National Security Doctrine
I. Background
A. In Latin America, basic ideology of military regimes of late 60s, 70s, early 80s
B. Most important theoretical work done in Brazilian military colleges
C. Focused on internal threat of subversion and class warfare
D. Concerned about link between economic development and internal and external security
II. Total War
A. A New Kind of War
1. Enormous power of nuclear weapons shifts struggle to new battlefields
2. Now conflict between superpowers moves to the periphery
3. USA and USSR will not fight each other directly
4. Traditional war is between states, external
5. Total war can be within populations
6. Ideological frontiers supersede territorial warfare
B. USSR sees revolutionary war as path to imperial destiny in Third World - Latin America is the front line!
1. USSR will use political, economic, psyhcosocial and military means to achieve goals achieve goal
2. Thus government justified in widespread use of repression
3. Rigorous enforcement of internal security moral equivalent of fighting occupying army.
4. Soviet Union will create climate of active opposition to achieve goals
5. Thus internal security becomes as important as external security
6. Internal, revolutionary war does not have to armed
7. Any challenge to state policies can be, indeed is an act of war.
C. Fighting the War
1. Only the military is organized to combat subversion
2. Subversion is now global - internal and external - and a global strategy is needed to combat it
3. National security takes precedence over individual rights
4. It is enough that individual rights be used to denigrate established values for them to be abridged.
III. Suicide of the West
A. James Burnham (1905-1987) - National Review editor
B. His ideas influential in development of National Security Doctrine
C. Western Civilization is in peril
1. Struggle is not to defend capitalism or democracy
2. It is to defend Western Civilization against Eastern-Orthodox-Byzantine Communism
3. West is a society derived from split from East. Half-Asian Russia never belonged.
4. West in contraction - loss of colonies, Communism in Cuba and China, etc.
D. This is a self-inflicted peril
1. Ultimate risk to West is freedom to destroy freedom.
2. Unrestricted democracy is Western suicide
3. West leads USSR in all areas, so contraction could only have an intellectual or spiritual explanation
4. In face of nuclear holocaust, West had lost its nerve
5. Pre-Renaissance Catholicism much stronger than modern liberalism
6. Renaissance had introduced humanism, Reformation shattered absolute, single moral authority
7. This led to materialist atheism of desacralizing modern liberalism, leaving West morally weak
8. West unable to kill without spasms of guilt
9. West feels guilt over suffering on non-Western peoples, guilt made unbearable by humanism
10. Christianity solves the problem of guilt
IV. Role of Development
A. No internal security without high degree of economic development
B. Must have means to fight - industry, communications, technology, etc.
C. Development defined by defense concerns, not population's material needs
D. Creation of vast military-industrial complex
E. Alliance with technocrats
F. Workers must be kept controlled