Anthropology and Counterinsurgency: The Strange Story of their Curious Relationship
Montgomery McFate, J.D., Ph.D.
OMETHING MYSTERIOUS is going on in- surgents’ organizational structure is not military, but side the U.S. Department of Defense (DOD). tribal. Their tactics are not conventional, but asym- OverS the past 2 years, senior leaders have been call- metrical. Their weapons are not tanks and fighter ing for something unusual and unexpected—cultural planes, but improvised explosive devices (IEDs). knowledge of the adversary. In July 2004, retired They do not abide by the Geneva Conventions, nor Major General Robert H. Scales, Jr., wrote an ar- do they appear to have any informal rules of en- ticle for the Naval War College’s Proceedings gagement. magazine that opposed the commonly held view Countering the insurgency in Iraq requires cultural within the U.S. military that success in war is best and social knowledge of the adversary. Yet, none of achieved by overwhelming technological advantage. the elements of U.S. national power—diplomatic, Scales argues that the type of conflict we are now military, intelligence, or economic—explicitly take witnessing in Iraq requires “an exceptional ability to adversary culture into account in the formation or understand people, their culture, and their motiva- execution of policy. This cultural knowledge gap has tion.”1 In October 2004, Arthur Cebrowski, Direc- a simple cause—the almost total absence of anthro- tor of the Office of Force Transformation, concluded pology within the national-security establishment. that “knowledge of one’s enemy and his culture and Once called “the handmaiden of colonialism,” an- society may be more important than knowledge of thropology has had a long, fruitful relationship with his order of battle.”2 In November 2004, the Office various elements of national power, which ended of Naval Research and the Defense Advanced Re- suddenly following the Vietnam War. The strange search Projects Agency (DARPA) sponsored the story of anthropology’s birth as a warfighting disci- Adversary Cultural Knowledge and National Secu- pline, and its sudden plunge into the abyss of rity Conference, the first major DOD conference postmodernism, is intertwined with the U.S. failure on the social sciences since 1962. in Vietnam. The curious and conspicuous lack of Why has cultural knowledge suddenly become anthropology in the national-security arena since the such an imperative? Primarily because traditional Vietnam War has had grave consequences for coun- methods of warfighting have proven inadequate in tering the insurgency in Iraq, particularly because Iraq and Afghanistan. U.S. technology, training, and political policy and military operations based on par- doctrine designed to counter the Soviet threat are tial and incomplete cultural knowledge are often not designed for low-intensity counterinsurgency op- worse than none at all. erations where civilians mingle freely with combat- ants in complex urban terrain. A Lack of Cultural Awareness The major combat operations that toppled Saddam In a conflict between symmetric adversaries, Hussein’s regime were relatively simple because where both are evenly matched and using similar they required the U.S. military to do what it does technology, understanding the adversary’s culture is best—conduct maneuver warfare in flat terrain us- largely irrelevant. The Cold War, for all its complex- ing overwhelming firepower with air support. How- ity, pitted two powers of European heritage against ever, since the end of the “hot” phase of the war, each other. In a counterinsurgency operation against coalition forces have been fighting a complex war a non-Western adversary, however, culture matters. against an enemy they do not understand. The in- U.S. Department of the Army Field Manual (FM)
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A civil affairs officer speaks with Iraqi tribal leaders at the Civil- Military Coordination Center in Baghdad, 12 May 2003. US Army (interim) 3-07.22, Counterinsurgency Operations, sheik in town and was being properly honored by defines insurgency as an “organized movement his Iraqi host.4 aimed at the overthrow of a constituted government As this example indicates, U.S. forces frequently through use of subversion and armed conflict. It is do not know who their friends are, and just as often a protracted politico-military struggle designed to they do not know who their enemies are. A return- weaken government control and legitimacy while in- ing commander from the 3d Infantry Division ob- creasing insurgent control. Political power is the served: “I had perfect situational awareness. What central issue in an insurgency [emphasis added].” I lacked was cultural awareness. I knew where ev- Political considerations must therefore circumscribe ery enemy tank was dug in on the outskirts of Tallil. military action as a fundamental matter of strategy. Only problem was, my soldiers had to fight fanatics As British Field Marshall Gerald Templar explained charging on foot or in pickups and firing AK-47s and in 1953, “The answer lies not in pouring more troops RPGs [rocket-propelled grenades]. Great technical into the jungle, but rests in the hearts and minds of intelligence. Wrong enemy.”5 the . . . people.” Winning hearts and minds requires While the consequences of a lack of cultural understanding the local culture.3 knowledge might be most apparent (or perhaps most Aside from Special Forces, most U.S. soldiers are deadly) in a counterinsurgency, a failure to under- not trained to understand or operate in foreign cul- stand foreign cultures has been a major contribut- tures and societies. One U.S. Army captain in Iraq ing factor in multiple national-security and intelligence said, “I was never given classes on how to sit down failures. In her 1962 study, Pearl Harbor: Warn- with a sheik. . . . He is giving me the traditional ing and Decision, Roberta Wohlstetter demon- dishdasha and the entire outfit of a sheik because strated that although the U.S. Government picked he claims that I am a new sheik in town so I must up Japanese signals (including conversations, de- be dressed as one. I don’t know if he is trying to coded cables, and ship movements), it failed to dis- gain favor with me because he wants something [or tinguish signals from noise—to understand which sig- if it is] something good or something bad.” In fact, nals were meaningful—because it was unimaginable as soon as coalition forces toppled Saddam Hussein, that the Japanese might do something as “irrational” they became de facto players in the Iraqi social sys- as attacking the headquarters of the U.S. Pacific tem. The young captain had indeed become the new fleet.6
