ABSTRACT
Foreign Internal Defense is ‘the participation by civilian and military agencies of a government in any of the action programs taken by another government to free and protect its society from subversion, lawlessness, and insurgency.’ The key to relevant Foreign Internal Defense and Development doctrine and effective application of that doctrine is the ability to perform two essential tasks: to assess the conditions contributing to instability; and deriving a plan based on this assessment. This chapter looks at basically four elements: Peasant roots, communist leadership, American perceptions, and finally, United States (US) policy. Two general weaknesses in US policy mitigate against successful assessmment of the insurgent problem in any given country and subsequent implementation of a coherent political-military program. First, US counter-insurgency doctrine has its roots in the containment strategy of the Truman Doctrine; and second, aversion to committing US combat troops to Third World ‘hot spots’ as a consequence of the experience in southeast Asia.
