UNIVERSITY OF AMSTERDAM
Counterinsurgency in Vietnam
The United States Marine Corps and the Origins
of Pacification (1965-1967)
Name: Robin Bakker Student Number: 6214347
E-mail: robin.bakker21@gmail.com Thesis Advisor: Prof. Dr. R.V.A. Janssens Second Reader: Dr. A.M. Kalinovsky
Abstract
Both the United States Army and the United States Marine Corps conducted counterinsurgency operations in Vietnam against the Viet Cong between 1965 and 1967. But why was the Marine Corps approach to counterinsurgency different than the efforts of the U.S. Army? This thesis claims that most actions of the Marine Corps were aimed at pacification of the rural Vietnamese population. This is generally considered as an (indirect) result of their experiences with several small wars in the so-called “Banana-wars” in Central-America during the 1920’s and 1930’s. However, as I argue, the Marine Corps pacification efforts were foremost a result of the informal doctrine of the Marine Corps high command, which tended to favor newer counterinsurgency methods from contemporary experiences as the British in Malaya. Moreover, the Marine Corps
organizational culture caused them to learn from their own experiences and to adapt to
unseen circumstances. This capability also made them susceptible for new methods and tactics regarding counterinsurgency, which were previously unseen on the field of battle.
Introduction 7 Chapter I: The United States Marine Corps and Pacification 12
Counterinsurgency “American Style” The III Marine Amphibious Approach Combined Action
Other Means to the Desired End The Army Interferes
Pacification, attrition, or both?
Chapter II: The Small Wars Manual and Military Doctrine 25 The Army “irregular Warfare” doctrine
The Marine Corps and the Small Wars Manual A sound set of features
The Marine Corps doctrine in the 1960’s
Chapter III: The Era of Counterinsurgency 35
A gut feeling Victor H. Krulak Robert Thompson A blank template
Chapter IV: Semper Fidelis 47
Organizational Culture Theoretical Thinking
The culture of the United States Marine Corps Tradition
Theoretical thinking in the Army?
Conclusion 58
Introduction
About two years ago, the fiftieth anniversary of the Marine landing in Vietnam on March
filled with divans and parasols, would probably not remind any passerby of the
American military power which was at full display in 1965.1 Over the years, the Marine
landing, which signaled the first American combat troops in Vietnam, has come to symbolize the incongruous start of the American intervention. The Marines storming ashore that day – well-prepared and instructed to build and protect a nearby airfield in support of Operation Rolling Thunder – were unexpectedly greeted by a handful of smiling children and traditionally dressed Vietnamese women. The stage managed effort, (an idea of the South Vietnamese Army) with four American soldiers holding a large sign stating: “Welcome, Gallant Marines,” must have been a ludicrous manifestation
for the local population.2 Yet no spectator or Marine that day could have imagined how
devastating the next few years would be for Vietnam. Hence, the conflict
in Vietnam has never left the American debate. Ever since the fall of Saigon heralded the end of South Vietnam in April 1975, American scholars, historians and political scientists, have extensively tried to answer numerous questions regarding the nature and justification of the American intervention in Southeast Asia. Yet the question still yielding the most heated debate, unsurprisingly, considers blame. Key historical figures as President Lyndon B. Johnson, Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara and Harvard economist Walt W. Rostow all have been nailed to the pillory in the past four decades. However, most criticism was bestowed upon the commander of Military Assistance Command in Vietnam (MACV), U.S. Army Lieutenant General William Westmoreland. This is obviously not without any reason. Westmoreland’s concept of “attrition” has been signified as one of the main causes for the escalation of the Vietnam war. His implementation of force and foremost his conduct of warfare, has been a point of debate for many historians ever since the Vietnam war ended. Westmoreland’s pivotal role as commander of all American military forces in Vietnam until 1969 was quite recently reaffirmed, when in the winter of 2011, political scientist James MacAllister, examined the historical merits of
indictment in his article Who Lost Vietnam?3 Therein, MacAllister gave some guidance in
the extensive debate on Westmoreland by illustrating two dominant schools of thought.4
1
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/feb/28/vietnam-war-da-nang-50-year-anniversary-flourishing
2 http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/u-s-marines-land-at-da-nang
3 James MacAllister, ‘Who Lost Vietnam? Soldiers, Civilians and Military Strategy’, Quarterly Journal:
International Security (2010) 29
According to MacAllister, the two-sided debate, consisting of the “counterinsurgency school” and the later “revisionists,” primarily focuses on Westmoreland’s assessment of threat. The counterinsurgency school, including historian Andrew Krepinevich, who wrote The Army and Vietnam in 1986, firmly puts the blame on Westmoreland for not thoroughly formulating a viable strategy to counter the
Vietnamese insurgency.5 The revisionists claim that difficult circumstances, such as the
varied threat of the war, left Westmoreland little alternative “but to focus his attention and resources on conventional methods of warfare.”6 As is argued by revisionist
historian Andrew J. Birtle, who wrote a two piece study on U.S. Army doctrine in the twentieth century, Westmoreland’s understanding of the war is underplayed. As Vietnam was both conventional and a highly effective armed insurgency, Westmoreland, from a revisionist perspective, was correct to use U.S. forces to “stem the tide” and let the
South-Vietnamese republic focus on pacification.7 The
main difference between both schools of thought is the assessment of threat. Could the war have been won (or the outcome have altered) through a better understanding of the enemy? Since the revisionists have mostly denied any possibility of another ending of the war in Vietnam, the counterinsurgency school tends to suggest that when another strategy would have been implemented, the eventual outcome would not have been so painful. Yet, by claiming this, it is surprising that most “counterinsurgency” scholars and historians have focused their efforts almost solely on the U.S. Army, while only a few have thoroughly examined the actions of the United States Marine Corps. Broadly regarded as a “second” party in the Northern provinces of South-Vietnam, the U.S. Marines actively participated in the war alongside the Army, and, most interesting, seemed more successful in their effort than their Army peers. The Marine Corps favored pacification over large-unit battles, initiated a well-recognized program in order to assist the Vietnamese people (Combined Action) and likewise tried to secure villages, instead
of destroying it to save it. So why was this the case?
