention the photo itself!), which stated in part that Mr. McClintock had "been a human rights monitor for the past sixteen years" and also indicated that he had earned his master's degree from the University of Wisconsin, which leads me to suspect that he probably studied under Alfred McCoy, with whose work I also tend to have problems despite its excellence. Though there are a few errors of fact in this book, most of them seem to be related to the author's obvious bias against CI/PsyOps & SpecOps, and those involved in these and related fields. In the end, the joke is on Mr. McClintock, because due to his excellent work, and despite its unfortunately biased tone, this book is well worth reading and an extremely useful and informative history of arguably the most important era in the history of Counterinsurgency/Psychological Warfare & Special Operations.

[Gordon · Rating 3 out of 5]

Difficult read, was this even published? Very detailed, looks at the use of counterinsurgency in American foreign policy through to the early 90s. Worth looking at if you're into that kind of thing.