Revisiting COIN Strategies in Vietnam

This post originally appeared in Cicero Magazine 14 July 2014.

That “Generals are always fighting the last war” may be true, but this is often because they are fighting a different war from their opponent. According to Clausewitz, it is key to military strategy to find the “center of gravity” in any war. If one does not, or focuses on the wrong ‘center’, the battles and ultimately the war will be lost. In Vietnam, the United States did not come to recognize the people of Indochina as the center of gravity and focused on them too little and too late. Many post-mortems on the Vietnam War have recognized this fact. Yet in recent conflicts such as Afghanistan and Iraq—despite the battle cry of “hearts and minds”—America still believed it could win through “thunder runs”, “economy of force”, “dynamic maneuver warfare”, and remote or walled combat fortresses. Arguably, these tactics won battles, but they have not won the wars.

Mao’s Teachings

The goal and strategy of indigenous communist forces was related directly to winning over the people of Southeast Asia. They wanted to change society, not just change governments. They sought to communicate this goal to the people and mobilise them to support it, not just build a government and centrally-controlled army to fight pitched battles, though they did show ability to do so against the French and, in later stages, against the United States.

Communist forces devised effective tactics to further their strategy of revolutionary guerrilla warfare largely based upon the teachings of China’s Mao Zedong and Vietnam’s General Vo Nguyen Giap. They viewed the wars as a “struggle”—dau tranh—broken further into the “military struggle”—dau tranh vu trang—and the “political struggle”—dau tranh chinh tri. Included in the political struggle was “action among the enemy”—dich van. “Action among the enemy” referred to actions behind enemy lines taken by communist forces among the local population in areas controlled or contested by anti-communist forces. Almost all communist actions conducted in South Vietnam included detailed plans and directives for propagandizing and re-training “liberated citizens”.

The primary and most effective vehicle through which communist forces undertook these actions was the “Agit-Prop Team”, also referred to as the “Armed Propaganda Team” (APT). These teams were first used by the Viet Minh to quickly disseminate news of the 1945 Japanese surrender and standing up of the communist government throughout the countryside—quickly pushed aside byBritish troops. They continued to be employed by communist forces throughout the conflict. Travelling minstrels and drama troupes had been part of Southeast Asian culture for centuries. As retired Army Sergeant Major and veteran of psychological operations in Vietnam,Herb Friedman explains: “Because of the widespread familiarity of the peasant with culture-drama teams and the wide acceptance of this traditional culture form, the communists seized upon the concept and developed it as a PSYOP weapon.”

APTs were a non-violent, culturally-attuned and effective way of communicating the communist message and mobilizing rural South Vietnamese to their cause. As a 1968 article in Military Review puts it: “If the United States had given a higher priority to finding out precisely what the Communists were doing psychologically in remote areas of South Vietnam between 1955 and 1959, and to urging the government of [South] Vietnam to develop and use a counter-psychological operation strategy, the Viet Cong would have been less able to exploit peasant resentments and to get them organized to support a guerrilla war the people did not want.”

Hearts & Minds in Saigon 

Perhaps the greatest testament to the success of the communist Armed Propaganda Teams is the fact that South Vietnamese and U.S. forces adopted the same tactics after coming to understand their effectiveness. These and similar missions were referred to as ‘psychological operations’—PSYOPS—by the U.S. military. Anti-communist APTs conducted operations similar to their communist counterparts and consisted of South Vietnamese cadre accompanied by U.S. troops.

The first two Anti-communist APT companies were organised in 1964 and many of the cadre were former communists who could speak with credibility of the actions and conditions on both sides of the fight. The program grew to 75 companies by 1969. Anti-communist forces also employed entertainment through ‘Culture-Drama Teams’. Their tactics were similar to the communists. They would engage villagers in singing, including teaching the people the South Vietnamese national anthem, teaching them the positive goals of the Saigon government, and giving news of government successes, programs and improvements.

In the cases of Afghanistan and Iraq, the U.S. does not seem to have fully taken these lessons from the Vietnam War on board.

American efforts to combat communism and win hearts and minds in Southeast Asia, and those of the French before them, were referred to generally as “pacification”. For most rural South Vietnamese in 1954, the newly independent government in Saigon was far away and not very relevant to their lives. Many government bureaucrats adopted the hands-off approach French colonial administrators had taken, remaining remote from citizens and more concerned with forms than people.

However, with the 1954 Geneva Accords dividing of the nation along the 17th parallel,  Ngo Dinh Diem’s government had to gain support from its citizens, not least of all because within two years there would—supposedly—be national elections encompassing both North and South Vietnam  in which Vietnamese would decide between communism and democracy. Saigon would have two years to reach the people outside of the provincial capitals before the July 1956 elections and do it better than the communists.

The Special Commissariat for Civic Action (CDV)—Cong Dan Vu—was the brainchild of Kieu Cong Cung, a nationalist former soldier and police chief. He had also been Viet Minh in the fight against the French return in 1945, so knew the communist’s tactics first-hand. The idea was to get the government out of offices and into villages, showing it could improve lives. It “attempted to place the resources of the South Vietnamese state behind an effort to duplicate the tactics of the communists at the village level and beat them at their own game”.

Mobile groups of CDV cadre, with support from local government, would connect with the people by living alongside them while working with them on civil projects to improve local living conditions. The first groups deployed in 1955 and began working in villages on information campaigns, attitude surveys and distributing medical aid. Their role expanded to holding classes on government services, ensuring each village had a school, a council, a village hall and a medical station, helping locals to build whichever they did not have. Once they achieved some success in an area, they moved on to another. Initial reports were optimistic.

Unfortunately, the CDV program met with resistance from the beginning. The provincial governors resisted it as encroaching on their power and budgets. Provincial administrators felt the work below their status. Village chiefs did not like the intrusion of outsiders from Saigon. Language and dialects proved to be a barrier. Often when CDV teams left, things would return to their previous state without support to maintain improvements. CDV cadres were being targeted for assassination by communist insurgents. U.S. advisers thought the program too ambitious and costly for Diem’s budget.

Despite its great promise, there simply was not enough support, time, money or cadres. In the end, the July 1956 elections which the CDV was envisioned to help Diem win never took place. It became clear the communists would win them by a wide margin. On the advice of the U.S., the South claimed it had not been party to the Geneva Accords and could therefore ignore them. The temporary split of Vietnam became permanent and set the stage for the Vietnam War.

