The Marines, Counterinsurgency, and Strategic Culture

Setting the Stage 159
legation guard in Nicaragua well before the civil war of 1926 got themselves
court- martialed and pulled out of the country for fighting with local thugs,
sacking the offices of journalists who had insulted them, and engaging in a
knock- down- drag- out brawl with police that became fatal. 99 It should have
been a surprise to no one, therefore, that the Marines landing on the beaches
of the Caribbean for long- term state- building duty posed a plausible liability
for local civil- military relations.
Marine leadership was not unaware of the potential strategic impact of
Marine treatment of locals and issued orders mandating that their relations
be positive and friendly. In this sense, the need for positive relations with
locals was not a blind spot in the Banana Wars era. Well before admonitions
for good treatment were penned in the pages of the Small Wars Manual,
Marine officers overseeing the deployment of their troops to the Caribbean
stressed diplomatic and courteous behavior. Col. Joseph Pendleton, then
the commanding officer of the Fourth Regiment of Marines landing in the
Dominican Republic, admonished his troops:
Members of this command will therefore realize that we are not in
an enemy’s country, though many of the inhabitants may be inimical
to us, and they will be careful so to conduct themselves as to
inspire confidence among the people in the honesty of our intentions
and the sincerity of our purpose. Officers will act toward the
people with courtesy, dignity and firmness, and will see that their
men do nothing to arouse or foster the antagonism towards us that
can be naturally expected toward an armed force that many interested
malcontents will endeavor to persuade the citizens to look
upon as invaders. 100
Orders of a similar sort were issued in Haiti. 101 While many Marines may
have taken this advice to heart, a critical number did not.
The well- intended paternalistic benevolence of some members of the
Corps cannot be denied. 102 Some members of the Marine Corps took a genuine
interest in the welfare of the local population and went to great lengths,
some of them exercising personal connections, to improve the lot of the population
they perceived as in their care. These efforts did not bear the fruits of
gratitude that they might have, however, given the context created by other
Marines exercising more abusive behavior and by the generally paternalistic
and condescending manner in which even the most favorable actions were
dispensed. Marines tended to sympathize with the most impoverished of
the local citizens and cultivated a concomitant disdain for the local elite
who seemed callous to, or culpable in, the suffering of their countrymen. 103
Although peasants often appreciated Marines rising to their defense in economic
and political matters, the end result was a hostile relationship with
the national elite—those with whom the Marines had to cooperate in order