Bøger af Lawrence A Yates

Prior to Operation JUST CAUSE, the December 1989 U.S. intervention in Panama, American leaders had struggled for over two years with the increasingly difficult regime of General Manuel Antonio Noriega. At the time, the Panama Canal was still under U.S. administration with the U.S. Southern Command, based at Quarry Heights, charged with its security. Led by General Frederick Woerner and seconded by Maj. Gen. Bernard Loeffke, the command's Army component commander, American military leaders weathered a series of low-grade crises during 1988-1989, slowly culminating in a growing military confrontation with Noriega's army, militia, and police forces. Detailed in Larry Yates' study are the contingency plans, rules of engagement, and a host of varied operations-security patrols, guard duty, training exercises, shows of force, and police actions-and even the occasional firefight, all of which characterized this trying period. But this history is much more than a precursor to JUST CAUSE. Its true value lies in its careful examination of the complex relationships between a U.S. combatant command, one of the four American global military headquarters, and the command's Washington, D.C., superiors, including Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Admiral William Crowe, Army Chief of Staff General Carl Vuono, Defense Secretary Richard Cheney, and President George H. W. Bush. Indeed, the able Woerner and his staff often found themselves walking a tightrope between a variety of ill-defined administration policies whose long-range goals were difficult to fathom and the exigencies of a steadily worsening local situation. The result is a rich mix of timeless experiences and insights especially attuned to the contingency fare so common in the post-Cold War era.

In the early 1960s, President John F. Kennedy expressed concern that Communist sponsored unconventional warfare was one of the most pervasive threats to American security and that the U.S. military establishment was inadequately prepared to counter the threat. To correct this deficiency, the White House put pressure on the services, especially the U.S. Army, to develop the doctrine and forces necessary to conduct what was variously called counterinsurgency, counterguerrilla warfare, special warfare, special operations, or stability operations. As the military's capability to engage in unconventional warfare grew, so, too, did the opportunities to translate this capability into action. One such opportunity was the crisis in the Dominican Republic in 1965. In "Power Pack: U.S. Intervention in the Dominican Republic, 1965-1966," Dr. Lawrence A. Yates vividly describes the role of the military in what today would be termed peacetime contingency and peacekeeping operations. After tracing the origins of the Dominican crisis, Dr. Yates analyzes the concerns that led to U.S. intervention; the joint planning, command and control arrangements, and intelligence gathering efforts that preceded and followed the introduction of U.S. marines and paratroopers into the country; the missions of those forces and the difficulties they encountered; the formation of an inter-American peace force that transformed unilateral intervention into a multilateral undertaking; and the way in which military forces provided the foundation upon which a political settlement was negotiated. In virtually every phase of the Dominican intervention, political considerations far outweighed military requirements. In this sense, "Power Pack" illustrates the kind of political military operations U.S. armed forces are most likely to engage in today under conditions short of all-out war. Many of the problems the military experienced in playing a supporting role to the diplomats and civil authorities instead of occupying stage center would later be reprised in Vietnam. In some respects, the U.S. intervention in the Dominican Republic was a dress rehearsal for Vietnam. In other respects, the dissimilarities are equally striking. In the Dominican Republic, the United States deployed, in the course of one week, a force large enough to end a civil war, suppress a potential insurgency, assist in restoring order and democracy, prevent a Communist takeover, and, having accomplished all this, leave the country one year later with its objectives achieved. The intervention in the Dominican Republic represents a successful application of U.S. power and diplomacy and an instructive case study for professional officers today.

CMH Pub 55-1-1. Contingency Operations Series. Examines the Panama crisis from June 1987 to December 1989 as an extended series of interrelated actions and issues that U.S. military personnel had to confront on a daily basis in a process that imparted no sense of inevitability as to the outcome. First published in 2008. Illustrated.