Early on anti-communist forces recognized the need to control the population to prevent communist communication and weed out communists. One of the tenets of revolutionary guerrilla warfare was Mao’s exhortation that “the guerrilla must move among the people as a fish swims the sea.” Communist guerrillas depended upon the local population for information, shelter, money, food, and new recruits. Separating the guerrilla “fish” from their “sea” of people would do them harm.

During the Malayan Emergency, British forces experienced some success with the “Briggs Plan”, which saw rural populations relocated to fortified, defensible “New Villages” with controlled entry and exit, separating the insurgents from the people and drawing them into the open to find support. As part of his effort to install democracy in Vietnam “from the bottom up”, Ngo Dinh Diem instituted the Agroville Programme in 1959—later Strategic Hamlet Program or New Life Hamlets—in an effort to isolate communists from the people.

The fortified, controlled villages—guarded, moated, barbed-wired and bamboo-fenced—prevented communists from entering to exploit them for supplies and recruits. Residents gave up their ID card upon exiting the village to work the fields and their identity was checked upon return. The program was incentivized by providing electricity, schools and medical facilities. A network of roads linked the hamlets. Hamlet councils linked residents to the government for the first time and the government felt the villages safe enough to extend credit to farmers. Villagers were organised into a self-defense force and devoted one day a week to maintaining defenses. Communication between villages and news awareness improved with the installation of radios. By 1962, the Diem government claimed 39% of South Vietnamese lived in such communities .

The program created as many problems as it solved. Thousands were uprooted from their farms and made to build new homes—unpaid—within controlled villages, often far from their ancestral homes. For Vietnamese, veneration of ancestors is important and leaving behind graves caused great social disruption. In its zeal to complete the project, initially the government uprooted 20,000 people to build a village for that could only hold 6,000, leaving 14,000 angry peasants. Many of those forced to move and into labor held smoldering resentment against the U.S. and the Diem government for uprooting them, something the communists exploited. Communist propaganda against the hamlets pictured them as concentration camps or prisons and they made great efforts to infiltrate the hamlets to agitate against the South from inside.

To America, the program was a way to isolate and starve communists. To the communists, it created further propaganda opportunities to show the repression suffered under the U.S. and Diem. To Ngo Dinh Diem, it was a way for his government to reach and control the people.

Lessons For Counterinsurgents Today

• For government to gain the support of the people, the government must reach the people positively. The newly-independent democratic government was a wholly new beast to its people who had only lived under French colonial administration and had to convince them of its worth. Insurgent forces were more effective at reaching even the most rural of communities. U.S. and government efforts were too little, too late despite their potential to deliver tangible public benefits to rural populations insurgent forces could not have. American and local government efforts were less successful at reaching and convincing the people of their worth than insurgent forces.

• Barriers keep bad things out, but they also keep them in.While barriers separated insurgents from the population they depended upon for support, their use also reinforced the propaganda image of local government and U.S. oppression. It disrupted social cohesion and fostered resentment among the people. The government reached the people in a negative way. Walls can keep people out, but not ideas. People frustrated by the obstacles to normal life constructed by COIN forces presented fertile ground for the insurgent’s ideology—the center of gravity and the focus of their effort to win the war.

In the cases of Afghanistan and Iraq, the U.S. does not seem to have fully taken these lessons from the Vietnam War on board. America’s effort to establish governments that have positive reach outside of Baghdad and Kabul has returned mixed results at best despite billions of dollars and thousands of lives invested in building them. Local governments have been unable to prove their value to their people—or at least no better than their opponents have—despite the claimed importance of winning “hearts and minds” to the American effort. Perhaps it is indeed true that our Generals were still fighting the last war

The 'Hot' War in Cold War Southeast Asia

This article originally appeared in Cicero Magazine on 3 July 2014.

The popular understanding of wars past is an important determining factor how wars in the future will be received or perceived by the general public. Policymakers have come to understand this and turn it to their advantage. Equating an intervention with upholding democracy plays well when compared with WWI, when the world was “made safe for democracy”. Interventions involving the liberation of oppressed masses or a gathering existential threat are compared with WWII. Opponents of interventions latch on to these comparisons as well, equating them with quagmires in Vietnam and Iraq. As time goes on, the general memory and popular factual understanding of these wars weakens despite more historical and archival evidence presenting a truer picture being opened by governments or discovered by academics. Despite having ended only 25 years ago, the Cold War presents such a case.

The Cold War was not one war fought in one place, but several wars fought in different theatres in different ways. The most familiar narrative of the Cold War focuses on the struggle in Europe between the United States and the Soviet Union. The American view of the Indochina Wars was that they were but another theatre in the war against international communism—the Global Cold War. For the French and Southeast Asians, it was a different battle. The French fought to preserve a dying colonial system; Southeast Asians, for national liberation and/or a new system based on communist principles.

The Cold War in Southeast Asia bore little resemblance to the Cold War in the West. The Southeast Asian Cold War was not “cold” at all…

The Cold War in Southeast Asia bore little resemblance to the Cold War in the West. The Southeast Asian Cold War was not ‘cold’ at all and, rather than a state-centric battle fought with nuclear threats, espionage and military-industrial production across clearly drawn map lines, the Indochina Wars were ‘hot’ wars featuring weak central governments with soft borders, the main driver of which was to capture the ‘hearts and minds’ of the people of Southeast Asia, who largely determined the course of the wars.

The Western Cold War

The Cold War in the West was a battle between states in two clear blocs along clear national borders. The map-lines of Cold War Europe were drawn at the 1945 Yalta and Potsdam Conferences. The “Iron Curtain” fell along the Oder-Neisse Line, running from the Baltic Sea in the north to the Czech border in the south, then traced southwards to the Mediterranean through Austria and Italy, divided in half between joint occupations. Control of defeated Germany and its capital, Berlin, was also split between the US, UK, France and the USSR. Following 1948 elections, Italy joined NATO as a full member of the West bloc. In 1955 Austria became a neutral state and occupation troops withdrew. Otherwise, national borders and lines between East and West in Cold War Europe remained largely unchanged for 45 years until German re-unification and the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Churchill, Roosevelt, and Stalin at Yalta, 1945.

