The Marines, Counterinsurgency, and Strategic Culture

Contrasting Nation- Building 191
the legacy but under the iron fist of unprecedented lengths of dictatorship.
Culpability for these legacies, in the minds of the populations who suffered
them, belonged to the Marines. For the decades of the Somoza regime, Nicaraguans
held to an anti- American narrative, blaming their current state on
the leathernecks who had put it in motion. Many Nicaraguans viewed their
country as having existed as a “quasi- US colony” until the Somozas were
deposed in 1979. The three Somozas—Anastasio Somoza García and his
two sons, Luis and Anastasio Somoza Debayle—were even dubbed “the last
Yankee Marines.” 25
Before the Corps fully realized what a menace the president of the
Dominican Republic, Rafael Trujillo—their onetime apprentice in the Guardia—was
to become, they disseminated his praise of Marine mentors in the
pages of the Gazette. 26 Even at this point, however, the reputation of the
Ejército Nacional (the renamed Guardia) ought to have given them pause. A
Marine general officer passing through the Dominican Republic in 1924—
the first officer to visit there since the Marines had departed—paraphrased
Trujillo’s comments about the constabulary that the Marines had forged
and he now wielded:
It seemed that in his opinion the military were not popular with the
people nor with some of the leading politicians. This he explained
was due to the fact that they wore the uniform of the Marines,
and that their bugle calls and drums were a continual reminder to
the people of the American occupation, which had not been popular
with many of the people and the leaders. But Colonel Trujillo
explained that he and his officers were proud that they were the
offspring of the Marine Corps even though some of the leading politicians
had used the expression—that the Pòlicia [sic], or Ejercito,
was the son of the American Marines. 27
Perhaps it is defensible that Marines of this era, in their pioneering
moment of nation- building, did not see that their infrastructural improvements
and enthusiastic amplification of a centralized government would
become a precursor to dictatorship, but it is much less defensible today.
Marine experiences and the lessons that could be gleaned with critical hindsight
are largely lost on a forward- looking, ahistoric population. The dangers
of the formula put in play during the Caribbean era remain largely
undiscussed in Marine discourse and are absent from wider discussions
concerning future counterinsurgency practice. Should they be considered,
these would have something to say about the fallacy of measuring success
through material achievements and would emphasize caution concerning
the follow- on effects of constructing a centralized security structure unaccountable
to the people and equipped with infrastructure that enables
unprecedented reach into the countryside.