MILITARY REVIEW z March -April 2005 25 two primary, interrelated reasons. First, anthropology is largely and US Army conspicuously absent as a discipline within our national-security enter- prise, especially within the intelli- gence community and DOD. An- thropology is a social science discipline whose primary object of study has traditionally been non- Western, tribal societies. The meth- odologies of anthropology include participant observation, fieldwork, and historical research. One of the central epistemological tenets of an- thropology is cultural relativism—un- derstanding other societies from within their own framework. The primary task of anthropology has historically been translating knowledge gained in the “field” back to the West. While it might seem self-evident that such a perspective would be beneficial to the national- security establishment, only one of the national defense universities (which provide master’s degree- A 101st Airborne Division level education to military personnel) trooper examines a cap- currently has an anthropologist on its tured RPG and makeshift bamboo launcher, 1969. faculty. At West Point, which tradi- tionally places a heavy emphasis on engineering, anthropology is dispar- Such ethnocentrism (the inability to put aside one’s agingly referred to by cadets as “nuts and huts.” own cultural attitudes and imagine the world from And, although political science is well represented the perspective of a different group) is especially as a discipline in senior policymaking circles, there dangerous in a national-security context because it has never been an anthropologist on the National can distort strategic thinking and result in assump- Security Council. tions that the adversary will behave exactly as one The second and related reason for the current might behave. India’s nuclear tests on 11 and 13 May lack of cultural knowledge is the failure of the U.S. 1998 came as a complete surprise because of this military to achieve anything resembling victory in type of “mirror-imaging” among CIA analysts. Ac- Vietnam. Following the Vietnam War, the Joint cording to the internal investigation conducted by Chiefs of Staff collectively put their heads in the sand former Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and determined they would never fight an uncon- David Jeremiah, the real problem was an assump- ventional war again. From a purely military per- tion by intelligence analysts and policymakers that spective, it was easier for them to focus on the threat the Indians would not test their nuclear weapons be- of Soviet tanks rolling through the Fulda Gap, cause Americans would not test nuclear weapons prompting a major European land war—a war they in similar circumstances. According to Jeremiah, could easily fight using existing doctrine and tech- “The intelligence and the policy communities had an nology and that would have a clear, unequivocal underlying mind-set going into these tests that the winner.8 B.J.P. [Bharatiya Janata Party] would behave as The preference for the use of overwhelming force we [would] behave.”7 and clear campaign objectives was formalized in The United States suffers from a lack of cultural what has become known as the Weinberger doc- knowledge in its national-security establishment for trine. In a 1984 speech, Secretary of Defense
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Caspar Weinberger articulated six principles de- colonel replied, “That may be so, but it is also irrele- signed to ensure the Nation would never become vant.”12 The same could be said of the conflict in Iraq. involved in another Vietnam. By the mid-1980s, there Winning on the battlefield is irrelevant against an was cause for concern: deployment of troops to El insurgent adversary because the struggle for power Salvador seemed likely and the involvement in Leba- and legitimacy among competing factions has no non had proved disastrous following the bombing of purely military solution. Often, the application of the U.S. Marine barracks in Beirut. Responding to overwhelming force has the negative, unintended these events, Weinberger believed troops should be effect of strengthening the insurgency by creating committed only if U.S. national interests were at martyrs, increasing recruitment, and demonstrating stake; only in support of clearly defined political and the “brutality” of state forces. military objectives; and only “with the clear inten- The alternative approach to fighting insurgency, tion of winning.”9 such as the British eventually adopted through trial In 1994, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and error in Northern Ireland, involves the follow- Colin Powell (formerly a military assistant to ing: A comprehensive plan to alleviate the political Weinberger) rearticulated the Weinberger doctrine’s conditions behind the insurgency; civil-military coop- fundamental elements, placing a strong emphasis on eration; the application of minimum force; deep in- the idea that force, when used, should be overwhelm- telligence; and an acceptance of the protracted na- ing and disproportionate to the force used by the en- ture of the conflict. Deep cultural knowledge of the emy. The Powell-Weinberger doctrine institutional- adversary is inherent to the British approach.13 ized a preference for “major combat operations”— Although cultural knowledge of the adversary big wars—as a matter of national preference. Al- matters in counterinsurgency, it has little importance though the Powell-Weinberger doctrine was eroded in major combat operations. Because the Powell- during the Clinton years; during operations other than Weinberger doctrine meant conventional, large-scale war in Haiti, Somali, and Bosnia; and during the sec- war was the only acceptable type of conflict, no ond Bush Administration’s pre-emptive strikes in discernable present or future need existed to develop Afghanistan and Iraq, no alternative doctrine has doctrine and expertise in unconventional war, includ- emerged to take its place.10 ing counterinsurgency. Thus, there was no need to We have no doctrine for “nationbuilding,” which incorporate cultural knowledge into doctrine, train- the military eschews as a responsibility because it ing, or warfighting. Until now, that is. is not covered by Title 10 of the U.S. Code, which On 21 October 2003, the House Armed Services outlines the responsibilities of the military as an ele- Committee held a hearing to examine lessons learned ment of national power. Field Manual 3-07, Stabil- from Operation Iraqi Freedom. Scales’ testimony at ity Operations and Support Operations, was not the hearing prompted U.S. Representative “Ike” finalized until February 2003, despite the fact the Skelton to write a letter to Secretary of Defense U.S. military was already deeply engaged in such Donald Rumsfeld in which he said: “In simple terms, operations in Iraq. Field Manual 3-07.22—meant to if we had better understood the Iraqi culture and be a temporary document—is still primarily geared mindset, our war plans would have been even bet- toward fighting an enemy engaged