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6. Defense of the Territory
Since the stake in modern warfare is the control of the populace, the first objective is to assure the people their protection by giving them the means of defending themselves, especially against terrorism.
We then have to create and train organizations capable of detecting the elements our enemies will strive to introduce into our territory preparatory to the open struggle.
Finally, if hostilities break out, if terrorism and guerrilla activity have established themselves over a large portion of our territory, we must combat them with the appropriate methods, which will be far more effective than those which would have been considered and used in peacetime.
THE INHABITANTS' ORGANIZATION
Military schools teaching classic doctrines of warfare rely upon a number of decision factors—the mission, the enemy, the terrain, and the resources.
But one factor that is essential to the conduct of modern warfare is omitted—the inhabitant.
The battlefield today is no longer restricted. It is limitless; it can encompass entire nations. The inhabitant in his home is the center of the conflict. Amidst the continuing movement of military actions, he is the stablest element. Like it or not, the two camps are compelled to make him participate in the combat; in a certain sense, he has become a combatant also* Therefore, it is essential to prepare him for the role he will have to play and to enable him to fulfill it effectively on our side.
For the inhabitant to elude the threats of the enemy, to cease to be an isolated target that no police force can protect, we must have him participate in his own defense. To this end, we have him enter into a structured organization encompassing the entire population. No one shall be able to avoid this service, and each person at any moment will be subject to the orders of his civil or military superiors to participate in protective measures.
Control of the masses through a tight organization, often through several parallel organizations, is the master weapon of modern warfare. This is what permits the enemy to uncover quickly any hostile element within a subjugated population. Only when we have created a similar organization will we be able to discover, and as quickly eliminate, those individuals the enemy tries to introduce among us.
The creation of such an organization may run into serious difficulties, but they are not insurmountable if we firmly desire to succeed. There will be no lack of good will; danger will create it. The experience of the battle of Algiers provides us with a sound basis for this assumption.
First, we designate an energetic and intelligent man in each city who will, with one or more reliable assistants, build the projected organization with a minimum of help from the authorities.
The principle is very simple. The designated leader divides the city into districts, at the head of each of which he places a chief and two or three assistants. These, in turn, divide the district into sub-districts and designate a chief and several assistants for each of them. Finally, each building or group of houses receives a chief and two or three assistants who will be in direct contact with the populace.
Careful investigation is necessary before designating members of the organization and to prevent failures. Nevertheless, making each member responsible for the designation and control of his immediate subordinates will permit rapid creation of the organization on a sound foundation.
In our overseas territories or during a period of crisis at home, when for a variety of reasons we may not be sure of the loyalty of the people—particularly if the enemy organization previously created is sufficiently strong to oblige the population to walk carefully—the problem will be more complex, since the inhabitants will reject any responsibility that might subject them to the adversary's retaliation.
In this case, the pyramid of our organization is created from the bottom up by the police forces charged with maintaining order. Mobile gendarmerie squadrons, with their accustomed police contacts with the people, will be especially qualified to perform this delicate task.
First, they conduct a careful census of the entire population. The basic leader of the organizational structure will be the head of the family. He is made responsible for all inhabitants of his apartment or house, and for keeping up to date the list established at the time of the census.
During the taking of the census, we designate at the next echelon a chief of a group of houses (or of a building, or a floor of a building), who will be responsible for a certain number of heads of family, four or five at most.
Finally, when the census is completed and a close relationship established with the population, chiefs of subdistricts will be designated. According to the way in which the city is divided up, it will be possible tor a sub-district leader to be made responsible for some ten chiefs of house groups. Since this individual will play a key role, the district commander should appoint him and then only after careful investigation. The essential quality of a potential sub-district leader is that he have firm attachments in the sub-district (a business or shop, affluence, a large family). That is, he should have a standard of living or family ties that it would be difficult for him to abandon.
There will be no structural echelon above the subdistrict leader. His role is too important for him to be easily commanded, and he will be too vulnerable a target for the enemy. The organization will actually be a pyramid of which the sub-district leader will constitute the apex.
In case of war, a special civil and military organism is set up for an entire medium-sized city or for districts in the larger cities. Its essential role is to transmit orders to the sub-district leaders, to see to their execution, and to gather information the sub-district leaders will provide. Having permanent contact with the sub-district leaders, this special organism will ensure continuing and correct execution of instructions issued to the various echelons of the organization.
The population census will permit each inhabitant to be given a census card, one or two copies of which will remain in the possession of the forces of order.
The card will include a photograph of the individual, as well as, say, his house-group number (e.g., 3), the letter of the sub-district (B), the number of the district (2), and the letter designating the city (A). The result will constitute what amounts to a catalog number (A.2.B.3.), which will, in the course of frequent checks, enable us to keep tabs on each individual and on the ability of the leaders upon whom he depends.