Most historians with an interest in counterinsurgency have either neglected these issues and suggested that the Marine Corps conducted practically the same strategy as the U.S. Army, or suggest that the origins of the Marine Corps counterinsurgency in Vietnam
5 Ibid.
6 This defense is essentially the same that Westmoreland himself offered in his memoirs.
7 David Fitzgerald, Learning to Forget: US Army Counterinsurgency Doctrine and Practice from Vietnam to
came from their experiences in Central America during the Banana Wars (1898-1934). Others point to the publication of the Small Wars Manual in 1940, which, at some point, may have created a viable Marine Corps doctrine on counterinsurgency prior to the Vietnam war. This wad of assumptions is also evident in various historical publications. Krepinevich states that the Marine Corps approach to counterinsurgency was an evolving mixture of ideas, and not one based on a solid understanding of a particular doctrine. And Edward T. Nevgloski, a former Marine Lieutenant-Colonel, argued in 2015 that Marine actions between 1965 and 1968 are often depicted as unplanned and isolated events and are therefore mischaracterized.8 Nevgloski even claims that the
“pacification approach,” put forward by journalist Neil Sheehan (who wrote A Bright
Shining Lie in 1988), is misguiding.9 All these short
explanations illustrate many deficiencies and shortcomings surrounding the motives of the Marine Corps efforts in Vietnam. The question thus arises why the Marine Corps conducted a different strategy than the U.S. Army. As this question not only places a newer, sophisticated burden on the actions of General Westmoreland, it may also shift the focus of the debate regarding counterinsurgency in Vietnam in favor of the revisionists. Furthermore, it is also relevant for military branches or governments who may need to further adapt to a counterinsurgency environment instead of a traditional
focus on conventional, or “Clausewitzian” warfare. To establish the premise for my
thesis, I will begin by making an assessment of what the implementation of the Marine Corps counterinsurgency in Vietnam actually encompassed. The first chapter of my thesis will therefore primarily examine the official history of the Marine Corps, combined with a comparison between the Marine Corps and the U.S. Army. By also examining several sources as Andrew Krepinevich and the memoires of Marine General Lewis Walt, I will show that the Marine Corps conducted the war on different terms than
the U.S. Army. Subsequently, to examine the origins of Marine
pacification in Vietnam, I have framed my thesis by applying three different, yet interdependent explanations (or concepts): formal doctrine, informal doctrine and
organizational culture. The doctrinal explanations, comprising the second and third 8 Edward T. Nevgloski, ‘Reconsidering USMC involvement in the Vietnam War’, Defence In Depth
(17-8-2015) https://defenceindepth.co/2015/08/17/reconsidering-us-marine-corps-involvement-in-the-vietnam-war/
9 Also Nevgloski: “Adding to the confusion is the Marine Corps’ own official history, which fails to place the
Da Nang landing in its proper context, explain why the Marines were in the northern provinces, and even argues that although the Marines did indeed engage in big unit war; they did so only as a second thought and after ordered to against their better tactical judgment.”
chapters, are based on the theoretical framework as described in Mars Learning: The
Marine Corps Development of Small Wars Doctrine (2001), written by historian Keith
Bickel.10 By differentiating between formal doctrine, what is written in manuals and
military publications and pamphlets, and informal doctrine, how officers and generals perceived and acted according the formulated doctrine, Bickel rendered a thoughtful theory, usable for future inquiries. My second chapter, will therefore take the formal
doctrine explanation, with the Small Wars Manual (1940), as its point of departure. While
many historians claim that this Marine Corps manual was highly influential for later counterinsurgency operations, on the eve of the full-scale intervention in Vietnam in 1965, the Small Wars Manual was vastly outdated and it is unknown whether this
publication actually shaped the Marine Corps doctrine regarding counterinsurgency. By
projecting Bickel’s theory of “formal” (or institutionalized) doctrine onto the early 1960’s, I will examine whether the Small Wars Manual actually shaped the Marine Corps
doctrine in the early 1960’s. The third chapter will then focus on the
concept of informal doctrine, also formulated by Keith Bickel. Although Bickel regards
informal doctrine as an open exchange between commanding officers, embodied by
“personal ideas that others may choose to use and follow but that do not have institutional blessing,” I will examine whether Marine officers, besides their superiors and colleagues, were also subject to a larger debate regarding counterinsurgency in the
1960’s.11 In addition to Bickel, I have based my argument on Douglas Blaufarb’s The
Counterinsurgency Era (1977) to widen Bickel’s theory on informal doctrine.12 By
studying multiple persons in the British and United States military, this chapter will argue that the commanding Marine General Lewis Walt was inspired by various “new” methods of counterinsurgency, mostly coming from his peers and even from the United
States President John F. Kennedy. The fourth and final chapter will assess if the
Marine Corps’ organizational culture was adaptive and susceptible for the contemporary ideas on counterinsurgency. As elaborated in Learning to Eat Soup With A Knife
Counterinsurgency lessons from Malaya and Vietnam (2005), I have based my argument
on John Nagl’s theory of “organizational culture.” By looking at the British efforts’ in Malaya, Nagl has argued that the British Army could be characterized as a “learning
10 Mars Learning examined whether the Marine Corps experiences in the Banana wars in Central America
indeed resulted in a doctrine on Small Wars during the first decades of the twentieth century.
11 Keith Bickel, Mars Learning: The Marine Corps Development of Small Wars Doctrine, 1915-1940 (2001) 5. 12 Ibid,7.
institution” and was therefore successful in its effort to counter the Malayan insurgency, while the rigid organizational culture of the U.S. Army was to blame for the “war of attrition,” as they relied too heavily on the tools that they had used with success for the past century. By comparing the Marine Corps organization on several key features with the British Army, we can see that the Marine Corps was indeed an institution capable of adapting and learning from its earlier experiences.
These three approaches will examine and clarify the origins of the actions of the Marine Corps in Vietnam in more depth than what has thus far been the case. With the focus on the third and fourth chapter, the motives of the Marine Corps to implement pacification will be examined, as well as their informal doctrine and organizational culture. I will show that the Marine Corps informal doctrine and its organizational culture were very pervasive in creating an environment in which early counterinsurgency concepts could thrive.
Chapter I: The United States Marine Corps and Pacification
In March 1965, the United States Marine Corps was the first of the American armed forces to deploy large ground combat units to South Vietnam. Storming the beachhead at Da Nang in the early morning, the Marine landing was an impressive display for both locals and a handful of correspondents on site. But when general Lewis Walt, commander of the III Marine Amphibious Force, reflected on this particular event in his memoires Strange War, Strange Strategy (1970), he mentions that shortly after arriving
he had “neither a real understanding of the nature of the war nor any clear ideas as to how to win it.”13
This poignant passage is illustrative for the first weeks of Marine Corps intervention in the Northern provinces of South Vietnam. The III Marine Amphibious Force, under the command of both Lewis Walt and Victor Krulak, was in due time assigned to build an airstrip near the village of “Chu Lai” and their subsequent mission was to provide static defense of airfield perimeters.14 While the number of active
Marines swelled from 3.500 to over 17.500 within three months of their arrival, the
Marine Corps expanded its operations to combat patrols and also pacification.15 But why
did the Marine Corps prefer pacification over large scale battles? In this chapter, I will establish the premise of my thesis by illustrating the differences between the Army’s strategy in Vietnam and the Marine Corps approach to counterinsurgency in the “tactical areas of responsibility” (TAOR’s) of I Corps between 1965 and 1967. This includes pacification and, more specific, the Combined Action Program.
