- Title Information
- Title
- "Freedom Is not Won with Flowers:" An Operational Analysis of the U.S. Occupations of Cuba (1906), Haiti (1915), and Nicaragua (1927)
- Abstract
- Why have great powers sometimes been able to occupy weaker countries and at other times, using similar tactics, lost to a few poorly armed insurgents? Most scholarly theories of counterinsurgency propose best practices against insurgencies inspired by Maoist protracted warfare theory. But the wide variation in outcomes among cases in which counterinsurgents followed these best practices suggests that insurgent organization and strategy exert equal influence on victory and defeat as counterinsurgency strategy. I argue that for insurgent movements with low levels of bureaucracy, leaders’ autonomy and the difficulty of replacing them make leadership – rather than civilians or fighters – the insurgents’ center of gravity. I propose a model of leadership decapitation in which only those insurgencies whose leaders are highly motivated to fight and are able to evade capture or assassination will win their campaigns. This model is based on detailed case studies of the U.S. occupations of Cuba (1906), Haiti (1915), and Nicaragua (1927), which current theories of counterinsurgency theory do not fully explain. This research contributes to a more accurate understanding of the outcomes of these interventions and of the variety of forms insurgencies can take.
- Name:
Personal
- Name Part
- McMahon, Leo D
- Role
- Role Term (marcrelator)
(authorityURI="http://id.loc.gov/vocabulary/relators", valueURI="http://id.loc.gov/vocabulary/relators/cre")
- creator
- Name:
Personal
- Name Part
- Kinzer, Stephen
- Role
- Role Term (marcrelator)
(authorityURI="http://id.loc.gov/vocabulary/relators", valueURI="http://id.loc.gov/vocabulary/relators/ths")
- thesis advisor
- Name:
Personal
- Name Part
- Jost, Tyler
- Role
- Role Term
- reader
- Name:
Corporate
- Name Part
- Brown University. International Relations
- Role
- Role Term:
Text
- sponsor
- Origin Information
- Copyright Date
- 2023
- Type of Resource (primo)
- text_resources
- Physical Description
- digitalOrigin
- born digital
- Language
- Language Term:
Text (ISO639-2B)
(authorityURI="http://id.loc.gov/vocabulary/iso639-2.html", valueURI="http://id.loc.gov/vocabulary/iso639-2/eng")
- English
- Note:
thesis
- Senior thesis (AB)--Brown University, 2023
- Note
(displayLabel="Concentration")
- International and Public Affairs
- Genre (aat)
- theses
- Subject (fast)
(authorityURI="http://id.worldcat.org/fast", valueURI="http://id.worldcat.org/fast/00975461")
- Topic
- Insurgency
- Subject (fast)
(authorityURI="http://id.worldcat.org/fast", valueURI="http://id.worldcat.org/fast/01228307")
- Topic
- Nicaragua
- Subject (fast)
(authorityURI="http://id.worldcat.org/fast", valueURI="http://id.worldcat.org/fast/01205805")
- Topic
- Cuba
- Subject (fast)
(authorityURI="http://id.worldcat.org/fast", valueURI="http://id.worldcat.org/fast/01205135")
- Topic
- Haiti
- Subject (fast)
(authorityURI="http://id.worldcat.org/fast", valueURI="http://id.worldcat.org/fast/00881325")
- Topic
- Counterinsurgency
- Subject (fast)
(authorityURI="http://id.worldcat.org/fast", valueURI="http://id.worldcat.org/fast/")
- Topic
- Decapitation
- Subject (fast)
(authorityURI="http://id.worldcat.org/fast", valueURI="http://id.worldcat.org/fast/")
- Topic
- Military leadership
- Access Condition:
use and reproduction
- All rights reserved
- Access Condition:
rights statement
(href="http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/")
- In Copyright
- Access Condition:
restriction on access
- All Rights Reserved
- Identifier:
DOI
- 10.26300/85cf-tm83