The Cold War was an ‘imaginary war’ in which the two sides threatened each other with annihilation, but no direct military battles were fought. The deterrent effect of nuclear weapons and collective security guarantees of NATO and the Warsaw Pact made the cost of war in Europe too high. The sides confronted one another along their border. Many such scenes played in Berlin, including the 1948 Blockade and Airlift and the 1961 confrontation at Checkpoint Charlie. The two sides also tried to out-produce one another, engaging in a statistical battle in which agricultural, industrial and military production were weapons. They engaged in an arms race to produce and field more and better nuclear weapons in different forms and faster than the other. The only fighting in any real sense was between intelligence services in a “shadow war of espionage, counter-espionage and covert actions. The armies were the security and intelligence agencies of West and East, the CIA and the KGB, and the multitude of other forces lined up on one or the other side. In the war that could never become a real war…”

The Western Cold War was a state-centric conflict prosecuted through nuclear posturing, national military-industrial production and covert intelligence operations fought across tightly-controlled national borders. It is telling that many of the most intense military confrontations of the European Cold War–and much espionage activity–hinged on the ‘German question’ and the fate of a single city, Berlin, issues not finally resolved until the fall of the Wall and the collapse of European communism.

The ideological battle to win the ‘hearts and minds’ of Europeans was an important component, but the “center of gravity” in the European conflict–to use Karl von Clausewitz’s phrase–was the governments of the states involved. Governments and their security apparatuses could control the behavior of their citizens. Though the threat of nuclear war hung over their heads, the fighting was not real in its literal sense. Which side the average European fell on depended on where they lived, determined for them by the Big Three at conference tables in Yalta and Potsdam.

The Cold War in Southeast Asia

Pandora’s Box

Pham Van Dong & Ho Chi Minh, 1966.

In contrast to the West, the Southeast Asian Cold War, rather than ushering in the beginning of a new struggle, was the continuation of a struggle which had begun for some, such as Ho Chi Minh, as early as the 1920s. The struggle for Indochina predated the Cold War. The Japanese invasion in 1941 and return of the French in 1945 “opened Pandora’s box”, creating the opportunity to fight return of French rule to Indochina—something Southeast Asians may not have pursued nor achieved without the break in French control created by the war. The post-WWII period for Indochinese marked the resumption of two intertwined battles—that of liberation from French colonial rule and between communist and anti-communist forces to determine which system would govern independent Indochina.

Hot War

Arguably, the Cold War in Asia was not ‘cold’ at all. Unlike in Europe, where opposing forces stared each other down across borders but never fired a shot, the Southeast Asian Cold War was ‘hot’. Real armed battles were fought between colonial and nationalist and communist and anti-communist forces almost from the very beginning. During the First Indochina War, there would also be violent ethnic, religious and factional fighting among differentIndochinese populations alongside the battle for independence. Over two decades, troops would invade, occupy and fight in, to varying degrees, all of the Indochinese states in the First and Second Indochina War, resulting in hundreds of thousands of total casualties—something unthinkable in Cold War Europe.

Soft Borders

The battle in Southeast Asia was not between governments behind clearly drawn borders on either side of a clear line of demarcation between democracy and communism. Borders mattered little in the Southeast Asian Cold War. There was no Oder-Neisse Line in Indochina. The 1954 17^th parallel border between North and South Vietnam came to matter very little due to communist infiltration and American bombing.

In Southeast Asia, Western governments were unwilling to commit fully to total war and unwilling or unable to take, occupy and hold territory they had won.

Under French rule, the states of Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos had all been one large colony–Indochina. There had always been interchange between these regions-cum-states, each with significant diaspora in the others. Many national leaders of Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos would be born or spend significant time in neighboring states. Close lingual, religious, cultural and ethnic relations facilitated ‘softer’ borders.

Much of the fighting during the Second Indochina War took place in South Vietnam and spilled over the border into Cambodia and Laos. Communist and anti-communist forces throughout Southeast Asia cooperated with kindred factions and used each other’s territories to transit through or as a sanctuary from their own fight across the border. The famous Ho Chi Minh and King Sihanouk Trails used by communist forces to transit the borders of Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam are examples. Governments in distant Saigon, Phnom Penh or Vientiane could do little to control their frontiers. The porous nature of these borders has been blamed specifically for “enlarging” the Second Indochina War beyond Vietnam.

Weak Eastern Governments and Lack of Western Will

French propaganda poster following defeat at Dien Bien Phu, 1954.

Governments had far less power in Southeast Asia than their counterparts in Europe. Throughout most of the Cold War, Southeast Asian states had two or more governments which claimed rule. Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia experienced periods in which territory in each was controlled by opposing governments, dividing the country, each claiming to hold legitimate power over the whole.

The sides hurled propaganda. South Vietnam was called a puppet of the United States, while North Vietnam was a creature of Beijing. The governments of Cambodia and Laos claimed neutrality, but received aid from all sides in a constant tug of war between North Vietnam, America, Russia and China. There was no grand post-WWII modernization and development plan like the Marshall Plan for Europe. Efforts to form effective Asian collective security regimes, such as SEATO, were stymied by the Geneva Accords requirement Indochinese states remain neutral.

Government heads did not stay in power long and there were constant overthrow attempts by both communist and anti-communist forces. There were multiple mutiny or coup attempts from 1960 against Ngo Dinh Diem in the lead up to his 1963 assassination, a trend which continued with his successors until 1966. Loyalties also shifted. King Sihanouk of Cambodia was seemingly onevery side of the struggle in Cambodia at one time or another—monarchist, republican, anti-communist and finally with the Khmer Rouge communists.

Ngo Dinh Diem, 1955

In previous modern wars such as WWI and WWII, large-scale troop deployments and naval, air, armor and artillery support were central features and the war was prosecuted largely by one army defeating the enemy militarily and advancing to occupy ever more territory until the state leadership was destroyed or it capitulated. Capitols, major population centers and industrial areas were particular targets of bombing campaigns. It was total war. Both world wars ended when belligerent governments surrendered. Their troops stopped fighting and normal life returned.