Counterinsurgency “American-style”
Since there is a wide range of conflicting ideas regarding the nature of “counterinsurgency” in Vietnam, I will begin clarifying the central discussion at stake: the characterization of the enemy. Was the United States fighting a conventional war against the North Vietnamese Army or were they fighting a guerilla war against the Viet Cong? The Neo-Clausewitzian Harry Summers, who published On Strategy: A Critical
Analysis of Vietnam in 1982, argued, since “they overwhelmed South Vietnam with a
twenty-two division force,” that the North-Vietnamese Army (NVA) was ultimately
responsible for the fall of Saigon in 1975.16 The U.S. Army, according to Summers, thus
failed to accurately determine the nature of the war.
Although this holds partly true – since the NVA would play a major role in the later stages of the Vietnamese conflict – Summers neglects the fact that the Viet Cong was a trained and effective foe, who largely determined the field of battle in the (more decisive) early years of the American intervention. Countering this insurgency came in two different “methods.” In The Army and Vietnam (1988), Andrew Krepinevich claims
13 Lewis Walt, Strange War, Strange Strategy A General’s Report on Vietnam (1970) 9.
14 “Chu Lai” did not refer to any village or geographic location. It was the Chinese name of Marine Corps
general Victor H. Krulak.
15 Michael Hennessy, Strategy in Vietnam: The Marines and Revolutionary Warfare in I Corps, 1965-1972
(1997) 3.
that the Army was indeed in the counterinsurgency business, but conducted a flawed “attrition strategy,” which was nothing more than a natural outgrowth of its organizational recipe for success.17 Both World War II and Korea had proven the
effectiveness of firepower and by using America’s strong suits; material abundance and technological superiority, the U.S. Army, conducted counterinsurgency “American style.” By embracing the application of massive firepower and body counts, large search-and-destroy sweeps were carried out in an attempt to locate the enemy and then air raids and artillery fire would provide the means for the desired end. Krepinevich uses the words of British brigadier W.F.K. Thompson, who was acting as a journalist for the Daily
Telegraph in Vietnam, to describe the American action wryly: “They used that ghastly
word, prophylactic firepower, which means if you do not know where the enemy is, make
a big enough bang and you may bring something down.”18 The
Army doctrine of harassing insurgent forces faster than the enemy could replace them, served as the measure of how well their strategy was working. Yet by putting a body count – the number of enemy killed in action – first and the security of the population second, the Army provided the incentive for its commanders to shoot first and worry later about the hearts and minds of the local people. The “rules of engagement,” which the Army officially said to monitor very closely, therefore suffered from a “creative application,” as Krepinevich argued. The availability of firepower and technology made it easier to shoot first and think second. “With increasing frequency VC and NVA forces enter a hamlet, raise their flag and announce that they are staying. In order to get them
out, we often have to destroy the hamlet.”19 With the
ineffective harassing of the enemy, the most urgent consequence was that the Army desperately alienated the Vietnamese population in the countryside. Besides that this alienation was a direct result of their strategy of attrition, this was also caused by a lack of long term vision and experience. Commanding officers were largely restricted to one-year tours and GI’s were no longer in Vietnam than six months. This is characterized by Krepinevich as the “personnel policy” argument. “Short command tours contributed to
the commander’s incentive to get a good box score by generating a large body count.”20
And, with the Army on a continuous search-and-destroy roll, soldiers never really
17 Andrew Krepinevich, The Army and Vietnam (1988) 196. 18 As cited in The Army and Vietnam (1988) 199.
19 Krepinevich, The Army and Vietnam (1988) 199. 20 Ibid, 206.
grasped a “feel” for the area nor for its people or their culture, which drastically reduced its insurgency handling capabilities. As U.S. Army Lieutenant Colonel John Paul Vann, once observed: “The United States has not been in Vietnam for twelve years, but for one
year twelve times.”21 By April 1967, the
Office of the Secretary of Defense, Studies and Analysis (OSDSA) published a study which proved that the Army’s search-and-destroy missions had not succeeded in assisting the South Vietnamese government to effect better control of its population (i.e. a “shield for pacification”). Instead, it had actually left the population exposed to the Vietcong.22
However, Westmoreland’s strategy of attrition persisted and was embraced even more as the war dragged on. It was all too easy to fall back on the technological elements of the
army strategy – firepower on call, helicopter gunships, herbicides and defoliants.23 The
army’s goals and policies frustrated attempts to conduct counterinsurgency operations. Pacification, or the “other war,” was considered the task of the South Vietnamese Army (ARVN). In the end, the Army ended up trying to fight the kind of conventional war that it was trained, organized and prepared – and above all wanted – to fight instead of the counterinsurgency war it was sent to fight.
The III Marine Amphibious Operational Approach
Most scholars agree that the early stages of Marine intervention in the Chu Lai area –
near the landing beaches of Da Nang – was characterized by improvisation.24 Apart from
the observations made by U.S. Army commander William Westmoreland, that American operations would take place in “three successive stages; base security, deep patrolling and finally search and destroy missions,” the actual conduct of III Marine Amphibious Force for the first three months mainly consisted of the occasional rebuilding of
infrastructure and providing security for the nearby local population.25 General Walt’s
visualization of the Marine campaign in Vietnam renders this inherent contradiction of the early campaign. “The destructive mission and the constructive mission, and we’ve
21 As cited in Neil Sheehan, John Paul Vann, A Bright Shining Lie (2010) 229.
22 As cited in Krepinevich: ‘[A] fully 90 percent of all incidents in any given quarter were occurring in the
10 percent of the country that held over 80 percent of the population.’ 188.
23 During the last five months of 1966, MACV invested 95 percent of its combat battalions in
search-and-destroy operations.
24 Edward Nevgloski, ‘Reconsidering US Marine Corps Involvement in the Vietnam War’, Defence-In-Depth
(August 15, 2015) https://defenceindepth.co/2015/08/17/reconsidering-us-marine-corps-involvement-in-the-vietnam-war/
25 Jack Shulimson and Charles M. Johnson, U.S. Marines in Vietnam, The Landing and the Buildup 1965
got to do both jobs at the same time.”26
Yet, as a result of this approach, Jack Shulimson and Charles M. Johnson, authors of the official Marine Corps history argue that because of this improvisation, “some seeds of pacification were already planted.”27 The first credited example of Marine pacification
in Vietnam fell upon Lieutenant Colonel David E. Clement. When a Vietnamese district chief reported the continuous infiltrations of the village of Le My, near the newly
operating Da Nang airbase, battalion commander Clement decided to act.28 To provide
the cluster of hamlets with both security and the means of fending for themselves, Clement’s battalion cleared the village and took up defensive positions while rounding up the male villagers, who were then filling in trenches and dismantling Vietcong bunkers. When after several days Vietnamese forces relieved the Marines, they had trained local forces, helped prepare the defenses and set up medical aid stations. Although short-lived, the operation was regarded as a success. According to General Collins, the “Le My” experiment, as it came to be known, “may well be the pattern for the
employment of Marine Corps forces in this area.”29
Apart from the “Le My” experiment, the Marine pacification effort was still in its infancy in June 1965. After a few months of “Civic Action” operations, such as dispensing food and providing shelter for the local population, there was a need for overall guidance and direction. Since Civic Action was regarded “too important to leave to the good will and natural enthusiasm of individual Marines,” general Walt issued the “Concept of Civic
Action in the Republic of Vietnam” on June 7th, just days after he assumed command of III
MAF.30 In its essence, civic action was described therein as “economic and social
activities which are beneficial to the population as a whole.”31 Yet, in the near foreseeable
future, Le My would be the only showcase for the conduct of Civic Action in the area surrounding the Da Nang airbase. As Marine General Walt himself stated:
We had found the key to our main problem—how to fight the war. The struggle was in the rice paddies, in and among the people, not passing through, but living among them, night and day, sharing their victories and
26 Ian J. Townsend, Combined Action Platoons in the Vietnam War, A Unique Counterinsurgency Capability
For The Contemporary Operating Environment (2014) 32.
