The Limits of U.S. Military Capability: Lessons from Vietnam and Iraq

5 Leveraging Host Governments: The Challenges of Institution-Building

US officials knew that their success in Vietnam and Iraq ultimately hinged on the host government taking control of the conflict. They also knew that transferring “ownership” was impossible absent security gains and stronger hostgovernment institutions. Yet these officials came to recognize that by taking the lead in both conflicts, the United States gave host-government leaders reason to “shirk,” that is, to allow the United States to carry the security burden, to forego costs of institutional development, and to resist reforms.1 In consequence, the United States bore a disproportionate share of the costs of the US-led mission in the country. Host-government leaders passed on the costs to the United States because it was wedded to its goals, could presumably achieve them without the host government’s assistance (or would not achieve them even with the government ’s aid), and would pursue these goals even if bearing the costs alone (on the “free rider” problem, see Olson 1965). These leaders actually had everything to lose from accepting these costs if they included a loss in political capital or control over the instruments required to retain and extend their power.2 Their behavior owed, then, to a paradox of governing power: a weak leader is unable and a strong leader is unwilling to accept costs of a policy—regardless of its chapter five Leveraging Host Governments The Challenges of Institution-Building 154 The Limits of U.S. Military Capability desirability—when the intervening government can and will.3 Predictably, then, US relations with Saigon and Baghdad were often distant, sometimes confrontational , and a consistent threat to the US-led, security effort. The United States did eventually acquire significant leverage over the South Vietnamese government. The United States compelled Saigon to assume the lead in the war effort by employing a credible threat to withdraw US forces and leave Saigon vulnerable to an existential threat from communist forces. By comparison , the political challenge for the United States in Iraq was great, in the short and the long term. In the short term, the challenge was that Iraqi leaders would not incur the costs necessary to serve US goals because these leaders accepted one or more of the following premises: (a) they lacked the power to satisfy US demands over strong internal resistance, (b) US demands required costly political , economic, or security concessions, (c) their strong power base protected them from US retaliation, or (d) the United States would carry the load alone if necessary. The challenge only increased because US goals and actions shifted leverage to Iraqi leaders to resist US demands when compliance would reduce the power of these leaders or increase their costs. Over the long term, the challenge was that an ever more capable host government would claim an increasing share of benefits—exerting greater independence on matters of politics and security— because the United States would not be able to impose sufficient costs in retaliation . Importantly, in neither conflict did the United States possess sufficient leverage to push reforms that host-government leaders believed would weaken them politically, nor did it have the leverage to overcome formidable (political, economic, and social) institution-building challenges. These conclusions follow from assessing the US institution-building challenge, first, in Vietnam and, then, in Iraq. Institution-Building in Vietnam In Vietnam, the United States sought to promote democratic institutions and political-economic reforms to legitimate the Saigon government so that it could compete more successfully with the communist opposition for popular support. The United States also sought to build the capabilities of government institutions in South Vietnam—in particular, indigenous security forces—to take over the war effort. The United States had mixed success. Although the United States could not overcome Saigon’s incentives to maintain the existing distribution of power and wealth within the country, the United States had more success inducing Leveraging Host Governments 155 Saigon to develop its combat and pacification capabilities. The reasons emerge from examining US leverage in the pursuit of each set of goals. Democratic Institutions and Political-Economic Reform US officials never committed to building a model democracy or an egalitarian political-economic system in South Vietnam. A task of that magnitude would have exceeded meager US capabilities and risked creating instability in host governance that would undermine US strategic goals. Yet US officials frequently acknowledged that their...