The Marines, Counterinsurgency, and Strategic Culture: Lessons Learned and Lost in America’s Wars by Jeannie L. Johnson (review)

James Lockhart

Journal of Advanced Military Studies, Volume 11, Number 2, 2020, pp. 235-239 (Review)

Published by Marine Corps University Press

For additional information about this article https://muse.jhu.edu/article/796347/summary

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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. Vol. 11, No. 2 While the title claims a transatlantic perspective, this does not appear well defined in the introduction or apparent at times in the chapters. The author does bring in Spanish postcolonial context as well as Soviet and British per- spectives; yet, much of the story is indeed focused, as his argument states, on Chilean agency and American intervention. Thus, the majority are from the and Chile, with only one archive consulted in Europe, the British National Archives. Also, his use of periodicals and published primary sourc- es are almost entirely American or Chilean. The author uses American and Chilean sources, expertly weaving them into his tale of interventionism and his argument, though the reader is left with curiosity about the transatlantic component of the book’s title, especially outside of Great Britain, given Chile’s Spanish colonial past. Thus, this book is an excellent case study for historians of , the Cold War, and intelligence studies as well as international relations schol- ars, political geographers, and political scientists interested in intervention and statecraft. Given the book’s arguments and exceptional use of declassified CIA records, the book is a useful and even necessary addition to the literature on Cold War Chile, intelligence studies, and studies of intervention. The narrow focus of the book may limit its utility in teaching though. Graduate seminars on Latin America, the Cold War, or research methods courses would benefit, though may prove more difficult to assign in undergraduate teaching. Overall, this engaging book makes a contribution to Cold War history with understanding the role of Chile within what Westad calls the global Cold War. Also, the author makes an important argument that empowers the agency of state actors and activists outside the Cold War binary of the United States and Soviet Union. Lastly, the author resourcefully used newly accessible records that help to better narrate how the Cold War came to be and understand the myriad relics it left behind.

Brian Jirout, PhD Independent Scholar

The Marines, Counterinsurgency, and Strategic Culture: Lessons Learned and Lost in America’s Wars. By Jeannie L. Johnson. Washington, DC: Georgetown Uni- versity Press, 2018. Pp. 324. $110.95 (hardcover); $36.95 (paperback).

Jeannie L. Johnson’s policy-relevant book assesses what the American govern- ment and United States Marine Corps have learned and retained, learned but discarded and lost, and failed to learn in counterinsurgency from the early twen-

Book Reviews 235 Journal of Advanced Military Studies tieth century to the early twenty-first. General James N. Mattis, who wrote the book’s foreword, hopes that her study and recommendations “can serve as cat- alyst for change in the American approach to counterinsurgency” (p. x). Thus, her book will resonate with anyone dissatisfied with Otto von Bismarck’s quip that “what we learn from history is that nobody learns from history.” Johnson believes that we can and should. Marines will find Johnson, a veteran of the intelligence community, well in- formed. She was in touch with Marines who had served in Southeast Asia and/ or the Middle East. She immersed herself in Leatherneck and the Marine Corps Gazette while conducting her research. She also studied the Marine Corps’ Small Wars Manual (1940), the U.S. Army-Marine Corps Counterinsurgency Field Manual (Marine Corps Warfighting Publication no. 3-33.5, 2006), and the U.S. Army Stability Operations Field Manual (Field Manual 3-07, 2008), among other military and scholarly publications. Johnson divides her book into two parts: The Strategic Cultures of Ameri- cans, the U.S. Military, and Marines; and Marines across a Century of Counter- insurgency Practice. The first, more theoretical part, borrows from the Central Intelligence Agency’s (CIA) cultural mapping/cultural topography method, which was developed to better understand the behavior of foreign governments. Johnson uses it introspectively to evaluate American and Marine Corps attitudes and inclinations toward counterinsurgency. The second, more empirical part, reconstructs Marine Corps experiences in and the in the 1910s and 1920s, the (CAP) in Vietnam in the 1960s, and counterinsurgency in Iraq in the 2000s.

What Johnson Concluded about Marines’ Attitudes and Inclinations Johnson found that the Marine Corps remained averse to, and thus unprepared to invest and succeed in, counterinsurgency warfare. Complementing histori- an Russell Weigley’s arguments from several decades ago, Johnson learned that Americans preferred the employment of superior force and technology to bring fast, conclusive, and measurable results that conventional strategies brought over the more drawn out, inconclusive, and difficult-to-measure unconvention- al ones of counterinsurgency. Conventional strategies remained associated with bravery, heroism, and valor, while counterinsurgency has led to incidents of what the author referred to as “Marines behaving badly.” This behavior derived from the ethnocentric and racist attitudes Americans tended to take with them when deployed in the developing world, or Global South (Latin America, Af- rica, and Asia), and that proved embarrassing when exposed in Congress and the press. Neither Americans nor Marines typically dreamed of this when imag-

236 Book Reviews Vol. 11, No. 2 ining who and what Marines were and what they were supposed to do when carrying out their missions abroad, and so they remained averse to it.1 Indeed, Johnson identified the narrative storyline that Marines preferred. This storyline privileged conventional operations from the Barbary Wars (where Marine officers acquired the Mameluke sword), the First World War (particu- larly Belleau Wood, where Marines took the name Devil Dogs), the Second World War (where Marines mastered amphibious assault and raised the flag on Mount Suribachi), and the (where Lewis B. “Chesty” Puller broke out from the Chosin Reservoir). These remain the kinds of stories that Marines admired. Consequently, this kind of warfighting shaped and conditioned Ma- rine self-image and oral traditions, training regimes, and preparation for future wars during the century Johnson considered. Although Johnson acknowledged these preferences, there was more to know about Marine attitudes and inclinations toward counterinsurgency than they offered. Indeed, she concluded that many aspects of their identity, norms, values, and perceptions naturally lent themselves to counterinsurgency. For ex- ample, Marines’ adaptability and improvisational style served them well. So did their proclivity to tough it out in austere, low-budget environments while getting their hands dirty and suffering hardship without complaining—“doing windows,” as she phrased it.

