[iwar] [fc:Afghanistan.and.the.Lessons.of.Vietnam]

From: Fred Cohen (fc@all.net)
Date: 2001-10-30 17:54:30
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Afghanistan and the Lessons of Vietnam
2100 GMT, 011029

By George Friedman

Summary

As America proceeds with its war in Afghanistan, a number of lessons can be
taken from the U.S. experience in Vietnam. Unfortunately the wrong lessons
could easily be applied. Rather than worry about public opinion,
policymakers must avoid repeating mistakes that occurred a generation ago.

Analysis

A U.S. newspaper article early last week announced in shock that the Taliban
has not yet crumbled despite 20 solid days of bombing. A spokesman for the
Joint Chiefs was forced to concede that not only were the Taliban fighters
tougher than expected but they also actually seemed to be unaware that they
are going to be defeated. Norman Schwarzkopf also went on the air to explain
why the fate of the United States in Afghanistan will be different from the
fate of the Russians.

Behind all of these reactions are distant echoes of Vietnam. There are
echoes of bombing campaigns that were supposed to force the North Vietnamese
to capitulate and recollections about how American generals were certain the
French experience had nothing to teach us. But above all there is the core
idea that Vietnam taught us the American people would not tolerate a long,
drawn-out war with heavy casualties. 

At the root of that notion is a colossal myth, which holds that the American
public turned against the Vietnam War and forced the government and the
military to end it. Although widely accepted as fact, there is almost no
truth to this perception. 

Consider that eight years after the war began, the United States held a
referendum on the conflict in the form of the 1972 presidential election.
There rarely has been a more clearly drawn poll. Richard Nixon defeated
George McGovern in any overwhelming landslide, the largest to that point in
American history. There was no great enthusiasm for the war by then, to be
sure, but Nixon was in a position to launch the Christmas bombing of Hanoi
in December 1972 without any substantial erosion in his popularity. 

Throughout the war, poll after poll consistently showed that the majority of
the public continued to support, if not the conflict, the government's
continued prosecution of it. The anti-war movement was vocal but never came
close to commanding a majority position among the public. The public was
certainly weary of the war by 1968 and wanted a solution, but it never
demanded a precipitous withdrawal.

The myth of the public's repudiation of the war has been nurtured by two
groups, the first being the members of the anti-war movement who tried to
make themselves and their demonstrations appear to be the decisive factor in
the conflict's end. The truth is that the anti-war movement actually helped
build the pro-war coalition, inasmuch as many Americans preferred to be
pro-war rather than be associated with the other side. Nevertheless, the
mythology of the swelling anti-war movement continues to haunt policymakers.

The second set of mythmakers came from the military leadership itself, which
could not accept the fact that the United States was defeated in Vietnam.
They therefore popularized the notion that the war could have been won had
not the anti-war movement both demoralized the troops in the field and
forced political leaders to pander to impose impossible constraints on the
soldiers' ability to fight. 

For the military, the anti-war movement was a convenient way to deflect
criticism about how they managed the conflict. They spoke about how they won
every battle, but they did so without reflecting on the possibility that
they might have been fighting the wrong battles. 

The military did have more of a case than the anti-war movement. The
political constraints imposed on the armed forces were decisive, but these
constraints were present at the start of the war, not just at the end. The
Vietnam War was lost for a host of reasons going back to the beginning. As
we consider the structure of the war in Afghanistan, it is extremely
important at this early moment that we think through the real lessons of
Vietnam.

First, the Vietnam War was conducted in an atmosphere of fear. The deepest
concern of war planners was that China would intervene with support from the
Soviet Union. The experience in Korea just a decade before was that the
Chinese were not going to accept the occupation of North Vietnam to the
Chinese frontier and that they were not going to accept the destruction of
the North Vietnamese regime. 

The United States dreaded the idea of another fight with the People's
Liberation Army in Asia. The U.S. military, as part of founding American
strategy, therefore was not permitted to contemplate an invasion of North
Vietnam or the destruction of the Hanoi government.

Second, the United States wanted the broadest possible coalition to support
the war and thus represented it as a struggle between the free world and
communism. Washington wanted allied military support, or at the very least
political support. Some allies -- South Korea, Australia, Taiwan -- did send
troops, while others provided something between cheerful and sullen backing.
In order to entice the largest number of countries to support the conflict,
the United States contracted its strategic military options to the lowest
common denominator. 

For example, by 1965 it was clear the supply lines between North Vietnam and
the southern battlefields, called the Ho Chi Minh trail, had to be cut. But
the supply lines ran through Laos and Cambodia. This very fact indicated it
was the North Vietnamese who had first violated the sovereignty of these
countries and who therefore has widened the conflict.