27 Shulimson and Johnson, US Marines 1965 (1978) 46. 28 Ibid, 38.
29 Ibid, 39.
30 Shulimson and Johnson, US Marines 1965 (1978) 47. 31 Ibid.
defeats, suffering with them if need be, and joining them in steps toward a better life long overdue.32
Combined Action
The Civic Action policy would define the Marine pacification effort for the next months to come. Under the command of Lieutenant Colonel William W. Taylor, the commanding
officer of 3rd Battalion, a combined squad of American forces and Vietnamese forces was
formed in august 1965, which came to be known as the “joint action company.”33 This
was not a surprising development. The inherent nature of the Vietnamese experience – conducting development operations while defending an expanding area of operations with a limited number of troops – was problematic and therefore the Marines needed to increase their force capacity to secure the designated villages and hamlets. As a consequence, local Vietnamese “regional forces” or “popular forces” (RF/PF) were created to accompany the Marines on their missions. Although these Vietnamese soldiers often had the poorest military training and had the least equipment to work with, the RF/PF forces – also known as “Ruff-puffs” – were considered to be a vital link in the entire pacification process.
The fruition of this was the implementation of the “Combined Action Program” (CAP) in the second part of 1965, which was institutionalized after the early successes of “joint action.” A company of roughly a dozen Marines, together with a “popular platoon” of thirty-five Vietnamese soldiers were placed in villages, working throughout the day and night alongside the local population. Besides the implementation of Vietnamese soldiers, the most important reason for the existence of combined action was the legitimization of American military forces by “assuaging” the consequences of the war. The program was was implemented as an all-inclusive package for the local population in various designated CAP villages. Most important was the security for Viet Cong harassments and the training of local (police) forces. Yet the program also included the provision of medical care, distribution of clothing, construction and repair projects and even evacuation for Vietnamese civilians when necessary. It was, as also Andrew Krepinevich recognizes, a great example of “winning the hearts and minds of the
32 John Southard, Defend and Befriend, The U.S. Marine Corps and Combined Action Platoons in Vietnam
(2014) 13.
33 Shulimson and Johnson, US Marines 1965(1978) 134. Also in Strange War, Strange Strategy (1970):
General Walt states that the original suggestion was made by Captain John J. Mullen Jr., yet the first plans on CAP were made by Major Cullen C. Zimmerman. The convergence of ideas into the Combined Action Program was therefore a collective and evolutionary achievement.
people.”34
But not only Krepinevich recognized the potential of Combined Action. For many historians and scholars, Combined Action was the most promising pacification effort in the entire war. As the British counterinsurgency expert Sir Robert Thompson argued: “Of all the United States forces the Marine Corps alone made a serious attempt to achieve permanent and lasting results in their “Tactical Area of Responsibility” (TAOR) by seeking to protect the rural population.”35 But this was not only a consequence of
security and regular (medical) aid. Indicative of the success of CAP was the close bond forged between Marines and the local villagers, as vividly rendered in The Village by
Francis J. West in 1972.36 A combined action platoon in the village of Bin Nghia (fifty
miles outside of Chu Lai airbase) became an extraordinary example of military goodwill and Marine hardship. With The Village, West published a classic narrative on American efforts at pacification. The Marines put themselves forward as “culturally sensitive,” and rendered themselves as friendly forces. This was further catalyzed by their actions in combat. West prominently characterized the life in Bin Nghia as fatalistic and sometimes even hellish. Marine night patrols often resulted in contact with the Viet Cong and as result over seventy firefights in little than three months occurred were registered in the direct surrounding area of Bin Nghia. Although this must have been a horrifying experience for the Marines themselves, it foremost functioned as a accelerator in befriending the local population.
Yet not every attempt at pacifying the local population went as smooth and effective as some scholars suggest. A few academics, including a former Combined Action Marine, Major Edward F. Palm, claim that the program was flawed and would not have been decisive when implemented on a much larger scale. Although critics of CAP are rather a minority in the debate on CAP as counterinsurgency tactic, their opinion is not lacking in legitimacy and thus worth noting here. In Tiger Papa Three (2015), Palm argues that there were not enough Marines with the intelligence and sensitivity to make
the program successful.37 After his return to the United States, Palm declared in an
article in the Marine Corps Gazette in 1988 that his platoon “had been a failure that can
34 Andrew Krepinevich, The Army and Vietnam (1986) 10. 35 Robert Thompson, Defeating Communist Insurgency (1966) 67.
36 When having a look at different websites by former CAP Marines, there is a great amount of nostalgia to
be found. (capmarines.com)
be attributed almost totally to intercultural misunderstanding.”38 This is also supported
by Bruce Allnutt, a former Marine, who published a critical study on Marine Combined Action Capabilities as soon as 1969. In his evaluation, Allnutt makes some recommendations specific to the "softer" areas of civic action, psychological operations, and general institution- and nation-building. One of the big problems facing the success of all these factors was communication. Usually, only one or two Marines knew the Vietnamese language, but often insufficient to prevent disputes. As Alnutt says, “the frequency with which major problems grow out of trivial disputes which an interpreter
could solve in minutes emphasizes the importance of communication as a basic skill.”39
The problems facing Combined Action regarding its effectiveness can even be put inside a larger scholarly framework of doubt about the distinction between pacification and attrition. Some voices argue that the Marine Corps essentially did the same thing as the U.S. Army. One of the most important sources to be considered in this regard is, again, The Village by Bing West. By emphasizing the cruel night patrols, West’s narrative
can also be seen as a prominent argument against effective counterinsurgency.40 This is
chiefly supported by Marine Corps University scholar Nicholas Schlosser, who wrote a reassessment of the Marine Corps approach in Vietnam in 2014. In his article, he argues that the differences between the Marine Corps approach and the Army are exaggerated. The Marine approach did not differ substantially from Westmoreland’s approach “and was no more likely a means of achieving victory within the limitations stipulated by the
Johnson administration.”41 By using the recent declassification of notes from Marine
General Wallace M. Greene, Schlosser argues that Greene’s conception of the threat in Southeast Asia “advocated a total war.”42 The primary difference was not between
pacification and search-and-destroy or between counterinsurgency and attrition, but between whether the communist forces were to be destroyed in the highlands (as
advocated by Westmoreland) or near the coasts (as advocated by the Marine Corps).43
38 Edward Palm, ‘Tiger Papa Three: A Memoir of the Combined Action Program, Part I.’, Marine Corps
Gazette (Jan. 1988) 34-43.
