The Salvadoran Crucible
The Salvadoran Crucible

Author: Brian D'Haeseleer

Publisher: University Press of Kansas

Published: 2017-12-15

Total Pages: 270

ISBN-13: 0700625127

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In 1979, with El Salvador growing ever more unstable and ripe for revolution, the United States undertook a counterinsurgency intervention that over the following decade would become Washington’s largest nation-building effort since Vietnam. In 2003, policymakers looked to this “successful” undertaking as a model for US intervention in Iraq. In fact, Brian D’Haeseleer argues in The Salvadoran Crucible, the US counterinsurgency in El Salvador produced no more than a stalemate, and in the process inflicted tremendous suffering on Salvadorans for a limited amount of foreign policy gains. D’Haeseleer’s book is a deeply informed, dispassionate account of how the Salvadoran venture took shape, what it actually accomplished, and what lessons it holds. A historical analysis of the origins of US counterinsurgency policy provides context for understanding how precedents informed US intervention in El Salvador. What follows is a detailed, in-depth view of how the counterinsurgency unfolded—the nature, logic, and effectiveness of the policies, initiatives, and operations promoted by American strategists. D’Haeseleer’s account disputes the “success” narrative by showing that El Salvador’s achievements, mainly the spread of democracy, occurred as a result not of the American intervention but of the insurgents’ war against the state. Most significantly, The Salvadoran Crucible contends that the reforms enacted during the war failed to address the underlying causes of the conflict, which today continue to reverberate in El Salvador. The book thus suggests a reassessment of the history of American counterinsurgency, and a course-correction for the future.

Stories of Civil War in El Salvador
Stories of Civil War in El Salvador

Author: Erik Ching

Publisher: UNC Press Books

Published: 2016-08-26

Total Pages: 363

ISBN-13: 1469628678

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El Salvador's civil war began in 1980 and ended twelve bloody years later. It saw extreme violence on both sides, including the terrorizing and targeting of civilians by death squads, recruitment of child soldiers, and the death and disappearance of more than 75,000 people. Examining El Salvador's vibrant life-story literature written in the aftermath of this terrible conflict--including memoirs and testimonials--Erik Ching seeks to understand how the war has come to be remembered and rebattled by Salvadorans and what that means for their society today. Ching identifies four memory communities that dominate national postwar views: civilian elites, military officers, guerrilla commanders, and working class and poor testimonialists. Pushing distinct and divergent stories, these groups are today engaged in what Ching terms a "narrative battle" for control over the memory of the war. Their ongoing publications in the marketplace of ideas tend to direct Salvadorans' attempts to negotiate the war's meaning and legacy, and Ching suggests that a more open, coordinated reconciliation process is needed in this postconflict society. In the meantime, El Salvador, fractured by conflicting interpretations of its national trauma, is hindered in dealing with the immediate problems posed by the nexus of neoliberalism, gang violence, and outmigration.

The Urban Crucible
The Urban Crucible

Author: Gary B. Nash

Publisher: Harvard University Press

Published: 2009-06-01

Total Pages: 304

ISBN-13: 9780674041325

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The Urban Crucible boldly reinterprets colonial life and the origins of the American Revolution. Through a century-long history of three seaport towns--Boston, New York, and Philadelphia--Gary Nash discovers subtle changes in social and political awareness and describes the coming of the revolution through popular collective action and challenges to rule by custom, law and divine will. A reordering of political power required a new consciousness to challenge the model of social relations inherited from the past and defended by higher classes. While retaining all the main points of analysis and interpretation, the author has reduced the full complement of statistics, sources, and technical data contained in the original edition to serve the needs of general readers and undergraduates.

