Learning to Eat Soup with a Knife : Counterinsurgency Lessons from Malaya and Vietnam

Learning to Eat Soup with a Knife : Counterinsurgency Lessons from Malaya and Vietnam Lt. Col. John A. Nagl Date: 15 September, 2005   —   $11.56   —   Book product page Rating:

Col. Nagl's book explores the way the US and British armed forces learned counterinsurgency lessons in Malaya and Vietnam. At first, I though it was a bit too scholarly because Nagl approaches the subject through organizational theories designed for evaluating how businesses and bureaucracies learn, but by the end of the first chapter he had me hooked. Even through a few dull spots, the subject was compelling and timely enough to keep me turning pages.

I guess it's no surprise to anyone that the British Army turns out to be the organization that adapted itself to fighting and beating an insurgency, while the US -- despite British advice and innovation from the lower ranks -- just couldn't do it. Nagl explains why.

US military strategy is focused solely on winning massive WWII-style battles. It's designed to mass heavy firepower at a weak point in the enemy's lines and drive on to victory. This is coupled with the pragmatic dogma of sending a bullet (or a bomb) into harm's way rather than a man.

Neither of those deeply entrenched war fighting doctrines is relevant to counterinsurgency. In counterinsurgency operations like Vietnam and now Iraq, the enemy knows he can't stand up to US firepower, so he doesn't mass together to be conveniently eliminated by long range artillery and air strikes. And the practice of bombing small groups of insurgents in civilian areas where innocents are sure to be killed is also counterproductive to the goal of winning hearts and minds as we just saw in Pakistan.

Unfortunately, the US military is reluctant to change the way it fights wars, preferring to focus on the next big threat, like China or a resurgent evil Russian empire. Referring to the use of ineffective "big war" tactics to fight the guerilla war in Vietnam, one senior US officer explained clearly,

"I'll be damned if I permit the United States Army, its institutions, its doctrine, and its traditions to be destroyed just to win this lousy war."

Even when Gen. Westmoreland was replaced by Gen. Abrams who understood US forces needed to change strategies and tactics in order to win, he was powerless to change the system.

...although aware of his subordinates' failure to change their operations in accordance with his directives, he was unwilling to ruin their careers for neglecting his orders and unsure that their replacements would be any more willing to fight the war in a manner antithetical to everything they had been taught was how wars should be fought.

The term "hidebound" comes to mind.

Insurgencies in their current form have been around for more than fifty years now and the methods, strategies, and tactics for defeating them are well known. The reason the US military in Iraq is having the same problems they had in Vietnam stems from the way our military is trained and run. Special Operations and civil affairs -- the forces needed to fight and win "small wars" -- are not encouraged as career paths in our Army.

This phenomenon is well covered by Thomas P.M. Barnett and Col. Thomas X. Hammes in their books as well. All three analysts offer the same solutions: expand our counterinsurgency and civil affairs forces, train for counterinsurgency, require counterinsurgency studies, and promote incentives and rewards for soldiers on civil affairs and counterinsurgency career paths. In other words, stop focusing solely on the big wars we'll never fight, and start training to win the small wars we're fighting right now.

After Col. Nagl wrote the first edition of this book, he served a term in Iraq. His preface for this edition relates his experiences there with what he wrote, and it's interesting to see what he has to say after actually experiencing an Army deployment against an insurgency. I recommend this book to anyone finding out why our armed forces have so much trouble with insurgencies.