Who Lost Vietnam? Who Lost Vietnam? James McAllister Soldiers, Civilians, and U.S. Military Strategy Why did Gen. William Westmoreland and the U.S. Army pursue a ºawed military strategy during the Vietnam War? As the United States ªnds itself involved in a dire counterinsur- gency campaign in Afghanistan, with little apparent reason for optimism, some political scientists have turned their attention to the origins and develop- ment of U.S. military strategy in Vietnam for readily applicable lessons. Yet, despite the passage of four decades and the declassiªcation of millions of pages of documents, diplomatic and military historians still have not reached a consensus as to why the United States pursued a ºawed military strategy in Vietnam. Indeed, historians continue to argue about which elements of the strategy were ºawed and whether any strategy could have led to success in Vietnam. For these reasons, political scientists and historians should pay care- ful attention to a theoretically innovative article by Jonathan Caverley, published in a recent issue of this journal.1 To appreciate the signiªcance of Caverley’s argument, it is crucial to under- stand the two dominant schools of thought on U.S. military strategy in Vietnam. The ªrst school, which George Herring has labeled the “counterin- surgency school,” is best represented by the work of scholars such as Andrew Krepinevich, Guenter Lewy, Lewis Sorley, and John Nagl.2 In his 1986 book, The Army and Vietnam, Krepinevich argues that military strategy in Vietnam was hopelessly ºawed because Westmoreland and the U.S. Army were wed- James McAllister is Professor of Political Science at Williams College and a member of the U.S. State De- partment’s Historical Advisory Committee on Diplomatic Documentation. The author would like to thank Richard Betts, Andrew Birtle, Peter Brush, Gian Gentile, Brendan Green, Robert Jervis, David Kaiser, Andrew Krepinevich, Mark Lawrence, Doug Macdonald, Paul MacDonald, James Mahon, Mark Moyar, Joshua Rovner, Jerome Slater, James Willbanks, the anon- ymous reviewers, and the wonderful students in the political science 382 research seminar at Wil- liams College for their insightful comments and suggestions. Finally, he would also like to acknowledge the invaluable support provided by the Stanley Kaplan Program in American For- eign Policy at Williams College. 1. Jonathan D. Caverley, “The Myth of Military Myopia: Democracy, Small Wars, and Vietnam,” International Security, Vol. 34, No. 3 (Winter 2009/10), pp. 119–157. 2. George C. Herring, “American Strategy in Vietnam: The Postwar Debate,” Military Affairs, Vol. 46, No. 2 (April 1982), pp. 57–63; Andrew F. Krepinevich Jr., The Army and Vietnam (Baltimore, Md.: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1986); Guenter Lewy, America in Vietnam (New York: Oxford Uni- versity Press, 1978); Lewis Sorley, A Better War: The Unexamined Victories and Final Tragedy of Amer- ica’s Last Years in Vietnam (New York: Harcourt Brace, 1999); and John A. Nagl, Learning to Eat Soup with a Knife: Counterinsurgency Lessons from Malaya and Vietnam (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005). International Security, Vol. 35, No. 3 (Winter 2010/11), pp. 95–123 © 2010 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. 95 Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/ISEC_a_00024 by guest on 25 September 2021 International Security 35:3 96 ded to a concept of warfare that heavily emphasized overwhelming ªrepower, search and destroy missions, and conventional uses of force rather than classic principles of counterinsurgency (COIN) warfare. In Krepinevich’s view, “The Army Concept of war is, basically, the Army’s perception of how wars ought to be waged and is reºected in the way the Army organizes its troops for battle. The characteristics of the Army Concept are two: a focus on mid-intensity, or conventional, war and a reliance on high volumes of ªrepower to minimize casualties—in effect, the substitution of material costs at every available op- portunity to avoid payment in blood.”3 For Krepinevich and other scholars in the counterinsurgency school, Westmoreland and the U.S. Army fought inef- fectively because they applied a concept of warfare unsuited to their adversary. The role of President Lyndon Johnson and his civilian advisers is fairly pe- ripheral in Krepinevich’s account of the origins and evolution of U.S. strategy on the ground in Vietnam. The Army Concept obviously predated the war, and Krepinevich argues that the Johnson administration was inclined to let the army run the ground war as long as it did not expand operations beyond the borders of South Vietnam.4 Instead of the relentless focus on ªrepower and search and destroy tactics, Krepinevich and other