This organization will permit the command to enlist the participation of the populace in its own protection. To a certain extent, it will be able to participate in the tasks of the forces of order and carry out simple police missions. Detection, surveillance, and occasionally the arrest of dangerous individuals will be managed without difficulty, and the transmission of instructions will always be easy and quick. The organization will rapidly become one of the essential elements of the territorial command and will assume an ever increasing importance. A special office, which we shall call the bureau of the inhabitants' organization and control, will be necessary to monitor the organization's activity.
In case of emergency, this organism would be in a position to establish without delay very strict control over food supplies, animals, and all resources our adversaries could use against us. This organization will enable the precise identification of the outlaw: Any individual who is slow to establish himself and does not enter the organization would, in effect, be an outlaw.
A careful search of the population is necessary to find men capable of being leaders of the organization at its various echelons. The bulk of the population is by habit or tradition normally devoted to established authority and the forces of order. The people will be ready to help if we ask their aid, on the condition that we will at all times support and protect those who are on our side. This protection is one of the essential missions of the inhabitants' organization.
Good will is never lacking even in the most troubled of times. Indochina and, later, Algeria have amply proven this. But we ought never to forget that ambition has always been a powerful incentive for a young and dynamic elite that wishes to get out of its rut and arrive. It is largely to this youth that we must appeal. We must bind them to us and compensate services rendered according to their worth.
Finally, of course, we may always assure ourselves of their loyalty by placing them within an organization it will be difficult to leave once admitted.
This inhabitants' organization certainly runs counter to our traditional spirit of individualism and may promote dangers to our liberties that we must not minimize. The analogy with certain totalitarian organizations will afford our adversaries easy opportunities to attack us.
But we cannot permit ourselves to be deluded. There is a fundamental difference. Our organization is a defensive one, the sole aim of which is to ensure the protection of the populace, particularly against the danger of terrorism. No individual entering it need abdicate a particle of his basic liberties; but in the face of a common enemy, each will give under discipline his total and unreserved assistance to his fellows and his superiors. Once the war is won or the danger has passed, our organization will have no reason to exist.
Abuses are always possible. The organization will have to be seriously controlled, so that it remains solely a means of protection against the external enemy and does not become a vehicle for internal political pressure. This cannot happen if it is created in a spirit of justice and if the burdens it necessitates are equitably shared among all the inhabitants of a given region, no matter what their social circumstances may be.
One should not lose sight of the fact that this is the sole means we have to assure the protection of peaceful citizens and to prevent terrorism from forcing them into a harsh and inhuman servitude.
Formerly, nations spent huge sums for the construction of fortifications designed to protect themselves against invasion. Today, the inhabitants' organization, the elite formation designed as a framework for protection and to give us information about the enemy's clandestine penetration of our territory, constitutes the modern means of defense against modern warfare.
Any country that does not create such an organization runs a permanent danger of being invaded. The financial outlays called for cannot be compared with those needed for the construction of elaborate fortifications. We have no excuse if we do not create such an organization.
COUNTRYWIDE INTELLIGENCE
With a reliable intelligence service, we would be able to detect all infiltration attempts against our territory and to discover who are those indispensable to the enemy's preparation of his projected offensive action.
The inhabitants will know them, since they suffer terribly from their activities, but will not denounce these agents unless they can do so without risk. Fear of reprisal will always prevent them from communicating to us information they possess.
The inhabitants' organization, which in large measure assures their security, will therefore be an important organism for information. In its very creation, it passes the entire population through a sieve and learns the circumstances in which each person lives. Contacts are made, and a certain confidence in the forces of order established.
Then, frequent meetings of responsible leaders at various echelons will permit regular and frequent relations between the authorities and qualified representatives of the people. Much information will also be gathered, the source of which our adversaries will not succeed in discovering. We will thus have created an initial element of security and understanding.
We cannot hope to transform all the inhabitants into agents. But since modern warfare asserts its presence on the totality of the population, we have to be everywhere informed. Therefore, we must have a vast intelligence network, which ought to be set up, if possible, before the opening of hostilities.
During a period of crisis, we complain of not being better informed. We accuse the people unjustly of concealing the truth or of not giving us die information they possess. And very often, because we have not prepared anything, we will be tempted to obtain by violence information that a well-organized service would have given us without difficulty.
Selective terrorism, as we have seen, will, even before the opening of hostilities, put an end to our regular intelligence agents. Leaders and small functionaries are its first victims. The threat of the enemy's warfare organization quickly condemns the population to silence. When hostilities begin, we shall be cut off precipitously from all sources of information if we have made no provision to guard against it.
Even before the inhabitants have been organized, we ought to give a portion of the populace the chance of informing us securely. The time is past when a specialized service could recruit a few agents haphazardly and from a quite special sector of society.
We have to have numerous and secretly established centers of accelerated training, where we will be able to train quickly a great number of inhabitants in the agent roles we shall ask them to play. Their training will be essentially practical: It will be limited to teaching them a few elementary procedures for transmitting simple information (telephone, letter box, dead-drop, etc.), which will be sufficient to ensure their protection.