in Maoist revo- ter than they were, the plan for the postwar period lutionary warfare, a type of insurgency that has little and all of its challenges would have been far better, application to the situation in Iraq where multiple or- and we [would have been] better prepared for the ganizations are competing for multiple, confusing ‘long slog’ . . . to win the peace in Iraq.”14 objectives.11 Even such DOD luminaries as Andrew Marshall, Since 1923, the core tenet of U.S. warfighting the mysterious director of the Pentagon’s Office of strategy has been that overwhelming force deployed Net Assessment, are now calling for “anthropology- against an equally powerful state will result in mili- level knowledge of a wide range of cultures” be- tary victory. Yet in a counterinsurgency situation such cause such knowledge will prove essential to con- as the one the United States currently faces in Iraq, ducting future operations. Although senior U.S. “winning” through overwhelming force is often in- Government officials such as Skelton are calling for applicable as a concept, if not problematic as a goal. “personnel in our civilian ranks who have cultural While negotiating in Hanoi a few days before Saigon knowledge and understanding to inform the policy fell, U.S. Army Colonel Harry Summers, Jr., said to process,” there are few anthropologists either avail- a North Vietnamese colonel, “You know, you never able or willing to play in the same sandbox with the defeated us on the battlefield.” The Vietnamese military.15
MILITARY REVIEW z March -April 2005 27 The Current State of the Discipline Universal Love” and “Material Consumers, Fabri- Although anthropology is the only academic dis- cating Subjects: Perplexity, Global Connectivity Dis- cipline that explicitly seeks to understand foreign cul- courses, and Transnational Feminist Research.”19 tures and societies, it is a marginal contributor to U.S. Anthropologist Stephen Tyler recently took fourth national-security policy at best and a punch line at place in the Bad Writing Contest with this selection worst. Over the past 30 years, as a result of an- from Writing Culture, a remarkable passage de- thropologists’ individual career choices and the ten- scribing postmodern ethnography: “It thus relativizes dency toward reflexive self-criticism contained discourse not just to form—that familiar perversion within the discipline itself, the discipline has become of the modernist; nor to authorial intention—that con- hermetically sealed within its Ivory Tower. ceit of the romantics; nor to a foundational world Unlike political science or economics, anthropol- beyond discourse—that desperate grasping for a ogy is primarily an academic discipline. The major- separate reality of the mystic and scientist alike; nor ity of newly minted anthropologists brutally compete even to history and ideology—those refuges of the for a limited number of underpaid university faculty hermeneuticist; nor even less to language—that appointments, and although there is an increasing hypostasized abstraction of the linguist; nor, ulti- demand from industry for applied anthropologists to mately, even to discourse—that Nietzschean play- advise on product design, marketing, and organiza- ground of world-lost signifiers of the structuralist and tional culture, anthropologists still prefer to study the grammatologist, but to all or none of these, for it is “exotic and useless,” in the words of A.L. anarchic, though not for the sake of anarchy, but be- Kroeber.16 cause it refuses to become a fetishized object among The retreat to the Ivory Tower is also a product objects—to be dismantled, compared, classified, and of the deep isolationist tendencies within the disci- neutered in that parody of scientific scrutiny known pline. Following the Vietnam War, it was fashion- as criticism.”20 able among anthropologists to reject the discipline’s historic ties to colonialism. Anthropologists began to The Colonial Era reinvent their discipline, as demonstrated by Kathleen From the foregoing discussion, it might be tempt- Gough’s 1968 article, Anthropology: Child of Im- ing to conclude that anthropology is absent from the perialism, followed by Dell Hymes’ 1972 anthology, policy arena because it really is “exotic and useless.” Reinventing Anthropology, and culminating in edi- However, this was not always the case. Anthropol- tor Talal Asad’s Anthropology and the Colonial ogy actually evolved as an intellectual tool to con- Encounter.17 solidate imperial power at the margins of empire. Rejecting anthropology’s status as the handmaiden In Britain the development and growth of anthro- of colonialism, anthropologists refused to “collabo- pology was deeply connected to colonial administra- rate” with the powerful, instead vying to represent tion. As early as 1908, anthropologists began train- the interests of indigenous peoples engaged in neo- ing administrators of the Sudanese civil service. This colonial struggles. In the words of Gayatri relationship was quickly institutionalized: in 1921, the Chakravorti Spivak, anthropologists would now International Institute of African Languages and speak for the “subaltern.” Thus began a systematic Cultures was established with financing from interrogation of the contemporary state of the disci- various colonial governments, and Lord Lugard, the pline as well as of the colonial circumstances from former governor of Nigeria, became head of its ex- which it emerged. Armed with critical hermeneu- ecutive council. The organization’s mission was tics, frequently backed up by self-reflexive neo- based on Bronislaw Malinowski’s article, “Practical Marxism, anthropology began a brutal process of Anthropology,” which argued that anthropological self-flagellation, to a degree almost unimaginable to knowledge should be applied to solve the problems anyone outside the discipline.18 faced by colonial administrators, including those The turn toward postmodernism within anthropol- posed by “savage law, economics, customs, and in- ogy exacerbated the tendency toward self-flagella- stitutions.”21 Anthropological knowledge was fre- tion, with the central goal being “the deconstruction quently useful, especially in understanding the power of the centralized, logocentric master narratives of dynamics in traditional societies. In 1937, for ex- European culture.” This movement away from de- ample, the Royal Anthropological Institute’s Stand- scriptive ethnography has produced some of the ing Committee on Applied Anthropology noted that worst writing imaginable. For example, Cultural anthropological research would “indicate the persons Anthropology, one of the most respected anthro- who hold key positions in the community and whose pology journals in the United States, commonly pub- influence it would be important to enlist on the side lishes such incomprehensible articles as “Recover- of projected reforms.” In the words of Lord Hailey, ing True Selves in the Electro-Spiritual Field of anthropologists were indeed “of great assistance in
