COIN Counterinsurgency (merged thread)

[JMA]

to an extent but most certainly in the US, that very prevalent syndrome gets fixed only when absolutely necessary.

You've served in two Armies. Each was, man for man, among the world's best at that time. They were that because they had to be. When one has to do something, one puts a lot more effort into it...

OK gotcha. Now what I can't get my head around is soldiers going to war in places where there is no real national commitment to a result or where they operate under sever restrictive ROEs. Why do they do this? Doesn't make sense to me.

Regardless of their worth and merit, those two very young Armies as they then existed are gone, never to return. The US Army has been around for over 200 years, it is an old comfortable Dude of an institution that is concerned with staying alive in a strange and wonderful political arena where there are a lot of other Gladiators questing for survival -- and glory. It plans on being around for another couple of Centuries. The Army thus is cautious and more concerned with survival of the institution than with its competence at this time. That is true in most democratic nations. Goes with the territory and, IMO, that's okay -- the overall life of most citizens is worth the sacrifices in capability those armies have to make.

From out hear in the colonies we witnessed the partial awakening of the sleeping giant post 9/11. While you were half awake back then maybe you should have kicked some more ass? Yes the military industrial complex is unstoppable.

For us, 'desirable' -- even highly desirable -- or increased effectiveness are not impetus enough to overcome the domestic political aspects. We'll muddle along as we always have, always do, until we have to fix it. Then we will do that temporarily. We will then quickly go back to our navel gazing after the crisis passes. So far, our overall record of doing it in that really inefficient manner is fairly good, surprisingly so. Though the trend is downward -- as should be expected...

If you have noticed I have not included the US in my discussions on length of tours and rotations as the sheer scale of the US involvement makes it near impossible to stabilise through the formation of permanent units given those numbers. The Brits on the other hand with a deployment of under 10,000 was/is a viable option.

The US Army today is mediocre because it doesn't need to be any better. I have seen it -- served in it -- when it was both better and when it was worse. It gets better in wartime and the tougher the war, the better it gets. Easy wars (as today) provide no incentive to get much better. There is no Citizen or Congressional pressure to be incredibly effective (actually, quite the reverse, the bulk of Americans including many in Congress are anti-military to at least some extent). Capability is present to rise to that peak when necessary and most people realize that, so they're content to allow the Army to bumble along. The Army, for its part, truly tries to do better -- but it is captive to political pressures that drive personnel, training and operational policies and to a bureaucracy that is politically derived and supported. There are over 600K DoD Civilian employees, all adults, mostly voters -- so Congress insures they are coddled and catered to. There or over 2M active and reserve service members, add their families and you get almost 4M voters. Congress is more concerned with their votes than with their competence. It's that simple.

The same sort of situation existed prior to the fall of Rome I believe?

Given a need for the hard work and sacrifice of all concerned to get better, quickly, a proven capability to do that has been shown so in the absence of need, no one is terribly interested in an excessive amount of hard work. There are many dedicated people in US uniforms who try to circumvent all that and truly aid in many units doing a good job -- but they move around every three or four years so the overall effect is one of some inconsistency. In terms of US Army units, as Bertrand Russell said of people in general, 20% do 80% of the work...

Well if you keep the 20% sharp then you will always have a basis to build on.

The good news is that, aside from that hard working 20%, the Army, too, knows that it can do better when required to do so and it puts a large amount of effort into insuring that remains the case. Too large IMO but they didn't ask me...

Yes I can understand that for when I take my dog for a run and slip the leash he senses the freedom, takes off and loves it. In a 20 year career how many times would a soldier experience the thrill of being allowed to run free?

That ability to patch something together in times of real need may or may not remain true. It will for the near term, say 20 to 40 years; after that, hard to say.

Yes, I have no crystal ball either.

[JMA]

However, I can tell you that you will not ever get "inside the head of such men." All those people named as well as Nathan Bedford Forrest and a few others -- including some RSA types -- and my pet, Subotai, had little to no formal military training or education.

"Inside the head" of such people is not reproducible or replicable. One either has it or one does not. Few do. We are capable of selecting those few and placing them in positions of influence. We deliberately choose not to do so.

