The Savage Wars of Peace

Military Review, Nov-Dec, 2004 by Robert M. Cassidy

The U.S. military has a long history prosecuting what Rudyard Kipling labeled the "savage wars of peace." In many cases, the U.S. Army and the U.S. Marine Corps (USMC) carried these small, savage wars to successful conclusions. Max Boot's The Savage Wars of Peace: Small Wars and the Rise of American Power is a history of the U.S. military's involvement in small wars and counterinsurgencies during the 19th and 20th centuries. (1)

Boot, a frequent contributor to The Weekly Standard, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, and The Los Angeles Times, provides a valuable, topical addition to the existing corpus of books about small wars and insurgencies. Although this is Boot's first foray into the realm of U.S. military history, the American military should read this book because of the ongoing counterguerrilla warfare in Iraq and Afghanistan. Lessons learned in Vietnam and other counterinsurgencies are germane to the small wars of today.

This extraordinary book has three parts: America's rise as a commercial and naval power; its emergence as a great power and its increased commitment to constabulary roles; and Vietnam's influence on the U.S. military's willingness to fight small wars. The book also draws conclusions about the kinds of wars America might face in the future.

Counterinsurgency Wars

Boot's most interesting chapter offers a colorful account of Stephen Decatur's exploits as an intrepid, swashbuckling naval officer whose leadership skills and actions were central to America's success during the Barbary wars. Discussions of America's emergence as a great power and Alfred Thayer Mahan's book, The Influence of Sea Power upon History: 1660-1783, conclude the book's first part. (2)

The second and largest part of the book, the most salient for students of small wars, examines the Boxer Uprising in China and ends with a discussion of U.S. constabulary operations in China at the outbreak of World War II. The importance of this part of the book is to illuminate accounts of the Army's counterinsurgency efforts during the Philippine Insurrection and the USMC's conduct of the Banana Wars.

Boot's account of the Philippine War is thorough and lucid as he explains the brutal methods perpetrated by insurgents and counterinsurgents. His conclusion highlights the key components of what was ultimately a successful counterinsurgency. He also captures the gruesome massacre of G Company, 9th Cavalry--"A bolo slash across his face filled in with strawberry jam to lure ants from the jungle." General Arthur MacArthur's response to intransigent insurrectos was to dust off and reissue Civil-War-era "General Orders 100," which essentially authorized the execution of captured combatants not in uniform. (3)

Boot also captures in detail Cuban veteran and U.S. Brigadier General Frederick Funston's daring, cunning raid into enemy territory to capture guerrilla leader Emilio Aguinaldo. According to Boot, the Philippine counterinsurgency was a success because the U.S. military used aggressive patrolling and force to pursue and crush insurgents, treated captured rebels well, and generated goodwill among the population by running schools and hospitals and improving sanitation. (4)

Three chapters of The Savage Wars of Peace are devoted to the USMC's experiences in constabulary and counterguerrilla operations in Central America and the Caribbean Basin. The experience gained during the Banana Wars was the genesis of the USMC Small Wars Manual, which Boot addresses in the short first chapter of part 3. (5) The most salient discussions stem from the USMC's constabulary and counter-guerrilla efforts in Haiti, the Dominican Republic, and Nicaragua.

Boot introduces readers to Smedley Darlington Butler, an intriguing, resilient character who appeared in almost every USMC small war during the early 20th century. Boot tells us that Butler "was trained under the eye of an old sergeant major who had fought with Kitchener in the Sudan before retiring and joining the U.S. Marines." Butler also fought in the Boxer Rebellion and won a Medal of Honor at Veracruz. In Haiti, where Butler was appointed the first commandant of the gendarmerie, the United States established an indigenous constabulary led by USMC officers. In 1916 in the Dominican Republic, under the U.S. military governor, the Marines assumed control of the war, police, and interior ministerial functions and created an American-officered constabulary.

The book describes legendary Marine "Chesty" Puller as cutting his teeth in Nicaragua in the late 1920s and early 1930s. Puller led indigenous Guardia Nacional patrols on the hunt for Sandino and his guerrilla bands in the mountains and jungles. Boot encapsulates all the lessons the Marines gleaned from the Banana Wars into one pithy bumper-sticker saying: "Small wars cannot be fought with big war methods." (6)

Lessons Learned

The last part of the book looks quickly at the small wars lessons learned in the USMC Small War Manual, Vietnam's effect on the U.S. military's capacity to fight small wars, and lessons for the future. Boot explains that the Small Wars Manual reflected the valuable experience a generation of Marines gained while conducting small-unit patrolling and constabulary operations in the Americas. His main argument is that the Marines are more intellectually supple because they were the first service to embrace and codify counterinsurgency in print. The Army has had as much experience fighting insurgents but "never bothered to develop a doctrine of antiguerrilla warfare because ... the Indian Wars [were always viewed] as a temporary diversion from [its] real job--preparing to fight a conventional army." (7)