U.S. Army Counterinsurgency and Contingency Operations Doctrine 1942-1976 (review)

Andrew J. Birtle has produced an impressive sequel to his earlier volume on the same topic covering the years 1860–1941. As the author observes, historically U.S. soldiers have spent far more time performing a variety of constabulary, administrative, diplomatic, humanitarian, nation-building, and irregular warfare functions than they have fighting on the conventional battlefield. He proceeds to address the development of this competence during World War II and the ensuing Cold War through the end of the Vietnam conflict. This book is important to students of this genre of warfare, because it shows the development within the officer corps of the U.S. Army, in practice if not on paper, of a commonly held and successful set of assumptions and responses to wars of this type. These represented a set of concepts and principles derived from a variety of sources and applied with a flexible approach, as the author demonstrates through an array of case studies. The volume is strongly recommended for students of counterinsurgency, as it is well crafted, draws on extensive primary sources and secondary research, and is lucidly written.

The lessons could not be more poignant. The United States has a long and illustrious history of fighting small wars and undertaking pretty successful civil administrative burdens. While it has never been that enthusiastic about such ventures, it has historically maintained that as a practical matter it was the only agency with the training, organization, and personnel to administer foreign populations during wartime. Further, military necessity and the principle of unity of command dictated that all civil and military forces be placed under a single military commander to facilitate the prosecution of the war. This made sense and worked well from the invasion and occupation of North Africa through the post–World War II reconstruction. The goals in each case were different in that during the war they were to restore law, order, and basic government services. Afterwards, the goal was to transform the conquered through a revolution of their political, social, and economic foundations to ensure that another such war would not happen. Generals Clay in Europe and MacArthur in Japan found themselves heading an enormous and ambitious social engineering enterprise that would require imagination, pragmatism, patience, time, money, and, most importantly, indigenous support. It was discovered that the best successes occurred by working through existing institutions and planting seeds in the hope that the ideas would flourish. The seeds would take the form of suggestions that aimed at reforming educational systems and at removing barriers to personal, political, economic, and social expression. It was also found through experience that it was unwise to impose on an occupied people one's own laws and customs. More often than not such an imposition produced turmoil and poor results, as the indigenous body politic tended to reject transplanted institutions, and see them as dictates.

This body of knowledge was committed to writing in a series of doctrinal publications in the mid- and late-1950s and died on the battlefields of Vietnam. The phrase "No more Vietnams" obscured the proven principles of U.S. counterinsurgency doctrine and provided an ambiguous legacy, and yet these writings contain a deep reservoir of useful insights and guides for similar future operations. Birtle leaves the reader wondering, after his sound development of the topic, why the U.S. defense establishment in looking for some new ideas did not read a few old books before invading Iraq.