"Never Take Counsel Of Your Fears"
Nov 11 '01
The Bottom Line Read this fascinating book.You'll develop a greater appreciation for the sacrifices all of our soldiers have made (and continue to make) for this country.
NOTE: This is a book review of On Strategy: A Critical Analysis of the Vietnam War by Harry G. Summers Jr, Colonel of Infantry. I have placed it in this category for three good reasons:
1) It is required reading at the Army and Naval War Colleges, so it couldn't hurt to have civilians to read it.
2) It is not listed in the Epinions database under Military History/Vietnam War, nor under Summers, Harry, but it ought to be.
3) Upon reading it I have come to better appreciate our history and I believe others will benefit, too.
Introduction
Veterans Day merits reflection, if not serious contemplation, of the history of our nation. This year I chose to focus on the war waged in Vietnam.
Ever since my Uncle Mike survived two tours of duty (1966-70) in Vietnam, I have wanted to learn about our involvement 'over there'... but those in authority have subtly indicated this is not the war anyone wants to remember, let alone discuss.
How Little Did I Know...
Although I grew up in the military as the dependent of an Air Force officer, my Dad never served in Vietnam. And, throughout my childhood, when we went to visit my Uncle Mike, I got the distinct impression that his tours of duty were 'off limits' as a topic of conversation.
In high school, I read Johnny Get Your Gun in English class and then sat through an American History class, but Vietnam was never covered. The class fell short of the mark ending with an exhaustive discussion of the Civil War.
Eventually, I watched the films Apocalypse Now, Platoon, and Good Morning, Vietnam!. I wondered if they were based on facts, but because I was a lazy college student, and found the number of books on the topic of Vietnam daunting, I didn't look beyond the movie screen for answers to my questions.
As an art history graduate student at Kent State University, I saw grisly photos and learned about the events that took place on May 4, 1970. Even there, though, the only time I ever felt comfortable asking questions about Vietnam was when I met Maya Lin. The winner of the competition to create a memorial of the Vietnam war, Lin was a visiting lecturer as part of a series on public art.
Upon arriving at Epinions, I sought out the advice of someone I felt wouldn't steer me wrong - mshawpyle. Our resident military historian sent me a thorough list of books on the topic when I admitted my knowledge of Vietnam was minimal. At the top was On Strategy and it turned out to be a better starting point than I ever imagined.
On Strategy: Vietnam 101
Harry G. Summers Jr., Colonel of Infantry, describes the strategy and tactics used by the United States and the North Vietnamese in a concise and straightforward manner. His critical analysis doesn't pull any punches. He firmly buttresses his explanations with information taken directly out of the Army's Field Manuals. The book also features the easy-to-comprehend 'Principles of War' in the Appendix.
Relying heavily on Carl von Clausewitz's landmark book On War (translated by Professor Peter Paret), Summers presents the facts - the good, the bad, and the ugly - about our involvement in Vietnam. He divides the text into two parts: 'The Environment' and 'The Engagement'.
Part I: The Environment
After a brief introduction outlining his analysis, Summers dives headlong into three topics that affect all wars: National Will, Friction, and Tactics, Grand Tactics, and Strategy. For someone just learning the basics about war - that war is made up of both political objectives and military strategy (not just one or the other) - I found this background information helpful when it came to reading Part II: The Engagement.
National Will: The People & The Congress
National Will features a two-pronged discussion of the views, attitudes, and actions of the people and the Congress during the Vietnam war.
In The People, Summers maintains that in the 'Age of Aquarius' the public dismissed old rules and regulations. This, unfortunately, transcended to the Army, who decided that the rules of war must also be old-fashioned and out of date. He then suggests President Lyndon Baines Johnson's actions were based in fear - he was afraid his 'Great Society' programs would fail if a war were declared on the North Vietnamese. What Johnson apparently failed to consider was Clausewitz's theory of a 'trinity of war' which states there must be a balance between the people, the government, and the Army. It must be established from the beginning and then maintained to have a successful outcome in war.
