The manual’s short “Acknowledgements,” placed up front right after Petraeus’s signature, refers to only two books: David Galula’s Counterinsurgency Warfare: Theory and Practice and Sir Robert Thompson’s Defeating Communist Insurgency: The Lessons of Malaya and Vietnam, both from the mid-1960s.
Chapter One of the manual takes a leaf out of Galula’s book and, practically paraphrasing the French commander, underscores the primacy of political factors in counterinsurgency. “General Chang Ting-chen of Mao Zedong’s central committee once stated that revolutionary war was 80 percent political action and only 20 percent military,” the manual reads. Then it warns: “At the beginning of a COIN operation, military actions may appear predominant as security forces conduct operations to secure the populace and kill or capture insurgents; however, political objectives must guide the military’s approach.”27
Chapter Two opens with an epigraph from David Galula’s book: “Essential though it is, the military action is secondary to the political one, its primary purpose being to afford the political power enough freedom to work safely with the population.” The field manual comes back to Galula several pages later, stating how “David Galula wisely notes” that the soldier must temporarily focus on civilian tasks. “Galula’s last sentence is important,” Petraeus’s manual emphasizes. Redirecting the military from its core military tasks should only be temporary, “one taken to address urgent circumstances.”28
The influence of Galula is everywhere evident. As Lieutenant Colonel John Nagl, a member of the team that helped write the manual, notes, “Of the many books that were influential in the writing of the Field Manual 3-24, perhaps none was as important as David Galula’s Counterinsurgency Warfare: Theory and Practice.” The historian Grégor Mathias reports that General Petraeus “encouraged officers serving in Iraq and Afghanistan to read [Galula’s book].”29 General Petraeus himself would later refer to Galula as “the Clausewitz of counterinsurgency” and to his Counterinsurgency Warfare as “the greatest book written on unconventional warfare.” Petraeus added that Galula was, from this side of the Atlantic, “the most illustrious French strategist of the twentieth century.”30
And through Galula, Mao Zedong’s shadow looms over Petraeus’s manual.31 Mao’s central insight—regarding the political nature of counterinsurgency—is front and center. The manual dissects Mao’s strategy as it was used during the Chinese Civil War, in Vietnam, and elsewhere—“the Maoist, Che Guevara-type focoist, and urban approaches to insurgency.” After reviewing the different types of insurgent approaches, the manual goes into a long exegesis on “Mao Zedong’s Theory of Protracted War” (bold in original) and describes Mao’s three-phase strategy of political and military insurgency. The manual details, in a two-and-a-half-page development, the different phases of Maoist strategy. It then elaborates on the North Vietnamese dau tranh (“struggle”) tactics that “offers another example of the application of Mao’s strategy.” Chapter Five contains a history of the defeat of Chiang Kai-shek to the Communist insurgency led by Mao, underscoring Chiang Kai-shek’s mistaken strategy of defending only the coastal financial and industrial hubs. The final chapter analyses Mao’s logistics theories to establish the importance of nimble logistical practices in a counterinsurgency: “Mao believed the enemy’s rear was the guerrillas’ front; the guerrillas’ advantage was that they had no discernable logistic rear.”32
The result is that General Petraeus’s field manual and its recommendations at times almost sound as if they were written by Mao Zedong. One can hear the words of Mao on the eve of his departure to negotiate with Chiang Kai-shek in 1945: “We must systematically win over the majority, oppose the minority, and defeat [the enemy] one by one.”33 Or Mao’s words in 1946: “In order to crush [the opposition]… we must co-operate closely with the people, and we must win over all those that can be won over… we should try to win over all those who may be opposed to the war and to isolate the war-lovers.” Or his words in 1947: “we must resolutely and persistently carry out the policy of winning over the masses by giving them some benefits so that they will come over to our side. Only if we can accomplish these… things will victory be ours.”34 Mao is the ghost that haunts Petraeus’s field manual.
