US approach to counterinsurgency based on the El Salvador model

Nikita Lalwani and Sam Winter-Levy recently interviewed Walter C. Ladwig III for The Monkey Cage about his new International Security article on "Influencing Clients in Counterinsurgency: U.S. Involvement in El Salvador's Civil War, 1979–92."

WL: By 1983, the Reagan administration had to accept that their strategy wasn’t working. So they began to move back toward a conditionality approach, like the one Carter had initiated. Most notably, at the end of 1983, Vice President George H.W. Bush is dispatched to El Salvador on a secret mission, where he delivers an ultimatum about reforms that have to happen if U.S. aid is to continue. This leads to a period of political reform, culminating in the election in 1984 of Napoleon Duarte as the first democratically elected president of El Salvador.

In this period of good feelings, both the Reagan administration and Congress no longer feel the need to keep pressing El Salvador for reform. For the most part, they drop conditions on assistance, and from the middle of the 1980s to the end of the decade, the United States moves back to a de facto inducement strategy. As a result, reforms halt in El Salvador and there’s a backsliding into political violence. It’s only toward the end of the decade, into the early 1990s, with the new Bush administration, that there’s a desire to bring the war to an end. The White House puts conditions back on aid to El Salvador to force the government to negotiate with the insurgents and investigate and prosecute the 1989 murders of six Jesuit priests [and their housekeeper and her daughter] in San Salvador. And again, we see that the conditionality strategy leads to a relatively high degree of compliance with U.S. goals.

NL & SWL: Why does conditionality work better than inducement, in general and in the specific case of El Salvador?

WL: In general, inducement does not appear to encourage reciprocity. Forcing governments to comply, rather than simply hoping that they will share your interests, is what drives reform forward. The El Salvador government was quite desperate for aid, and the United States held their feet to the fire and exploited their weakness. If you’re someone sitting in the Department of Defense or maybe in the State Department, you may think that’s not the right way to treat a partner government. But it’s a good way to get the local government to take your interests and goals seriously.

I thought that the original article was well written. However, I wasn't entirely convinced about Ladwig's evidence to demonstrate Salvadoran compliance with US demands was more likely to follow the withholding of aid than they were the use of aid as an inducement. The United States rarely sent clear messages to the Salvadoran military and government; it sent mixed signals. Different signals came from Defense, State, CIA, US Embassy, White House, and Congress. Rare were the firm, consistent messages.

Ladwig also claims that the Salvadoran government, when threatened with the cutoff from aid because of their execution of the six Jesuit priests at the UCA and their two companions, investigated and prosecuted those responsible. I'm not sure how anyone can come to such a conclusion. Senator Moakley's investigation demonstrated that the Salvadoran military and government were involved in a cover-up. The military might have gone further in its investigation and prosecution of those involved in the Jesuit murders than they would have wanted to but I can't say that they did what the US asked of them.

At times, the Salvadoran military and government did respond to US threats, but I'm not so sure that it was as straightforward as put forth in the article. And I definitely wouldn't be comfortable taking the lessons of El Salvador and applying them to contemporary US relations with Pakistan.