In Southeast Asia, Western governments were unwilling to commit fully to total war and unwilling or unable to take, occupy and hold territory they had won. French commanders decided, rather than occupy Indochina with enough troops to guarantee security, they would pursue a “hedgehog” strategy of fighting the war through forays into enemy territory from a series of heavily fortified encampments, leading to their encirclement and 1954 surrender at Dien Bien Phu. The US, having just fought an unpopular war in Korea, was unwilling to commit to another war in Asia. Eisenhower did not want America to be seen as supporting French imperialism in Indochina and would not act without diplomatic support from Britain and Australia.

There was no line of advance as there had been during WWII, behind which the war was over and civilians viewed themselves as ‘liberated’. Conversely, Southeast Asians saw the Westerners, especially the French, as ‘occupiers’. Communist forces, in territory and a culture much more home to them than their white counterparts, returned wherever they left. The moment Western troops left an area, they lost control of it. They controlled Vietnam only “100 yards on either side of all major roads”. Though America used its fire support assets to great effect and multiplied the effectiveness of its troops, the enemy did not abate for it.

Gen. Maxwell Taylor, Robert McNamara, John F. Kennedy, 1963.

The U.S. government policy, championed by Robert McNamara, of relying on “body counts” and statistics as metrics to determine victory led America tolose focus on other factors. Despite the focus on killing the enemy, America often refrained from bombing North Vietnamese government targets in the capital, Hanoi, as a tactic to keep them at the negotiating table while using B-52’s to carpet bomb entire swathes elsewhere in Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia. This angered civilians and turned them into refugees, fleeing into the arms of communists—particularly benefiting the Khmer Rouge. The French and American governments sought to end their wars in Southeast Asia as soon as they began and both eventually pursued negotiated settlements. They did not win the wars.

Those Who Forget History…

The popular conception of past wars and what, where, how, who and why they were conducted is often incomplete and the accuracy of the picture fades over time despite the clearer image produced by years of academic study after the fact. The Cold War is a perfect example, with the story of the Western or European Cold War the dominant narrative over what was a “hot war” in Southeast Asia. Since the dominant narratives or popular conception of wars past determines how wars are perceived in the future, it becomes all the more important to look deeper into even recent history for an accurate picture of events. Why? As ever—those who forget history are doomed to repeat it.

The U.S.-Chinese War Over Africa

This article originally appeared in Cicero Magazine on 9 June 2014.

American and Chinese efforts in Africa can be characterized by two contrasting outlooks. The United States focuses on security, the Chinese on economic investment. Contrary to Howard French’s claims in his new book, China’s Second Continent, that Chinese settlers constitute “the beginnings of a new empire,” Beijing’s relationship with the continent is more nuanced than that – China is a burgeoning world power in desperate need of resources and profits. Unlike its European predecessors, Beijing has no interest in re-imagining colonies in its own image. Yet, its attention toward the continent may foretell a larger strategic competition between the United States and China. Whereas the Chinese look at Africa and sees dollar signs, Americans look at the continent and see dangers – Islamic terrorists, pirates, and corrupt dictators chief among them. This may not be the first time China has made advances in Africa. But this time around, its economic might and no-strings-attached sales pitch may prove a winning combination.

Pivot to Africa

The U.S. recognized the need to boost its presence in Africa because of its geographic and strategic importance. The establishment of U.S. Africa Command and its 2008 designation as a separate combatant command exhibit America’s renewed commitment to security on the continent. America has expanded airstrips to accommodate increasing personnel and logistical traffic and ramped up its training and liaison support of African militaries and intelligence agencies and institutions such as the African Union. U.S. Special Forces, intelligence officers and security contractors have been increasingly employed to target militants. Secretary of State John Kerry, on a recent trip to the region, linked U.S. assistance with a country’s democratic achievements.

Washington now has a military and intelligence presence in over a dozen countries there. For example, it employs private contractors to fly light civilian aircraft out of Burkina Faso over western Africa to track militants. Djibouti is its largest permanent base, home to 4,000 U.S. personnel and a hub for UAVs and manned reconnaissance aircraft. Washington also flies manned reconnaissance aircraft from Uganda, assisting in the hunt for Joseph Kony’s LRA. It has also established drone bases in Niger and Ethiopia, expanded facilities in Kenya for training African troops, and deployed forces to Mali to assist British and French efforts following the 2012 coup. The U.S. has also sent troops to Somalia, South Sudan, Chad, Congo and the Central African Republic in recent years. Most recently, it deployed a contingent to Nigeria to assist in the search for Boko Haram militants.

In contrast, China has focused on economic partnership and development. China’s rapid growth and demand for natural resources requires it to look outside its borders for stable and affordable resources. In this regard, Africa provides China with a bonanza: Over 85% of China’s imports from Africa consist of raw natural resources. Trade between Africa and China has swelled by 30% per annum over the last ten years, while trade volume has been more than double that with the United States. China has also invested in roads, railways and ports to help transport these resources, benefiting Africans as well. For example, China recently pledged to build a $3.8 billion railway in Kenya. Chinese Premier Li Keqiang visited the same African countries John Kerry had just a few weeks before.

Whereas the Chinese looks at Africa and sees dollar signs, the United States looks at the continent and sees dangers – Islamic terrorists, pirates, and corrupt dictators chief among them.
Unlike the United States and other Western trade partners, China does not condition its relationships in Africa with political or ideological commitments. This advantage is appreciated by African strongmen subject to harangues from the West on democracy, human rights, and rule of law. Still, some fear China’s goals are purely mercenary and an attempt to “lock up” all of Africa’s resources and that China will abandon the continent once it has gotten what it wants.

Reading Mao in Kinshasa

This is not for the first time Africa has become a chessboard of global competition between great powers, especially China. Though Washington and Moscow competed in Africa, the more interesting story is the competition between Beijing and Moscow for “hearts and minds” in Africa. As the Sino-Soviet Split deepened in the early 1960s, China began to challenge the Soviet Union for leadership of the socialist bloc. It saw an opportunity to build independent influence in states recently liberated from or still fighting for independence from European colonialism. Its influence was strongest in nearby North Korea and the former French colonies Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos. However, as Jeremy Friedman writes, China presented a real challenge to the Soviets in Africa as well.

