Tag Vietnam

Military Effectiveness and Cheese-Eating Surrender Monkeys

The International Security Studies Forum (ISSF) has posted a roundtable review on H-Diplo of Jasen J. Castillo’s Endurance and War: The National Sources of Military Cohesion (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2014). As the introduction by Alexander B. Downes of The George Washington University lays out, there is a considerable political science literature that addresses the question of military effectiveness, or why some militaries are more effective combatants than others. Castillo focused on why some armies fight hard, even when faced with heavy casualties and the prospect of defeat, and why some become ineffective or simply collapse. The example most often cited in this context – as Downes and Castillo do – is the French Army. Why were the French routed so quickly in 1940 when they had fought so much harder and incurred far higher casualties in 1914? (Is this characterization of the French entirely fair? I’ll take a look at that question below.)

According to Downes, for his analysis, Castillo defined military cohesion as staying power and battlefield performance. He identified two factors that were primary in determining military cohesion: the persuasiveness of a regime’s ideology and coercive powers and the military’s ability to train its troops free from political interference. From this, Castillo drew two conclusions, one counterintuitive, the other in line with prevailing professional military thought.

  • “First, regimes that exert high levels of control over society—through a combination of an ideology that demands ‘unconditional loyalty’ (such as nationalism, communism, or fascism) and the power to compel recalcitrant individuals to conform—will field militaries with greater staying power than states with low levels of societal control.”
  • “Second, states that provide their military establishments with the autonomy necessary to engage in rigorous and realistic training will generate armies that fight in a determined yet flexible fashion.”

Based on his analysis, Castillo defines four military archetypes:

  • “Messianic militaries are the most fearsome of the lot. Produced by countries with high levels of regime control that give their militaries the autonomy to train, such as Nazi Germany, messianic militaries possess great staying power and superior battlefield performance.”
  • “Authoritarian militaries are also generated by nations with strong regime control over society, but are a notch below their messianic cousins because the regime systematically interferes in the military’s affairs. These militaries have strong staying power but are less nimble on the battlefield. The Red Army under Joseph Stalin is a good example.”
  • “Countries with low regime control but high military autonomy produce professional militaries. These militaries—such as the U.S. military in Vietnam—perform well in battle but gradually lose the will to fight as victory recedes into the distance.”
  • “Apathetic militaries, finally, are characteristic of states with both low regime control and low military autonomy, like France in 1940. These militaries fall apart quickly when faced with adversity.”

The discussion panel – Brendan Rittenhouse Green, (University of Cincinnati); Phil Haun (Yale University); Austin Long (Columbia University); and Caitlin Talmadge (The George Washington University) – reviewed Castillo’s work favorably. Their discussion and Castillo’s response are well worth the time to read.

Now, to the matter of France’s alleged “apathetic military.” The performance of the French Army in 1940 has earned the country the infamous reputation of being “cheese eating surrender monkeys.” Is this really fair? Well, if measured in terms of France’s perseverance in post-World War II counterinsurgency conflicts, the answer is most definitely no.

As detailed in Chris Lawrence’s book America’s Modern Wars, TDI looked at the relationship between national cost of foreign interventions and the outcome of insurgencies. One method used to measure national burden was the willingness of intervening states to sustain casualties. TDI found a strong correlation between high levels of casualties to intervening states and the failure of counterinsurgency efforts.

Among the cases in TDI’s database of post-World War II insurgencies, interventions, and peace-keeping operations, the French were the most willing, by far, to sustain the burden of casualties waging counterinsurgencies. In all but one of 17 years of continuous post-World War II conflict in Indochina and Algeria, democratic France’s apathetic military lost from 1 to 8 soldiers killed per 100,000 of its population.

In comparison, the U.S. suffered a similar casualty burden in Vietnam for only five years, incurring losses of 1.99 to 7.07 killed per 100,000 population between 1966 and 1970, which led to “Vietnamization” and withdrawal by 1973. The United Kingdom was even more sensitive to casualties. It waged multiple post-World War II insurgencies. Two that it won, in Malaya and Northern Ireland, produced casualty burdens of 0.09 British killed per 100,000 during its 13 years; Northern Ireland (1968–1998) never got above 0.19 British soldiers killed per 100,000 during its 31 years and for 20 of those years was below 0.025 per 100,000. The British also lost several counterinsurgencies with far lower casualty burdens than those of the French. Of those, the bloodiest was Palestine, where British losses peaked at 0.28 killed per 100,000 in 1948, which is also the year they withdrew.

