Lessons Vietnam taught Americans

Karachi: As the US extricates itself from Afghanistan and is being pulled again into West Asia, it is easy to forget that it is 40 years since US forces were driven out of Vietnam. A BBC documentary showed the anguish of the Vietnamese who had served US forces, but were left behind as the North Vietnamese advanced upon Saigon in a lightning thrust. The film made the point that Hanoi had been encouraged in its aggression by Nixon’s Watergate scandal, and his resignation.

Since then, America has been involved in a number of wars. And while it prevailed in minor conflicts in Grenada and Panama, its technological edge has failed in Iraq and Afghanistan. Although American administrations have declared victory and withdrew from Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan, the fact is that they could not meet their military goals. And when a state launches an offensive far from its shores and fails to achieve its objectives, then to all intents it has been defeated.

Of the three conflicts, only the Vietnam war had an ideological dimension. At the height of the Cold War, the threat of a Communist takeover of South Vietnam made President John F. Kennedy send in “advisers” to prop up the military regime in Saigon. This small force was steadily augmented until there were some 550,000 American troops fighting the Vietcong. As a resilient enemy refused to crack, the Pentagon escalated its campaign to include the bombing of North Vietnam and Cambodia. More bombs were dropped than that was dropped on Germany in the Second World War. Agent Orange, a chemical defoliant designed to deprive the Vietcong of jungle cover, killed tens of thousands, and led to deformed babies.

But in defeat, few lessons were learnt. American generals in Afghanistan tried and failed to defeat a slippery foe who, like the Viet Cong, could melt into the population. And again, a brutal occupation generated resistance. Just as the Afghans had defeated the British and the Soviets, the Vietnamese had resisted the Chinese for centuries; fought against Japanese occupation; and then defeated the French colonial power.

The American armed forces are the best equipped and trained and Washington spends as much as the rest of the world on defence. Why, then, has it been unable to defeat poorly armed guerrillas? The answer lies as much in politics as it does in strategy.

As satellite television and the Internet connect the world closely, conflicts reach our screens in real time in a manner inconceivable even a generation ago. So while American bombers could bomb civilian targets in North Vietnam without the rest of the world knowing about casualties, now amateur reporters stream videos of atrocities instantly.

This easy access to information serves as a check to elected governments. So while I’m sure there must have been US commanders itching to carpet bomb areas resisting their troops, this kind of brute force is getting harder to apply.

Then there is the reluctance to accept heavy casualties: while nearly 60,000 American soldiers died in Vietnam, the numbers in Iraq and Afghanistan were far lower. One reason is the quick evacuation of wounded soldiers to field hospitals. But ultimately, Americans, while highly supportive of their military, soon sicken of the sight of their soldiers returning home in body bags. It is for this reason that American military planners have been working on remotely controlled defence sys-tems that would keep their soldiers and pilots from harm’s way. Drones are only one example of this evolution; many more are heading to a conflict zone near you.

What else do these examples of asymmetrical warfare teach us? Clearly, ideology, political will and the desire to expel a foreign invader provide poorly armed fighters with a level of motivation that is not grasped by armchair warriors in Washington.

Much has been written about the “battle for hearts and minds”. But the fact is that a foreign invader can hardly expect to convince an Afghan or an Iraqi that he is occupying his country and killing his countrymen for his own good. Almost by definition, an extended occupation will multiply resistance. US President Barack Obama understands this, and hence his determination to pull US troops from Afghanistan, and his reluctance to commit forces elsewhere. For his prudence, he has been dismissed as a wimp by his adversaries. But there are times when it takes greater courage to refuse to fight.

By arrangement with Dawn