28 March -April 2005 z MILITARY REVIEW ANTHROPOLOGY AND COUNTERINSURGENCY providing Government with knowledge which must be the basis of administrative policy.”22 Anthropology as a tool of empire was, how- ever, not without its detractors. In 1951, Sir Philip E. Mitchell wrote: “Anthropologists busied them- selves [with] all the minutiae of obscure trial and personal practices, especially if they were agree- ably associated with sex or flavoured with ob- scenity. There resulted a large number of pains- taking and often accurate records of interesting habits and practices, of such length that no one had time to read them and [which were] often, in any case, irrelevant. . . .”23 The World War I Era After the classic age of empire came to a close, anthropologists and archeologists became key players in the new game in town—espio- nage. Their habits of wandering in remote ar- eas and skill at observation proved to be quite useful to the government. Although a number of anthropologists worked as spies during World War I (including Arthur Carpenter, Thomas Gann, John Held, Samuel Lothrop, and Herbert A North African soldier serving with Free French Spinden), the most famous was Harvard-trained and American forces archaeologist Sylvanus Morley, who had discov- sharpens his bayonet. ered the ancient city of Naachtun and had di- US Army rected the reconstruction of Chichén Itzá while serv- of his life is the service of truth.”26 ing as head of the Carnegie Archaeological Program A German Jew by birth, Boas was an adamant from 1914 to 1929. Morley, who was one of the most pacifist and an outspoken critic of the war, writing respected archeologists of the early 20th century, multiple editorials and newspaper articles express- was also the “best secret agent the United States ing his opinion that World War I was a war of im- produced during World War I.”24 perialist aggression. (Ironically, many of Boas’ stu- In 1916, when German agents were allegedly at- dents, including Margaret Mead and Ruth Benedict tempting to establish a Central American base for went on to work for the military in roles Boas would submarine warfare, the Office of Naval Intelligence have, no doubt, questioned.) recruited Morley, who used archeological fieldwork For his public allegations against the unnamed an- as cover to traverse 2,000 miles of remote Central thropologists, the American Anthropological Associa- American coastline, enduring “ticks, mosquitoes, tion censured Boas in 1919. The criticism of Morley fleas, sand flies, saddle-sores, seasickness, bar- by his peers for his espionage activities and the re- running, indifferent grub, and sometimes no grub at sulting scuffle within the American Anthropological all, rock-hard beds, infamous hostelries, and even Association (AAA) foreshadowed the reemergence earthquakes.” While Morley and company found no of the issue of covert anthropological support to the German submarine bases, he did produce nearly U.S. Government during the 1960s. 10,000 pages of intelligence reports documenting everything from navigable shoreline features to the 25 The World War II Era economic impact of sisal production. During World War II, the role of anthropologists Morley’s activities were not well regarded by within the national-security arena was greatly ex- many anthropologists. On 20 December 1919, Franz Boas, the most well-known anthropologist in panded. Many anthropologists served in the Office America, published a letter in The Nation, to the ef- of Strategic Services (OSS), the institutional prede- fect that Morley and others (although they were not cessor to both the CIA and Special Forces. Anthro- named directly) “have prostituted science by using pologists served in a research capacity and as op- it as a cover for their activities as spies. A soldier eratives. Carleton Coon, a professor of anthropology whose business is murder as a fine art . . . accept[s] at Harvard, trained Moroccan resistance groups in the code of morality to which modern society still sabotage, fought in the battle of Kasserine Pass, conforms. Not so the scientist. The very essence and smuggled arms to French resistance groups in
MILITARY REVIEW z March -April 2005 29 US Army
Stretcher bearers prepare to evacuate American wounded near Buna, New Guinea, 1942.
German-occupied Morocco. His book about life in intelligence unit in the Arakan Mountains of the OSS, A North Africa Story: The Anthropolo- Burma.29 gist as OSS Agent, contains a highly amusing ac- In addition to intelligence analysis, Bateson de- count of developing an IED in the shape of a don- signed and produced “black propaganda” radio key dropping.27 broadcasts intended to undermine Japanese propa- Other anthropologists also saw direct action: Brit- ganda in the Pacific Theater. He found the work ish ethnologist Tom Harrisson parachuted into distasteful, however, because he believed that truth, Borneo to train indigenous guerrillas to fight the especially the unpleasant truth, was healthy. Despite Japanese. Cora Du Bois, who served as Chief of his misgivings about deceitful propaganda, Bateson the Indonesia section in the OSS Research and was a willing and competent operative. In 1945, he Analysis Branch, became the head of the Southeast volunteered to penetrate deep into enemy territory Asia Command in Ceylon, where she ran resistance to attempt the rescue of three OSS agents who had movements in Southeast Asian countries under Japa- escaped from their Japanese captors. For this ser- nese occupation. Du Bois received the Exceptional vice, Bateson was awarded the Pacific Campaign Civilian Service Award in 1945 for her work with Service Ribbon.30 the Free Thai underground movement.28 Bateson had remarkable strategic foresight con- Perhaps the most famous anthropologist who cerning the effect of new technology on warfare. served in the OSS was Gregory Bateson. Bateson, While in the Pacific Theater, he wrote to the leg- a British citizen, spent many years conducting eth- endary director of the OSS, “Wild Bill” Donovan, nographic research in New Guinea, the results of that the existence of the nuclear bomb would change which were published in 1936 as Naven. At the be- the nature of conflict, forcing nations to engage in ginning of World War II, having failed to find a po- indirect methods of warfare. Bateson recommended sition with the British War Office, Bateson returned to Donovan that the United States not rely on con- to the United States and was recruited by the OSS, ventional forces for defense but to establish a third where he served as a civilian member of a forward agency to employ clandestine operations, economic
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A Kachine child
watches as a US Army U.S. soldier serving with the Chinese 38th Division receives a haircut, 1945.
