Description
Low intensity conflict (LIC), which emerged during the Reagan administration, was a way of counteracting the “Vietnam Sydnrome”, a legacy of the Vietnam War that constrained the United States from direct military intervention into many Third World conflicts. In this volume Ivan Molloy analyses the defacto foreign policy strategy of LIC as propagated by the US. He recounts how, part covert, part overt, LIC was developed as a low-cost and low-risk method of dealing with revolutionary movements and post-revolutionary governments (usually Marxist) considered threatening to US national interests. He reveals the secretive strategy to be an integral component of the Iran-Contra affair, and at the heart of the Reagan doctrine.
Molloy argues that LIC was a means of civilianising and privatising America’s foreign policy. He argues that LIC was always more of a political, rather than military, tool and shows how the United States used LIC selectively in the 1980’s to combat guerrilla movements and undermine targeted regimes to achieve its foreign policy objectives. Nicaragua and the Philippines are presented as key examples of this multi-dimensional strategy as it emerged in the 1980s. Using the examples of Cuba, Yugoslavia and East Timor, Molloy demonstrates that this complex strategy is still evident today.
Ivan Molloy is Head of Politics and International Studies and the University of the Sunshine Coast in Australia.