Guerrilla Warfare

Report Outline
Threat in Communist Guerrilia Strategy
Long Record of Guerrillas in Warfare
Means of Combating Red Guerrillas

Threat in Communist Guerrilia Strategy

Kennedy'S Warning on Red Use of Guerrillas

President kennedy told the nation on his return from Europe, June 6, that Soviet Premier Khrushchev had insisted to him in Vienna that communism would triumph in the new and less-developed countries of the world. Khrushchev was “certain that the tide there was moving his way, that the revolution of rising peoples would eventually be a Communist revolution, and that the so-called wars of liberation supported by the Kremlin would replace the old methods of direct aggression and invasion.” Kennedy declared that, for his part, he believed “just as strongly that …liberty and independence and self-determination, not communism, is the future of man.” But he saw the struggle as “a continuing crisis of this decade.”

Communists are confident that they can turn local conflicts in their direction by use of “guerrillas or insurgents or subversion.” What the free world is up against in combating aggression of this kind had been graphically described by the President in the special message he delivered to Congress on May 25. Aggression by the “adversaries of freedom,” he pointed out then, “is more often concealed than open.”

They have fired no missiles; and their troops are seldom seen. They send arms, agitators, aid, technicians and propaganda to every troubled area. But where fighting is required, it is usually done by others—by guerrillas striking at night, by assassins striking alone, by subversives and saboteurs and insurrectionists, who in some cases control whole areas of independent nations.