If you understand the simple fact that the tactic of successful insurgents is to exploit only your weaknesses and never to attack your strengths then you are half way there.

Once you have a force of well trained, well armed and well supported soldiers in the field. You should be able to give them their head to get after the enemy and not hand them a long list of ROE.

With ROEs and lawyers in constant attendance you don't get the best officers and NCOs rising up the structure. To tend to attract bureaucratic "yes-men" which is not what makes for an aggressive and operationally effective army.

You still broadly misunderstand the fight in Afghanistan. It is not that there aren't people who know what to do and how to do it -- it is simply that they are generally not allowed to do those things. There is no pressing need to do much better pushed by the Politicians and those are the people that have forced their services to tread softly and not use a stick. They know they're guilty of that and thus their lack of any real pressure to do better. In short, the problem is not direct incompetence, though that exists in some cases and is due to various factors not least people not suited for the jobs they have due to the inadvertent and unintended inequities of assignments due to the politics of a democratic society...

The real problem there is simply malfeasance induced ineffectiveness due to flawed policies and failed theories.

What I don't get about Afghanistan is why otherwise outstanding soldiers go meekly to the slaughter with one hand tied behind their backs. Maybe the way around all this is to make greater use of private paramilitaries and thereby skirt around the aspects which reduce the efficiency of the US military in the field.

[JMA]

"The waning of the 2005-2010 COIN theory fashion wave"

Do you write this stuff Fuchs? I like it. It is only with verbal brutality that those supposedly at the wheel of this out of control vehicle can be woken up. But will it be too late.

I liked the quote:

There's a quote from Churchill:

The Americans will always do the right thing ... after they've exhausted all the alternatives.

This coming from a Brit is like the pot calling the kettle black!

[Ken White]

It's the American way.

OK gotcha...Why do they do this? Doesn't make sense to me.

Of course it make little sense, if any. Politicians are truly an interesting species. Why they send people off on ill advised forays is beyond me...

As for why the Troops go, that's easy. It's what they get paid for, it's why they're in the forces. Most of them if they do not actually like to fight are certainly willing to do so. So why they go is easy. Why they get sent is another question entirely.

The same sort of situation existed prior to the fall of Rome I believe?

As well as several other Empires...

Not to worry, we've been operating like this for 216 years, we're used to it.

Well if you keep the 20% sharp then you will always have a basis to build on.

We don't keep 'em all, only about half but we're big enough to obtain adequate slack with that 10%. We're also pretty brutal about firing incompetents in wartime as opposed to the political pressure to keep them in situations short of existential war.

Yes I can understand that for when I take my dog for a run and slip the leash he senses the freedom, takes off and loves it. In a 20 year career how many times would a soldier experience the thrill of being allowed to run free?

Depends on the Soldier...

With ROEs...bureaucratic "yes-men" which is not what makes for an aggressive and operationally effective army.

Totally true but also absolutely unavoidable in a democracy in peacetime. Democracies do not want, will not tolerate aggressive and operationally effective Armies in peacetime. How they expect a lollygagging Army to suddenly get great if confronted is an interesting sociological question...

What I don't get about Afghanistan is why otherwise outstanding soldiers go meekly to the slaughter with one hand tied behind their backs. Maybe the way around all this is to make greater use of private paramilitaries and thereby skirt around the aspects which reduce the efficiency of the US military in the field.

Vast overstatement. The casualty rate in Afghanistan is relatively miniscule (others may differ...). You still misunderstand that operation and the majority of them will agree that one hand is tied but they are confident they can do okay with the remaining hand and a foot or two...

It is important to recognize that the US is NOT at war. The same things that adversely affect US military performance in peacetime would also hobble private paramilitaries. So no joy there. It is hard for those not American -- it's hard for most Americans -- to realize how dysfunctional our Congress is unless confronted with a near disaster.

That Churchill quote has always been and is today pretty well accurate.

[jmm99]

from JMA
This coming from a Brit is like the pot calling the kettle black!

coming from a halfbreed ?

Winston, after all, was only a Brit from Daddy's side !

Cheers

Mike

[William F. Owen]

OK gotcha. Now what I can't get my head around is soldiers going to war in places where there is no real national commitment to a result or where they operate under sever restrictive ROEs. Why do they do this? Doesn't make sense to me.