What Johnson Encountered in Marine Experiences Johnson reached a mixed conclusion with respect to Marine experiences. The earliest examples—so-called Banana Wars in Central America and the Carib- bean—were least effective. American misunderstanding of what Marines could accomplish in the , Haiti, and and Marine ignorance of local politics, society, and culture, not to mention their racism, inhibited them. This notwithstanding, Marines found valuable lessons about counterinsurgency there, and they committed them to paper in the Small Wars Manual. This manual was, however, shelved in the late 1920s and 1930s as Marines focused on amphibious warfare, which they perfected in the Pacific in the 1940s. There was little or no continuity between the lessons learned in these Banana Wars and the counterinsurgency missions Marines were tasked with in Vietnam in the 1960s and early 1970s. In Vietnam, the United States returned to counterinsurgency, which Ma- rines’ Combined Action Program executed well. CAP platoons and squads were led by highly motivated sergeants and, more often, corporals who worked closely with Vietnamese Popular Forces (PF) in jointly patrolling their rural communi- ties while working on small-scale civic-action projects to improve their lives in a modest, sustainable way. CAP Marines’ rapport with these Vietnamese was such

Book Reviews 237 Journal of Advanced Military Studies that they were perceived as defenders—not only against Vietcong insurgents but also against a sometimes abusive central government in Saigon and the larger, more conventional American units that passed through these villages. The prob- lem was that higher echelons in U.S. Military Assistance Command, Vietnam (USMACV) did not value CAP. USMACV also failed to incorporate CAP Ma- rines’ intelligence into its planning and operations. This rendered CAP some- what irrelevant to the overall U.S. effort, leaving some of its Marines frustrated. In the post-Vietnam period, Marines internalized a great deal about coun- terinsurgency, but the subject retained only “a junior place” in professional mil- itary education and training in the 1980s and 1990s (p. 220). General Charles C. Krulak (Commandant from 1995 to 1999) emphasized two concepts in the years prior to 11 September 2001: “three-block wars” and “strategic corpo- rals.” Both built upon preexisting institutional strengths to produce effective results in Iraq, particularly during the second battle of Fallujah and the Sunni Awakening. Marines dominated these engagements, not only from a military perspective but also from a stability-operations, civil-relations, and press- management point of view. Johnson criticizes some, however, for exaggerating the novelty of this. Had Marines had the historical perspective that she believes they should have, they would have seen this for what it was: an application of lessons learned over a century rather than innovation in the war on terrorism.

Commentary Johnson’s book remains not only about learning from history but also about how transformative leaders need to identify cultural obstructions in organiza- tions like the Marine Corps. For transformative Marine leaders like Krulak and Mattis to create the kind of change they seem to have in mind, they will need to deal with the biases for conventional action and other problems outlined here. Johnson’s use of cultural mapping/cultural topography seems a comprehensive and effective way to go about this. Thus, Marines will find this book useful. Among Johnson’s most penetrating insights remains her observation that “US energies and resources have been most effectively spent when in the service of indigenously motivated trajectories already under way. In this sense, it is the US that becomes the force multiplier instead of the other way around” (p. 270). That is, there remains only so much that American counterinsurgency operations, no matter how well conceived, planned for, and implemented, can accomplish in nations like Haiti, Vietnam, and Iraq. The United States, on its own, simply does not have the power and influence to remake these coun- tries when they are not already inclined to remake themselves. Indeed, Johnson showed how Marine intervention, by systematically fostering centralized gov- ernments that led to decades of dictatorship, worsened the situation in Central America and the Caribbean.

238 Book Reviews Vol. 11, No. 2 Johnson could have better contextualized some of her discussions within global-historical frameworks. For example, the Marine Corps’ return to coun- terinsurgency in Vietnam was not simply a response to the insurgency in South- east Asia in a long context of guerrilla warfare as an isolated phenomenon in world history. Rather, it followed a pivot toward the Global South, where wars of national liberation were raging, and the flexible-response doctrine, which included modernization and developmental aid, Green Berets, and the Peace Corps seemed completely new to Americans in the late 1950s and 1960s. So, the conflict in Vietnam remained a small war, but its context was quite different than the one that framed U.S. intervention in the Caribbean Basin in the 1910s and 1920s. Turning to lessons learned from the banana wars might have seemed as pertinent to Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson administration officials and Marine leaders of the time as looking for guidance from the Civil War or the Indian wars of the nineteenth century. This minor criticism notwithstanding, Johnson’s book ought to be read by policy makers, Marines, and those who study military and naval affairs.

James Lockhart, PhD Zayed University Dubai, United Arab Emirates

Note 1. Russell Weigley, The American Way of War: A History of United States Military Strategy and Policy (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1973).

Russia and Central Asia: Coexistence, Conquest, Convergence. By Shoshana Keller. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2019. Pp. 360. $52.95 (paperback); $42.95 (ebook).

Historian Shoshana Keller’s book is an ambitious yet carefully composed ac- count of the historical relationship between the peoples of Central Asia and Russia. It is a welcome contribution to the field of Central Asian studies and world history alike, addressing key issues of social, cultural, and political rela- tions with an eye toward military histories. Keller is particularly interested in the forces that shaped this understudied region and led to the contours that we see there today. She manages this successfully. One of the reasons for this suc- cess is her skillful organization of the material. In several hundred pages of tightly written text, Keller explores three themes

Book Reviews 239