39 Bruce Allnutt, ‘Marine Combined Action Capabilities: The Vietnam Experience’, Office of Naval Research
(1969) 74.
40 In the first few pages West clearly states that the hellish experience was exceptional. Only a minor
percentage of the entire number of marines active in the Combined Action Program engaged in combat on a daily basis.
41 Nicholas Schlosser, ‘Reassessing the Marine Corps’ Approach to Strategy in the Vietnam War, 1965–
1968’, International Bibliography of Military History, Vol. 34 (2014) 29.
42 Ibid, 33. 43 Ibid, 50.
Although Schlosser indeed makes a credible claim, he confines himself by looking at the evolution of Marine strategy from a single perspective – that of Greene’s. By making his claim, Schlosser entirely missed Keith Bickel, who argued that the Marine Corps doctrine in Vietnam – although it openly borrowed from Army and vice versa – was formulated different than the Army doctrine. I will elaborate this point in more detail in chapter two, but it is essential here to know that the Marine Corps predominantly used the “ink spot-principle” of secured enclaves as its guiding method, rather than the “kill anything that moves” implementation of the U.S. Army. Furthermore – as also Bickel argues – the final implementation of Marine strategy was certainly not up to Greene himself. As the origins of the Combined Action Program point out, the Marine Corps strategy was foremost the fruition of individual opinions and perspectives.44
Other means to the desired end
Besides the implementation of pacification, the Marine Corps also engaged in several other – sometimes highly effective – counterinsurgency efforts. This is supported by historian Raphael S. Cohen, who got his dissertation “Beyond Hearts and Minds” published in the Journal Of Strategic Studies in 2014. In his article, Cohen questions the importance of the population’s “hearts and minds.” Taking examples from various counterinsurgency operations in the twentieth century, Cohen argues that military victory was often not a result of economic and social reforms, but from effective “population control.” This concept admittedly shares the “hearts and minds” focus on the population and on starving the insurgency, but instead emphasizes coercion, rather than winning popular support.
Analyzing the Marine Corps official history, we can see that the Marine Corps was aware of this idea and employed it through a combination of three sets of different tactics. Either physical measures (walls, resource controls and forced resettlement), cooption (of local elite and often the insurgents themselves) and “divide and rule” strategies.45
44 Michael Hennessy, Strategy in Vietnam (1997) 72. As also historian Michael Hennessy argues, it was a
“hybrid approach balancing a range of different types of missions.”
In some cases, the Marine Corps used a combination of various counterinsurgency methods. One of these efforts became known as the “COUNTY FAIR” technique, a concept that evolved from the experiences from several units with cordon
and search operations. An entire Marine company would surround a village or hamlet
while another would then search it for Viet Cong insurgents. This combination of pacification and offensive action was done with great caution and harvested mixed results. When small or medium sized hamlets were searched, the village chiefs checked identity cards and simultaneously provided food and medical care by a Navy corpsman. Yet , this method was also inherently flawed. When the Marines had more than 1,000 people to check, they had neither the time or the personnel to properly screen everybody.46
Another way of preventing the Viet Cong gaining a foothold on the local population was by denying them vital supplies to survive. These tactics were rooted in a more “traditional” kind of counterinsurgency, since these were based on earlier
experiences in Central America.47 As most insurgent forces were permanently on the
move and therefore had to live off the land, they regularly claimed taxes and parts of harvests to keep themselves alive. During operation GOLDEN FLEECE in September 1965, Marine forces were employed for the protection of the autumn rice harvest. By securing and assisting Vietnamese farmers with the distribution of their harvests, Lieutenant Clement (the same officer who was part of the early Combined Action
Program) declared that over half a million pounds of rice “was denied the VC.”48 He
claimed that the operation was both a psychological and an economic success.
The Army interferes
Whereas the first ten months of Marine intervention were primarily characterized by an anticipation to a guerilla threat, the following year, 1966 would be different. Since III MAF was active in the most northern provinces of South Vietnam, the Marine Corps had to address a varied threat. The area of I Corps was prone to both regular infiltrations of the Viet Cong from the countryside as well as large scale battles initiated by the North Vietnamese Army (NVA). Addressing this threat, the Marine focus on counter guerilla operations, although largely considered successful, were however conflicting with the perspectives of Army Generals on the conduct of the war. As soon as November 1965,
46 Ibid, 142.
47 Krepinevich, The Army (1988) 174.
Army general William E. Depuy, reported to commander William Westmoreland disturbingly that “all but a tiny part of the I Corps area is under the control of the VC.”49
Subsequently, Westmoreland accepted the Marine Corps concern about pacification, but he wanted them to experiment with lighter battalions and new tactics to also engage the enemy’s main force units.
This concern eventually grew into one of the largest search-and-destroy operations of 1966, called Double Eagle. As a complementary mission to the Army-led operation Masher, Double Eagle served as the largest search and destroy mission conducted by the Marine Corps and included the biggest amphibious assault in the Vietnam war upon until that moment. But, although it was carefully planned, the mission was forewarned and was therefore not effective in its conduct. Killing over three hundred enemy soldiers, the operation placed a heavy strain on the remaining units in I Corps who could therefore not secure their bases. Furthermore, as Marine General Krulak stated: “[the operation] taught the people in the area that the Marines would come in, comb the area and disappear; whereupon the VC would resurface and resume
control.”50 Krulak therefore concluded that “the lessons of the Double Eagle operations
were largely negative.”51
The interference of MACV into Marine operations eventually formed what came to be known as the “balanced approach.” At two high level conferences in Honolulu in February 1966, delegates of the government of South Vietnam together with President Johnson, predominantly placed the emphasis of the Marine intervention on the conduct of pacification. Yet actions to thwart the enemy main force, the Army approach, were also considered key in winning the war. To the dismay of Marine Generals Krulak and Walt, the conference subsequently led to a stronger hand of Westmoreland in Marine Corps operations and strategy.52 Smaller battalions should conduct search-and-destroy
missions and clearing operations against both local Vietcong and also more distant enemy locations. As scholar Michael Hennessy argues, although the primary Marine focus remained based on the securitization and pacification of local enclaves, the
49 Jack Shulimson, U.S. Marines in Vietnam, An Expanding War 1966 (1982) 13. 50 Shulimson, U.S. Marines 1966 (1982) 36.
51 As cited in: Jack Shulimson, U.S. Marines in Vietnam, An Expanding War 1966 (1982) 34.
52Although general Westmoreland was also higher in rank, his influence in marine matters was largely due
to his high demand of manpower. By the end of 1966, US forces would increase from 184.000 to over 400.000 active service men, doubling the size of combat battalions. Since Westmoreland requested those troops, his opinion was often decisive.
