ABSTRACT
The Cold War was replete with examples of American unconventional incompetence, allies lost, mission revealed or aborted or even adjuncts to Soviet policy. The exposure to American misconceptions about armed struggles, alien agendas, unconventional arenas, and the price of secrecy was not what mattered in the Pentagon. The Americans were apt to discard the ideal in the name of pragmatism, embrace the covert without realizing the enormous costs exacted by secrecy, and assumed that American power can easily adapt to unorthodox missions. As long as the Cold War imposed models and priorities, these terrorists and their guns could be defined, assigned significance, encouraged or denied not only by Washington but also by Moscow. There were, at least occasionally, signs that a reluctant America might suffer from shifts on the margins. And the margins often held real resources: the oil that would when withheld indicate the value of energy—and the cost.