Training for Victory
Training for Victory

Author: Frank Kenneth Sobchak

Publisher: Naval Institute Press

Published: 2024-11-19

Total Pages: 352

ISBN-13: 1682471365

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One of the most difficult security challenges of the post–Cold War era has been stabilizing failing states in an era of irregular warfare. A consistent component of the strategy to address this problem has been security force assistance where outside powers train and advise the host nation’s military. Despite billions of dollars spent, the commitment of thousands of advisors, and innumerable casualties, the American efforts in Afghanistan and Iraq failed catastrophically. Nevertheless, among those colossal military disasters were pockets of success. The Iraqi Special Operations Forces (ISOF) held back the Islamic State in 2014 long enough to allow American and allied forces to flow back into the country, and many Afghan commando units fought to the bitter end as their country disintegrated around them. What made those units successful while the larger missions ended disastrously? Author Frank K. Sobchak explores security force assistance across five case studies, examining what factors were most critical for U.S. Special Forces units to build capable partners like the ISOF and the commandos. More specifically, the book assesses the impact of five components of Special Forces advisory missions: language training and cultural awareness of the advising force; the partner force-to-advisor ratio; the advisors’ ability to organize host-nation forces; whether advisors are permitted to guide in combat; and the consistency in advisor pairing. Based on the experiences of U.S. Army Special Forces in El Salvador (1981–1991), Colombia (2002–2016), the Philippines (2001–2015), Iraq (2003–2011), and Afghanistan (2007–2021), Sobchak argues that the most crucial factors in producing combat-effective partners are consistency in advisor pairing and maintaining a partner force-to-advisor ratio of twelve special forces soldiers advising a company-sized force or smaller. Intriguingly, and counter to conventional wisdom, at first glance language training and cultural awareness do not seem to be critical factors, as most of the Green Berets that trained units in Iraq and Afghanistan lacked both capabilities. Despite an orthodoxy that argues the opposite, there is little evidence that combat advising is decisive in producing effective partners and there is conflicting evidence that language training and cultural awareness are important. Many of these findings, while focused on Special Forces operations and doctrine, could be used to improve the odds of success for larger security-force assistance missions as well.

Cold War Crucible
Cold War Crucible

Author: Hajimu Masuda

Publisher: Harvard University Press

Published: 2015-02-09

Total Pages: 397

ISBN-13: 0674598474

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After World War II, the major powers faced social upheaval at home and anticolonial wars around the globe. Alarmed by conflict in Korea that could change U.S.–Soviet relations from chilly to nuclear, ordinary people and policymakers created a fantasy of a bipolar Cold War world in which global and domestic order was paramount, Masuda Hajimu shows.

El Salvador
El Salvador

Author: David Francois

Publisher: Helion and Company

Published: 2023-03-24

Total Pages: 309

ISBN-13: 1804514020

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A severe social and political crisis in El Salvador during politicians, religious figures and activists through strikes but organized the Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front (FMNL) and launched an armed insurrection against the government in early 1981. Within months, the FMLN established itself in control over two departments – which it was to guerrilla’s support base in the countryside. Although bombardments, strafing, shelling, summary execution of anybody captured, and massacres of civilians became the norm of the day, the FMLN continued growing in strength and by 1983, reached the peak of its power and control over the countryside. El Salvador, Volume 1: Crisis, Coup and Uprising 1970-1983 – is the first inclusive and incisive military history of this incredibly vicious, merciless war: one of two major conflicts fought in Central America during the 1980s within the context of the Cold War. Based on official documentation and carefully cross-referenced secondary sources, it is lavishly illustrated with original photographs and custom-drawn color profiles and is an indispensable single-point source of reference.

The Cold War [5 volumes]
The Cold War [5 volumes]

Author: Spencer C. Tucker

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA

Published: 2020-10-27

Total Pages: 4179

ISBN-13:

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This sweeping reference work covers every aspect of the Cold War, from its ignition in the ashes of World War II, through the Berlin Wall and the Cuban Missile Crisis, to the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. The Cold War superpower face-off between the Soviet Union and the United States dominated international affairs in the second half of the 20th century and still reverberates around the world today. This comprehensive and insightful multivolume set provides authoritative entries on all aspects of this world-changing event, including wars, new military technologies, diplomatic initiatives, espionage activities, important individuals and organizations, economic developments, societal and cultural events, and more. This expansive coverage provides readers with the necessary context to understand the many facets of this complex conflict. The work begins with a preface and introduction and then offers illuminating introductory essays on the origins and course of the Cold War, which are followed by some 1,500 entries on key individuals, wars, battles, weapons systems, diplomacy, politics, economics, and art and culture. Each entry has cross-references and a list of books for further reading. The text includes more than 100 key primary source documents, a detailed chronology, a glossary, and a selective bibliography. Numerous illustrations and maps are inset throughout to provide additional context to the material.

