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

Warrior Culture: Ditch ‘Redskins’, but Keep Apache

This article originally appeared in Cicero Magazine on 30 June 2014.

The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office have cancelled the trademark registration of the Washington Redskins football team, convinced the team’s logo and name is an offensive racial slur against Native Americans. It is an offensive name, more so than any other sports mascot with an ethnic connection. The decision followed a widespread public campaign and letters from 50 U.S. Senators urging a name change. Following the ruling, some, such as Simon Waxman, claim the effort needs to go further. He claims the U.S. military is guilty of the same racist conduct in using Native American tribal names and the names of Native leaders for equipment and operations. Is there a difference between the Washington Redskins and an AH-64 Apache attack helicopter?

Waxman claims that the use by the U.S. military of the tribal names such as Kiowa and Chinook, weapons such as the tomahawk, or names such as Grey Eagle and Geronimo are offensive. His evidence is the systematic U.S. campaign of “manifest destiny” which saw America expand its way across the whole of the continent, crushing Native tribes in the process.

It is true. The United States fought, tricked, cajoled, murdered and coerced Native tribes into moving off their own land and the U.S. military was the tool most often used to achieve it. By the turn of the 20th century, Native tribes had all but vanished from America. According to Waxman, the campaign was racist and it is therefore racially offensive for the military to use Native terms.

The U.S. military does honor Native American tribes for their warrior culture and fighting spirit because it is worthy of respect and honor and the American military requires and fosters a similar warrior culture.
However, there is no such thing as a “Redskin” helicopter or a “Native Savage” cruise missile. The military does have Kiowa helicopters and Tomahawk cruise missiles. The Kiowa were a real tribe and the tomahawk was a real weapon and Geronimo and Grey Eagle were real Native leaders. There is no racist connotation in the use of the names themselves. Waxman’s assertion is that since the U.S. military crushed Native tribes it is racist for the military to use terms associated with peoples it defeated. Waxman compares it, citing Noam Chomsky, with the hypothetical situation if the Nazi’s would have called their tanks or fighters “Jew” or “Gypsy”.

So why is it different? The U.S. military almost always uses themed names for different series’ of equipment. Aircraft carriers are named after U.S. Presidents or other leaders. Battleships were named after U.S. states. Submarines are often named after aquatic animals. Fighter jets are christened with birds of prey. Armored vehicles are named after Generals. The military does this to impart an association to that system of characteristics of its namesake and to honor them, not to disparage a vanquished foe. The association helps to build esprit de corps among those who are stationed on, maintain, use or operate the system.

How can it be that the U.S. military named its helicopters after Native tribes for racist motivations, but named its aircraft carriers after Presidents and Senators out of respect and to honor them? Was it racist against the British to commission the USS George Washington? How about the Sherman tank against white Southerners? If military equipment is named after vanquished foes, why don’t we have a “King George III” submarine, a “Nazi” landing craft, or “Hammer and Sickle” tanks. Waxman would surely argue that it is cynical to believe that the U.S. military, which spent decades hunting the Natives in the Southwest, would honor the same tribes today. That is because Waxman—who never served in the military—like many other people does not understand the concept of warrior culture.

Most Native American tribes had some form of warrior culture. They trained their young men not only to peacefully hunt animals and gather berries in the woods, as naïve and unbalanced narratives picture them, but to fight against neighboring bands, sometimes from the same tribe. They developed and conducted religious rituals in preparation and upon return from war. For many Native tribes, war was a way of life. They were not just the wide-eyed peaceful daisies waiting to be plucked as many postmodernist thinkers—like Noam Chomsky—portray them as. They were proud warriors, not just victims.

They believed there was no greater feat than to meet and defeat a foe in battle and no greater honor than to die in battle one’s self. When white settlers moved into their territory, they conducted raids upon them. It was on their land and therefore fair game. They knew violence would be met with violence. That was life. However, the tribes did not have the technological ability or the population to defeat a European foe which had systematic designs on making the entire continent their own. Despite the overwhelming odds against them, they resisted the white man for decades. The Comanche stopped the northern advance of Spain from Mexico, the westward advance of France out of Louisiana, and the advances of both Texas and the United States as well. Not a bad return for a people forced to live in the Llano Estacado, a desert corner of west Texas which even today is barren land. The warrior culture and fighting spirit of Native Americans is indeed worthy of respect.

Ask an American soldier today if they consider Native Americans defeated enemies of the country or if they consider them warriors worthy of respect. They will answer with respect, hands down.

The United States military has a warrior culture of its own. American troops believe that, as George Orwell says, “People sleep peaceably in their beds at night only because rough men stand ready to do violence on their behalf.” Today less than 1% of America serves in the all-volunteer military and they come home to a country that does not understand them when they do. American veterans turn to one another for support. It reinforces a warrior culture. No one pays the costs of war more than the soldier. They understand that the world is a real and dangerous place where there are other people who want to see America fail and to harm and kill Americans. It is not something that just happens to someone else on TV. It is because of America’s warriors and their warrior culture that people such as Waxman and Chomsky never have to see or experience this first-hand. America’s warriors keep the wolf from the door.

So, yes, the U.S. military does honor Native American tribes for their warrior culture and fighting spirit because it is worthy of respect and honor and the American military requires and fosters a similar warrior culture. But those who do not understand warrior culture or violence and reject it in all of its forms would not understand such a feeling. They would have to believe that is just cynical, racist mocking to name a weapons system a Tomahawk, or a deadly attack helicopter an Apache, or a drone Grey Eagle. Ask an American soldier today if they consider Native Americans defeated enemies of the country or if they consider them warriors worthy of respect. They will answer with respect, hands down.

Washington Redskins owner Dan Snyder has attempted to justify the racist name of his team by using a similar argument. He argues that the Redskins moniker is a “badge of honor” and its use is meant to impart to his football team the fierce warrior fighting spirit associated with Native tribes. So what’s the difference?

It may come as a shock to some, but football is just a game. No one dies. Nothing tangible for the country rides upon victory or loss by one side or the other. While players are skilful and do risk injury, they also get paid ridiculous sums of money and receive excellent health care. Real soldiers are lucky to receive either. Many professional athletes act more like prima donnas than warriors. The tired old metaphors that equate sports with combat should be retired. They are offensive to those who really do fight. Many professional and amateur athletes themselves recognize that. There is no real warrior culture in football. It is just a game. Dan Snyder should not equate his team’s racist mascot with honor. Retire the “Redskins”.

On the other hand, Simon Waxman and likeminded individuals should suspend their disbelief that the U.S. military can in fact honor Native Americans and that it is not just cynical racism. It is clear to see why they have made the mistake and misunderstand the difference. It is an alien concept to them. The U.S government, the U.S. military and the American people of the time all took part in an act of genocide against Native Americans. That is a fact. That cannot be undone. However, no one alive today took part in those actions. The people who named these weapons systems after Native Americans did not have it in mind as a cynical ‘endzone dance’ against a defeated opponent when they did so.

The U.S. military chose to adopt Native American terms for these weapons and platforms in order to honor the warrior culture associated with them, to build esprit de corps among those servicemembers associated with them, and because the U.S. military has a proud warrior culture of its own. That is not racist. Get rid of the Washington “Redskins”, but keep the AH-64 Apache.