The War in El Salvador --Is U.S. Military Strategy Working?

Abstract

Military strategy is a critical element in meeting political objectives during any war. The war in El Salvador is the only conflict in which the United States is currently involved a war which the U.S. has been helping to fight for many years. Unfortunately, the United States' military strategy has only been able to meet some of the nation's political objectives. Part of this lack of success can be contributed to a poor correlation of means to ends and part to faulty execution of existing strategy. In their essay, "American Military Policy in Small Wars: The Case of El Salvador", LTC A.J. Bacevich, et al, analyze American involvement in this decade-long war. El Salvador is a clear case study of how policy can break down when a comprehensive national security framework is not applied to a complex problem involving U.S. interests. The first step in any national security framework is to understand the nation's political objectives. A major problem in formulating U.S. strategy towards El Salvador is that the United States and the El Salvadoran government do not share the same political objectives. This is a common problem in any coalition warfare and is especially so in El Salvador. The United States primary political objective is for a democratic, stable government in El Salvador which will provide its people with reasonable economic growth and prosperity. However, if a stable democratic government is not possible, the United States' secondary political objective is to ensure that a communist dictatorship doesn't replace the existing pro-U.S, government in El Salvador. This second objective expands the problem into a regional and global issue. When the United States first formulated its strategy for El Salvador during the early Reagan administration, stopping the spread of world communism was a reasonable objective.

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Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
Jan 01, 2005
Accession Number
ADA437315

Entities

People

  • Steven A. Roser

Organizations

  • National War College

Tags

Communities of Interest

  • Energy and Power Technologies
  • Human Systems

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Air Force
  • Army Personnel
  • Civil Defense
  • Communism
  • Counterinsurgency
  • El Salvador
  • Governments
  • Information Operations
  • Military Budgets
  • Military Strategy
  • National Security
  • Organizational Structure
  • Psychological Operations
  • Security
  • Training
  • United States
  • Warfare

Fields of Study

  • Political science

Readers

  • East Asian Political and Security Studies within the Soviet Union
  • Political Violence and Terrorism Studies.
  • Systems Analysis and Design