New Stuff#1

U.S. Army CoUnterinSUrgenCy

And ContingenCy operAtionS doCtrine

1860–1941

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6 militAry interventionS dUring

the wilSon AdminiStrAtion 1914–1920

Though the Army might disdain international constabulary duty, it could not avoid such work altogether. The nation’s growing overseas interests prohibited the Army’s disengagement from world affairs. This was especially true during Woodrow Wilson’s tenure as president of the United States from 1913 to 1920. Wilson fervently believed that the United States had a moral obligation to spread its concepts of individ- ual freedom, self-government, and political democracy to the world at large. A humanitarian idealist who disliked soldiers and abhorred vio- lence, Wilson’s evangelical idealism nevertheless led him to embrace the use of force as a means to achieve his greater ends. As he explained, “If I cannot retain my moral influence over a man except by occasion- ally knocking him down, if that is the only basis upon which he will respect me, then for the sake of his soul I have got occasionally to knock him down. If a man will not listen to you quietly in a seat, sit on his neck and make him listen.”1

Woodrow Wilson sat on a lot of necks during his eight years as president. Driven by a curious mixture of moral imperialism and prag- matic self-interest, Wilson deployed naval and Marine forces to Cuba, Haiti, the Dominican Republic, Russia, Mexico, Honduras, and Guatemala, not to mention China and Nicaragua, where he inherited deployments initiated by his predecessor. Though the Marine Corps proved to be his instrument of choice, the Army did not escape its share of duty. In addition to sharing China garrison duty with the marines, the Army participated in military interventions in Mexico (1914, 1916), north Russia (1918–1919), Siberia (1918–1920), and Panama

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(1918–1920). All five of these operations proved trying experiences in which the Army fulfilled its specific and limited objectives while fail- ing to achieve the president’s long-term goals. These interventions highlighted for American soldiers the difficulties in coordinating polit- ico-military policy during contingency operations. They also reaf- firmed the officer corps’ already widespread impression regarding the disagreeable nature of foreign constabulary duty.2

Vera Cruz, 1914

“I am going to teach the South American republics to elect good men!” Wilson proclaimed, and it was no idle remark. High on his list of prospective pupils was Mexico, a country mired in a seemingly endless cycle of poverty, revolution, and oppression. Convinced that social and political justice were impossible under the latest usurper of the Mexican presidency, Victoriano Huerta, Wilson became obsessed with the notion of ousting Huerta and redirecting the Mexican Revolution along liberal, constitutional channels. After diplomatic pressure failed to achieve these ends, the president turned to more forceful measures. He provided 10,000 rifles to Huerta’s leading opponent, Venustiano Carranza, and when this gesture failed to pro- duce results, sought an excuse to intervene directly in Mexican affairs. On 9 April 1914, a patrol of Huerta’s soldiers arrested several American sailors in the Mexican port of Tampico. (Map 4) The inci- dent gave Wilson the pretext for which he was looking. Although Mexican authorities quickly released the sailors and apologized for the incident, the president was determined to exploit the episode. The United States admiral on the scene demanded that Mexico affirm its apology by firing a 21-gun salute to the American flag. When Huerta refused, Wilson made his move.3

On 21 April U.S. marines seized the wharves at Vera Cruz, the maritime gateway to Mexico City. The action was designed to weaken Huerta, both by blocking the delivery of foreign arms bound for his army and by denying him access to the important revenues generated from the city’s dockside customs house. Much to the president’s cha- grin, the Mexicans refused to accept the indignity. Although the major- ity of the city’s garrison obligingly withdrew, a motley assemblage of policemen, released convicts, naval cadets, and patriotic citizens opened fire on the wharves, making the marines’ position on the docks untenable and compelling them to occupy the entire town. Assisted by naval gunfire, approximately 6,000 U.S. sailors and marines seized the rest of the city the following day. By the time the fighting had stopped,

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over a hundred and thirty Americans and several hundred Mexicans lay dead or wounded.4

The president was devastated by the news. He had hoped to dis- comfit Huerta without loss of life on either side. Instead, he was in possession of a city of 40,000 hostile people and perilously close to the outbreak of an all-out war he did not want. Both the Army and the Navy clamored for Wilson to take the next step and initiate a full occupation of Mexico as envisioned by the official war plans. Although mindful of the hardships to be incurred in pacifying Mexico, the nation’s military leaders believed that war was now inevitable and that it would be the height of folly to give Mexico the time to mobilize and concentrate its forces. Like their counterparts in Europe, America’s military leaders of 1914 believed that war plans and mobilization timetables were finely crafted mechanisms that had to be executed completely and without interruption once they had been put into motion. Failing to do so—to delay the call-up of reserves and impede the planned deployment of men and materiel—would create chaos in the rear echelons and court disaster at the front. The die was cast, they argued, and it was time for the politicians to step aside.