That IS the exam question!
Fear, honour, interest. Thucydides said it best! Wars are caused by politics and strategy requires a policy and strategy can only be realised in tactics.

[jmm99]

The exam question ...

from JMA
....where there is no real national commitment to a result or where they operate under sever restrictive ROEs...

I'd suggest that the problem lies in confusion with the concept of "limited war", where that concept is considered to require "limited means" (in military strategy and/or tactics), as opposed to a "limited result" (in the policy end goal which underlies the war).

E.g., we (say the political masters) will conquer only the south 20 miles of the opponent's country - the "limited result". The means used do not have to be limited and may in fact take everything off the table - and use it. An example was Ike's back-channel proposition to the North Koreans, which would I suppose be patently illegal today (according to the ICJ) because it involved the threat to use nuclear weapons.

So, a "limited result" may be logical as a policy; but then all means necessary to that end goal must be employed.

Regards

Mike

[JMA]

The exam question ...



I'd suggest that the problem lies in confusion with the concept of "limited war", where that concept is considered to require "limited means" (in military strategy and/or tactics), as opposed to a "limited result" (in the policy end goal which underlies the war).

E.g., we (say the political masters) will conquer only the south 20 miles of the opponent's country - the "limited result". The means used do not have to be limited and may in fact take everything off the table - and use it. An example was Ike's back-channel proposition to the North Koreans, which would I suppose be patently illegal today (according to the ICJ) because it involved the threat to use nuclear weapons.

So, a "limited result" may be logical as a policy; but then all means necessary to that end goal must be employed.

Regards

Mike

Mike I believe it is more that a lot of these minor interventions are token efforts. Help out a friendly country in trouble but don't go as far as you did in Vietnam and get sucked in. Then there is an element of political "smoke and mirrors".

For example it seems that the effort was moved to Afghanistan as a means to get out of Iraq without seeming to be "soft" on the guys who caused 9/11. (I have made my point elsewhere that it was enough to bring the Taliban to its knees rather than to take a full step into the quicksand of Afghanistan.)

I'm not sure how I would react if I were still serving and they tried to deploy me into one of these crazy wars.

Mike, tell me more about "Ike's back-channel proposition to the North Koreans" don't know much about that.

I can understand the concept of a limited intervention such as it would have been in Afghanistan if the US had gone home after the Taliban government had collapsed saying to the world "see what happens if you harbour people who attack the USA".

You are correct IMO in saying that a limited objective be given to the military and let them do it best way they can rather than ensure a limited result through restricting the means at the disposal of the military to achieve a result.

[jmm99]

may be something that cannot be realized solely by resort to military means - or indeed one for which military means are horribly unsuited.

E.g., one end result desired in Vietnam was that the DRV ("North Vietnam") give up its sovereignty claims to South Vietnam. That end result was purely political-diplomatic. That result ultimately could only be realized by diplomatic means - absent the complete destruction of the DRV (which could have been done, leaving aside the consequences that might have flowed from that course of action and the voters' rejection of that COA in 1964).

Thus, limited military means were elected by the Kennedy and Johnson administrations in an attempt (a hope ?) to bring the DRV around to our diplomatic position. We wanted the DRV to recognize the right of the GSV to exist, and refrain from infiltration into and subversion of the South. Any resemblences to Iran and Israel are, of course, completely coincidental.

So, we (US) embarked on a gradual escalation in the use of force (a "rachet strategy", if such can be termed a strategy, of McNamara). That war in effect consisted of three wars (in simplified form, three efforts): the effort against the North; the effort against PAVN main force units and their paths from the North to the South; and the effort against the Lao Dong-controlled NLF in the South. The bottom line is that Vietnam was an armed conflict which was long on tactics and short on a coherent strategy.

----------------------------------
Eisenhower and Threatened Nuclear Use in Korea is a subject of historians' spin - not as to the threat, which was made and involved transfer of real nukes; but as to whether the threat caused the North Korean and Chinese to agree to the armistice.

