Foreign Internal Defense - Participants in FID Programs

Participants in FID Programs

No external force can guarantee success against an insurgency unless the people regard the Host Nation (HN) government as legitimate. Limited external support helped Ramon Magsaysay defeat the Hukbalahap insurgency in the Philippines, with one of the most important parts of that support being the availability of air transport so he could be visible in remote areas. The Vietnam War showed that even a superpower cannot make an unresponsive and corrupt government succeed against insurgents, especially when the superpower has significant conflict in its internal decisionmaking. An ineffective HN government guarantees the failure of counterinsurgency.

The first part of this discussion discusses two parts of the "McCormick Magic Diamond" terms the "counterinsurgency force" (i.e., principally the HN government and closely aligned FID units) and the "international community" (i.e., nongovernmental organizations (NGO)) and other nation-states).

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