General David Petraeus learned, but more importantly popularized, Mao Zedong’s central lesson: counterinsurgency warfare is political. It is a strategy for winning over the people. It is a strategy for governing. And it is quite telling that a work so indebted to Mao and midcentury French colonial thinkers would become so influential post-9/11. Petraeus’s manual contained a roadmap for a new paradigm of governing. As the fog lifts from 9/11, it is becoming increasingly clear what lasting impact Mao had on our government of self and others today.
2
A JANUS-FACED PARADIGM
THE POLITICAL PARADIGM OF MODERN WARFARE EXISTED IN two distinct variations: one more explicitly brutal, the other more legalistic. The tension between the two would arise again and again—and it plagued counterinsurgency practice as a mode of governing for decades.
The theorist of the harsh version was Roger Trinquier, author of that early treatise Modern Warfare: A French View of Counterinsurgency. Trinquier of course shared many core tenets with his counterparts. He too believed that the most vital objective was to gain the allegiance of the civilian population: “Military tactics and hardware are all well and good,” Trinquier writes, “but they are really quite useless if one has lost the confidence of the population among whom one is fighting.” But although everyone agreed on the importance of gaining the population’s confidence, they disagreed on how to achieve that objective. Trinquier and some other French commanders in Algeria, like General Paul Aussaresses, resolved the dilemma by heeding Machiavelli’s advice to the letter: “It is much safer to be feared than loved, if you cannot be both.”1
Trinquier took a harshly realist view of his enemies and, as a result, a take-no-prisoners approach to warfare. He believed that terrorism was the most effective strategy of the insurgents. “We know that the sine qua non of victory in modern warfare is the unconditional support of the population,” he wrote. “If it doesn’t exist, it must be secured by every possible means, the most effective of which is terrorism.” The only way to counter that, he argued, was “the complete destruction” of the insurgent group. This, he emphasized, was “the master concept that must guide us in our study of modern warfare.”2 And it entailed using all means necessary—including torture and disappearances.
Terrorism was not a means for the guerrilla opposition only, in Trinquier’s view. After having discussed at length the terrorist acts and torture administered by the Front de libération nationale (FLN) in Algeria, Trinquier concluded: “In modern warfare, as in the traditional wars of the past, it is absolutely essential to make use of all the weapons the enemy employs. Not to do so would be absurd… If, like the knights of old, our army refused to employ all the weapons of modern warfare, it could no longer fulfill its mission. We would no longer be defended. Our national independence, the civilization we hold dear, our very freedom would probably perish.”3
In Modern Warfare, Trinquier quietly but resolutely condoned torture. The interrogations and related tasks were considered police work, as opposed to military operations, but they had the exact same mission: the complete destruction of the insurgent group. Discussing the typical interrogation of a detainee, captured and suspected of belonging to a terrorist organization, Trinquier wrote: “No lawyer is present for such an interrogation. If the prisoner gives the information requested, the examination is quickly terminated; if not, specialists must force his secret from him. Then, as a soldier, he must face the suffering, and perhaps the death, he has heretofore managed to avoid.” Trinquier described specialists forcing secrets out of suspects using scientific methods that did not injure the “integrity of individuals,” but it was clear what those “scientific” methods entailed.4 As the war correspondent Bernard Fall suggests, the political situation in Algeria offere
d Trinquier the opportunity to develop “a Cartesian rationale” to justify the use of torture in modern warfare.5
Similarly minded commanders championed the use of torture, indefinite detention, and summary executions. They made no bones about it.