By way of background, possible use of nuclear weapons (and a very destructive and real strategic bombing campaign in the North and parts of the South) pre-dated Eisenhower - see Wiki, U.S. threat of atomic warfare, and Bruce Cumings' 2005 Why Did Truman Really Fire MacArthur? ... The Obscure History of Nuclear Weapons and the Korean War Provides the Answer.

The Cumings article has an interesting comment by Curt Lemay (after two paragraphs describing the Korean strategic air campaign), which ties into the discussion above about "limited war":

This was Korea, "the limited war." The views of its architect, Curtis LeMay, serve as its epitaph. After it started, he said: "We slipped a note kind of under the door into the Pentagon and said let us go up there . . . and burn down five of the biggest towns in North Korea -- and they're not very big -- and that ought to stop it. Well, the answer to that was four or five screams -- 'You'll kill a lot of non-combatants' and 'It's too horrible.' Yet over a period of three years or so . . . we burned down every town in North Korea and South Korea, too . . . Now, over a period of three years this is palatable, but to kill a few people to stop this from happening -- a lot of people can't stomach it." (19)

(19) J F Dulles Papers, Curtis LeMay oral history, 28 April 1966.

Keeping the above in mind, we move on to Eisenhower, as to whom there is quite a bit of historians' spin, especially as to his beliefs as to the use or non-use of nukes (in Korea and generally). As is often the case, absolute truth is not part of the available record.

Here are two views, starting with James I. Matray, Revisiting Korea: Exposing Myths of the Forgotten War (2001):

How Eisenhower managed to achieve an armistice ending the Korean War remains contested terrain. Historians acknowledge that Eisenhower entered office thinking about using expanded conventional bombing and the threat of nuclear attack to force concessions from the Communist side. The armistice agreement came on July 23, after an accelerated bombing campaign in North Korea and bellicose rhetoric about expanding the war. Most scholars, however, reject as myth Eisenhower's claim that Beijing was responding to his threat of an expanded war employing atomic weapons because no documentary evidence has surfaced to support his assertion.[31]

They contend that the Chinese, facing major internal economic problems and wanting peaceful coexistence with the West, already had decided to make peace once Truman left office. And Stalin's death in March only added to China's sense of political vulnerability, causing the Communist delegation to break the logjam at Panmunjom later that month before Secretary of State John Foster Dulles conveyed his vague atomic threat to India's prime minister for delivery to Beijing. Moreover, the nuclear threats of May 1953 were not clearly or forcefully delivered and were not substantively different from those implied threats that the Truman administration made in the fall of 1951, when B-29 bombers carried out atomic bombing test runs over North Korea with large conventional bombs.[32]

31. C. Turner Joy, How Communists Negotiate (New York, 1955),161-62; James Shepley, "How Dulles Averted War," Life, January 16,1956, 70-80; Dwight D. Eisenhower, Mandate for Change, 1953-1956 (Garden City, NY, 1963), 181.

32. William Stueck, The Korean War, pp. 303-307.

So, the threat is acknowledged, but not that the threat caused the Chinese to bend to Ike's will.

And, Beyond brinkmanship: Eisenhower, nuclear war fighting, and Korea, 1953-1968 (excerpt available only - snip):

Granted, a few scholars have not hedged their bets regarding Eisenhower and the use of nuclear weapons. (4) However, as suggested above, the overall trend is exculpatory. As a result, a corrective regarding Eisenhower and his reputation is needed. The fact of the matter is that President Eisenhower was much more committed to the necessity, if not the desirability, of nuclear war fighting than most have been willing to accept. This article will illustrate the point by exploring the strong continuity and consistency in Eisenhower's thinking about nuclear war fighting on the Korean peninsula between 1953 and 1960, and in 1968 during the Pueblo Crisis.

Much has been written about the administration's debate in the winter and spring of 1953 about whether to expand the Korean War with nuclear weapons and compel the North Koreans and Chinese to accept an armistice. Most agree that by the time of a critical meeting of the NSC on May 20, 1953, it seemed that serious discussions had already led to some planning, in principle, to expand the war with nuclear weapons in the future if the conflict did not end. (5) In addition, signals of this intention may have been conveyed to Communist leaders by Secretary of State John Foster Dulles and others. Because the North Koreans and Chinese agreed to an armistice that June, it cannot be known for sure whether the administration had really agreed to conduct a future campaign of nuclear compellence. An archival "smoking gun" has not been found that would conclusively settle the issue.