scholars in this tradition suggest that Westmoreland and the U.S. Army should have adopted a counter- insurgency strategy based on the model of the Combined Action Platoon (CAP) program favored by the U.S. Marines in I Corps. In contrast, the revisionist school, represented by historians such as John Carland, Dale Andrade, Andrew Birtle, and Mark Moyar, defend Westmoreland’s conduct of the war against the critical assessments of the counterinsurgency school.5 The main defense of Westmoreland put forward by the revisionists is that realities on the ground in South Vietnam—the threat posed by North Vietnamese and Vietcong (VC) main force units—left him little 3. Krepinevich, The Army and Vietnam, p. 5 (emphasis in original). The essence of Caverley’s “cost distribution theory” is a reframing of the Army Concept of War: both his theory and Krepinevich’s concept posit that the United States substituted technology and ªrepower to minimize U.S. casual- ties in Vietnam. 4. Ibid., p. 165. 5. See John M. Carland, “Winning the Vietnam War: Westmoreland’s Approach in Two Docu- ments,” Journal of Military History, Vol. 68, No. 2 (April 2004), pp. 533–574; Dale Andrade, “Westmoreland Was Right: Learning the Wrong Lessons from the Vietnam War,” Small Wars & In- surgencies, Vol. 19, No. 2 (June 2008), pp. 145–181; Andrew J. Birtle, “PROVN, Westmoreland, and the Historians: A Reappraisal,” Journal of Military History, Vol. 72, No. 4 (October 2008), pp. 1213– 1247; and Mark Moyar, Triumph Forsaken: The Vietnam War, 1954–1965 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), pp. 335–336. Another inºuential critique of U.S. strategy is Harry G. Sum- mers Jr., On Strategy: A Critical Analysis of the Vietnam War (Novato, Calif.: Presidio, 1982). Sum- mers’s critique is revisionist, but his focus is considerably different from those noted above. Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/ISEC_a_00024 by guest on 25 September 2021 Who Lost Vietnam? 97 alternative but to focus his attention and resources on conventional methods of warfare. This defense is essentially the same as that offered by Westmoreland in his memoirs: in Vietnam the U.S. Army faced a threat from the main force units, “the bully boys with crowbars,” and “the termites,” or the guerrilla forces in the villages. Vietnam was neither a standard conventional struggle nor a standard insurgency; it was both at the same time. Westmoreland had no doubt that the army’s focus had to be directed at the bully boys, because they presented the greatest and most immediate threat.6 In the view of revisionist historians, Westmoreland and the U.S. Army could not ªght in strict accor- dance with the principles of counterinsurgency because the threat in South Vietnam was vastly different and more complex than that posed by lightly armed and isolated insurgents in villages. The main lines of division between the counterinsurgency school and the re- visionists have been fairly established for decades. Caverley’s argument is im- portant because it presents an alternative explanation for U.S. military strategy that is at odds with the scholarship of both schools. His main thesis is that de- mocracies such as the United States inevitably do a poor job of combating in- surgencies because civilian ofªcials “shift the burden of providing for the nation’s defense onto the rich by employing capital as a substitute for military labor.” Caverley argues that for electoral reasons, leaders of democracies are more willing to expend “treasure rather than blood” because average voters care more about the latter than the former. As a result, democracies ªght insur- gencies poorly because they rely on overwhelming ªrepower and technology rather than on a more effective COIN strategy requiring large numbers of sol- diers.7 The policy implication of Caverley’s thesis and his historical interpreta- tion of Vietnam could not be more depressing for those hoping to either stay out of or succeed in counterinsurgency conºicts: democracies are likely to be- come involved in such conºicts, but their leaders will be unable or unwilling to provide the military with the resources needed to win these wars. For Caverley, the recent efforts of scholars and military practitioners to develop successful counterinsurgency practices, symbolized by the U.S. Army/Marine 6. See William C. Westmoreland, A Soldier Reports (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1976), p. 145; and William Westmoreland, “A Military War of Attrition,” in W. Scott Thompson and Donaldson D. Frizzell, The Lessons of Vietnam (New York: Crane, Russak and Company, 1976), pp. 57–71. For other accounts of Westmoreland’s strategic thought by his contemporaries, see Phillip B. Davidson, Vietnam at War: The History, 1946–1975 (New York: