Studying Vietnam Doesn’t Really Help
I’ve written about this topic before, and I continue to think that the prime lesson to be learned, if there is one, is that the host government matters AND that the US can’t really influence any such government to become what it is not (i.e. a co-dependent shaky edifice).
But we need to back up a theoretical level first before approaching diving in more fully into the Thomas/Barry article. A construct I find very helpful is the distinction (made by Thomas PM Barnett) between War and Peace. If we take the Iraq II example, the War phase was the period of the invasion and the overthrowing of Saddam Hussein. In Afghanistan it was the (very quick) routing of the Taliban from power with aid from the Northern Alliance.
The Peace (or Stabilization/(Re)construction) phase is much harder and much longer lasting. Basically everything starting from the rise of the insurgencies in both Iraq and Afghanistan. It’s a little tricky in that the “peace” phase requires a great deal of military might, so the peace phase is not simply civilian reconstruction, infrastructure building, economic recovery, and the growing capability of a national government (complete with national army/police, etc.) though those latter points are really the sign of ultimate victory in the peace phase.
I’ll come back to that in a second, but first the Thomas-Barry article:
One that he [Gen. McChyrstal] has read—and reread—is a 1999 book called A Better War, written by Lewis Sorley, a retired Army lieutenant colonel. Sorley argues that, contrary to the conventional wisdom, the United States could have won in Vietnam—if only the U.S. Congress hadn’t cut off military aid to South Vietnam…
Not until Gen. Creighton Abrams replaced Gen. William Westmoreland as U.S. commander in 1968 did the Americans smarten up and begin to fight a true counterinsurgency, focusing on protecting the population by a strategy of “clear and hold.” Instead of shoving aside the South Vietnamese Army, Abrams built up the local forces until they could stand and fight largely on their own—as they did in 1972, repulsing North Vietnam’s Easter Offensive with the aid of American airstrikes.
Sorley argues however that by this point in the game, even though the US was winning, the civilian population back home had already given up and were pushing the politicians (in this case Nixon who had run a pledge of winding down Vietnam).
In 1973, President Nixon and the North Vietnamese signed a peace treaty that allowed Hanoi to keep 150,000 troops in South Vietnam, just waiting on orders to march. In 1974, breaking Nixon’s promises of continued support to Saigon, the U.S. Congress cut off all aid to South Vietnam. Without logistical support or air cover, the South Vietnamese Army collapsed in 1975 and the communists swept into Saigon.
All of which sounds logical enough to me. I can easily imagine that had the US Congress not cut off the air power to South Vietnam, the South Vietnamese government could have stayed in some stalemate scenario, certainly not in any sense winning against the Vietcong but at least not losing or being overrun.
Arguably as it stood the US won neither the War or Peace phase of Vietnam. Though it seems they were doing at least somewhat better by the end. As a result of that reality, the Vietnam era military adopted the Powell Doctrine which emphasized overwhelming force and a quick exit so as not to get bogged down in foreign countries.
By the Barnett reckoning, The Powell Doctrine over-emphasized (or only emphasized) the War phase to the exclusion of the peace phase. We saw this in Somalia, Haiti, Iraq War I and so on. The Powell Doctrine later got merged I would say with Art Cebrowski’s notion of Net-centric Warfare. Netcentric argued that much smaller forces (than originally imagined by the Powell Doctrine), through the use of increased communications technologies and platforms, could achieve overwhelming victory….in the War phase note. The Netcentric theory lay at the heart of The Rumsfeld Doctrine of light footprint and massive air/logistical power combined with special forces on the ground. This guided both the Iraq and Afghanistan War phases. [Read more →]
November 10, 2009 4 Comments
