The Marines, Counterinsurgency, and Strategic Culture

Setting the Stage 149
default form: in large columns both “slow and blunt.” 49 Small- unit combat
patrolling became the “cornerstone of success” in Nicaragua but was rediscovered
through much the same learning process as had been undergone on
both sides of Hispaniola. 50
The Marines were aided in their anti- insurgent task by an aggressive and
innovative aviation arm; Marine aviation “came of age” in the Nicaraguan
conflict. 51 Fire support by air was pioneered—including history’s first divebomb
attack—with sometimes surprising success. 52 Resupply by air and the
evacuation of the wounded, both novel concepts at the time, enabled increasingly
savvy (and smaller) patrols to remain in the field for weeks in pursuit
of insurgent forces rather than be tethered to garrison post. 53 Most famous
of these roving patrols was Chesty Puller’s Company M, which became the
“terror of the Sandinista contingent” in its area of operations. 54
The Marines’ primary accomplishment in Nicaragua was not the defeat
of an insurgent force but rather oversight of two rounds of free and fair
elections. Michel Gobat, who in the main tends to be profoundly critical of
the Marines’ intervention in Nicaragua, nevertheless cedes credit to them
on this point: “The historical evidence thus suggests that Nicaragua’s USmanaged
elections were not simple charades. However tentatively, they
fostered political equality, participation, accountability, and contestation—
outcomes that political scientists deem key to the creation of a democratic
polity.” 55 Marines accomplished this by keeping Sandino’s forces sufficiently
at bay and by a steady and conscious demolition of the caudillismo system
of regional power brokers in the Nicaraguan countryside. 56 It was for this
secondary purpose that the Guardia Nacional de Nicaragua was originally
constituted. 57
The Nicaraguan Guardia was based on the same organizational concept
employed in Haiti and the Dominican Republic and experienced many of
the same challenges: low- quality recruits who were characterized by tendencies
toward abuse of the population, inattentiveness to discipline, and a
steep learning curve in all martial arts. In short, it was “not an effective organization
for the first year and a half of its existence.” 58 In the end, however,
the Guardia was deemed a success by its Marine officers as both the besttrained—it
was fighting the Sandino insurgency almost entirely on its own
by 1930—and most loyal (despite ten mutinies, seven of them lethal!) of the
Caribbean constabularies. 59 Like its two predecessors, the Marine- trained
national constabulary in Nicaragua engaged in both internal and external
policing and became the republic’s strongest state institution, armed with
unprecedented reach into the countryside. 60
After five years of fighting and oversight of two elections, the Marines
were pulled from Nicaragua. Intense political and fiscal pressure from
home—present from the beginning—was only exacerbated by the negative
press skillfully cultivated by Sandino’s cause célèbre, the disenchantment
of a disgruntled elite in- country, and democratic processes that signaled