It attempted to create an Afro-Asian bloc and played up its own armed guerrilla insurgency and quest for independence and development as shared traits with Africans struggling for the same. It supported Algerian independence when Moscow did not and pictured Khrushchev’s ‘peaceful co-existence’ with the West and disarmament talks as evidence of lack of support for armed socialist revolutionaries in Africa and elsewhere. Chinese propaganda depicted the 1963 Cuban Missile Crisis as Moscow backing down from the U.S. China greatly increased its African propaganda efforts by increasing local-language radio broadcasts and the distribution of books and pamphlets throughout the continent, far outpacing Soviet and even Western efforts. China seemed for a time to be winning the ideological battle with Moscow for leadership of socialism in the Third World.

But by 1963, it became apparent that though China was winning ideological and propaganda battles in Africa and elsewhere, it could not compete with the Soviet Union—or the West—in terms of material and financial support to socialist movements in Africa and elsewhere in the developing world. Cold War China lacked the capacity to provide large amounts of troops, weaponry or money to allies in far off places such as Africa. It could not buy nor project power. The Soviet Union and the West could. China lost its first round in the competition for Africa.

China is in a quite different position today. It is an economic powerhouse with the clear ability to contribute large amounts of wealth to the economies of African countries with the natural resources they seek. Today it is able to build the roads, railways and ports it could not afford during the Cold War and which the Soviets and the West could. While its first efforts in Africa were driven and focused purely on communist ideology and the shared revolutionary struggle, its African efforts today are marked by a clear lack of any connection to ideology. It buys resources and builds necessary infrastructure seemingly with no strings attached. Additionally, its relationship with the U.S. itself is one characterized by mutual dependence, rather than clear opposition as the competition during the Cold War was. African countries do not have to choose definitively between East and West.

While Chinese policy is to remain militarily disentangled from events that do not directly affect its interests, it has shown a greater willingness to contribute to African security. Beijing, for example, was instrumental in the passage of Security Council 1769 in 2007, authorizing a joint UN-African Union peacekeeping force in Darfur. It has provided over 1500 troops to UN peacekeeping efforts in Africa, more than any other member of the UN Security Council. Its navy is part of the joint multinational effort to combat piracy off the African coast. Even Chinese aid and arms transfers to Africa have been misrepresented, as they give more military arm and aid to democratic regimes than the United States, according to a 2012 study.

In the mainstream narrative of the Cold War, the focus was placed on the conflict between the United States versus a monolithic Soviet Union, which supported socialist movements from Cape Horn to the Cape of Good Hope. But this was never the case. Moscow was not the puppet-master it was believed to be. China and the Soviet Union fell out badly beginning in the late 1950s, and the relationship remained rather sour until the 1980s. This has perpetuated a view that China has always been isolationist and lacking in ambitions overseas, as well as concerns over the “rise” of China being over-inflated. China, in fact, attempted to project power outside of its own borders before—in Africa specifically. Previously it tried and failed because it lacked the resources to become a global power. But that has all changed.

Beijing is once again putting up stiff competition for Africa, this time for Washington instead of Moscow. Its “no strings attached” partnerships are attractive to many African governments. America’s financial and military aid, by contrast, often comes with strings attached, such as criteria for good governance and human rights. China’s efforts focus on obtaining the natural resources it requires and pays African states well in return in terms of both sales and infrastructure development to obtain them with no added conditions. With $2 trillion in trade, China may well win its second round in the scramble for Africa.

Iraq, Afghanistan, and the Shift to the East: American Foreign Policy Looking Forward

This article originally appeared in Small Wars Journal on 18 March 2013.

This week marks the tenth anniversary of the beginning of the Iraq War, a war that will perhaps never hold a sure place in America’s history. It is time to reflect on what we should have learned from it and to add these to the lessons our combined American history teaches us and apply them to our world today. Though the headlines are still gripped by news from the Middle East, in the bigger picture, we should be shifting our attention toward the Far East. Shifting our concern to China and the East is not an argument of moral imperative based upon violent oppression or extremism, nor is there a justification of self-defense. We’re not being attacked. We have a real competitor, a state of affairs America hasn’t faced yet in all of its years of post-WWII hegemony.

My grandfather fought in WWII, my father in Vietnam, and I fought in Iraq. WWII was a war of industrialized nations fought around the globe. Broadly, our enemy was Japanese and German fascism. Vietnam pitted industrialized America against an underdeveloped Vietnam over fears of the spread of Russo-Chinese communism in Asia. It is much harder to nail down the reasons for the Iraq War since many of them turned out to be false. In the broader scheme, the Afghan and Iraqi campaigns were/are a fight against Islamic extremism in response to 9/11. As time has gone on whom, why and what America fights for is becoming harder to define, as is deciding when we should decide to do so.

The days of war on the European continent are gone and aren’t coming back anytime soon. There are many reasons for this. WWII devastated virtually the whole of the continent and left the major economies—Germany, France, Britain--weak and in crushing debt. The only combatant to come out of the war in a stronger position than it went in was America and this is a position we have maintained with little world competition in the 68 years since. Europeans understood afterwards that they had more to gain from mutual cooperation with each other and with America than they had in competing and trying to strike and shift balances of power.

Out of this understanding came two of the most important organizations to European and American commerce and security—the European Union and NATO. These organizations ensure that European states remain engaged with one another and with America and vice versa. The EU recently—rightly—won the Nobel Peace Prize. Many who don’t know the history and original idea behind the EU and the common market and currency scoffed. What started out as a joint enterprise between West Germany and France involving coal and steel concentrated along their common border to ensure they never went to war over these resources again has evolved into the largest common labor and commerce market in the world, a 27-country block which carries heavy weight in world markets. NATO has and continues to be the security mechanism that ensures America and Europe remain mutually engaged and cooperate in each other’s security, throughout the Cold War and into today.

The attack on Pearl Harbor that finally drew the U.S. into WWII came from Japan and the fight in the Pacific was just as furious as that in Europe. However no huge mechanized U.S. divisions had to make the slog through continental Asia. The U.S. experience in the Korean War—a forgotten war—shows that this would likely have been a more difficult proposition. The atomic bomb ended the war before the U.S. had to make such a major shift. We can perhaps be thankful our enemy was the island of Japan and not on the mainland of Asia. Early American difficulties in Korea may be blamed on defense budget cuts and a general aversion to investing money, equipment, and lives in another war in Asia so soon after finishing a first. Technically, the Korean War is still not over.

