The Salvadoran Crucible — The Failure of US Counterinsurgency in El Salvador, 1979-1992

Hardcover, 253 pp Copyright 2017 University Press of Kansas Proceeds from this book sale go towards the AUSA Scholarship Fund In 1979, with El Salvador growing ever more unstable and ripe for revolution, the United States undertook a counterinsurgency intervention that over the following decade would become Washington's largest nation-building effort since Vietnam. In 2003, policymakers looked to this “successful” undertaking as a model for US intervention in Iraq. In fact, Brian D’Haeseleer argues in The Salvadoran Crucible, the US counterinsurgency in El Salvador produced no more than a stalemate, and in the process inflicted tremendous suffering on Salvadorans for a limited amount of foreign policy gains. D’Haeseleer’s book is a deeply informed, dispassionate account of how the Salvadoran venture took shape, what it actually accomplished, and what lessons it holds.A historical analysis of the origins of US counterinsurgency policy provides context for understanding how precedents i