In his autobiographical account published in 2001, Services Spéciaux. Algérie 1955–1957, General Paul Aussaresses admits to the brutal methods that were the cornerstone of his military strategy.6 He makes clear that his approach to counterinsurgency rested on a three-pronged strategy, which included first, intelligence work; second, torture; and third, summary executions. The intelligence function was primordial because the insurgents’ strategy in Algeria was to infiltrate and integrate the population, to blend in perfectly, and then gradually to involve the population in the struggle. To combat this insurgent strategy required intelligence—the only way to sort the dangerous revolutionaries from the passive masses—and then, violent repression. “The first step was to dispatch the clean-up teams, of which I was a part,” Aussaresses writes. “Rebel leaders had to be identified, neutralized, and eliminated discreetly. By seeking information on FLN leaders I would automatically be able to capture the rebels and make them talk.”7
The rebels were made to talk by means of torture. Aussaresses firmly believed that torture was the best way to extract information. It also served to terrorize the radical minority and, in the process, to reduce it. The practice of torture was “widely used in Algeria,” Aussaresses acknowledges. Not on every prisoner, though; many spoke freely. “It was only when a prisoner refused to talk or denied the obvious that torture was used.”8
Aussaresses claims he was introduced to torture in Algeria by the policemen there, who used it regularly. But it quickly became routine to him. “Without any hesitation,” he writes, “the policemen showed me the technique used for ‘extreme’ interrogations: first, a beating, which in most cases was enough; then other means, such as electric shocks, known as the famous ‘gégène’; and finally water.” Aussaresses explains: “Torture by electric shock was made possible by generators used to power field radio transmitters, which were extremely common in Algeria. Electrodes were attached to the prisoner’s ears or testicles, then electric charges of varying intensity were turned on. This was apparently a well-known procedure and I assumed that the policemen at Philippeville [in Algeria] had not invented it.”9 (Similar methods had, in fact, been used earlier in Indochina.)
Aussaresses could not have been more clear:
The methods I used were always the same: beatings, electric shocks, and, in particular, water torture, which was the most dangerous technique for the prisoner. It never lasted for more than one hour and the suspects would speak in the hope of saving their own lives. They would therefore either talk quickly or never.
The French historian Benjamin Stora confirms the generalized use of torture. He reports that in the Battle of Algiers, under the commanding officer, General Jacques Massu, the paratroopers conducted massive arrests and “practiced torture” using “electrodes […] dunking in bathtubs, beatings.” General Massu himself would later acknowledge the use of torture. In a rebuttal he wrote in 1971 to the film The Battle of Algiers, Massu described torture as “a cruel necessity.”10 According to Aussaresses, torture was condoned at the highest levels of the French government. “Regarding the use of torture,” Aussaresses maintains, “it was tolerated if not actually recommended. François Mitterrand, as minister of justice, had a de facto representative with General Massu in Judge Jean Bérard, who covered our actions and knew exactly what was going on during the night. I had an excellent relationship with him, with nothing to hide.”11
After torture, in Aussaresses’s toolbox, came summary executions. Aussaresses does not minimize the use of these either, nor the fact that they were approved at the highest levels of the French government. “By asking the military to reestablish law and order inside the city of Algiers, the civilian authorities had implicitly approved of having summary executions,” he writes. “Whenever we felt it was necessary to be given more explicit instructions, the practice in question was always clearly approved.” In fact, Aussaresses firmly believes from his personal conversations with General Massu that he had been given the express signal that summary executions were approved by the government of Prime Minister Guy Mollet: “When we killed those [twelve] prisoners there was no doubt in our minds that we were following the direct orders of Max Lejeune, who was part of the government of Guy Mollet, and acting in the name of the French Republic.”12
Suspected insurgents, whether proven guilty or innocent, had to be eliminated. A person who turned out not to have information was just as dangerous as someone who confessed, since the process of interrogation would turn anyone against the French government. Aussaresses explains:
Only rarely were the prisoners we had questioned during the night still alive the next morning. Whether they had talked or not they generally had been neutralized. It was impossible to send them back to the court system, there were too many of them and the machine of justice would have become clogged with cases and stopped working altogether. Furthermore, many of the prisoners would probably have managed to avoid any kind of punishment.13
This too is confirmed by the historian Benjamin Stora, who reports that there were as many as 3,024 disappearances in Algeria.14
For his part, Aussaresses legitimized the violence. “I don’t think I ever tortured or executed people who were innocent,” he writes. He could say this, in part, because he understood guilt as extending so widely. At least twenty people were involved at different stages of a bomb attack, he maintained—from the bomb maker, to the driver, to the lookout, etc. And in contrast to the terrorists, Aussaresses claims, “I had never fought civilians and never harmed children. I was fighting men who had made their own choices.”15
For Aussaresses, as for Roger Trinquier, torture and disappearances were simply an inevitable byproduct of an insurgency—inevitable on both sides of the struggle. Because terrorism was inscribed in revolutionary strategy, it had to be used in its repression as well. In a fascinating televised debate in 1970 with the FLN leader and producer of The Battle of Algiers, Saadi Yacef, Trinquier confidently asserted that torture was simply a necessary and inevitable part of modern warfare. Torture will take place. Insurgents know it. In fact, they anticipate it. The passage is striking:
I have to tell you. Whether you’re for or against torture, it makes no difference. Torture is a weapon that will be used in every insurgent war. One has to know that… One has to know that in an insurgency, you are going to be tortured.