Wilson, however, refused to step aside. He agreed to replace the naval assault force in Vera Cruz with Army troops in preparation for a thrust on Mexico City but declined to authorize the drive itself. War was not what the president wanted, and he rejected the military’s pleas for action and its dire predictions of disaster. Rather than becoming the launch point for the subjugation and pacification of Mexico, Vera Cruz was merely to be a fulcrum from which Wilson could exercise addi- tional pressure on the Huerta regime. It was a limited role of which the nation’s military leaders did not approve.5

Wilson’s stubborn adherence to the notion of a limited intervention threw the Army’s war plans into disarray, so much so that Brig. Gen. Tasker H. Bliss, the commander of U.S. forces along the Texas- Mexican border, roundly denounced the War College’s failure to develop flexible plans for contingencies short of a full-scale interven- tion. The criticism was justified, yet in fairness to the Army it should be pointed out that the nation’s war planners had indeed considered the problem. In the spring of 1911 the president of the War College, Brig. Gen. William W. Wotherspoon, had urged Army Chief of Staff Leonard Wood to have the State Department clarify American objectives in the event of an intervention in Mexico. He pointed out that while the Army had a plan for the occupation of all of Mexico, it could not prepare for lesser contingencies unless it knew what those contingencies might be. Unfortunately, neither the nation’s diplomats nor Presidents Taft and

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Wilson provided such guidance, and consequently, the Army had never bothered to develop plans for the type of limited contingency it now faced. It would not be the last time that such operations would be bedeviled by poor civil-military communication.6

On 30 April Maj. Gen. Frederick Funston led approximately 4,000 soldiers ashore at Vera Cruz to relieve the Navy, which left behind 3,000 marines—nearly half the U.S. Marine Corps—to assist him. Although the Navy wished to retain control of the marines, President Wilson saw the wisdom of a unified command and followed the prec- edents established in earlier joint operations by placing the marines under Funston’s command.7

With the city secured, Funston turned to the thorny question of civil administration. Mexican law prohibited its citizens from working for an occupying power, and this made it difficult for the military to employ its traditional method of incorporating indigenous officials into the occupation regime. Using the Army’s administration of the Philippines as an example, Funston established a civil administration staffed with veterans of the Army’s previous governments in the Philippines, Cuba, and Puerto Rico. In addition to the usual departments like education, finance, and public works, he created an Office of Civil Affairs whose head served as his chief adviser on civil matters. He did not, however, reestablish Mexican civil courts, not only because most native judges refused to serve, but also because he realized that the Mexican govern- ment would not recognize the judgments handed down by occupation courts after the Americans had left. The Army therefore encouraged civil plaintiffs to settle their disputes out of court, while confining the activities of U.S. military courts to the adjudication of criminal cases.8

Having established the basic machinery of government, Funston followed precedent by inaugurating a vigorous civil affairs campaign, both to demonstrate America’s benevolent intentions and to establish precedents he hoped the Mexicans would emulate after the Americans had gone. There was much to be done. Vera Cruz’s government was notably corrupt and inefficient. The sorry state of municipal affairs was best illustrated by the city’s trash disposal system, which relied entirely upon the appetites of the huge, black vultures that adorned city edifices. Like Hercules in the Augean stables, Funston threw himself into the work. He imposed strict sanitary codes, established refuse collection services, paved streets, installed sidewalks, began vaccination pro- grams, improved the prisons, reformed the city’s finances, and elimi- nated government corruption. At his direction schools were reopened, new teachers recruited, and a teacher’s institute established to improve the overall quality of instruction. He launched a campaign against vice,

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Street improvements instituted by the U.S. Army in Vera Cruz in 1914

banning gambling and the sale of marijuana and cocaine, and regulat- ing, but not prohibiting, prostitution. At times Funston’s reforms strayed into the realm of the puritanical, as in the case of his banning bullfighting and cockfighting, prohibitions that violated deeply rooted traditions. For the most part, however, he tried to respect native institu- tions as called for by Army doctrine. By the time he was done, the city was virtually unrecognizable. Governmental administration was effi- cient, while the death rate had dropped by 25 percent. Even the vultures had left town for better pickings elsewhere. Funston reinforced his civic program by enforcing strict discipline among his men, so much so that nearly half the garrison had been court-martialed by the end of the occupation. “This government is too pious . . . to suit me,” grumbled one marine, Maj. Smedley Butler.9