controls, and psychological pressures in the new during wartime in the United States. Along with warfare.31 This organization is, of course, now Bateson and Geoffrey Gorer, Mead helped the OSS known as the Central Intelligence Agency. establish a psychological warfare training unit for the Later in his career, Bateson was allegedly involved Far East.34 with a number of experimental psychological war- Like Bateson, Mead had reservations about the fare initiatives, including the CIA’s Operation MK- use of deceitful propaganda, believing that such meth- Ultra, which conducted mind-control research. It is ods have “terrible possibilities of backfiring.” Mead’s generally accepted that Bateson “turned on” the larger concern, however, was the “tremendous Beat poet Allen Ginsberg to LSD at the Mental Re- amount of resentment” against using anthropologi- search Institute, where Bateson was working on the cal insights during the war. In particular, she noted causes of schizophrenia.32 that using anthropologists to advise advisers is inef- Among anthropologists, Bateson is generally re- fective; to be useful, anthropologists must work di- membered not for his activities in the OSS, but as rectly with policymakers.35 Mead’s husband. In 1932, he met Mead in the re- In 1942, Mead published And Keep Your Pow- mote Sepik River area of New Guinea. After con- der Dry, a book on U.S. military culture. Accord- ducting fieldwork together in New Guinea, Bateson ing to Mead, Americans see aggression as a re- and Mead coproduced ethnographic films and sponse rather than a primary behavior; believe in the photodocumentation of Balinese kinesics.33 use of violence for altruistic, never for selfish pur- Like her husband, Mead was also involved in the poses; and view organized conflict as a finite task war effort. In addition to producing pamphlets for to be completed. Once finished, Americans walk the Office of War Information, she produced a study away and move on to the next task. William O. for the National Research Council on the cultural Beeman points out that Mead’s observations of U.S. food habits of people from different national back- national strategic character seem to be borne out by grounds in the United States. She also investigated the current administration’s characterization of the food distribution as a method of maintaining morale conflict in Iraq as a defensive war, prompted by the
MILITARY REVIEW z March -April 2005 31 imminent threat of weapons of mass destruction group of people could be traced to commonalities in ready for imminent use and undertaken for altruis- psychological-development processes. While some tic reasons, such as “bringing Democracy to Iraq,” of their conclusions now seem ridiculous (for ex- that would be short and limited in scope.36 ample, Gorer’s “swaddling hypothesis” to explain the In 1943, Benedict, Mead’s long-time friend and bipolar swings in Russian culture from emotional re- collaborator, became the head (and initially the sole pression to aggressive drinking), other research re- member) of the Basic Analysis Section of the Bu- sults were not only accurate but useful in a military reau of Overseas Intelligence of the Office of War context.40 Information (OWI), a position Benedict sought to use “to get policy makers to take into account different Small Wars habits and customs of other parts of the world.” In January 1961, U.S. President John F. Kennedy While at OWI, Benedict coauthored The Races of met with national security adviser Walt Whitman Mankind, a government pamphlet which refuted the Rostow to discuss various national-security threats. Nazi pseudo-theories of Aryan racial superiority. Kennedy and Rostow turned their attention to the Conservative congressmen attacked the pamphlet as subject of Vietnam, and Kennedy said: “This is the communist propaganda, and the publicity surround- worst one we’ve got. You know, Eisenhower never ing it led to the sale of 750,000 copies, its transla- mentioned it. He talked at length about Laos, but tion into seven languages, and the production of a never uttered the word Vietnam.”41 musical version in New York City.37 Kennedy and Rostow’s discussion (and Benedict also undertook research on Japanese Kennedy’s approval of the “Counterinsurgency personality and culture, the effect of which cannot Plan” for Vietnam 10 days after taking office) was be overstated. Near the end of the war, senior mili- inspired by Major General Edward G. Lansdale’s tary leaders and U.S. President Franklin Delano report on the situation in Vietnam. Lansdale, who Roosevelt were convinced the Japanese were “cul- was widely believed to have been the model for turally incapable of surrender” and would fight to Alden Pyle in Graham Greene’s The Quiet Ameri- the last man. Benedict and other OWI anthropolo- can, was a former advertising executive who almost gists were asked to study the view of the emperor single-handedly prevented a communist takeover of in Japanese society. The ensuing OWI position pa- the Philippines. Lansdale helped install Ngo Dinh pers convinced Roosevelt to leave the emperor out Diem as president of the American-backed govern- of the conditions of surrender (rather than demand- ment of South Vietnam and, later, ran Operation ing unconditional surrender as he did of dictators Mongoose, the covert plot to overthrow by any Adolph Hitler and Benito Mussolini). Much of means necessary Fidel Castro’s government in Benedict’s research for OWI was published in 1946 Cuba.42 as The Chrysanthemum and the Sword, consid- Much of Lansdale’s counterinsurgency operations ered by many as a classic ethnography of Japanese in the Philippines can best be described as applied military culture, despite Benedict never having vis- military anthropology. For example, in the 1950s, as ited the country.38 part of his counterinsurgency campaign against the Since fieldwork in the traditional sense was im- Huk rebels of the Philippines, he conducted research possible during wartime, culture had to be studied into local superstitions, which he exploited in remotely. The theoretical contribution of World War “psywar”: “One psywar operation played upon the II anthropologists to the discipline is commonly popular dread of an asuang, or vampire. . . . When known as “culture at a distance.” Following the war, a Huk patrol came along the trail, the ambushers si- from 1947 to 1952, Mead, Benedict, and others es- lently snatched the last man of the patrol. . . . They tablished a research program at Columbia Univer- punctured his neck with two holes, vampire-fashion, sity. Working under contract to the U.S. Office of held the body up by the heels, drained it of blood, Naval Research, anthropologists developed tech- and put the corpse back on the trail. When the Huks niques for evaluating cultural artifacts, such as im- returned to look for the missing man and found their migrant and refugee testimonies, art, and travelers’ bloodless comrade, every member of the patrol be- accounts, to build up a picture of a particular cul- lieved that the asuang had got him and that one of ture.39 them would be next. . . .” Lansdale noted that such Most of the culture-at-a-distance studies were tactics were remarkably effective.43 rooted in the premises of developmental psychology, During the Huk Rebellion, the real guerrilla-war- such as that the so-called national character of any fare expert was Captain Charles Bohannan, who
