ABSTRACT
Many of the 'wars of liberation' waged during the Cold War era were effectively 'proxy wars' with the Soviet Union and its satellites backing insurgent groups and the United States giving some degree of support to its allies or, in the case of Latin America, more direct support to its hemispheric neighbours. Both superpowers became themselves directly embroiled in insurgency campaigns in the sense that, rather than simply advisers, American and Soviet ground forces were ultimately committed on a large scale. Both South Vietnam between 1965 and 1973 and Afghanistan between 1979 and 1989 indicated once more that armed forces tend to operate within almost a preordained tradition with respect to counter-insurgency. Presidential identification of insurgency as a predominant threat to American interests during the Kennedy administration, therefore, was not shared by an army, as Larry Cable puts it, 'configured, equipped and trained according to a doctrine suitable for conventional warfare, or for warfare in the nuclear battlefield of Europe'.