Of the allegedly fearsome “authoritarian militaries,” only Portugal rivaled the staying power of the French. Portugal’s dictatorial Estado Novo government waged three losing counterinsurgencies in Africa over 14 years, suffering from 1 to 3.5 soldiers killed per 100,000 for 14 years, and between 2.5 and 3.5 killed per 100,000 in nine of those years. The failure of these wars also contributed to the overthrow of Portugal’s dictatorship.

The Soviet Union’s authoritarian military had a casualty burden between 0.22 and 0.75 soldiers killed per 100,000 in Afghanistan from 1980 through 1988. It withdrew after losing 14,571 dead (the U.S. suffered 58,000 killed in Vietnam) and the conflict is often cited as a factor in the collapse of the Soviet government in 1989.

Castillo’s analysis and analytical framework, which I have not yet read, appears intriguing and has received critical praise. Like much analysis of military history, however, it seems to explain the exceptions — the brilliant victories and unexpected defeats — rather than the far more prevalent cases of indecisive or muddled outcomes.

Saigon, 1965

The American RAND staff and Vietnamese interviewers on the front porch of the villa on Rue Pasteur. Courtesy of Hanh Easterbrook. [Revisionist History]

Although this blog focuses on quantitative historical analysis, it is probably a good idea to consider from time to time that the analysis is being done by human beings. As objective as analysts try to be about the subjects they study, they cannot avoid interpreting what they see through the lenses of their own personal biases, experiences, and perspectives. This is not a bad thing, as each analyst can bring something new to the process and find things that other perhaps cannot.

The U.S. experience in Vietnam offers a number of examples of this. Recently, journalist and writer Malcolm Gladwell presented a podcast exploring an effort by the RAND Corporation initiated in the early 1960s to interview and assess the morale of captured Viet Cong fighters and defectors. His story centers on two RAND analysts, Leon Gouré and Konrad Kellen, and one of their Vietnamese interpreters, Mai Elliott. The podcast traces the origins and history of the project, how Gouré, Kellen, and Elliott brought very different perspectives to their work, and how they developed differing interpretations of the evidence they collected. Despite the relevance of the subject and the influence the research had on decision-making at high levels, the study ended inconclusively and ambivalently for all involved. (Elliott would go on to write an account of RAND’s activities in Southeast Asia and several other books.)

Gladwell presents an interesting human story as well as some insight into the human element of social science analysis. It is a unique take on one aspect of the Vietnam War and definitely worth the time to listen to. The podcast is part of his Revisionist History series.

Can Effective Armies Exist Without Effective Governance? History Suggests No.

ARVN soldiers and U.S. advisor (U.S. Army Center for Military History)
ARVN soldiers and U.S. advisor (U.S. Army Center for Military History)

Is it possible for an outside country to build an effective indigenous military? The United States inter-agency and national security communities have a strong current interest in helping other countries develop and sustain effective security establishments. This is officially termed Security Cooperation (SC). The assistance provided directly by the U.S. military to foreign military organizations is called Security Force Assistance (SFA). SC and SFA are both integral aspects of current U.S. foreign policy and military strategy.

The U.S. has been providing SFA since at least World War II, but its success in this undertaking has been decidedly mixed. A two-decade effort by the U.S. to build an effective South Vietnamese army culminated in abject failure at the hands of North Vietnam in 1975. Despite a decade of investment in money, resources, and manpower, the U.S. has yet to build (or rebuild) independently effective military establishments in Afghanistan and Iraq.

One consistent factor in each of these cases has been the lack of a stable, effective indigenous government to underpin the military forces. How important is effective governance to successful military establishments? History suggests that it may be integral.