The Crucible of Islam
The Crucible of Islam

Author: G. W. Bowersock

Publisher: Harvard University Press

Published: 2017-04-10

Total Pages: 120

ISBN-13: 0674978218

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Little is known about Arabia in the sixth century, yet from this distant time and place emerged a faith and an empire that stretched from the Iberian peninsula to India. Today, Muslims account for nearly a quarter of the global population. A renowned classicist, G. W. Bowersock seeks to illuminate this obscure and dynamic period in the history of Islam—exploring why arid Arabia proved to be such fertile ground for Muhammad’s prophetic message, and why that message spread so quickly to the wider world. The Crucible of Islam offers a compelling explanation of how one of the world’s great religions took shape. “A remarkable work of scholarship.” —Wall Street Journal “A little book of explosive originality and penetrating judgment... The joy of reading this account of the background and emergence of early Islam is the knowledge that Bowersock has built it from solid stones... A masterpiece of the historian’s craft.” —Peter Brown, New York Review of Books

El Salvador: Blood on All Our Hands
El Salvador: Blood on All Our Hands

Author: George Thurlow

Publisher: Stansbury Publishing

Published: 2024-03-01

Total Pages: 194

ISBN-13: 1935807765

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On April 29, 1981 American journalist George Thurlow was shot by members of the El Salvador Treasury Police on a jungle road in San Salvador. His 29-year-old driver, Gilberto Moran, was killed and Associated Press photographer Joaquin Zuniga was seriously injured in the shooting. Thurlow left El Salvador two days later to receive medical treatment in the U.S. In 2000 he began a more than two-decade search to find Gilberto Moran’s grave and some form of personal redemption. El Salvador: Blood On All Our Hands details that search and introduces us to those who fought in the civil war, U.S. aid workers helping to rebuild the tiny country, as well as every day Salvadorans who suffered through a war that killed 70,000 of their fellow citizens. Many Salvadorans have decided it is time to move on from focusing on the war as their country enters a new era. The U.S. officials who supplied weapons and encouragement to the Salvadoran government, its security forces and the murderous death squads have never been held accountable. In El Salvador a Truth Commission has identified those most responsible for the assassinations and murder of priests, journalists and opposition leaders. This book is intended to document a moment in Salvadoran history when the United States government was responsible for a cruel carnage and to illustrate how American citizens are attempting to repair the damage.

Tell Mother I'm in Paradise
Tell Mother I'm in Paradise

Author: Ana Margarita Gasteazoro

Publisher: University of Alabama Press

Published: 2022-04-19

Total Pages: 281

ISBN-13: 0817321217

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"Anna Maria Gasteazoro (1950-1993) was a Salvadoran opposition leader and renowned prisoner of conscience. In her memoirs, Tell Mother I'm in Paradise, she recounts her trajectory from a privileged Catholic upbringing in El Salvador, with stints at school abroad and early jobs, to her increasing commitment to political work after witnessing the violence and corpses in the streets of San Salvador early in the civil war, to clandestine organizing against the brutal military junta. Her inspiring and, at times, dramatic story culminates in three years as a political prisoner of conscience and then release and exile to Mexico. Readers get a sense of the upper-class milieu of well-connected parents and loving nannies and of Gasteazoro negotiating her education and freedom and exploring her talents in early years. She chronicles her growing rebellion against strictures of the Catholic Church and the conservative group Opus Dei, with which her mother was heavily involved. She was well educated and spoke perfect English and discovered a talent for organizing in administrative jobs abroad and at home. As the war progressed, she quickly became a valuable leader in the opposition movement as a member of the National Revolutionary Movement (MNR), a social democratic party, despite the machismo environment. She was often sent abroad as a representative. In two particularly exciting events, she served as a delegate to the Eleventh International Youth Festival in Havana in 1978 and when, with her life in danger, she donned a disguise to give a speech at a conference in Spain. As other MNR leaders were killed or disappeared, she rose to top leadership. Against the backdrop of kidnappings and disappearances of prominent members of the opposition and massive social oppression, Gasteazoro began to live a double life. As an operative in a faction of the Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (FMLN), she organized safe houses for fellow activists and proved adept at creative content, handling whatever task was required, for example, writing for an underground radio station and producing what became an award-winning documentary film. In 1981, the notorious National Guard arrested and tortured her, and she was then sent to the women's prison at Illopango. There, she and other activists dedicated their days to organizing through the Committee of Salvadoran Political Prisoners (COPPES). Gasteazoro's love affairs, including with fellow operatives, are woven into the narrative. Accounts of the relationships help reveal her as extraordinary woman in extraordinary times who lived to the fullest in both body and spirit"--