Capitalism puts its own edge on the 'netwar'
The Zapatista Social Netwar in Mexico
By David Ronfeldt, John Arquilla, Graham E. Fuller and Melissa Fuller
Rand Corporation, 1998, $15
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Review by Rick Mercier
In the 1960s, Che Guevara called on people around the world to launch "two, three, many Vietnams". In The Zapatista Social Netwar in Mexico, scholars commissioned by the US Army contend that an indigenous peasant uprising in southern Mexico represents "a seminal case" of an emerging form of political struggle. This form involves "measures short of traditional war, in which the protagonists use networked forms of organisation and related doctrines, strategies, and technologies attuned to the information age".
When the Zapatista National Liberation Army (EZLN) rose up in the Mexican state of Chiapas in January 1994, activists and non-government organisations (NGOs) "swarmed" — both physically and electronically — to limit the Mexican army's counteroffensive, even though at this time "the United States may have been tacitly interested in seeing a forceful crackdown on the rebels".
After only 12 days of fighting, the Mexican government was compelled to announce a unilateral cease-fire. The global Zapatista movement was born, converting a military defeat for the EZLN into a ripe opportunity to reshape the local and national political landscapes.
According to the book: "What began as a violent insurgency by a small indigenous force in an isolated region was thus transformed and expanded, within weeks, into a non-violent, less overtly destructive, but still highly disruptive movement that ... had both foreign and national repercussions for Mexico".
There were important precursors to the Zapatista "netwar". In the 1980s, activists in North America mobilised to oppose US policies in Central America. In the 1990s, activists, workers and NGOs formed an impressive transnational network in an attempt to block the passage of the North American Free Trade Agreement in the US Congress.
But activists armed with computers and fax machines are not solely responsible for giving shape to the Zapatista movement. The indigenous communities in Chiapas deserve much of the credit for the non-hierarchical, decentralised manner in which the movement has developed.
Of course, any study sponsored by the US Army on a phenomenon as "fundamentally anti-establishment" as the Zapatista netwar would be incomplete without recommendations for how to conduct counter-netwar. On this matter, two of the authors' assertions stand out. One is that, even in the age of the internet, "a war's conduct and outcome will normally depend mostly on what happens in the 'real world'". The other is that "it takes networks to fight networks".
The Mexican army has learned these lessons, flooding Chiapas with 70,000 troops, but breaking up this enormous military presence into small detachments whose mobility and ability to communicate with other units has been enhanced significantly by US military aid. The federal army and state police have also overseen the establishment of a thoroughgoing intervention by paramilitaries into the social life of Chiapas — part of a networked response to the Zapatista rebellion.
The government, meanwhile, portrays the violence as a civil conflict and uses the mayhem to validate its policy of saturating indigenous communities with so-called peacekeeping soldiers. This has enabled the Mexican government to implement an information strategy that "is being keyed to a need to show respect for human rights" while turning up the heat on Zapatista communities.
The authors do not buy completely the benign image fashioned for the Mexican army. They caution the US military "to be wary of a very close association" with Mexico's armed forces, since they may "revert at times to heavy-handed policies and strategies".
The authors promote a subtle and flexible, and if possible bloodless, plan of action for counter-"netwarriors". They say the trouble with traditional counterinsurgency is that these days you must take into account the "CNN effect": the global media — alerted to a situation by netwarriors — deprive a local government of "the luxury of controlling who knows what about a conflict". Consequently, "a hard-line approach" to dealing with the conflict becomes "less feasible".
Sophisticated counter-netwarriors should consider the option of coopting willing NGOs, they say: "Where feasible, it may be advisable to improve US and allied skills for communication and even coordination with NGOs that can affect the course and conduct of a netwar". The researchers also urge greater surveillance of cyberspace to keep abreast of what net warriors are up to.
The passages on counter-netwar make this book worth reading, but the authors are a bit hasty in drawing general conclusions from this one example. Zapatismo is a unique convergence of elements not easily reproducible in other contexts or in support of other struggles. Whether the Zapatista movement turns out to be a seminal case of netwar, or just a singular one, remains to be seen.