The only logical military step was to drive U.S. forces across the Laotian
panhandle in order to cut the supply lines and isolate the North Vietnamese
army in the south. This would have cost the United States allies and might
have triggered a Chinese response. Instead of cutting the artery, the
obsession with coalition-building forced U.S. forces to try to cut off the
capillaries one by one. When the United States finally intervened against
the supply system during the Cambodia incursion in 1969, it was too far
south.

Third, lacking sufficient forces to stabilize the situation on the ground
and political permission to execute a decisive strike against the Ho Chi
Minh trail, the United States decided to carry out a bombing campaign
against targets in the north. The theory was that the North Vietnamese would
recognize their hopeless situation and, fearing losses, abandon the war in
the south and accept defeat. 

The United States failed to understand that the bombings, while painful,
actually strengthened the North Vietnamese regime in two ways. First, the
attacks assisted psychological warfare in the north, rallying the population
in the same way that the American population was rallied after Sept. 11. The
bombing was also seen as a sign of American weakness, a desire to do
something indecisive with low casualties rather than something decisive with
high casualties. When you add in the limitations put on the bombers until
1972 by coalition politics and fear of China, the bombing had no chance of
being effective.

Fourth, no clear explanation was ever provided for why the Americans should
succeed where the French failed. Some highly technical arguments were made,
such as that air mobility increased the capacity of U.S. forces more than
France's. Others argued that the French, exhausted by World War II, had no
stomach for the war. And many simply believed the power of the United States
was so clearly manifest that the North Vietnamese would simply give up.

Fifth, and most important, neither the political leadership nor the military
clearly defined the goal in Vietnam. For former U.S. President Lyndon
Johnson, the goal was simply to end the communist insurrection in the south.
For the military, no credible strategy for achieving that goal was ever
enunciated. 

No two wars are ever the same, and Afghanistan is quite different from
Vietnam. But there are always lessons to be learned. Unfortunately, the main
'lesson' that is widely believed now is a false one: that the Americans have
no patience for a long war. 

The Vietnam War did not end because of public impatience. It ended because
the Sino-Soviet split rendered it irrelevant and because no one in the
leadership had any idea how to win the war under the conditions defined from
the beginning. The public gave the leadership years to win the war. Time is
not the problem in Afghanistan. Conceptualizing the war is critical.

These are the issues, then, that must be addressed amid the current
conflict:

1. In Vietnam the fear was that the Chinese would intervene. In Afghanistan
the fear is that a holy war will spread to other Islamic countries. If that
is a credible fear, and if the spread would create a political-military
situation that cannot be endured, then prosecuting the war in Afghanistan is
impossible. The assertion that the war will widen beyond our capacity is a
central strategic issue that must be faced directly and honestly. Wishful
thinking and creating bogeymen are both destructive.

2. The United States has again chosen to create a broad coalition. That is
politically satisfying, but in Vietnam it was politically debilitating. If
the price of keeping the coalition is severe constraints on the ability to
prosecute the war, then the coalition becomes a liability. The coalition
must facilitate the warfighting effort. If it constrains it, there is no
reason to have a coalition.

3. Bombing campaigns by themselves do not win wars. The Taliban is not going
to give up the dreams for which it has fought for many bloody years just
because it is being bombed. Light infantry forces are notoriously difficult
to hurt anyway, particularly in the mountains. The North Vietnamese used the
bombing campaign to cement their position, and so will the Taliban. Worst of
all, if there is going to be a bombing campaign, it cannot concern itself
with civilian casualties or with borders. If the enemy is in Pakistan, then
that is where the enemy must be bombed. If the United States can't live with
this, it should not start it.

4. Why will the United States succeed where the Soviets didn't? There might
be a reason, but it's not yet apparent. The Soviets were certainly prepared
to be ruthless and take casualties, and they spent a decade in combat. If
there is an explanation for why the United States will do better, the
president must make it, both clearly and publicly.

5. What exactly is the goal? We understand that we want to destroy terrorism
and all who support it. Fair enough. In what way are current and projected
operations in Afghanistan likely to achieve that? If the Taliban were
toppled, would that undermine al Qaeda's operations in Europe, the United
States and in the Islamic world? There must be a connection between goals,
missions and means.

None of this is to say that the war in Afghanistan is a bad idea. It is
difficult to define the circumstances under which the United States could
decline combat after Sept. 11. Nevertheless, there is something to learn
from Vietnam, and the danger is that the wrong lessons are being taken from
that experience. The American public never repudiated the Vietnam War. The
lack of conceptual coherence and clarity caused the elite to throw up its
hands. The issue is not about the public. It is about the policymakers not
making the same intellectual mistakes they made in the last generation.

George Friedman is the founder and chairman of STRATFOR

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