What Are You Currently Reading? 2009

[Zack]

Just finished Silence Was A Weapon by Stuart Herrington and will likely begin Phoenix: Birds of Prey by Mark Moyar, and Pacification by Richard Hunt tomorrow. Any other ones I should definitely read on pacification in Vietnam? I'm preparing a paper for the 2010 APSA conference (assuming my proposal gets accepted) on military transformation.

[J Wolfsberger]

The Thirty Years War: Europe's Tragedy by Peter H. Wilson. He does an excellent job of presenting the complexity of the politics. One aspect of the conflict I intend to dig further into is insurgents/partisans.

[Mike in Hilo]

Zack--In my opinion, Hunt's is probably as close as you can get to a definitive AAR of CORDS....I would also see Soreley's A Better War and, since you've read Stu herrington's, you would do well to read Bergerud's Dynamics of Defeat, which is about the same province, Hau Nghia.

IMO, Bergerud is a must read--a highly detailed account of events in a province which, as it happens, was atypical of MR-III or IV--i.e., South VN--as opposed to Central VN--MR-I and II---(Atypical in the sense that, as Bergerud admits, the fight had become a blood feud, with local VC and and their supporters often having forgotten the original motives for the struggle....This intractable, generational blood feud nature of the conflict was more characteristic of Binh Dinh and Quang Ngai in Central VN). I would agree with Bergerud's conclusions that the impoved security in Hau Nghia by 1970 was a result of the change in the balance of forces more than pacification and that the population continued to believe the communists would eventually prevail--But see his conclusion that a social transformation would have changed this perception as a bit of a non sequitur. In the event, the population was correct in assessing that the balance of forces would revert back in the communists' favor in the wake of the US withdrawal...

To appreciate more fully the influence of large enemy units in the Vietnamese countryside in the waning years of the Republic, read Col William Le Gro's Vietnam: Cease Fire to Capitulation, US Army Center of Military History, CMH Pub 90-29 (This work is available on-line in is entirety).

For an alternative--i.e., non-CORDS-- approach to pacification, see Bing West's The Village.

For detail on VC methodology in taking over a village see The Village War by William Andrews (recomended earlier by Mike F, SW Council). On the relocation of large segments of the population from VC to GVN-controlled areas as a result of allied bombing see Sir Robert Thompson's No Exit From Viet Nam, Second Edition.

Finally, you will find some insights in the contributions by Sir Robert Thompson and by Robert Komer in The Lessons of Vietnam, Edited by W. Scott Thompson and Donaldson D. Frizzell, Univ of Queensland Press, 1977 (In my opinion, most other sections of this book do not contribute greatly to insight....)

Cheers,
Mike.

[jmm99]

To Mike's list, you should consider Tran Dinh Tho, Pacification (1977; one of the Indochina Monographs - 7mb DL - free), who was a key player in the programs, and who gives the South Vietnamese slant on the project. This thread, CORDS / Phoenix: Counterinsurgency Lessons from Vietnam for the Future, and this thread, CIA Vietnam Histories, also have a number of links.

Good luck on your project.

Mike

[Kiwigrunt]

Private Army by Vladimir Peniakoff, better known as Popski.
Read it many years ago and forgot I had it.

Now here's a man who enjoyed the war. In his own words:

Up to the times I am writing about I had found little contentment, and I believe that my contemporaries had the same sterile experience; but during these five years every moment was consciously happy.

[Ranger94]

Just finished:
Books
"Fiasco"
"The War Within"
"Veil"

Papers
"A Strategy of Tactics: Population-centric COIN and the Army"

Just Starting:
"The Gamble"

In Cue:
"The Army In Vietnam"

Thanks to contributors to SMJ. Your contributions in '07-'08 assisted greatly while I was studying prior to my ETT deployment in '08-'09. I am now back into theory and doing some light reading.

Any reading suggestions about historical references on why/when COIN theory does not meet operations on the ground is appreciated.

Knocked out " The Commanders" while, intermittently, receiving indirect on last deployment

[slapout9]

I have recently recommended this to a few SCW members. It was one of the original papers from my era,early 1970's on Insurgency as a System, in fact a great deal of what is in Killcullen's writings is in this paper. Link to the PDF download.

http://www.rand.org/pubs/reports/R0462/