by Robert Tollast
Download The Full Article: Exit Strategies: Iraq and the Republic of South Vietnam
Editor's Note. This essay is an interview with James H. Willbanks with initial commentary added by Robert Tollast. In 1972 James H. Willbanks was one of a handful of American advisers to the South Vietnamese Army at the battle of An Loc, one of the most desperate and fearsome battles of the entire war. A detailed account of this battle, as well as the political and military problems of Vietnamization can be found in his book Abandoning Vietnam: How America left and South Vietnam lost its war.
James Willbanks is now a distinguished historian of the war in South East Asia, and is keen to stress that his expertise does not lie with events in Iraq. Like many observers of events following the 2003 invasion, he couldn't help noticing uncanny similarities, which he mentions in the forward to Abandoning Vietnam. However, as a professional historian he understands the pitfalls of blandly comparing events separated by a gulf of time, distance and culture.
As David Petraeus wrote in the autumn 1986 issue of Parameters,
"We should beware literal application of lessons extracted from Vietnam, or any other past event, to present or future problems without due regard for the specific circumstances that surround those problems."
While being cautious, Petraeus states that there is still much to learn from Vietnam. Looking back at events since 2003, hard lessons have again emerged in the effort to build armies from societies defined by poverty and upheaval. It would seem that many of these issues have re-appeared.
A lot of these problems will be familiar to readers of the SWJ reading list. Corrupt security forces, often with a sectarian or ethnic prejudice, who intimidate the population. Corrupt governance, leaders who are appointed because of their connections and armies too young to cope with logistics capacity, are just some of these difficulties.
Download The Full Article: Exit Strategies: Iraq and the Republic of South Vietnam
Robert Tollast is an English Literature Graduate from Royal Holloway University of London and has published articles for the finance publication AccountingWEB. He became interested in events in Iraq through his late father, who was a Military Intelligence Officer in Iraq with General Sir Maitland Willson's Persia/ Iraq force (Paiforce) in 1942. He is currently learning Arabic and would be interested one day to visit Iraq, although he concedes this is currently quite an eccentric ambition.
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It may be worth recalling that Tra also said that Westmoreland had in effect reached the cross-over point, where the war cost Hanoi more than it could replenish in men and arms, in early 1967. And so Tet 1968 was a desperate move by the Party before Paris. Just before Tet, Westmoreland asked to be allowed to attack the Viet-Cambodia border as he felt PAVN was staging there for Tet. LBJ just called him home and kicked him upstairs a la Bush/Petraeus/Keane screwing of Casey. Imagine if LBJ had given the OK in December 1967!
But later, when Nixon gave his OK to hit Cambodia and Abrams sent in ARVN deep in there for two years and later into Laos to chase PAVN and Khmer Rouges all over Cambodia, Hanoi cheered as now ARVN was dangerously stretched. Tra had said that this American mis-use of ARVN (which Thieu objected to) saved PAVN from defeat as its forces were concentrated and Saigon's were dispersed.
In the end we DID abandon ARVN as we are abandoning the Iraqis. Nixon had to choose whether he would replenish Israeli forces, thus betraying his promise to ARVN in 1973, or face the Israeli threat to nuke Egyptians. Hanoi was well appraised and this played well into Ted Kennedy's efforts to prevent the making of Vietnam another war Dems start and Reps finish, like Korea.
And, the fact is, that we do abandon because we never continue to supply locals at the rate we were when we were trying to create their force IN OUR OWN EXTRAVAGANT IMAGE. ANA is costing us $300,000 per soldier to equip. Can anyone imagine Obama continuing to do that after we leave?
Does anyone think that we'll supply Iraqis the way we supplied ourselves there after we're gone?
The ABANDONMENT begins with Americans training others in the American way and never considering if the logistic line can be kept up after we leave. We failed in Vietnam because, after WE killed Diem, we took it all over, not by imposing polices but just changing any Saigon Government that doesn't accept our "suggestions." As the generals we put in, from Big Minh to Khanh, tried to make terms with Hanoi, using French intermediaries, we replaced them like a revolving door. I'm afraid that what Wikileaks didn't quite grasp is that secret documents are tools with which future history is shaped in advance, not solid facts "documented."
Anyone who kept reading Hanoi's documents after 1975 on the pre-victory period would note that the closer to the end, the more the Soviets supplied PAVN. We DID NOT DO THE SAME WITH ARVN. Ironically, both Viet sides were more honest with themselves on record than we were, are or will ever be in our Pentagon archives (the Pentagon papers and a lot of the current crop of Iraq War "histories" attest to that). "Secret" does not mean "truth" at the Pentagon as self-deception is critical to morale!
When we left, South Vietnam's cities were totally out of Hanoi's hands (75% of population) and the countryside was held by PFs/RFs with a blossoming farming countryside. Everyone knew that Nixon had made a deal with China to stop Hanoi's Westward march as a Soviet proxy through Thailand to India in exchange for turning Cambodia over to its flunky, Pol Pot, and US maintaining no SE Asian bases east of Philippines. China kept its end of the deal with Nixon in 1979 when it crippled Hanoi's Soviet sponsored march westward. In 1975 China even offered Big Ming a free South Vietnam from South of Dala to Camau if he held off surrender for 48 hrs. But "our" man of 1963, Big Minh, wouldn't and surrendered. ARVN was out of gas and out of bullets. Yet, ARVN Command still was certain it could hold out in Mekong Delta forever. So, who lost Vietnam?