To buttress the case that Eisenhower was a seriously committed nuclear war fighter at least on the Korean peninsula, this article will examine the argument from several perspectives. First, the debates within the administration about how to respond to a renewal of the Korean War by the Chinese and North Koreans will be looked at. Then, the discussion about Eisenhower's approval of the introduction of dual-capable nuclear weapons systems into Korea in 1957 will be examined. Finally, President Eisenhower's forceful and affirmative comments about the first use of nuclear weapons in Korea, made after 1953 and throughout his post-presidential years, will be surveyed. Viewed in its entirety, over a period of years, the continuity in Eisenhower's beliefs about the subject becomes clear and striking. The record suggests that Eisenhower assertively promoted the utility of nuclear weapons. Indeed, as will be shown, even during the Pueblo Crisis of 1968, he strongly urged the Johnson administration to consider the use of nuclear weapons.

In this view, Eisenhower and J.F.Dulles made the threat, but also intended to carry it out.

So, analogizing to a game of Chicken, was Ike the total drunk driver, who tapes over his eyes, enters the vehicle and throws away the steering wheel - or was he someone who was play acting all of that ? And how did the Chinese view him ? The answers to the mind game part of all this are not really known.

Regards

Mike

[Pete]

So, we (US) embarked on a gradual escalation in the use of force (a "rachet strategy", if such can be termed a strategy, of McNamara). That war in effect consisted of three wars (in simplified form, three efforts): the effort against the North; the effort against PAVN main force units and their paths from the North to the South; and the effort against the Lao Dong-controlled NLF in the South. The bottom line is that Vietnam was an armed conflict which was long on tactics and short on a coherent strategy.

As I understand it the reason we sent in combat troops in 1964 was as a short-range expedient to avoid losing, and our ratcheting up of the effort went on from there. I believe it was the spectre of the Chinese coming in the way they had in Korea that prevented us from invading North Vietnam and taking the place over. The so-called neutrality of Laos was our reason for not going in there and cutting the Ho Chi Minh Trail.

[Fuchs]

Do you write this stuff Fuchs? I like it. It is only with verbal brutality that those supposedly at the wheel of this out of control vehicle can be woken up. But will it be too late.

It's my blog.

[JMA]

So, analogizing to a game of Chicken, was Ike the total drunk driver, who tapes over his eyes, enters the vehicle and throws away the steering wheel - or was he someone who was play acting all of that ? And how did the Chinese view him ? The answers to the mind game part of all this are not really known.

Regards

Mike

Whatever happened it was probably scary enough... as was the Cuban missile crisis. Then in one of the Indo-Pakistan conflicts such threats were exchanged.

So does the world really need a whole bunch of less stable countries to develop nukes?

As I said I believe that there should be no more nuclear armed countries.

Certainly no madman in North Korea nor a mad mullah in Iran should have a button to press... and the West should have the courage make sure that does not happen.

[JMA]

It's my blog.

Well done, there's good stuff there.

[JMA]

As I understand it the reason we sent in combat troops in 1964 was as a short-range expedient to avoid losing, and our ratcheting up of the effort went on from there. I believe it was the spectre of the Chinese coming in the way they had in Korea that prevented us from invading North Vietnam and taking the place over. The so-called neutrality of Laos was our reason for not going in there and cutting the Ho Chi Minh Trail.

So what were the strategic errors made?

[Pete]

The main strategic error was in not having a strategy, other than the hope that attrition would wear down the NVA and VC. The Harry Summers book On Strategy has a Clausewitzian critique of how the war was fought.

[jmm99]

HT to Bourbon for highlighting this resource, Baptism By Fire: CIA Analysis of the Korean War.

Two estimates (released as part of the June 2010 package) are relevant to the possible use of nukes during the 1953-1954 Eisenhower administration.

8 Apr 1953, SE-41 Special Estimate: Probable Communist Reactions, etc....

SE-41 8 Apr 1953 Atomic Weapons.jpg

8 Mar 1954, SNIE 100-2-54 Special National Intelligence Estimate: Probable Reactions of Communist China, etc.....

SE-41 8 Mar 1954 Atomic Weapons.jpg

The materials I cited re: Ike and nukes are 2005 or earlier.