And you have to mount a subversive organization in light of that and in function of torture. It is not a question of being for or against torture. You have to know that all arrested prisoners in an insurgency will speak—unless they commit suicide. Their confession will always be obtained. So a subversive organization must be mounted in function of that, so that a prisoner who speaks does not give away the whole organization.16
On Trinquier’s view, torture was inevitable. It practically defined revolutionary war and counterinsurgency, as opposed to conventional warfare. The FLN engaged in torturous acts, including lethal terror attacks on civilians and torture against ordinary members of the Muslim population who favored the French or were uncommitted, he asserted.17 And, although the extent of the torture is still in dispute today, it is true that the FLN, like other liberation movements, engaged in acts of terrorism, often aimed at civilian populations, including bombings of restaurants and bars, and targeted assassinations of the police. To not torture in response, to not torture to gain information about the insurgency, that would have meant to not fight the war, Trinquier argued. The French may as well have decided to simply relinquish their colonial power—which they ultimately would.
“Torture?” asks the lieutenant aide de camp in Henri Alleg’s 1958 exposé The Question. “You don’t make war with choirboys.”18 Alleg, a French journalist and director of the Alger républicain newsp
aper, was himself detained and tortured by French paratroopers in Algiers. His book describes the experience in detail, and in his account, torture was the inevitable product of colonization and the anticolonial struggle. As Jean-Paul Sartre writes in his preface to Alleg’s book, torture “is the essence of the conflict and expresses its deepest truth.”19 It was inextricably linked to colonialism, racism, and counterinsurgency. For many French officers, like Trinquier, it was an inexorable byproduct of modern warfare.
In an arresting part of The Battle of Algiers it becomes clear that many of the French officers who tortured suspected FLN members had themselves, as members of the French Resistance, been victims of torture at the hands of the Gestapo. It is a shocking moment. We know, of course, that abuse often begets abuse; but nevertheless, one would have hoped that a victim of torture would recoil from administering it to others. Instead, as Trinquier suggests, torture became normalized in Algeria. This is, as Sartre describes it, the “terrible truth”: “If fifteen years are enough to transform victims into executioners, then this behavior is not more than a matter of opportunity and occasion. Anybody, at any time, may equally find himself victim or executioner.”20
In contrast, other French commanders abjured torture, at least publicly. David Galula, for instance, knew that torture was used by some French officers in Algeria, but he minimized its occurrence. The complaints of torture were “90 percent nonsense and 10 percent truth,” he would say.21 Galula himself preferred to avoid physical torture and to use instead more psychological means—such as locking a prisoner in an oven and threatening to turn the oven on22—or to turn suspects over to units that he knew tortured. Galula bought into a sham legal framework that absolved French paratroopers of responsibility whenever suspects were murdered. He ascribed to a more legalistic version of counterinsurgency and maintained a greater public distance from the practice of torture than other commanders.
The Counterrevolution Page 4