IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/taf/fswixx/v32y2021i1p152-162.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The Venezuelan castro-communist counterinsurgency (1960-1968) and the fight for emergent democratic governments

Author

Listed:
  • Daniel Levinson Harris

Abstract

Democracies, handicapped by constitutional conventions and structural mechanisms which enforce the practice of humanitarian ethics, are less well-equipped to address counterinsurgencies (COIN) than popularly-unaccountable authoritarian regimes. Although commonly asserted in academic and popular channels, this statement belies a greater truth: that democracies actually outperform authoritarian governments as it relates to COIN conflict outcome. This paper makes the argument for the waging of effective COIN by emergent democracies through the analysis of the successful Venezuelan anti-Castro-Communist counterinsurgency of the 1960s. The Rómulo Betancourt (1958–1964) and Raúl Leoni (1964–1969) administrations’ tempered and humane response to urban and rural Castro-Communist violence decisively won the backing of the Venezuelan people and mortally wounded the insurgent support base. Once military operational and tactical missteps that prolonged the conflict are accounted for, the Venezuelan COIN of the 1960s can serve as an exportable model for newly emergent democracies seeking to wage war within constitutional conventions.

Suggested Citation

  • Daniel Levinson Harris, 2021. "The Venezuelan castro-communist counterinsurgency (1960-1968) and the fight for emergent democratic governments," Small Wars and Insurgencies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 32(1), pages 152-162, January.
    • Handle: RePEc:taf:fswixx:v:32:y:2021:i:1:p:152-162
    DOI: 10.1080/09592318.2020.1826837
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09592318.2020.1826837
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1080/09592318.2020.1826837?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:taf:fswixx:v:32:y:2021:i:1:p:152-162. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Chris Longhurst (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.tandfonline.com/fswi .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.