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Latin American soldiers receiv- ing heliborne training from U.S. Special Forces, 1969. later coauthored one of the best studies of practical the violence, the underlying socioeconomic conditions, counterinsurgency, Counter-Guerrilla Operations: and issued recommendations for social, civil, and The Philippine Experience. Bohannan, who fought military reform to the Colombian and U.S. govern- as an anti-Japanese guerrilla in New Guinea and the ments.46 Philippines during World War II, remained in the Phil- Bohannan was a believer in the use of minimum ippines as an Army counterintelligence officer. He force in counterinsurgency. In an unpublished 1964 was a natural pick for the team when Lansdale re- paper from a Vietnam posting, he objects to totali- turned to the Philippines in 1950. Bohannan contin- tarian methods of counterinsurgency as being poten- ued to work with Lansdale in Vietnam (and appar- tially counterproductive: “Mass arrests, wholesale ently Laos) throughout the 1950s and 1960s, serving searches, and other seemingly easy methods of as deputy commander of the covert “Saigon Mili- “population control” can only strengthen opposition tary Mission” that Lansdale headed. Quite likely, to the government.” And, according to Lansdale, Bohannan was also the military planner for the Bay overwhelming force was simply not effective for of Pigs.44 fighting an insurgency: “Only unabashedly totalitar- Bohannan had completed advanced graduate ian governments, Communist or colonialist, with rela- work in anthropology and was a strong advocate of tively unlimited resources, can seriously think of, or local cultural knowledge and “total immersion” dur- attempt, killing or capturing most of the insurgents ing training and operations.45 He was particularly in- and their supports.”47 terested in “operations intended to influence the Bohannan’s mentor, Rufus Phillips (a former CIA thinking of people.” In 1959, for example, he was a operative who later headed the Rural Affairs Sec- member of the secret U.S. “survey team” sent to tion of the U.S Agency for the International Devel- Colombia to evaluate the insurgency and provide a opment Mission in Vietnam) observed in a 1964 plan for U.S.-Colombian action. Much like anthro- memorandum that the U.S. military was bound by pologists conducting fieldwork, the team traveled “conventional military thinking.” The American more than 23,000 kilometers and interviewed more command was guided by neither a British-style ded- than 2,000 officials, civilians, and guerrilla leaders. ication to a political objective—however abusive the Their three-volume report reviewed the history of measures used to achieve it—nor any particular
MILITARY REVIEW z March -April 2005 33 interest in the nonmilitary side of U.S. counterinsur- none of Hickey’s findings were implemented, and gency: “Everybody talks about civic action and psy- the Strategic Hamlet Program was a failure. chological warfare, but little command emphasis is In 1964, a major uprising of Montagnard highland placed on it and it is not understood. The major em- tribal groups occurred under the banner of FULRO phasis remains on ‘killing Viet Cong’.”48 (The United Front for the Struggle of Oppressed Races). Although the Montagnards sided with the The Vietnam War United States against the communist north and were Despite the authority of men like Lansdale and supplied by (and fought alongside) U.S. troops, they Bohannan within high-level military and policy circles violently opposed the South Vietnamese Govern- during the Vietnam War, the military preference for ment’s efforts to control their region and assimilate overwhelming force frequently trumped the hearts the population. and minds aspect of counterinsurgency. Anthropolo- Dealing with the revolt was a major imperative gists such as Gerald Hickey, who went to Vietnam for the military and the South Vietnamese Govern- as a University of Chicago graduate student and re- ment because the central highlands were of strate- mained throughout the war as a researcher for the gic importance and included the Ho Chi Minh Trail, RAND Corporation, found that their deep knowl- which was the main North Vietnamese infiltration edge of Vietnam (valuable for counterinsurgency) and supply route. Hickey, who had worked closely was frequently ignored by U.S. military leaders who with the Montagnards for years, advised the senior increasingly adopted a conventional-war approach commander of U.S. forces in Vietnam, General Wil- as the conflict progressed. Hickey’s career raises a liam Westmoreland, on the reasons for the rise of number of issues that even now plague anthropo- ethno-nationalism among the tribes and how to cope logical research in a military context, such as the with the revolt. Hickey also successfully acted as politics of research inside the beltway, the inability an intermediary between highland leaders and the to change counterproductive policies, and back- U.S. and South Vietnamese governments.51 biting by other anthropologists hostile to the military As the war dragged on, Hickey became increas- enterprise. ingly frustrated with the military-strategy viewpoint Hickey, who wrote Village in Vietnam, a classic held by officers such as U.S. Army General Will- ethnography of a southern Vietnamese lowland vil- iam E. Depuy, who believed a war of attrition would lage, was recruited by RAND in 1961 to produce a defeat the communists. Hickey’s view was that the study funded by DARPA. The study followed the war in Vietnam was a political struggle that could newly established Strategic Hamlet Program that only be resolved in political terms, not through pure sought to consolidate governmental authority in paci- military force. As an anthropologist, he recognized fied areas through a defense system and adminis- that elements of Vietnam’s own culture could be trative reorganization at the village level. Central to used to promote peace between the existing nation- the study was the question of how highland tribes alist political parties, religious groups, and minori- could be encouraged to support the South Vietnam- ties—none of whom welcomed communist rule. ese Government. In a remarkable paper titled “Accommodation