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Back to the Street without Joy: Counterinsurgency Lessons from Vietnam and Other Small Wars
Title: Back to the Street without Joy: Counterinsurgency Lessons from Vietnam and Other Small Wars
Date: Summer 2004
Author: Robert M. Cassidy
Bibliographic Entry: Cassidy, Robert. “Back to the Street without Joy: Counterinsurgency Lessons from Vietnam and Other Small Wars.” Parameter. Summer 2004. http://usgcoin.org/library/articles/BacktotheStreetWithoutJoy.pdf (Accessed December 11, 2007)
Electronic Link: http://usgcoin.org/library/articles/BacktotheStreetWithoutJoy.pdf
Key Words: Vietnam, counterinsurgency, insurgency, small war, war paradigms, civil-military
Summary of Key Points, Issues, Conclusions:
Cassidy asserts that the US military has had “a host of successful experiences in counter-guerrilla war, including some ... with certain aspects of the Vietnam War.” However, the residual shadow of Vietnam has prevented the preservation and institutionalization of lessons learned in the jungle. For most of the 20th century, the US military culture (notwithstanding the Marines’ work in small wars) generally embraced the big conventional war paradigm and fundamentally eschewed small wars and insurgencies, viewing these experiences as ephemeral anomalies and aberrations. Thus, this article revisits the “more relevant counterinsurgency lessons” from Vietnam and counterinsurgencies and small wars predating it.
Abram’s unified strategy to clear and hold the countryside by pacifying and securing the population met with much success. Programs to be studied are: Civilian Irregular Defense Groups (CIDG), the Marines’ Combined Action Program (CAP), and Abrams’ PROVN Study-based expansion of the Civil Operations and Revolutionary (later Rural) Development and Support (CORDS). Essentially, rural development allowed military and civilian US Agency for International Development advisers to work with their Vietnamese counterparts at the province and village level to improve local security and develop infrastructure. Identifying and eliminating the Viet Cong infrastructure was a critical part of the new focus on pacification.
Cassidy identifies some of the common lessons from the Banana Wars, from the Philippine Insurrection, and from the Indian War. One of the primary lessons captured in the Small Wars Manual is that while delay in the use of force may be interpreted as weakness, the brutal use of force is not appropriate either. Additionally, the manual urges US forces to employ as many indigenous troops as practical early on to confer proper responsibility on indigenous agencies for restoring law and order and to focus on the social, economic, and political development.
Lessons from the Philippine Insurrection include: avoiding big-unit search and destroy missions because they were counterproductive; maximizing the employment of indigenous scouts and paramilitary forces to increase and sustain decentralized patrolling; mobilizing popular support by focusing on the improvement of schools, hospitals, and infrastructure; and enhancing regime legitimacy by allowing insurgents and former insurgents to organize anti-regime political parties.
Finally, Cassidy identifies a “loose body of principles” from the Indian Wars. These are the importance of close civil-military coordination of the pacification effort, firm, but fair and paternalistic governance, and to reform the economic and educational spheres. Additionally, the army learned the importance of good treatment of prisoners, attention to grievances, and the avoidance of killing women and children.
Name of Researcher: Katie Stout
Institution: Integrative Center for Homeland Security, Texas A&M University
Date Posted: December 14, 2007