The Politics of Intervention

14 THE POLITICS OF INTERVENTION

portance of economic development on internal peace, but the
officers of that era accepted the dogma of industrial capitalism
without serious question. They may have suspected the per­
sonal values of the business world, but they deferred to the
businessmen's expertise in economic matters. Consequently,
the Army assumed that government did not bear the major
responsibility for the economic well-being of the dependencies.
In the area of political organization the Army was less com­
mitted to spreading democratic institutions than America's
political leaders. The road to democracy meant encouraging
political parties and holding elections in backward societies,
and the Army saw such activities as a source of violence
and injustice.
The Army's Philippine experience, shared by most of the
officers of the combat arms, produced a group of military
measures for the response to a popular uprising which had
unquestionable political implications. A lucid commentary on
the tactics of pacification may be found in Captain John W-
Furlong's "Notes on Field Service in Cuba."^26 Furlong, basing
his analysis on Spanish military operations and his own four
years of service in the Philippines and Cuba, stressed that the
three major tasks in operations against insurgents were identi­
fying them, depriving them of popular support, and eliminat­
ing them by aggressive, continuous operations. To identify
the insurgents, intelligence must be fresh and voluminous,
which meant lavish expenditures for information; Furlong
recommended that all field commanders have secret service
funds available. In questioning suspects, Furlong continued,
the goal of interrogation was complete personal data on every
rebel, and no suspect should be allowed to sleep until thor­
oughly quizzed. To streamline the intelligence-security organ­
ization, a single officer should hold, concurrently, the posts
of intelligence officer, provost marshal, and provost judge in
each military district.
Furlong believed that food control was the most effective
means to sever the people from the insurgents. This meant
destroying the food supply in the countryside and rounding
up the rural population, operations which would both starve