Marines were “prodded to fight the war of attrition.”53 Even more illustrative of this
interference, was the implementation of project Dye Marker in September 1967. The vision of US Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara called for the construction of a barrier along the demilitarized zone, employing minefields, sensors, and barbed wire to reduce infiltration from North Vietnam. Marines and Navy Seabees (Naval Construction Forces) provided the manpower to strip a 600-meter wide “belt” for eleven kilometers of vegetation. After taking too many numbers of casualties in its process, the project would be abandoned after the investment of 757,520 man-days and 114,519 equipment-hours. Westmoreland felt that “to have gone through with constructing the barrier, even in
modified form that I proposed, would have been to invite enormous casualties.”54
Pacification, attrition, or both?
Although both Marine Generals Victor Krulak and Lewis Walt were dismissive of Westmoreland’s attempts to pursue the suggested search-and-destroy missions rather than pacification efforts, Combined Action would remain a vital part of the Marine approach to Vietnamese villages and hamlets. And as the Vietnamese conflict dragged on, the promising results of pacification were recognized by the U.S. Army, but only years later. The “Program for the Pacification and Long-Term Development of Vietnam” (also known as “PROVN”) study done by Army Chief of Staff General Harold K. Johnson was published as soon as march 1966, yet prominently ignored by Westmoreland and DePuy. Studying the history of Vietnam and interviewing U.S. Army officers about their experiences while in country, the PROVN study criticized the Army strategy of attrition and concluded that village and hamlet security must be achieved by means of effective “saturation tactics in and around populated areas.”55 However, little was done to
implement these recommendations until in 1969, general Creighton Adams took over the command of MACV in South Vietnam.
The question whether the outcome of the Vietnam war would have been different if the Army would have changed its strategy remained unanswered. Yet there is a broad consensus that this would have been highly unlikely. A viable counterinsurgency program in Vietnam would have needed a clear coordinated chain of command,
53 Michael Hennessy, Strategy in Vietnam (1997) 78.
54 John Prados, Vietnam, The History of an Unwinnable War (2009) 190. 55 Anthony James Joes, Why South Vietnam Fell (2014) 34.
attainable goals and organization, in-depth knowledge of the Vietnamese language and culture, and most of all, well trained Marines to do the job. Both former CAP Marine Edward Palm and scholar Michael Peterson (who published a first academic examination of Combined Action in 1989) do not believe that the program was the solution to the war in Vietnam, primarily because of culture. “The CAP program was constrained by its size, resources and attitudes among the Marines who were, after all, products of the same
culture as their detractor, William Westmoreland.”56 The argument I
have made in this chapter is that the Marine Corps conducted a different military strategy in Vietnam than the U.S. Army. Although this may be hard to argue, since the Marine Corps also fought the North Vietnamese Army near the Demilitarized Zone, their focus on counter guerilla warfare was different than the U.S. Army. This was primarily the result of the conviction of general Walt that pacification should be the basis of the Marine Corps strategy, which was subsequently implemented via the “enclave-based” security effort. Tactical Areas of Responsibility (TAOR’s) were the Marine Corps main
concern, instead of large sweeps and search-and-destroy missions.57 Combined Action,
was, arguably, the biggest achievement. Historian Michael Peterson illustratively points out this difference in his publication The Combined Action Platoons (1989). “The CAP Marines waged war in the hamlets; the main force Army and Marine units all too often
waged war on the hamlets.”58
56 Peterson, The Combined Action Platoons (1989) 123.
57 Jeremy G. Swenddal, General Lewis Walt: Operational Art in Vietnam 1965-1967 (2015) 65. ‘The USMC
conducted countless patrol and small unit operations within their TAOR’s.’
Chapter II: The Small Wars Manual and Military Doctrine
Small wars are operations undertaken under executive authority, wherein military force is combined with diplomatic pressure in the internal or external affairs of another state whose government is unstable, inadequate, or unsatisfactory for the preservation of life and of such interests as are determined by the foreign policy of our Nation. Small Wars Manual, 1940
As a catch-all term for unconventional and guerilla warfare, “small wars” was first coined in 1916 in the Marine Corps Gazette, when the United States was conducting various operations in Central America. These so-called “Banana wars,” fought in Cuba, Nicaragua, Haiti, Honduras, Panama and the Dominican Republic, were however not conventional “Clausewitzian” wars. For the Marine Corps, most operations in Nicaragua consisted out
of various occupations and police actions. The
accumulation of experience with small wars operations eventually led to a landmark
publication: the Small Wars Manual in 1940.59 This manual for internal Marine training is
nowadays still regarded by scholars as an important publication on the conduct of early counterinsurgency warfare. But how relevant was this publication for the shaping of the formal Marine Corps doctrine in the 1960’s, prior to the Vietnam war? In this chapter, I will give an assessment of various principles derived from the Small Wars Manual in the
59 Allen S. Ford, ‘The Small Wars Manual and Marine Corps Military Operations other Than War Doctrine’
light of Marine Corps formal doctrine on counterinsurgency in the early 1960’s.60 For the
sake of confining my research, I will regard the field manual Operations Against Guerilla
Forces, (also known as FMFM-21) published on 14 august 1962, as the most recent
Marine Corps doctrine prior to the landing in Danang in 1965.61 Although the
Marine Corps doctrine developed itself separate from the pre-Vietnam U.S. Army doctrine – and should therefore also be studied as such, it is necessary to illustrate the evolution of U.S. Army doctrine on “irregular operations” to give a clear sense of how military doctrine was established and how the U.S. Army doctrine was, unlike the Marine Corps doctrine, rigid and adamant in its essence.
The Army “irregular warfare” doctrine
Historian Andrew J. Birtle, who wrote a two study volume on U.S. Army counterinsurgency doctrine and operations in 1997, carefully examined the development of Army irregular warfare doctrine and argues that the U.S. Army doctrine had its roots in World War II.62 The protagonist in Birtle’s narrative, Russell Volckmann,
who successfully organized a large guerilla force in fighting the Japanese in the Philippines during the war, was subsequently asked by the U.S. Army to write a first pair of manuals on counter guerilla operations in the late 1940’s. In February 1951, the Army formally published his work as field manual 31-20, titled Operations Against Guerilla
Forces.63
Volckmann decided to focus the manual on two types of situations. The first was conflicts conducted by “irregular forces,” supported by an external power to bring change in the sociopolitical order of a country without engaging in a formal, declared war. The second was operations conducted by irregulars in conjunction with regular forces as part of a conventional war, as had been practiced by the Soviet Union in World War II. Operations Against Guerilla Forces, in its essence, thus relied heavily on military power. Although Volckmann acknowledged the importance of politics in guerilla warfare, the manual refrained from prescribing a set political program for the conduct of counter
60 Austin Long, ‘Doctrine of Eternal Recurrence, The US Military and Counterinsurgency Doctrine
1960-1970 and 2003-2006’ (2016) 18.
