The dispiriting outcome and immense cost of U.S.-led interventions in Iraq and Afghanistan have led policymakers to search for more efficient ways to deal with threats that emanate from troubled states. An influential school of thought has formed around the idea that “small footprint” interventions in places like El Salvador—those that rely on a small number of U.S. personnel to provide training and advice over long periods of time, coupled with infusions of U.S. equipment and economic assistance—have been both comparatively cheap and relatively successful. The Salvadoran model is consequently invoked regularly in policy debates, and is highlighted in both the 2006 and 2014 versions of the U.S. military’s field manual on counterinsurgency as an example of a low-cost intervention with a clear, positive outcome. A closer look at the conflict reveals a different logic at work, however—one that more closely follows the principal-agent theory developed in the introduction.

This chapter is one of nine historical case studies in Proxy Wars: Suppressing Violence through Local Agents.

Reviews:

• London Review of Books

• Journal of Strategic Studies 

• Military Review

• Defense Studies

Citation: Baker, Ryan T., "El Salvador, 1979–92: Revisiting Success." Chap. 5 in Proxy Wars: Suppressing Violence through Local Agents, edited by Eli Berman and David A. Lake, 137–58. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2019.

Related Publications: 

Berman, Eli, David A. Lake, Gerard Padró i Miquel, Pierre Yared, "Technical Appendix to 'Introduction: Principals, Agents, and Indirect Foreign Policies.'" ESOC Working Paper No. A1. Empirical Studies of Conflict Project, 2018.

Biddle, Stephen, Julia Macdonald, and Ryan Baker. "Small Footprint, Small Payoff: The Military Effectiveness of Security Force Assistance." Journal of Strategic Studies 41, nos. 1–2 (February 2018): 89–142, doi: 10.1080/01402390.2017.1307745.

Biddle, Stephen. "Building Security Forces & Stabilizing Nations: The Problem of Agency." Dædalus 146, no. 4 (Fall 2017): 126–38, doi: 10.1162/DAED_a_00464.

Biddle, Stephen, Julia Macdonald, and Ryan Baker. "The Trump administration wants to send more advisors to Afghanistan. Good luck with that." Monkey Cage (blog). Washington Post. May 15, 2017.

See also: https://minerva.defense.gov/Research/Funded-Projects/Article/1699260/deterrence-with-proxies/