in Hickey’s research indicated that the strategic South Vietnam: the Key to Sociopolitical Solidarity,” hamlets might be successful if farmers saw evidence Hickey explored the indigenous Vietnamese cultural their communal labor and contribution of time, land, concept of accommodation. While Taoist roots of and building materials actually resulted in physical the Vietnamese value system stressed individualism, and economic security. Although Hickey’s observa- in the Vietnamese worldview, accommodation was tions were probably correct, his views were often also necessary to restore harmony with the universe. dismissed as too pacifistic.49 When Hickey debriefed In Washington, D.C., Hickey’s views on accommo- Marine General Victor Krulak, the general pounded dation were treated as heresy. In 1967, at the con- his fist on his desk and said, “We are going to make clusion of Hickey’s brief to a Pentagon audience, the peasants do what’s necessary for strategic ham- Richard Holbrooke said, “What you’re saying, Gerry, lets to succeed!”50 As Hickey noted, peasants have is that we’re not going to win a military victory in many methods of passive and active resistance, and Vietnam.” Because it did not conform to the pre- force is often counterproductive as a motivator. Dis- vailing view of the conflict, Hickey’s message was liking the results of the study, the Pentagon pressured promptly dismissed. Regardless of the improbability RAND to change the findings and, in the interest of a military victory, to U.S. leaders, “accommoda- of impartial research, RAND refused. In the end, tion” meant “giving in,” and that was not an accept-
34 March -April 2005 z MILITARY REVIEW ANTHROPOLOGY AND COUNTERINSURGENCY able alternative. In the end, the American solution to the conflict was the use of overwhelming force in the form of strategic Vietcong guerrillas in a hidden tunnel, circa 1966. bombing and the Accelerated Pacification Campaign, neither of which resulted in victory.52 For his “ethnographic studies,” “contributions to the enhance- ment of U.S. Advisor/Vietnam- ese Counterpart relationship,” and “presence and counsel during pe- riods of attack by Viet Cong Forces and Montagnard upris- ings,” Hickey was awarded the medal for Distinguished Public Service by Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara. Despite his medal (or perhaps because of it), Hickey was not able to get an academic job when he returned to the United States. He was re- fused a position at the University of Chicago by fellow anthropolo- gists who objected to his associ- ation with RAND. Ironically, Hickey was also forced out of RAND because it was no longer interested in counterinsurgency. Following the lead of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, RAND was no Eyewitness Vietnam longer going to undertake research on unconven- unique approach. In 1964, the Army commissioned tional warfare, but turn its attention to “longer-range an unusual paper titled “Witchcraft, Sorcery, Magic, problems of tactical, limited war and deterrence and Other Psychological Phenomena, and Their Im- under the Nixon Doctrine.”53 plications on Military and Paramilitary Operations in the Congo.” Authored by James R. Price and Paul Project Camelot Jureidini, the report is a treatise on paranormal com- Testifying before the U.S. Congress in 1965, R.L. bat, discussing “counter-magic” tactics to suppress Sproul, director of DARPA said: “It is [our] primary rebels who are backed by witch doctors, charms, thesis that remote area warfare is controlled in a and magic potions.55 major way by the environment in which the war- In 1964, SORO also designed the infamous fare occurs, by the sociological and anthropological Project Camelot. According to a letter from the Of- characteristics of the people involved in the war, and fice of the Director of the Special Operations Re- by the nature of the conflict itself.”54 search Office, Project Camelot was “a study whose The recognition within DOD that research and objective [was] to determine the feasibility of devel- development efforts to support counterinsurgency oping a general social systems model which would operations must be oriented toward the local human make it possible to predict and influence politically terrain led to the establishment of the Special Op- significant aspects of social change in the develop- erations Research Office (SORO) at the American ing nations of the world.” The project’s objectives University in Washington, D.C. With anthropologists were “to devise procedures for assessing the poten- and other social scientists on staff, SORO functioned tial for internal war within national societies; to iden- as a research center into the human dimension of tify with increased degrees of confidence those ac- counterinsurgency. Many SORO reports took a tions which a government might take to relieve
MILITARY REVIEW z March -April 2005 35 An American Huey pilot talks with Thai villagers, 1962. US Army conditions which are assessed as giving rise to a po- Government lodged a diplomatic protest with the tential for internal war; [and] to assess the feasibil- U.S. Ambassador. In Washington, D.C., following ity of prescribing the characteristics of a system for congressional hearings on the subject, McNamara obtaining and using the essential information needed canceled Project Camelot in 1965. for doing the above two things.”56 Project Camelot, which was initiated during a time The Thai Scandal when the military took counterinsurgency seriously Shortly after the Project Camelot scandal, the is- as an area of competency, recognized the need for sue of clandestine research surfaced again in Thai- social science insights. According to the director’s land. In March 1970, documents that appeared to letter: “Within the Army there is especially ready implicate social scientists in U.S. counterinsurgency acceptance of the need to improve the general un- programs in Thailand were stolen from a university derstanding of the processes of social change if the professor’s file cabinet. The documents were given Army is to discharge its responsibilities in the over- to the Student Mobilization Committee to End the all counterinsurgency program of the U.S. Govern- War in Vietnam and were subsequently published ment.”57 in The Student Mobilizer. A number of anthropolo- Chile was to be the first case study for Project gists and other social scientists were allegedly gath- Camelot. Norwegian sociologist Johan Galtung was ering data for DOD and the Royal Thai Government invited to design a seminar for Project Camelot. Al- to support a counterinsurgency program that would though he refused, he shared information about the use development aid to encourage tribal villages to project with colleagues. Meanwhile, Hugo Nuttini, remain loyal to the Thai Government rather than who taught anthropology at the University of Pitts- joining the insurgents. Although anthropologists burgh, accepted an assignment for Project Camelot claimed to have been using their expertise to pre- in Chile. While there, he concealed Camelot’s mili- vent Thai villages from being harmed, heated debates tary origin, but word leaked out. Protests arose from took place within the AAA’s Committee on Ethics.58 Chile’s newspapers and legislature and the Chilean As a result of Project Camelot and the Thai scan-