On his wonderful blog, The Best Defense, Tom Ricks recently posed the question “Is the existence of a capable infantry a sign of a strong government bureaucracy?” In his recently published The Gunpowder Age: China, Military Innovation, and the Rise of the West in World History, Tonio Andrade cited Stephen Morillo’s observation that “strong infantry depends on strong government” to support that assertion that Europe had poor infantry in the 15th century by Chinese standards because of underdeveloped governments.

According to Ricks, Morillo made six implicit points:

  1. To have an infantry, you have to get people together
  2. To get them together and keep them together, you need a central authority
  3. You also need to feed and house them, and that requires money, likely raised by taxes, which again requires central authority
  4. To raise the taxes and collect them, you need assessors and collectors — that is, a bureaucracy
  5. And that is why a soldier is different from a warrior. A tribe can field a warrior, and a good one. But it takes a state to develop and sustain an infantry soldier.

Historical experience would suggest not only that capable military forces are reflective of effective governance, but that strong governments are necessary in order to field strong military establishments. This fundamental lesson may be vital to the future success of U.S. SC and SFA efforts.

We May Not Be Interested in COIN, but COIN is Interested in Us

Photo By United States Mint, Smithsonian Institution [Public domain or Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons
Photo By United States Mint, Smithsonian Institution [Public domain or Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

Is the United States Army turning its back on the experience it gained in Iraq and Afghanistan? Retired Brigadier General Robert Scales fears so. After recounting his personal experience with the U.S. Army’s neglect of counterinsurgency lessons following the Vietnam War, Scales sees the pattern repeating itself.

The Army as an institution loves the image of the big war: swift maneuver, tanks, heavy artillery, armed helicopters overhead, mounds of logistics support. The nitty-gritty of working with indigenous personnel to common ends, small unit patrols in civilian-infested cities, quick clashes against faceless enemies that fade back into the populace — not so much. Lessons will fade, and those who earned their PhDs in small wars will be passed over and left by the wayside.

U.S. Army War College professor Andrew Hill found the same neglect in the recent report of the National Commission on the Future of the Army, in which any reference to stability operations “is barely discernable.” As Scales put it, “here is the problem with that approach: The ability to win the big one is vital, but so is the ability to win the small wars. We paid a price for forgetting what we learned in Vietnam. I hope succeeding generations do not have to pay again.”

The U.S. government appears to be repeating the pattern insofar as its support for basic research on insurgency and counterinsurgency. During the early years of the Vietnam conflict, the U.S. government invested significant resources to support research and analysis efforts. This led to some very interesting and promising lines of inquiry by organizations such as the Special Operations Research Office, and scholars like Ted Gurr and Ivo and Rosalind Feierabend, among others. However, as Chris Lawrence recently pointed out, this funding was cut by the end of the 1960s, years before the war ended. After, the fruits of this initial research was published in the early 1970s, further research on the subject slowed considerably.

The emergence of insurgencies in Iraq and Afghanistan led to another round of research and analysis funding by the U.S. government in the mid-2000s. This resulted in renewed interest in the foundations built during the 1960s, as well as new analytical work of considerable promise. Despite the fact that these conflicts remain unresolved, this resourcing dried up once more by 2009 and government sponsored basic research has once more ground to a crawl. As Chris has explained, this boom-or-bust approach also carries a cost:

The problem lies in that the government (or at least the parts that I dealt with) sometimes has the attention span of a two-year-old. Not only that, it also has the need for instant gratification, very much like a two-year-old. Practically, what that means is that projects that can answer an immediate question get funding (like the Bosnia and Iraq casualty estimates). Larger research efforts that will produce an answer or a product in two to three years can also get funding. On the other hand, projects that produce a preliminary answer in two to three years and then need several more years of funding to refine, check, correct and develop that work, tend to die. This has happened repeatedly. The analytical community is littered with many clever, well thought out reports that look to be good starts. What is missing is a complete body of analysis on a subject. [America’s Modern Wars, 295]

The ambivalent conduct and outcomes of the recent counterinsurgencies generated hotly contested debates that remain unresolved. This is at least partly due to a lack of a detailed and comprehensive understanding of the phenomenon of insurgency and counterinsurgency. This state of affairs appears to be a matter of choice.