In The Congress, Summers explains how Johnson secured the Southeast Asia Resolution, which he used to then deploy troops, following the Gulf of Tonkin incident where two American destroyers were attacked by North Vietnamese patrol boats. Seemingly justifying Johnson's actions, three reasons are given as to why a declaration of war against Vietnam was not sought from Congress.
Because President Lyndon Baines Johnson mobilized troops, without a formal declaration of war being brought before and approved by Congress, the support of the American people was lacking. This left the Army dangling between the executive and legislative branches of the government. They subsequently became the (misdirected) focus of anti-war sentiment among the American public.
Friction: Focus on Five Facets
The concept of Friction is handled in five chapters: The People, The Bureaucracy, The Danger, The Doctrine and The Dogma.
There is a natural friction that develops between the people and the Army in times of war, but the Vietnam war policies only exacerbated it. After reviewing two such policies in The People that had a great impact on our view of the war from the homeland, Summers comes to the conclusion that measuring our success by body count resulted in the public deciding their Army was fighting in cold blood.
As far as The Bureaucracy is concerned, a thorough explanation of how the introduction of nuclear weapons impacted the relationship between military and civilian analysts is provided.
In The Danger, one of the most interesting chapters in this book, Summers pinpoints the psychological force of fear. "If fears dominate thinking the resulting paralysis will only increase the hazard." The two fears on the minds of our government leaders were the fear of nuclear destruction of the homeland and the fear of becoming involved with Communist China in a land war.
Built up with distortions of the truth and misperceptions of the facts, their fears led them to change battlefield doctrines, which are then elaborated on in the following chapter entitled The Doctrine. In particular, the 'spectrum of war' is introduced which ranged from:
- cold war (peace in a state of heightened alert) to
- limited war (war involving actual hostilities) to
- nuclear war (the ultimate war).
With as little knowledge as I possess about war and politics, I found getting through The Dogma the most difficult. Therefore I don't feel qualified to make any judgment on the quality of the material presented therein. What I did come to understand is that there is a big difference between a revolutionary war and guerrilla warfare (or a partisan war). A revolutionary war is designed to reach a decisive result. Guerrilla warfare is designed merely to harass and distract the enemy so that the regular forces can reach a decision in conventional battles. This difference is crucial when examining the Vietnam war.
Part II: The Engagement
The groundwork for the revelations offered in this half of the book come from Clausewitz's On War wherein he posits there are three intellectual activities that can influence the course of events in a war. First, one must discover and interpret the facts. Next, one must trace the effects back to their cause. And, finally, an investigation and evaluation of all possible means must be employed.
Tactics, Grand Tactics & Strategy
In this chapter, Summers gives us a peak at what will be broken down in subsequent chapters - how the 'Principles of War' are defined and then applied to the study of Vietnam.
He states that the United States made the mistake of thinking that the North Vietnamese guerrilla operations were a strategy in itself. Because of this, we attempted to understand it in terms of a "people's war" - similar to Mao Tse-Tung's "people's war" in China and the Soviet's "War on National Liberation" both of which were revolutionary, not partisan, wars. This resulted in us devising elaborate theories of counterinsurgency, which had been introduced during the Kennedy administration in 1961.
In actuality, the guerrilla warfare employed by the North Vietnamese was a tactic to wear us down, what Clausewitz referred to as 'the negative aim,' so they could overtake South Vietnam - particularly Saigon - which was their true objective. Unfortunately, for the United States, this caused mass confusion among the government, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the troops fighting in the jungles.
The Principles of War
As defined in the Army's Field Manual, and located in the Appendix, the 'Principles of War' are discussed in relation to the Vietnam war in the following chapters:
The Objective - Every military operation should be directed towards a clearly defined, decisive, and attainable objective.
This chapter focuses on the definitions of strategy and tactics. It breaks down each side's maneuvers as the war progressed in clear terms and points out the flaws in the United States strategy, which had multiple rationales, versus the will of the North Vietnamese, who had a single objective.