61 For my examination, I have used a version, that was revised twice by Lt.Gen Leonard F. Chapman Jr,. The
first revised version was published on the 18th of September in 1963 and the second revised edition was
published on the 8th of June, 1964. The first edition of these field manuals predominantly replaced the
former Small Wars Manual, as Marine Corps doctrine.
62 Andrew J. Birtle, US Army Counterinsurgency and Contingency Operations Doctrine 1942-1972 (2013)
135.
guerilla warfare. The manual confined its suggestions to general themes that had guided past American occupations and only encouraged commanders to foster trust and goodwill between the Army and the local population by restoring law, order and socioeconomic stability.64 Volckmann maintained that intelligence, propaganda and,
above all, military force were equally necessary for counter guerilla operations.
Surprisingly, this doctrine did not seem to have changed at the dawn of the 1960’s. Just four months after Kennedy took office, the Army again published a newly revised version of the field manual, FM 31-15. This edition added a variety of intelligence, psychological warfare, civic action and police measures aimed at separating the guerillas from the local population. But it offered no solutions to the corrosive effects of conflicting emotions of soldiers in active service on counter guerilla missions, or the inherent tension between fighting and nation-building. The FM 31-15 did therefore not differ much from the previous edition which Volckmann wrote a decade earlier. Even the publication of its successor, FM 31-16 in 1963 titled Counterguerilla Operations, did not bring about a more profound definition of counter guerilla warfare.65 Although the
emphasis relied on a renewed application of armor and artillery in combat tactics, it prominently pointed out that counter guerilla warfare was basically a “contest of
imagination, ingenuity, and improvisation by the opposing commanders.”66 The Army’s
response to the threat of a Vietnamese insurgency thus remained firmly rooted in the past.
The Marine Corps and the Small Wars Manual
To give a sense of how the Marine Corps doctrine was established in the pre-World War II period, I will now turn to the development of the Small Wars Manual. The origins of the 1940 edition lay in the Marine Schools in Quantico, Virginia. The lengthy conflict in Nicaragua (1912-1933) motivated many Marine officers in the 1920’s and 1930’s to submit their combat experiences for their own journal, the Marine Corps Gazette. As soon as 1921, Samuel M. Harrington, a Marine School instructor, issued “The Strategy and Tactics of Small Wars,” as one of the first landmark articles on small unit intervention. The small wars doctrine was later kick started by Major Harold H. Utley, one of the officers who experienced combat first hand in Nicaragua, when he published
64 Ibid, 141.
65 Birtle, US Army Counterinsurgency (2013) 211. 66 Ibid, location 4520.
the article “Tactics and techniques of Small Wars” in the Marine Corps Gazette in 1931.67
Arguing that “few real studies have been made of small wars” when the Marine Corps
was meanwhile engaged in multiple small conflicts in Central America, was alarming.68
The task of writing a manual for small wars fell directly upon the chief of the newly created “Small War Section,” Major Henry L. Larsen.69 In the early 1930’s, Utley’s article
went through a number of iterations and the first edition of Small Wars Operations, was published in 1935.
Yet the publication, mostly meant for training purposes in the Marine Schools, was extremely detailed and extensive. It comprised 32 chapters and over nine hundred pages of text. After another revision, the enduring result of these efforts became the 1940 Small Wars Manual. This edition reflected the research Utley and Harrington and notably included direct quotations of the British Colonel Charles E. Callwell from his
experiences with British colonial rule in India.70 The manual, counting fifteen chapters
and over five-hundred pages – massive, but still smaller than the 1935 edition – is both a primer on small wars and a how-to-fight manual. Each topic has a short summary that explains the background to the political, economical and social influences. The chapters envision a great variety of recommendations on almost every single aspect of conducting
a small war; from weaponization and clothing to nomenclature and even grooming.71
The most important message the Small Wars Manual elaborated is that the emphasis of any intervention in an environment other than conventional war, should be focused on the strategic and psychological principles regarding the local population – also referred to as “winning the hearts and minds.” The Small Wars Manual regarded the fundamental cause of the problem as coming from political, economic, and social disparities. In small wars, the military effort thus should merely be a part of the overall political effort.
Most important is that the insurgents must be isolated from their base of support – the people. But not through coercion or intimidation. The military strategy should be shaped on justice and 67 Keith Kopets, “Why Small Wars Theory Still Matters: The Extension of the Principles on Irregular
Warfare and Non-Traditional Missions of the Small Wars Manual to the Contemporary Battlespace”, Small
Wars Journal (September 30th, 2006) 10.
68 Harold H. Utley, ‘An Introduction to the Tactics and Techniques of Small Wars’, Marine Corps Gazette,
(May 1931).
69 Richard McMonagle, The Small Wars Manual and Military Operations Other Than War (1996) 65. 70 Charles E. Callwell, Small Wars – Their Principles and Practice (1896).
humanity. To implement a base of justice, the first key to successfully support the local population is the buildup of a local, indigenous police force. During the campaign in Panama, the Marines found that “the early training of competent police forces for the larger cities is one of the most effective methods to strengthen the local government and secure the good will of the better class of inhabitants.”72 Officer training comprises
special attention in this regard, since this provides the manpower to conduct free elections. The Small Wars Manual goes as far as formulating specific requirements for recruits: “They [Marines] should have sufficient scholastic qualifications to insure their
ability to absorb the military instruction.”73 A second key feature as proclaimed in
the Small Wars Manual focuses on the civil behavior of the implemented force. It is seldom achieved that a “crushing defeat” could be inflicted upon insurgency forces during the initial phases of intervention. The “enemy” – the insurgents – will, after a first defeat, “withdraw as a body into the more remote parts of the country, or will be
dispersed into numerous small groups which continue to oppose the occupation.”74 A
noticeable side note is that during small wars, caution must thus be exercised when applying force: “Instead of striving to generate the maximum power with forces available, the goal is to gain decisive results with the least application of force and the consequent minimum loss of life.”75 Since the main objective (i.e. psychological principle)
of the Small Wars Manual is to promote a genuine, symbiotic relationship with the local
population, “tolerance, sympathy, and kindness should be the keynote.”76 Mistakes may
have the most far-reaching effect and it may require a long period to reestablish
confidence, respect, and order. A third vital feature of
conducting small wars focuses on the maneuverability of the intervening force. In establishing peace and order, maintaining constant pressure on insurgents through small mobile patrols, is key in countering the insurgents. The rapid pacification of the nation will be jeopardized when hostile groups will “molest” the peaceful citizenry through the looting of villages.77 Infantry patrols of the intervening force must therefore
develop mobility equal to that of the opposing forces. The guerrilla groups must be continually harassed by patrols working throughout the theater of operation.
