Word: guerrillas
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...Ernesto ("Che") Guevara, 37, the Argentine-born Marxist who landed in 1956 with the original 81-man band of insurgents, quickly emerged as Castro's closest confidant and jack of all trouble (TIME cover, Aug. 8, 1960). Che was the brain behind Castro's hide-and-seek guerrilla tactics during the revolution; after the takeover, Castro made him Cuba's economic czar, first as head of the National bank and later as Minister of Industries, put him in charge of exporting Castroite subversion throughout Latin America, sent him on trips abroad to beat the drums for Communist...
Witnesses reported that the guerrillas took special care to treat all peasants like friends, even passed out some of the food taken from the haciendas. The guerrillas talked 15 miners into joining up on the spot, went away saying that they sought only "to establish a socialistic government with equality for everybody." A farmer who encountered one band on a road reported that three members spoke with Cuban accents. From the extent of the raids, police estimated that at least three bands were operating in the area, and reports put their strength at anywhere from...
...Unalterable Obligation." The lessons that emerge from Mecklin's account are sad but simple. Highhanded as he was, Diem deserved greater understanding from the U.S. Writes Mecklin: "Just as the U.S. should insist on effective action against a guerrilla enemy, we should rigidly limit our interference to this objective. We should accept almost any extreme of public embarrassment, even at the expense of our 'dignity,' to permit the host government to enjoy the trappings of independence...
...merit of the McNamara doctrine, according to Aron, is that it reduces the immediate danger of "nuclear spasm," as American theorists refer to all-out war. But it does so at the cost of increasing the likelihood of conventional or guerrilla wars in which (since massive retaliation is not as imminent) firmness of intent may be tested. Thus Aron speaks of both Russia and the U.S. wielding conventional "swords" behind a nuclear "shield," as the U.S. did when it used the Navy to stop Russian ships during the Cuban missile crisis. The act was possible because of local American superiority...
Equally, in Vietnam (though this has happened since Aron wrote) one can see the logic of the McNamara Doctrine at work. While the guerrilla war is in large part a peasant revolt, it is also politically organized by the Vietnamese Communists, and supported by the Chinese, who do not believe in the firmness of American intentions in the face of an unpopular and seemingly impossible war. The McNamara Doctrine suggests that the enemy should be met with increasingly powerful conventional forces. Whether or not the Chinese are sufficiently directly involved in South Vietnam to make application of the doctrine relevant...