The Marines, Counterinsurgency, and Strategic Culture

Introduction 9
Marine is tracked from the Corps’s early years to recruitment calls within
the modern era. The Marine Corps presents a unique case where role conception
is concerned. Because its institutional role has shifted so significantly
across time, the Marine brand has been established on a state of “being”—
who they are—to a far higher degree than on a well- defined role—what
they do. This flexibility of role—a willingness to “do windows”—means
that Marines are better positioned than their sister services to adapt to the
often shifting demands of counterinsurgency and nation- building. That said,
the prizing of the Corps’s historical role of amphibious assault poses significant
challenges to institutional commitments toward small- wars training
and professionalism. Those effects are examined across the Banana Wars
years, Vietnam, and the carryover into modern theaters.
Chapters 4 and 5 tackle the tall order of assembling and analyzing the
colorful combination of practices, values, and perceptions that have come to
characterize the modern Marine Corps. These are treated in compounding
form, demonstrating how an established value underpins key norms and
may cultivate service perceptions that validate both. One of the key contributions
of these chapters is transparency into a research approach that
does not treat norms and values in mutually exclusive fashion but rather
as layering elements within a shared cultural context—strengthening, or
alternatively, competing with one another. Highly regarded norms and values
celebrated by the Corps are not always compatible with an immediate
mission or with each other. These tensions form critical decision points for
Marines, who must prioritize competing cultural mores and take action.
Cultural collisions of this sort expose to view the often subconscious ranking
of complex cultural sets. Although Marines may claim loyalty and adherence
to the complete set of taught values, when these are juxtaposed in
critical decision frames it is often informal culture—the sort more difficult
to capture—that guides Marine decisions on which principles to sacrifice
and which to pursue.
Part II applies the cultural data amassed in part I to the question of
counterinsurgency practice. Chapter 6 sets the stage by providing a snapshot
of the campaigns in Haiti, the Dominican Republic, and Nicaragua and
of the CAP program in Vietnam. Then it introduces features of the American
cultural mind- set that shaped outcomes in each encounter. American naiveté
concerning the ease of changing indigenous cultural patterns, of providing
sustainable infrastructure, and of incurring the gratitude of locals by
offering material largesse is a long- standing tradition. The history examined
here makes clear that current criticisms of this sort levied against America’s
efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan were equally applicable in earlier eras.
Another theme treated in depth is the impact of ethnocentrism, sometimes
manifest as biting racism, on operations abroad. Material gifts to the state in
the form of improved sanitation and infrastructure did not make up for the
Marines’ rude and sometimes lethally abusive treatment of darker-skinned