72 Small Wars Manual (1940) 12-20, 18. 73 Ibid.
74 Ibid, 6-1, 1. 75 Ibid, 6-1, 2. 76 Ibid, 1-17, 32. 77 Ibid.
This third feature simultaneously holds a remarkable ambiguity that renders an inherent tension in the Small Wars Manual. While the small wars doctrine preaches an offensive attitude regarding the insurgency, the nature of the envisioned guerilla war generally places the United States in a strategically defensive position: the military strategy of the campaign and the tactics employed by the commander in the field must be adapted to the situation in order to accomplish the mission without delay. “[The] tactical operations […] against guerillas in small wars are habitually offensive.”78 This conflicting guidance is also
present in the chapter on “small war tactics” regarding the emphasis of firepower and armament. In the “principle of the offensive,” the Small Wars Manual elaborates common military psychology in a small war as one of military might and strength. The enemy’s superiority in numbers should be overcome by increased firepower through the proper employment of better armament, superior training and morale, and development of the
spirit of the offensive.79 An aggressive attitude is thereby key in order to “seek out,
capture, destroy, or disperse the hostile groups and drive them from the country.”80
A sound set of features
Although the Small Wars Manual thus proclaims a fragile balance between civil behavior and aggressive offensive operations, historians and political scientists have credited the 1940 edition for its relevance for twentieth century counterinsurgency operations and even current day implementations. When analyzing some of the consensus regarding the
Small Wars Manual, this credit indeed seems justifiable. The Small Wars Manual was, in
its own time, remarkably prescient regarding the nature of emerging revolutionary warfare as it placed the political mission ahead of the use of military means. Ideas and grievances were seen as the most ardent causes of small wars and simultaneously key in countering them. Marine thinkers thus gave special consideration to the underlying sociopolitical grievances and put the local population first in its doctrine: “[It] is usually
a project dealing with the social, economic, and political development of the people.”81
According to historian and former Marine Wray Johnson, who studied these principles and published Vietnam and American Doctrine for Small Wars in 2001, this
78 Small Wars Manual (1940) 1-17, 32. 79 Ibid, 6-3, 2.
80 Ibid, 6-4, 2. 81 Ibid, I-9-15, I-9-16.
was a remarkable statement for an American military organization, because of the emphasis on non-military solutions to what had hitherto been viewed as exclusively a
military problem.82 The cornerstone of the small wars doctrine, according to Johnson, is
the section on psychological warfare and propaganda. “The campaign plan and strategy must be adapted to the character of the people encountered. National policy and the precepts of civilized procedure demand that our dealings with other peoples be
maintained on a high-moral plan.”83 This citation hints at one of the key concepts of
modern counterinsurgency. A present-day expert on counterinsurgency warfare, Australian scholar and special advisor for the American military during both missions in Afghanistan and Iraq, David Kilcullen underscores these issues. When Kilcullen in 2006 gave a speech at the Counterinsurgency Conference in Washington D.C. titled Three
Pillars of Counterinsurgency, he argued that the counterinsurgent’s legitimacy and
operational effectiveness are the result of security, economy and politics (his three pillars). Kilcullen’s central – political – pillar is given special emphasis, since it “focuses
on mobilizing support.”84 Kilcullen addresses the scope of a viable counterinsurgency
strategy by stating that “marginalizing and out-competing a range of challengers, to achieve control over the overall socio-political space in which the conflict occurs, is the
true aim.”85 Given that the Small Wars Manual proclaimed the same center of gravity in
the 1960’s, the small wars doctrine suggested several progressive concepts of counterinsurgency.
The Marine Corps doctrine in the 1960’s
While the influence of the Small Wars Manual seems to have persisted throughout the 1940’s and also the 1950’s, the Marine Corps doctrine on small wars went through an interesting set of twists in the late 1950’s and early 1960’s. The Marine manual
Operations Against Guerilla Forces published in 1962 officially superseded the Small Wars Manual, but bore little resemblance with the then 20-year old Marine Corps
doctrine. As the new field manual outlined the origins, objectives and characteristics of “guerilla warfare,” it was clear that the concept of “small wars” had faded and that “guerilla” became the dominant concept in the 1960’s. A key difference with the Small
82 Wray Johnson, Vietnam and American doctrine for Small Wars (2001) 21. 83 Ibid, 1-8, 13.
84 David Kilcullen, ‘Three Pillars of Counterinsurgency’, Speech delivered at the U.S. Government
Counterinsurgency Conference, Washington D.C. (September 28th, 2006) 5. 85 Ibid.
Wars Manual is the shifting of attention from the local population to addressing the
guerilla as the “enemy.” The promulgated objectives of counter guerilla warfare are
foremost based on the “imagination, ingenuity and improvision of the commanders.”86
Every operation should be “…contributing to the defeat of the enemy.”87 This included
denying the enemy outside support, harassments, combat and elimination. With an emphasis on the use of artillery and airstrikes, the FM-21 thus put the Marine Corps approach on the offensive, making the overall implementation of force easier and less political in its nature.
But why was the Marine Corps doctrine in the early 1960’s so adjustable to U.S. Army desires? Historian Michael Hennessy, who published Strategy in Vietnam: The
Marines and Revolutionary Warfare in I Corps 1965-1972 in 1997, assumes that with the
fading of the small wars doctrine, the Marine Corps “accepted new U.S. Army and
national counterinsurgency doctrine as promulgated in the Internal Defense Policy.”88
Hennessy points out that, as a result of the formulation of the Internal Defense Policy, which expressed the assumption that counterinsurgency programs should not be limited to military measures but should also involve additional dimensions as economic development, police control, and effective local government, the Marine Corps had already accepted many concepts of the Army in the 1950’s and had come to depend on many special assets which only the U.S. Army could provide. This, above all, was probably also the result of budgetary cuts. Between 1957 and 1962, the Marine Corps size shrank from 200.000 active personnel to 30.000. And its annual budget was cut by
four percent several years in a row to a mere $902 million in 1961.89 This suggestion is
also supported by Keith Bickel, who argued that the Army influence was indeed a matter of budget. “[The] small wars doctrine was not a means in securing more resources.
There was not much money to be had waging small wars.”90
In this chapter I have analyzed and compared the 1940 Small Wars Manual with several field manuals of both the Army and the Marine Corps and argued that several small wars “principles,” through their political relevance, could endure well into the 1960’s. As the Marine Corps doctrine was shaped along concepts of hearts and minds – as justice, humanity and civil behavior – the extremely detailed Small Wars Manual,
86 FM-21, Operations Against Guerilla Forces (1964) 44. 87 Ibid, 44-46.
88 Hennessy, Strategy in Vietnam (2001) 17.
89 http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/agency/usmc/history.htm 90 Bickel, Mars Learning (1997) 237.