36 March -April 2005 z MILITARY REVIEW ANTHROPOLOGY AND COUNTERINSURGENCY dal, government funding and use of social science women, have the effect of making sex a prime men- research became suspect. Anthropologists feared tal preoccupation in the Arab world.” Apparently, the that, were such research to continue, the indigenous goal of photographing the sexual humiliation was to people they studied would assume they were all blackmail Iraqi victims into becoming informants spies, closing off future field opportunities abroad. against the insurgency. To prevent the dissemination Many anthropologists also believed the information of photos to family and friends, it was believed Iraqi would be used to control, enslave, and even annihi- men would do almost anything.62 late many of the communities studied. The result of As Bernard Brodie said of the French Army in these debates is the determination that for anthro- 1914, “This was neither the first nor the last time pologists to give secret briefings is ethically unac- that bad anthropology contributed to bad strategy.” ceptable. The AAA’s current “Statement of Profes- Using sexual humiliation to blackmail Iraqi men into sional Responsibility” says: “Anthropologists should becoming informants could never have worked as undertake no secret research or any research whose a strategy since it only destroys honor, and for results cannot be freely derived and publicly re- Iraqis, lost honor requires its restoration through the ported. . . . No secret research, no secret reports appeasement of blood. This concept is well devel- or debriefings of any kind should be agreed to or oped in Iraqi culture, and there is even a specific given.” These guidelines reflect a widespread view Arabic word for it: al-sharaf, upholding one’s manly among anthropologists that any research undertaken honor. The alleged use of Patai’s book as the basis for the military is de facto evil and ethically unac- of the psychological torment at Abu Ghraib, devoid ceptable.59 of any understanding of the broader context of Iraqi culture, demonstrates the folly of using decon- The Perils of Incomplete Knowledge textualized culture as the basis of policy.63 DOD yearns for cultural knowledge, but anthro- Successful counterinsurgency depends on attain- pologists en masse, bound by their own ethical code ing a holistic, total understanding of local culture. This and sunk in a mire of postmodernism, are unlikely cultural understanding must be thorough and deep to contribute much of value to reshaping national- if it is to have any practical benefit at all. This fact security policy or practice. Yet, if anthropologists is not lost on the Army. In the language of interim remain disengaged, who will provide the relevant FM 3-07.22: “The center of gravity in counterin- subject matter expertise? As Anna Simons, an an- surgency operations is the population. Therefore, thropologist who teaches at the Naval Postgradu- understanding the local society and gaining its sup- ate School, points out: “If anthropologists want to put port is critical to success. For U.S. forces to oper- their heads in the sand and not assist, then who will ate effectively among a local population and gain and the military, the CIA, and other agencies turn to for maintain their support, it is important to develop a information? They’ll turn to people who will give thorough understanding of the society and its cul- them the kind of information that should make an- ture, including its history, tribal/family/social structure, thropologists want to rip their hair out because the values, religions, customs, and needs.”64 information won’t be nearly as directly connected To defeat the insurgency in Iraq, U.S. and coali- to what’s going on on the local landscape.”60 tion forces must recognize and exploit the under- Regardless of whether anthropologists decide to lying tribal structure of the country; the power enter the national-security arena, cultural informa- wielded by traditional authority figures; the use of tion will inevitably be used as the basis of military Islam as a political ideology; the competing interests operations and public policy. And, if anthropologists of the Shia, the Sunni, and the Kurds; the psycho- refuse to contribute, how reliable will that informa- logical effects of totalitarianism; and the divide be- tion be? The result of using incomplete “bad” anthro- tween urban and rural, among other things. pology is, invariably, failed operations and failed policy. Interim FM 3-07.22 continues: “Understanding In a May 2004 New Yorker article, “The Gray Zone: and working within the social fabric of a local area How a Secret Pentagon Program Came to Abu is initially the most influential factor in the conduct Ghraib,” Seymour Hersh notes that Raphael Patai’s of counterinsurgency operations. Unfortunately, this is 1973 study of Arab culture and psychology, The Arab often the factor most neglected by U.S. forces.” 65 Mind, was the basis of the military’s understanding And, unfortunately, anthropologists, whose assis- of the psychological vulnerabilities of Arabs, par- tance is urgently needed in time of war, entirely ne- ticularly to sexual shame and humiliation.61 glect U.S. forces. Despite the fact that military ap- Patai says: “The segregation of the sexes, the veil- plications of cultural knowledge might be distasteful ing of the women . . . , and all the other minute rules to ethically inclined anthropologists, their assistance that govern and restrict contact between men and is necessary. MR
MILITARY REVIEW z March -April 2005 37 NOTES 1. MG Robert H. Scales, Jr., “Culture-Centric Warfare,” Proceedings (October 2004). 57, 4 (Winter 1998): 379-84. 2. Megan Scully, “‘Social Intel’ New Tool For U.S. Military,” Defense News, 26 April 31. Arthur B. Darling, The Birth of Central Intelligence, Sherman Kent Center for the 2004, 21. Study of Intelligence, on-line at
Montgomery McFate, J.D., Ph.D., is an American Association for the Advancement of Science Defense Policy Fellow at the Office of Naval Research, Arlington, Virginia. She received a B.A. from the University of California at Berkeley, an M.A., M.Phil., and a Ph.D. from Yale University, and a J.D. from Harvard Law School. She was formerly at RAND’s Intelligence Policy Center.
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