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C:\Documents and Settings\Administrator\My Documents\15 November 2004 Complete Dissertation Final Draft.Wpd KNOWLEDGE AND STRATEGY: OPERATIONAL INNOVATION AND INSTITUTIONAL FAILURE, U.S. ARMY SPECIAL FORCES IN VIETNAM 1961-1963 DISSERTATION Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate School of The Ohio State University By Christopher K. Ives, M.A. ***** The Ohio State University 2004 Dissertation Committee: Approved by Professor Allan R. Millett Professor John F. Guilmartin ________________________ Professor Warren R. Van Tine Adviser Department of History ABSTRACT U.S. Army Special Forces soldiers in Vietnam quickly adapted to battlefield conditions based in the hamlets and villages. Fighting featured short, sharp contests with insurgents often hardened by more than a decade of conflict with the French. Guerrilla foot-mobility and stealth had matched firepower and maneuver. Adaptations accumulated from experimentation by Special Forces soldiers into genuine innovation based on who they were, what they knew, and what they could make work. This critical analysis of Special Forces operations in Vietnam concludes that these soldiers demonstrated cognitive dominance during the period between the First and Second Indochina Wars. Achieving this dominance is a challenge common in history to soldiers and leaders. Special Forces soldiers managed change amidst a complex set of contexts, agents, and actions. These capable soldiers, given wide freedom of action, drove adaptations at the tactical and operational levels. Special Forces adaptations collectively constituted a counterinsurgency program sought by the U.S. in response to the challenges to the small, hot conflicts of the Cold War. There was innovation sought but not understood or successfully applied on a larger scale in this transition between the two, “big” Indochina Wars. ii This examination of the Civilian Irregular Defense Group program reveals an interrelationship between strategy--relating means to ends--and knowledge--data and purpose-formed information that enables action. Special Forces soldiers developed and executed what needed to be done to mobilize indigenous minorities, having assessed what needed to be known. The synthesis that emerged required a balance among cultural, political, military and other elements. This linked strategy and knowledge. Knowledge enabled strategy. The search for competitive advantage is at the heart of the rapid learning and adaptation that must take place when business organizations in the marketplace or military organizations on the battlefield face their opposition. Doctrine, training, and technology developed and acquired between wars may well not meet the requirements of the next conflict. Knowledge is information filtered through human experience and judgement. Knowledge management deals with the data and information, components of knowledge as well as about organizational and institutional culture. Despite continuities with irregular warfare and alliances between westerners and indigenous highlanders, American institutional failure emerged from a tangle of ill-fitted military advice, poorly understood social and political contexts, and inappropriate explicit doctrines. U.S. Army Special Forces soldiers fashioned counterinsurgency solutions based on the unique capabilities and culture of Special Forces, experimentation, as well as their unconventional warfare and resistance doctrines. Innovations developed in the Central Highlands, however, went misunderstood for what they could and could not offer in the way of meeting the challenge of revolutionary guerrilla warfare in South Vietnam. iii Dedicated to my wife Kristin and son James, without whose patience, love, and understanding the journey that ended with the dissertation could not have been possible. iv ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I wish to thank my advisor, Dr. Allan R. Millett, for the intellectual direction and critical commentary. I also wish to thank Dr. John F. Guilmartin and Dr. Warren R. Van Tine for the opportunities to express some of my ideas in their seminars and for their counsel. A different thanks goes to my first advisor, Dr. Williamson Murray, who warned me that the Ph.D. was mostly about writing, research, and rewriting. I would also like to acknowledge the assistance of fellow servicemen and veterans, in the graduate program at The Ohio State University like C.J. Horn and Rick Dorn. The men of U.S. Army Special Forces with whom I served and from whom I learned so much were very much in my mind for example and inspiration. Finally, I must thank the men and women from the Tidewater office of MPRI, especially Bill Hubbard and Bob Garner. Their efforts in applying the best practices from American military and business endeavors have helped me balance practice and theory. This research was supported in part by funding from the Mershon Center. v VITA February 17, 1954......................................Born - Little Rock, Arkansas 1976...........................................................B.A., University of Arkansas, Little Rock 1977-2000..................................................U.S. Army Officer 1998-Present..............................................Consultant FIELDS OF STUDY Major Field: History vi TABLE OF CONTENTS Abstract................................................................................................................................ii Dedication...........................................................................................................................iv Acknowledgments................................................................................................................v Vita......................................................................................................................................vi List of Figures...................................................................................................................viii List of Maps........................................................................................................................ix List of Tables.......................................................................................................................x Chapters: 1. Critical Analysis............................................................................................................11 2. Counterinsurgency in Vietnam: Competing Discourses...............................................43 3. Crossbows to Carbines..................................................................................................80 4. Continuities and Combatants......................................................................................117 5. Choosing the Wrong Trails.........................................................................................154 6. Threatened Hamlets and Bad Advice..........................................................................192 7. Contexts, Doctrine, and Discontinuities.....................................................................223 8. Operational Innovation, Institutional Failure..............................................................259 Bibliography.....................................................................................................................281 vii LIST OF FIGURES Figure Page 1.1 Knowledge and Strategy........................................................................................14 viii LIST OF MAPS Map Page 2.1 Vietnam Regional Map..........................................................................................44 3.1 Village Defense Program, Buon Enao Expansion.................................................81 5.1 Civilian Defense Group Program locations, June 1963.......................................155 5.2 Province and Administrative Divisions, 1963.....................................................156 ix LIST OF TABLES Table Page 5.1 U.S. Army Special Forces (Vietnam) Order of Battle, Command and Control, December, 1963...................................................................................................182 5.2 Growth in Camps and Area Development Centers, 1963....................................184 5.3 Civilian Irregular Defense Group Program Enlistment/personnel Measurements......................................................................................................189 6.1 U.S. Mission/MACV Statistical Trends..............................................................221 x CHAPTER 1 CRITICAL ANALYSIS It is not hard for firmly united, clever, and courageous men to do great things in the world. Ten such men affect 100,000. Jacob Burkhardt1 Soldiers, politicians, and diplomats in Saigon and Washington struggled with concepts and plans for counterinsurgency strategy and operations in the fall of 1961. As this struggle of ideas and bureaucratic politics occurred, a single Special Forces medic took his aid bag into the Central Highlands. This mission began what would become the only successful counterinsurgency program in the midst of the insurgent victories in South Vietnam. This Special Forces medic, Sergeant First Class Paul Campbell, helped launch a pilot program in November 1961 that would grow by 1963 to reach and mobilize many of the minority groups in the culturally and ethnically diverse South. These efforts quickly stabilized a significant, threatened part of South Vietnam's highlands. Organized and trained to lead anti-communist, guerrilla forces , U.S. Army Special Forces soldiers quickly adapted their operational techniques. These unique soldiers experimented with organizational
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