ABSTRACT
This chapter provides evidence of the mechanisms connecting the early experience of autonomy to army behavior when that autonomy was constrained. It demonstrates the lasting impact of previous work of officers in the older cohort on their beliefs about army autonomy and effective counterinsurgency. Despite such acceptance of the counterinsurgency mission and a mandate from the government to eliminate Sendero, in the 2000s, the army neglected this assignment due to new constraints on its autonomy during the country's re-democratization. The Peruvian army's paralysis in counterinsurgency was linked to the prior experience of the cohort that had developed and implemented counterinsurgency doctrine in the 1980s and early 1990s. The chapter attributes this cohort difference to the fact that only mid- and high-ranking officers who made up the senior cohort had served in the army during the high point of Peru's internal conflict and had drawn particular lessons from that service.
