xander day wrote,
The thesis of my dissertation is that the culture of the American military prevents it from fighting small wars effectively. The overarching focus of the essay will be upon how the U.S. Army’s preference for conventional warfare weakens significantly both their capacity to fight small wars, and their willingness to do so.
xander, like the others I applaud your efforts, but find your thesis statement flawed.

First, when you state that the American military has difficulty fighting small wars, that implies that other nations don't and are actually good at it. I would argue that most modern countries (especially democracies) have major difficulties waging small wars, especially small wars that endure over a long period. I'm sure you can list many failed European attempts to hold onto their colonies.

Furthermore, the recent trend to compare Malaysia to Vietnam is shamefully deceptive and unproductive. Put the Malysian Emergency in perspective, it was a British colony, and the Brits defined the rules, which gave them considerable freedom of movement. And while the emergency was serious, it paled in comparison to the problem set in Vietnam. As Owen stated the Vietnam War was not just a small war, combat with NVA regulars was as conventional as it got, and it was the conventional fight in the end that was decisive when NVA regulars rolled into Saigon.

Concurrently there was an insurgency, and some criticism directed against the U.S.'s early COIN efforts in Vietnam is deserved (although it frequently over hyped in my opinion). However, what seems to be overlooked is our many successes in Vietnam against both the NVA and the insurgency. GEN Abrams developed an appropriate COIN strategy, so we did learn, and we did concurrently while waging a conventional fight, and in a country where we didn't write all the rules. When we pulled out the VC were largely contained, at least to the point that they were not a vital threat to S. Vietnam, and the NVA was back in their box.

There are some new historical books coming out without the political agendas of the past, that shine a new light on our conflict in Vietnam. By all means criticize our shortfalls, but please keep it in perspective. If you want to compare America's performance to Europe's colonial wars, then I recommend you look at our conflict in the Philippines. We adapted rather quickly and in most respects did better than other modern countries.

Second, since your thesis is focused on the American Military's shortfalls, which there are many, but I think Ken put in perspective well when he explained the political and social factors on our homefront that shape our military policy and strategy.

I have to thank William Owen for this statement,
When left to their own devices, the US are actually pretty/very good. ...and they do learn fast, and there is ample material to support this, but what they learn the do seem to forget. Why they do, may be worthy of some study.
We do have the doctrine for small wars, and we had it long before the new COIN manual came out a couple of years ago. Why we failed to adapt to the situations we were in sooner still confounds me, but we do adapt.

My final point is that some small wars are not winnable for America or anyone else because the objectives are too lofty, too expensive and take too much time, which means the social and political factors that Ken addressed will preclude success. That is not a problem unique to America.