The Offensive - Seize, retain, and exploit the initiative.
"Offensive action is necessary to achieve decisive results and to maintain freedom of action." The most important information I gleaned from this chapter is that there are four variants of waging a war: strategic offensive, strategic defensive, tactical offensive, and tactical defensive. The North Vietnamese employed these variants, changing their methods of combating the U.S. troops as the need arose, but always kept their eye on the prize - the eventual capture of Saigon.
On the other hand, the United States, (rather than focusing on the source of the war - the North Vietnamese), became enmeshed in dealing with a symptom of the war - mainly the guerrilla warfare in South Vietnam. Summers states, "The United States was on the strategic defensive, but confused that posture with the strategic offensive." Adding fuel to this destructive fire, President Johnson refused to call up The Reserves because he thought the American public would view this as 'too costly' in terms of lives, thereby wholly unacceptable.
Mass, Economy of Force & Maneuver
Mass - Concentrate combat power at the decisive place and time.
Economy of Force - Allocate minimum essential combat power to secondary efforts.
Maneuver - Place the enemy in a position of disadvantage through the flexible application of combat power.
In this chapter, another Clausewitz theory, 'the enemy's center of gravity', is introduced as "the hub of all power and movement on which everything depends... The point against which all energies should be directed." The North Vietnamese's classic execution of Mass, Economy of Force, and Maneuver in 1975 is examined.
Unity of Command - For every objective, there should be unity of effort under one responsible commander.
Summers shows here that there is no doubt the North Vietnamese were united in their efforts to overtake South Vietnam. Then, he admits to the lack of a coherent military strategy between the National Security Council, the Department of Defense, the Pacific Command, and the Military Assistance Command Vietnam. He arrives at the conclusion that by not setting up a Southeast Asia Command, we failed to fix a militarily attainable political objective.
Security & Surprise
Security - Never permit the enemy to acquire an unexpected advantage.
Surprise - Strike the enemy at a time and/or place and in a manner for which he is unprepared.
In this chapter, the examination of the four tactical offensives are covered in great detail: 1965 (Ia Drang Valley defeat of the North Vietnamese); 1968 (the Tet Offensive, which led to massive casualties of South Vietnamese Communists - the Viet Cong); 1972 (the Eastertide Offensive, in which the North Vietnamese lost numerous casualties); and 1975 (the takeover of Saigon by the North Vietnamese).
Simplicity - Prepare clear, uncomplicated plans and clear, concise orders to insure thorough understanding.
Summers begins with a summary of the 'Principals of War' discussed in the previous chapters. He then shows how our inability to explain in clear terms our reasons for being in Vietnam affected the American people. Finally, he describes the drastic differences in the living conditions of officers based in Saigon compared to the grunts in the jungles. It was the media's coverage of these stark contrasts that led to the establishment of base camps, which compromised our troops' ability to be flexible when it was absolutely imperative.
In the final two chapters, Coalition Warfare and To Provide For The Common Defense, Summers draws to a close his analysis of how the South Vietnamese Army became dependent upon the United States, how the United States got sidetracked into 'nation building' rather than the destruction of the North Vietnamese, and how we can profit from the mistakes we made throughout the Vietnam war.
Final Thoughts
Seven years ago, I stood among a throng of veterans at The Wall letting the names of those who died for my freedom wash over my reflection as I wept in ignorance. All I knew then was that Uncle Mike had come home drastically affected by what he did and saw 'over there'.
Today, as I look at the battered bracelet I wear in memory of USASF SFC Donald M. Shue, who was last seen in Laos on 11-3-69, my tears are born out of sheer gratitude. It seems such a small thing to do in exchange, but I just want to say Thanks.
~ wvg ~
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Epinions.com ID:
wildvirgogirl
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Member: Elle Hills
Location: The Adirondack Park
Reviews written: 47
Trusted by: 136 members
About Me:
Art historian. Avid reader. Lover of etiquette, life, and music. Loyal to God.
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