We then distribute them throughout all phases of human activity—factories, yards, administrative offices, the large public services—everywhere people gather we will be present, thanks to them. We shall almost always be able to recruit them in the very circles of interest to us; if not, we shall get them jobs appropriate to their professional or vocational aptitudes that will serve them as cover.
These "benevolent" agents can give us information on their milieu and inform us of the agents the enemy attempts to infiltrate into the population—that is, such basic activists as fund collectors, propagandists, strike leaders, etc., who usually constitute the first echelon of the opponent's organization. Working among them, often in their very midst, our agents can discover them without difficulty.
This intelligence network, despite its extent and the considerable number of agents it will put to work, can be created at little expense. Their employment itself will provide the agents with a steady income. Various premiums for production will usually be sufficient to sustain their enthusiasm.
Information is nothing in itself, particularly during a crisis, if it is not quickly exploited. Therefore, we must create an intelligence-action service capable of exploiting its own information in the shortest possible time.
Certain individuals of our broadly based intelligence system, after proving their exceptional qualities, will be able to enter the intelligence-action service. They ought to be capable of detecting, following, and sometimes even arresting the enemy agents they uncover.
But our best agents will be furnished to us by the enemy himself. During the course of interrogations, we should always bear in mind that the majority of individuals arrested, if we have enough flexibility, can change camp. Many among them have passed over to the service of the enemy only through duress and have been kept there solely by a continuing threat of blackmail. If we generously offer them another path with our protection, they will become our most faithful collaborators.
As for others, it will suffice to lead them to denounce openly members of the organization whom they know, particularly their superiors and their subordinates. From then on, they are no longer able to betray us and will collaborate with us if only to assure their own protection.
Finally, experience has demonstrated that, although confessions and conversions may be difficult to obtain at lower echelons, they are, at a higher level, and especially among intellectuals, usually easy and quick.
It is thus that we shall recruit the basic agents of our intelligence-action service. Well trained by specialists of the forces of order, they will themselves be prepared to exploit their own information in the destruction of the opposing organization.
But, except for a few individuals capable of playing a double-agent role, profitable use of them is of short duration. We shall have to renew them frequently, particularly after all their information has been exploited.
This service should cooperate with all the elements charged with exploiting leads, be prepared to follow closely all police operations, and be au courant of all arrests so as to utilize to the maximum all recruitment possibilities.
A well-organized intelligence service can make us aware of the structure of the warfare organization our opponents seek to implant upon our territory.
The most effective solution would no doubt consist of destroying these opponents before they constitute a danger. However, if for various reasons—in general, political ones—we are not authorized to do this, we ought to observe their development closely so as to be in a position to arrest them the moment the order is given.
The best way to be well informed consists in introducing our own agents into the organization of the enemy and in corrupting his agents. This is a delicate task that only a few proven agents will be able to accomplish.
As the adversary's organization begins to expand, our opponents, working hi an enemy country, will find that their freedom of action becomes more limited. They run into increasing difficulties as they recruit more and more persons; they are no longer able to exercise tight control over all their agents. Then we will have the opportunities of introducing our own agents into their organization, and we ought to exploit them.
Here again, the best candidates will be furnished to us by the enemy himself. The security of a clandestine organization is assured by rigorous compartmentation. Personal contacts are, for reasons of security, rare at higher echelons. A well-trained intelligence-action service should be able to make frequent arrests of members of the enemy organization in utmost secrecy. We should try to make them pass quickly into our service, permitting them to remain within their own organization after having established a sure system of communications.
We should not underestimate our adversaries, nor should we overestimate them and attribute to them powers they do not possess. They, too, will always have innumerable difficulties to overcome. The thing that makes their task easy is the absence of a special service created to combat them, and the practically total freedom we permit them in the field of clandestinity.
If we prepare ourselv.es in peacetime to face modern warfare, if we provide the people with a means of defending themselves, if we take precautions to be informed at all times of the preparations and the intentions of our adversaries, then we shall have no difficulty in quickly taking the necessary action when the time comes to reduce our adversaries to impotence.
This capability will not go unnoticed; in itself, it may be sufficient to discourage any attempt at a trial of force and serve to maintain the peace. If, however, our adversaries should decide to pass over to open warfare, we would have at hand the means of crushing any enemy who attempts to carry the war onto our territory.
But if the measures decribed above are not adopted, our adversaries will be able to undertake an open struggle to attain their final objective, which is to overthrow the established authority and to replace it with their own system.
Since it is the population that is at stake, the struggle will assume two aspects: Political—direct action on the population; and military—the struggle against the armed forces of the aggressor Our adversaries will not open hostilities until a certain number of preliminary conditions have been realized. By that time their infiltration of our position will be profound and extensive. It will be possible to eradicate it only by powerful means, a firm intention to prevail, and a considerable investment in time.