Cheers

Mike

[Bob's World]

The main strategic error was in not having a strategy, other than the hope that attrition would wear down the NVA and VC. The Harry Summers book On Strategy has a Clausewitzian critique of how the war was fought.

No, our main strategic error was not allowing, and then recognizing the results of the scheduled Vietnam-wide elections of 1956. We overstated the role of ideology in such popular movements then, much as we do today, and took an unsustainable position of supporting the illegitimate government in the South that WE wanted, rather than being willing to work with a much more legitimate government for the entire nation (North and South reunited) that the the majority of the people who actually lived there wanted.

Yes there were many valid reasons we used then to rationalize this decision, just as there are many valid reasons we use today. But it does not matter how "valid" the reasons, one simply cannot overcome the fatal strategic flaw of throwing one's lot in with an illegitimate government. Everything after that was tactics. Vietnam was a pawn on a global chess board, and we got ourself into a position where we had to focus so much on saving that one pawn we forgot it was just a pawn. We lost sight of the big picture, and we lost sight of out national values. These are the real lessons of Vietnam that I think serve us best today as we wrestle with issues like AQ, a "Caliphate", Iraq, Afghanistan, etc.

[jmm99]

which has general relevance to the topic at hand and the current world; and particular relevance to the question of elections, "democracy" and legitimacy:

from BW
No, our main strategic error was not allowing, and then recognizing the results of the scheduled Vietnam-wide elections of 1956.

Let us not argue about whether elections were "scheduled"; what the 1954 Geneva Accords actually "accorded"; and who was bound to be "accorded" by those "accords". Solely for purposes of this discussion, I will accept that Vietnam-wide elections were scheduled for 1956. You get to pick the "scheduled date", unless you actually have found a scheduled date (which, if it exists, would be of great interest to me).

The first thing we have to do (in writing this alternative history) is to see whether we disagree as to the likely results of that hypothetical election. Now, since you are the proponent, I should say that you go first. But, to get this thing moving, I'll give my take.

In 1956, the North's population was at ~ 15M; the South's at ~ 12M. By 1956, Vo Nguyen Giap, but more so Truong Chinh, had pretty much cleaned up the North.

Chinh and Giap had early on collaborated in writing Van de dan cay ("The Peasant Question"), originally published in Hanoi in 1937 and 1938, with the authors using the pseudonyms Qua Ninh and Van Dinh. Chinh (General Secretary of the Lao Dong) was so zealous in the Land Reform Campaign of 1953-1956 (another collaboration with Giap) that he had to be put on the shelf. That campaign was very effective in neutralizing (killing, detaining or converting) "counter-revolutionaries". Sources for my ramblings are from the online docs which can be downloaded from here, Writings by and about Important Communist Leaders.

The bottom line (IMO) was that Uncle Ho in a 1956 election would have been assured of the votes in the North that he actually received in the North's elections (where a 90% win would have shown the presence of too many "counter-revolutionaries"). To those Northern votes, we can fairly safely add roughly 1/3 of the votes in the South - the Viet Minh controlled ~ 1/3 of the South's population when the fighting stopped in 1954. So, Ho and the Lao Dong win (nationwide votes: ~ 2/3 Ho; ~ 1/3 Others).

If you agree that would have been the probable result, you can continue with your alternative history of what then would have ensued in the South and for Vietnam as a whole (we know what actually happened in the North); and I suppose you should include what would have happened in Southeast Asia as a region (since that was the real prize, not Indochina). I'm sure you will include the good, the bad and the ugly.

Regards

Mike

[Pete]

No, our main strategic error was not allowing, and then recognizing the results of the scheduled Vietnam-wide elections of 1956.

Domestic U.S. politics were a major factor in LBJ's decision to send combat battalions to Vietnam; the first to arrive there were Marines to secure the airbase at Da Nang in March 1965. Truman, Eisenhower and JKF had wisely declined to get the U.S. heavily involved in Vietnam, except for aid to the French and later U.S. "advisors" to the South Vietnamese.