I'll go one step further: anyone in close contact with DRV officials knows that Hanoi had lost the war by 1973. Old Henry the snake screwed Saigon by giving PAVN permission to keep bases INSIDE SOUTH VIETNAM. The "rock-solid" American promise to Thieu was that if Hanoi attacks, USAF will pulverize the Haiphong-Hanoi Axis. As he acquiesced to Paris Accord, Thieu said: "I just sold out my country to the Americans" tp Haig. Watergate took care of all that so to this day Kissinger plays the plucked hawk. In fact, the only hero here is China for it did whatever it cost to stop Hanoi's takeover of SE Asia as a Soviet proxy. Since a lot of Vietnamese materials were translated into Arabic and turned up in Iraq post-2003, I think all that made a lot of "our" Iraqis think real hard. Of course, even those "dumb" Iraqis don't tell everything to our "brilliant" American generals.
Robert,
While my comments were more in response to Bob's initial comments, I've just taken the time to read your paper and find that I agree with your conclusions and there there are things that we can learn from previous campaigns so long as we take the time to consider the characteristics of the current campaign before we apply those lessons. Thus, while there is probably not much from Malaya that might apply in Iraq, there is, as you have illustrated, quite a bit from Vietnam. Conversely, there is probably less from Vietnam to apply in Afghanistan which was a limited objective intervention that got a life of its own.
I too hope that Iraq is not abandoned 'mission accomplished' to its fate that it does have the best possible outcome for the fallen and the future...
Simon
Thanks for your feedback on this. I think you are both correct to say that Iraq and Vietnam had a good case for exist more naturally as a unified state, and therefore Iraq, without a false internal boundary, is more "viable," unlike say, Sudan which could not survive its false post colonial division- simply too ethnically and religiously different.
Vietnam on the other hand, did suffer from a degree of ethnic division: Thieu was disdainful of the Montagnard tribes despite U.S efforts to make them a vital part of border security, while the regime favoured Catholicism over the majority Buddhist/ animist people in the South, eventually leading to widespread lack of faith in his policies. South Vietnamese Catholics on the other hand, were often seen as tainted by association with the French. The Catholics in turn, saw the South as a place of refuge from persecuting Communists, which was spurred on by real persecution- and propaganda.
The main danger in terms of similarity (in my view) is the Iraqi government losing legitimacy, potentially fatally undermining the will of its security forces to defend it.
Thieu allowed himself to be seen as the Catholic leader, insensitive to the pain of ancestral worshippers torn from their shrines by the strategic hamlet programme, as their houses burned. It massively boosted the Viet Cong.
Maliki could yet fall if the Sunnis and Kurds decide he is out for his own Shia inner circle.The lack of "false" boundaries in Iraq could become the presence of real ones, god forbid, in Kirkuk for example.
We only have to remember how hard it was for America to stabilise Anbar to think how bad another episode of renewed chaos could be.
Personally, I think Iraq deserves the best outcome- the families of our fallen servicemen and women deserve that too.
All the best,
Robert.
@ Bob "...The big difference that makes Iraq a much more viable go than Vietnam is that we never drew a line east to west across Iraq and allowed the Iraqis north of the line to achieve self-determination free from Western influence; while continuing to maintain western influence over the southern portion..."
Are we concerned with colonial influence or just western 'colonial' influence? Post-1954, it would seem that North Vietnam was probably subject to similar, albeit ideologically-divergent. colonial influence as was the South...
"...Ho and Giap, like Lincoln and Grant, were never going to settle for anything short of restoring the Union and did not recognize the artifical line or the illegitimate western created and sustained government of the South..."
And much the the same in the South, except for a powerful but largely disenfranchised elite; Vietnam as a single nation has a far longer history than Vietnam divided - I guess you could say the the pendulum has zeroed itself on this one. It's just a shame that we didn't 'get' that and fought to sustain division instead of unification...which brings up back to COIN 101, understanding the real issues before we charge on in...
While I am not a historian, here is my take on this.
While both Iraq and Vietnam endured the manipulations of generations of Western Colonial control, to include modern borders drawn by outsiders and designed to address the concerns and interests of those outsiders, Iraq was formed from the historic Mesopotamia, the "land between the rivers." Both modern states encompassed three distinct peoples (Kurds, Shiites and Sunnis in Iraq; Northern, Middle and Southern Kingdoms in Vietnam (plus misc tribal people in both who probably never thought of themselves as being aligned with any particular state).
The big difference that makes Iraq a much more viable go than Vietnam is that we never drew a line east to west across Iraq and allowed the Iraqis north of the line to achieve self-determination free from Western influence; while continuing to maintain western influence over the southern portion. As long as Iraq continues to move toward a governance that respects the equities of the three major groups within a construct that allows them to work and prosper together they should be ok internally. So long as they restore their military power, they will play a critical role in the stability of the region as well.
In Vietnam we engineered a half-answer, and then 10 years later found ourselves drawn into the expanding conflict (as the maoist model insurgency grew up into phase II, with occasional surges into phase III) in attempts to sustain the artificialities of the line we had engineered in the 50s in the name of curbing the expansion of Sino-Soviet influence. The biggest problem for the US in Vietnam was that we put too much faith in the line we had drawn and came to see it as a conflict between two distinct states, and it never really was. Ho and Giap, like Lincoln and Grant, were never going to settle for anything short of restoring the Union and did not recognize the artifical line or the illegitimate western created and sustained government of the South.
In Iraq we have other issues to be sure, but we have none of that which doomed the solution we crafted for South Vietnam. Iraq is a historically proven sustainable entity based upon its current borders. The best thing the US could do to help ensure the continued growth of Iraq as a reqional power would be to get over the blackeye we got next door and rebuild our relations with the people and govenment of Iran. Continuing to stay close to a rising Turkey is also very important; as is creating a bit more distance from the unhealthy relationship we have with the House of Saud.
Bottom line, at this point, it will be what we do around Iraq that helps it develop far more than anything we do within Iraq. But Iraq is indeed not Vietnam; but then again, Vietnam is not what most think it was either.
Cheers,
Bob