The most important item of tactical doctrine to emerge from the Army’s Mexican sojourn was a pamphlet compiled by the headquarters of the Vera Cruz expedition titled “Memorandum in Reference to the Methods To Be Employed in the Capture and Occupation of Latin-

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American Cities.” The essay was prompted by the recognition that any campaign to pacify Mexico or any other Latin American country would most likely entail episodes of urban irregular warfare similar to the Navy’s recent experience. The pamphlet prescribed methods for fight- ing in cities and became the basis for U.S. Army tactical doctrine on the subject for years to come, as the Army periodically reissued the work whenever intervention into a Latin state was imminent.10

While Army officers in Vera Cruz busied themselves with adminis- tering the city and developing street-fighting doctrine, pressure contin- ued to mount on the Huerta regime. Defeated by Carranza in the field and denied access to the customs revenues from Vera Cruz, Huerta resigned from the presidency in mid-July. Although the intervention had only been one factor in Huerta’s downfall, Wilson was elated by the success of his experiment in the limited use of military power. But the euphoria was short-lived. Carranza ignored Wilson’s call for elections, insisting instead that the United States evacuate Vera Cruz immediately. After hesitating for two months, Wilson acceded to Carranza’s demand and ordered American forces to withdraw in mid-September.

General Funston promptly protested the evacuation order on the grounds that a quick departure would undermine all the good work he had accomplished. He proposed that the United States retain control over the city through a transition period during which representatives from the Carranza regime could visit and learn American administra- tive methods. He also argued that it would be immoral for the United States to leave Vera Cruz without first being assured that Carranza would not retaliate against Mexican nationals who had worked for the U.S. military government as policemen, teachers, clerks, and mainte- nance workers. Washington accepted his proposals, but Carranza balked, and another two-month stalemate ensued. Ultimately, it was Carranza who backed down. With his domestic enemies closing in around him, he needed to gain control of Vera Cruz’s valuable wharves and customs house, and on 9 November he issued a blanket amnesty for all Americanistas. Two weeks later, on 23 November 1914, Funston’s expeditionary force loaded onto transports and sailed over the horizon, leaving the city to Carranza.11

Vera Cruz was the Army’s first venture in the Wilson administra- tion’s brand of limited military intervention, and the experience had proved to be an uncomfortable one. Although the operation had con- tributed to Huerta’s downfall, it had also highlighted underlying ten- sions between civil and military policy makers over the use of the Army as a tool of American diplomacy. Moreover, Wilson’s success had been only superficial. Huerta was gone, but internecine warfare continued in

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Mexico, with constitutional democracy and social justice a distant dream. No sooner had the Army departed than Carranza repudiated his pledge and purged everyone who had worked for the Americans during the occupation. As the Mexicans regained control over Vera Cruz, they ignored nearly all of Funston’s reforms. They rapidly reintroduced cor- ruption and inefficiency to government, neglected the sanitary codes, and allowed municipal facilities to deteriorate. Within a few months virtually every vestige of the Army’s presence in Vera Cruz had been expunged—much to the relief of the vultures, which happily returned to their roosts.

Rather than help foster democracy, all Wilson had accomplished was to further alienate Mexicans of all political stripes, from Huerta supporters to Carrancistas, who resented the arrogance with which the United States had meddled in their internal affairs. Only one major Mexican political leader had openly supported the intervention—a revolutionary general named Francisco “Pancho” Villa. It was a name Americans were not soon to forget.12

The Mexican Punitive Expedition, 1916–1917

The withdrawal from Vera Cruz did not mark the end of Wilson’s meddling in Mexico’s internal affairs. Carranza was soon faced with a major insurgency in northern Mexico led by General Villa. Though he favored Carranza, President Wilson refused to acknowledge the Carrancista regime as the legitimate government of Mexico. Instead, he withheld formal recognition in the hope of pressuring Carranza to make more democratic reforms. Carranza struck back by applying a little pressure of his own. In the summer of 1915 he orchestrated a covert campaign of bandit raids and guerrilla attacks in southern Texas. Integral to this campaign was a document circulated in the borderland in early 1915 called the Plan of San Diego, after the Texas town in which it was said to have originated. The plan called for an insurrection by Hispanics, Indians, and blacks against United States authority in the American Southwest and the establishment of an independent republic there. Although fantastic in conception, it represented an attempt to tap the resentment which the Mexican-American majority in southern Texas felt toward the ruling Anglo minority.13

As summer faded into fall, the situation along the border became critical. Encouraged by the Mexican press and supported by Carrancista soldiers stationed along the banks of the Rio Grande, Mexican- American bandits and guerrillas waged a low-level insurgency against U.S. authority in southern Texas. Occasionally led by Carrancista offi-