However, when it looked as though South Vietnam might fall in 1964-65, LBJ didn't want to be blamed as the president who lost Vietnam -- he and most Democrats remembered that the Republicans had made much hay over "Who lost China" starting in 1947. Hence our initial commitment of combat troops to Vietnam was made to avoid losing, but without having a long-range plan. Then our escallation followed in the hope that attrition of the NVA and VC might reach a tipping point.

It is ironic that in the presidential campaign of 1964 LBJ portrayed himself as the more reasonable of the two candidates -- one of his TV campaign ads showed a little girl followed by a nuclear mushroom cloud, as though that was what would happen were Barry Goldwater to be elected.

Today national policy in Iraq and Afghanistan is in part driven by the desire of Obama and the Democrats to avoid the blame for losing those wars by making premature withdrawals. What we have as a result is this hybrid policy of staying the course but with deadlines for leaving.

[Bob's World]

which has general relevance to the topic at hand and the current world; and particular relevance to the question of elections, "democracy" and legitimacy:



Let us not argue about whether elections were "scheduled"; what the 1954 Geneva Accords actually "accorded"; and who was bound to be "accorded" by those "accords". Solely for purposes of this discussion, I will accept that Vietnam-wide elections were scheduled for 1956. You get to pick the "scheduled date", unless you actually have found a scheduled date (which, if it exists, would be of great interest to me).

The first thing we have to do (in writing this alternative history) is to see whether we disagree as to the likely results of that hypothetical election. Now, since you are the proponent, I should say that you go first. But, to get this thing moving, I'll give my take.

In 1956, the North's population was at ~ 15M; the South's at ~ 12M. By 1956, Vo Nguyen Giap, but more so Truong Chinh, had pretty much cleaned up the North.

Chinh and Giap had early on collaborated in writing Van de dan cay ("The Peasant Question"), originally published in Hanoi in 1937 and 1938, with the authors using the pseudonyms Qua Ninh and Van Dinh. Chinh (General Secretary of the Lao Dong) was so zealous in the Land Reform Campaign of 1953-1956 (another collaboration with Giap) that he had to be put on the shelf. That campaign was very effective in neutralizing (killing, detaining or converting) "counter-revolutionaries". Sources for my ramblings are from the online docs which can be downloaded from here, Writings by and about Important Communist Leaders.

The bottom line (IMO) was that Uncle Ho in a 1956 election would have been assured of the votes in the North that he actually received in the North's elections (where a 90% win would have shown the presence of too many "counter-revolutionaries"). To those Northern votes, we can fairly safely add roughly 1/3 of the votes in the South - the Viet Minh controlled ~ 1/3 of the South's population when the fighting stopped in 1954. So, Ho and the Lao Dong win (nationwide votes: ~ 2/3 Ho; ~ 1/3 Others).

If you agree that would have been the probable result, you can continue with your alternative history of what then would have ensued in the South and for Vietnam as a whole (we know what actually happened in the North); and I suppose you should include what would have happened in Southeast Asia as a region (since that was the real prize, not Indochina). I'm sure you will include the good, the bad and the ugly.

Regards

Mike

MIke,

I may have overstated "scheduled", perhaps a less definitive term is appropriate. I also don't want my point to be that Ho would have won (which it appears he would have), but rather that we are best served strategically in these situations by working with whomever receives (through whatever process they apply) some writ of legitimacy recoginzed by the affected populaces.

By reinforcing what the people want, I am confident that we ultimately work our way into stronger, more mutually benficial relationships than we do when we instead try to force a solution that is wanted by us alone. Such forced solutions are certainly not legitimate to begin with, and not likely to become legitimate anytime soon. As these governments later run afoul of their populaces we then tend rush in to "support our ally," which I believe serves primarily to reinforce the postion of the insurgent challenger.

We tend to seek shortterm gains/solutions that grow into inevitable longterm losses/problems. Better to take a longer view, manipulate outcomes less, and be more open to working with those who we may initially be at odds with politically or ideologically so long as we assess that they represent what their populaces want. Postions that are truly "beyond the pale" are rarely sustainable, and we help to smooth those rough edges off better by working with, rather than working against.