Some of this begins to sound familiar. After ending Iraq and soon Afghanistan, America is war weary and will be cutting defense spending—some voluntarily, most via sequestration. Yet world events continue to call. See Iran, Libya, Syria, North Korea, and other lesser-known fights in places like Yemen, the Philippines, and the horn of Africa. What is different is that Europe seems to be waking up to the world again. European military and diplomatic contributions have been more forthcoming than at any time since WWII. Afghanistan, Iran, Libya, Syria, North Korea, and Mali are proof.

The wars in Iraq and Vietnam are always a controversial parallel to draw. America fought them both virtually alone. They became very unpopular politically at home, unpopular internationally, and they suffered from unclear goals, ‘mission creep’, an enemy hard to define or pin down, and were aggravated by bigger states becoming involved by fighting a proxy war against America. Both wars also have those who feel a better result would have been achieved if America had fully committed and ‘stayed the course’. They’re not necessarily wrong.

It must be understood that every conflict America has fought in the post-WWII era has carried with it the potential to expand into much wider conflict—WWIII even. Even seemingly small events such as the Cuban missile crisis or the fall of the Berlin Wall all carried the specter of a much wider battle with the USSR if things had gone differently. America didn’t go ‘all in’ in Korea because it risked war with the Chinese and perhaps Russia. A larger commitment expanding further outside the borders of Vietnam risked the same and the reason the U.S. only made temporary incursions into Laos and Cambodia. The U.S. didn’t chase bin Laden, al Qaeda, and the Afghan Taliban into Pakistan because it didn’t want wider war in the Middle East either. Though there is evidence Pakistan has been playing for both sides and that Iran fuelled the Iraqi insurgency, Americans would not support a fully-committed fight. Yet two years later America invaded Iraq on thinner pretense. We get ourselves into these things easily, but can’t finish them.

This hesitancy to fully commit and stay the course is also not wrong. Before America goes to war it should always decide if it is willing to go the distance. There are times when a small, limited, focused campaign can achieve results—see Bosnia, Kosovo, and Libya. But this is the exception and not the rule. Lack of a clear mission with defined goals and commitment to full victory can lead to quagmire and drift as in Vietnam, Afghanistan, and Iraq. The current administration’s hesitancy to become involved on the ground in the Arab Spring uprisings, Syria, and Africa seems to come from an understanding of this problem. One should not sleepwalk into wars or try to fight them on the cheap, as early on in Afghanistan.

Though controversial, drone strikes against targets in the Middle East and Africa are one of a few ways for America to act against opponents who don’t have a state or wear a uniform and doesn’t require U.S. boots on the ground or put troops’ lives at risk. The only other alternative, short of going to war, is to do nothing. As America, we find ourselves between a rock and a hard place. Doing something—ground combat, air interventions, drone strikes—is just as unpalatable as doing nothing and allowing extremists to control wider swathes of territory to the terror of the people that live there.

In order to maintain its position in the world, America cannot go back to sleep. Underneath it all, we’re not the lone masters of the universe anymore. Amid turmoil elsewhere, China is growing, flexing its muscles in the Pacific, in the markets, and in the cyber-world. Though the U.S. takes no official position, the arguments between China, Japan, Taiwan, Vietnam, and the Philippines over uninhabitable Pacific islands is actually about the oil and gas deposits under them. China’s economy and military spending has grown by leaps and bounds since 2008. China is indisputably conducting industrial and state espionage against America on the ground and online. With these points in mind, it is clear to see why the Obama administration is making a strategic shift to the East.

As the 20th century has turned into the 21st, moral justifications for going to war have become unclear, politicized, and suspect. Yet, despite outcries, there has never been as much care taken in the military operations of Western states for avoiding unnecessary civilian casualties in combat as there is today. They are a consideration in every engagement. We have gone from indiscriminate day and night bombing raids on urban areas to using intelligence-driven surgical strikes on individual targets which may soon require a judicial process to approve them. As much as this is a laudable improvement, the enemy knows how to create media churn when innocents are killed. This despite that attacks by Islamic extremists often kill scores more innocent civilians for every Western soldier, diplomat, or civilian they themselves kill.

Will there ever come a time again when it is clear America must act or has our thinking become too morally relativist? It is right to always be skeptical of the use of military force. War is an ugly thing for everyone involved and it is always right to question it. My father and I are American veterans of wars that will never have a clear place in our history. Many Vietnam veterans feel America had the communists on the run after the 1968 Tet Offensive, but domestic political and public opinion had turned against continuing to fight. There is historical support for this view. It doesn’t take much of a stretch to imagine that many veterans of that generation didn’t want the same thing to happen to their sons and daughters in Iraq and Afghanistan. This fear informed the ‘stay the course’ mantra of the George W. Bush era and other leaders such as Senator John McCain.

Both Vietnam and Iraq suffered because of a lack of clear ideas and communication to people at home what it was we were fighting for and how exactly we would know when we won, not to mention the huge costs in lives and money. Neither fight was ever short on cited justifications, but in neither case was there an answer in one sentence. In Vietnam, the enemy was communism. Yet we knew that we were never going to actually take on the real sources of communism directly—Russia and China. Similarly yet more confusingly, in Iraq the enemy was a WMD threat, Saddam Hussein, and the ambiguous enemy of ‘Islamic extremism’. There were no WMD. We deposed Saddam. There is no identifiable single source of Islamic extremism and America continues to reiterate constantly that Islam itself is not the enemy. The fight still goes on elsewhere even after killing bin Laden and rendering the original iteration of al Qaeda ineffective as an organization.

It was clear we had to fight WWII because eventually we would be fighting for our own continuing free existence one day. There was also the moral imperative to free other nations from an illegitimate foreign invasion accompanied by ethnic cleansing and holocaust. That is a pretty clear measuring stick. Does this mean that the circumstances must always be this clear before America turns to military force? What did German minorities, Chinese, Austrians, Czechs, Poles, Dutch, Belgians, French, and Britons of that era think? Did America wait too long to join the fight? There is some truth behind the argument that we waited until it really became our problem and that all was forgiven when we came as liberators—though too late for many. We invested tens of thousands of troops’ lives and billions of dollars in the war eventually anyway.

The onset of the Cold War and the atomic age presented new problems. Though clear lines were drawn again between NATO-West and Warsaw Pact-East, the ‘mutually assured destruction’ that nuclear weapons guaranteed ensured we would often come to the brink of WWIII, but never over the line. The West understood, in the words of George Kennan, that, “Soviet power . . . bears within it the seeds of its own decay.” By placing pressure militarily, economically, politically, and socially on the USSR, we were able to hasten its demise, though it did take forty-five years.

In many ways, America continues to apply this strategy to other states today. We’ve pressured states such as Iraq, Libya, Iran, Syria, and others in a similar fashion, attempting to affect change by identifying, creating, and exploiting cracks in their internal systems’ foundations. But these states, especially the Middle Eastern variety, have something the USSR never had—oil and gas wealth and religious, social, and ethnic unity. Even amid regional clashes based upon sectarianism, tribalism, and ethnicity, the people of the greater region often conclude, temporary alliances aside, that their differences with America are bigger than their differences amongst each other.

During the Cold War, the West could offer its foes religious, cultural, political, and economic freedom or liberalization. These were things dissidents wanted and called for and the Soviet state had to suppress. But it is not the same case in the Middle East and Maghreb. Though the people there do strive for political freedom from totalitarianism and more economic freedom, they often still reject the Western culture that is seen to come along with it. This presents people of the region a choice between the lesser of two evils; change their deeply-embedded culture in the name of progress or keep their traditions and suffer advancement at a snail’s pace. They’re not ready to buy what we’re selling, at least not as much as the East block was, or at least not yet. We’re in the position of trying to give something to them they’re not ready for and we want them to thank us for it. It isn’t working.

But it may work elsewhere. Asia certainly has its cultural differences from the West, but the differences between the two do not set us so far apart. America has excellent relations with India, a state that may just end up eclipsing China in decades to come. Japan has every opportunity to regain the economic power it had in the 1980’s. South Korea is also experiencing tremendous growth. America has normalized relations with Vietnam and strong relationships with the Philippines, Thailand, and Taiwan, among others. Many of these states are seeking an alliance to balance against Chinese regional pressure. Though the region has pariah states in Burma and North Korea, most Asians are looking for the kind of political, economic, and cultural liberalization that America and the West has to offer, albeit with their own cultural twist. A shift to the East is certainly a good idea.

It is perhaps wrong to look at China as an enemy of America in the Cold War sense of the word. It is clear that China is the number one competitor with the U.S. for world hegemony. Moral relativism dictates that this shouldn’t matter and if we walk around with a hammer, everything starts to look like a nail. Yet it is America’s dominance in the world that allows Americans to enjoy what it is we love in our society. One thing that is clear about Americans is that we will not happily accept a decline in our standard of living so that others elsewhere can have more. We don’t like bumps in the road. Despite fighting two long and costly wars in the Middle East over the past decade, the average American hasn’t felt a bump at all. There is no draft, no rationing, and only 1% of the population serves in the military. If competition means a decrease in security or living standards or increases in costs, Americans will not accept it. Morality aside, this is a facet of the American character.

The truth is that states such as North Korea and Iran do not pose a real threat to American hegemony for all of our concern over their weapons programs. They never have. They do have the ability to harm and kill a large number of Americans or our allies and, in the case of Iran, have done so. I witnessed first-hand the results of Iran’s proxy involvement in the Iraq War through arming and training Iraqi insurgents. Yet there is no scenario in which Iran could overtake America militarily, economically, or diplomatically. Though we should always remain concerned and watchful of such states, the amount of attention devoted to them should be proportionate to the true threat they represent, especially when there are bigger opponents in the game.

China is the only competitor who may present a real challenge to U.S. dominance. It is big enough, land, population, and resource-wise. Its economic growth has been impressive, as has the growth in its military spending. It is no secret that many of the military technologies China has unveiled in the past several years have often been based on pirated U.S. technology. China unveiled its own stealth fighter, having allegedly paid top dollar for pieces of a downed U.S. stealth bomber in Bosnia and from the crashed stealth helicopter used on the bin Laden raid in Pakistan. Recent reports show that China-based hackers, likely from a Chinese military unit, have infiltrated the computer systems of almost every major U.S. government institution, large media and law firms, and major corporations. Chinese agents on the ground in the U.S. are buying our military and civilian trade secrets and technologies.

But cultural and social change is coming along with China’s state-controlled opening and economic prosperity. The Chinese state seems to be making an attempt at a version of totalitarian capitalism and may soon wander into Russian-style ‘managed democracy’. They’ve been able to keep the brakes on any undesirable side effects to this point. But if history is any guide, economic liberalization brings political and social liberalization with it. In China’s case, this may become an uncontrollable, possibly bloody affair that makes Tiananmen Square look small in comparison. When people begin to want more freedoms in life, they begin to question the state as to why they cannot have it. America knows this from its own history. These are questions the Chinese government may not like to hear.

The question of whether or not China should be looked at as a competitor is an academic one. China clearly is a competitor. It remains to be seen if China is a foe. Chinese would likely argue that they’re not doing anything that America isn’t doing itself. They’re not wrong. We still spend more on our military than the next sixteen nations combined. We spy on China as well. From the point of view of moral relativism, it would be unfair to decry them for doing the same things we’ve been doing for decades. But the moral relativist doesn’t pick a side.

Choosing America’s side, China presents an unclear case. China has never really had imperialist ambitions and rarely involves itself in events outside its own borders, yet reacts jealously to actions it sees as taken against its interests or involvement in its domestic affairs. China may not have ambitions against America, but the question is if the competition they present will be a threat to the United States’ hegemony. Moral relativism would hold that they’re just as entitled to it as we are and if they can beat us at our own game then they deserve to win. These sound much like the words of George Kennan speaking on confronting and defeating the Soviet Union during the Cold War. We cannot just say they’re as entitled to it as we are and throw the game wide open. We’re still playing.

What should America do? We’ve always been good at forging long-term mutually beneficial alliances, something many other states have been unable to do, or at least not as successfully. Our enduring security relationship with Europe through NATO and the connections forged with former enemies using the Marshall Plan are examples. America should attempt to build and strengthen similar institutions that build multilateral cooperation in Asia.

Despite rhetorical accusation from the far left, America is not and never has been an empire. This argument does sell books though, as does reports of America’s premature demise. We do use our economic and military strength to push our interests forward, but this is a far cry from Rome, the Ottomans, and colonial powers like France and Great Britain. Though many may grumble America usually seems to get its way like the big kid in the schoolyard, countries that build cooperation with the United States find it is a mutually-beneficial relationship. Compare this with the exploited positions of European colonies or satellite states of the USSR. Even in the overwhelming majority of states where the U.S. has troops stationed or deployed, they are there by agreement, not invaders, and provide an economic boon.

If America is going to continue to compete, we need to give Asian states reasons to choose our side. Ensuring China isn’t allowed to push around its smaller neighbors is a good place to start. If we do, we will have to assure them that we are interested in the area for good and are not just fair weather friends who will abandon them, leaving them to suffer the wrath of their much bigger neighbor China. The U.S. must be ready to make as much a long-term commitment to our Asian allies as it has to our European partners.

Some will argue this will draw Chinese ire and increase friction, but allowing sometimes-ridiculous Chinese claims to territory and waters to stand may look like appeasement and only encourage further infractions. At the current level of Chinese espionage in the United States, they cannot honestly complain of U.S. involvement in their domestic affairs with clean hands. America refraining from playing at China’s borders should be dependent upon them refraining from playing too much within ours.

At the same time, continuing to trade heavily with China will continue its growth and, theoretically, the liberalization that will come with it. However we should encourage and incentivize China raising its product safety and labor standards. This will in turn increase the cost of Chinese goods to a level comparable with the rest of the world and support improved conditions for average Chinese workers to raise their wages to a comparable level as well—and demand more freedoms that come along with them. America should continue and expand military and educational exchange as well to grow a better mutual understanding of one another’s system and culture. America has always been an open book; China has not been.

In our meandering, unclear, adventurist, and sometimes-profligate relations with the rest of the world in the post-Cold War era, we shouldn’t lose sight that there are still sides to be chosen. Our position in the world is not assured by ‘American exceptionalism.’ It is always proper to question whether the choices we are making are morally correct. Yet this questioning must not translate into hesitancy or a failure to understand that we may have to take action, even military action, for the things we want to keep as a country or what we believe in or even for our very existence. When that time comes again—history tends to show it will—we will have to be prepared to compete or even fight with clear objectives in mind and accept no less than victory.

This is the kind of country my grandfather grew up in and the kind of war he fought in, though arguably the lines were much more clearly drawn then and there was a clear and present threat to our country. Things are more ambiguous in the modern world. Many Americans have become too comfortable with our position. Some believe unquestioningly in the absolute creation myth that this is a God-chosen nation that is the unique pinnacle of human development--a belief that ignores the hard work and sacrifice that built this country and keeps it where it is.

On the opposite side, other Americans have come to question so much about our position and dominance in the world that they seem to welcome the idea of the U.S. being taken down a notch and feel little connection to the country despite the advantages and benefits life here affords them. Both of these viewpoints are quite naïve and dangerous, yet represent the sides that divide America today—one believes in American infallibility, the other in unjust American imperialism. Both of these positions are wrong and neither is tenable.

America is moving out of its adolescence. In many ways we’re not fighting to advance anymore; we’re just fighting to hold on. This struggle is most present in the great American middle class, with the children of the baby boom generation facing the likelihood of having a lower standard of living than their parents. The men and women coming home from years of war in the Middle East are struggling to find a place in the workforce and society. In many ways, it seems that America has lost its way. One side holds that our best days are already behind us and it is to these idealized glory days we must return. The other believes we should seek some sort of utopian equilibrium with the rest of humanity that has never existed and likely never will.

America has to find its point again. For us to maintain our good standard of living and spread opportunity to the majority of citizens it must be recognized that we have to do it from a position of strength that continues to put our interests first. This also means accepting that the face of America itself is changing—ethnically, socially, and economically. This does not require an America that believes blindly in its own righteousness and rectitude and always presses its advantage to the pain of others. The world doesn’t need another empire. It needs a power that can provide stability and sound judgment in the rest of the chaos. For the last 75 years America has provided that stability.

There is no shortage of paranoid regimes that seek to wield their influence. Imagine American power in the hands of Iran, North Korea, or Russia. Despite our historical mistakes, America has always refrained from grossly abusing the full power it has in the world. It is true that there has never been a nation as strong as America. It is also true that there is no other power that has shown as much restraint in using it. To those who believe we should use it to our full advantage, know it is this very restraint that has allowed us to maintain it. For those who believe we have used it too often, know that America has used its power more justly than any other great nation before it.

Knowing the balance between when to exercise power and when to hold back is vital to maintaining America’s strength. Our adventures in Vietnam, Afghanistan, and Iraq should teach us that. We should have foreseen from the beginning and now in hindsight that these fights were against larger enemies that we either lacked the understanding to recognize and/or the will to take on fully. Lacking that understanding or commitment, we should not have started anything we were not going to finish. That does not mean blindly ‘staying the course’ once chosen, rather it means if we are not willing to pursue the fight from the beginning to the outcome of nothing less than total victory, then every minute, every life, and every cent spent upon it is wasted effort.

America itself is not immune from the strategy it applies against the rest of the world. When al Qaeda attacked the U.S. on 9/11, they did so knowing that America would have to respond. It was what they wanted. It has worked. As a consequence, America has been embroiled in war in the Middle East for over a decade at the cost of thousands of troops’ lives, over $1 trillion spent, and great domestic and international political turmoil. Despite the cost and effort, very little has changed in the region. Islamic extremism remains a threat and new organizations have sprung up every few years.

Our opponents have found cracks in the foundation of our system and are attempting to exploit them. This is a trick we know well because it is our game. When George Kennan wrote of communism containing the seeds of its own destruction he also wrote that American-style capitalism does as well. We must answer to the pressures put upon us by our foes, but do so in a way that does not waste effort, resources, or time. This is no time for America to become complacent. America worked and fought hard to obtain its place in the world and keeping that place will require just as much work and fighting.

The price of liberty is eternal vigilance.