New Testingstan

k buddy so our previous CORDS conversation was cut short by my lack of internet access and grand final fever

all I remember is a discussion over Johnson's sincerity re: pacification

I agree that CORDS as a PR move and CORDS as a genuine effort aren't mutually exclusive positions and that both ideas would have been present in Johnson's mind as he moved towards the idea in 66-67. I think the bigger question is the extent to which upper-level leadership on both sides actually understood/believed in the 'social revolution' talk that emerged from the Honolulu conference (Feb 66) onwards. A pretty persistent criticism from true believers within the pacification program was that upper-level leadership saw pacification as one giant public works program and was totally ignorant of the political dimensions of the program; or rather, could never see the political dimension as anything other than a flow-on from material benefit. Thus you have Johnson telling Komer to try rural electrification, as it had worked wonders for him in Texas with the voters; course, almost as soon as Komer steps off the plane in Saigon he realises how far off the mark that suggestion is.

Dipping into the political science stuff generated around that time gives you a greater understanding of this; Johnson and Bunker talk frequently about changing Vietnamese society but never actually articulate what that means, and efforts to flesh it out by true believers in mid-level management positions are ignored - and looking at their suggestions as to opposed to what actually happened is pretty revealing.

In a sense most of that is irrelevant anyway, because as far as I can tell territorial security - which everyone agreed was a first step for pacification - never happened for any consistent span of time. Certainly there were local successes but they never lasted, and it's instructive that the second reformation of pacification in late 1968 with the Accelerated Pacification Campaign basically abandoned all attempts at political change in favour of security, security, security - and even then wasn't terribly successful (really rad case study on this called 'The Red Queen's Race' in Journal of Military History, IIRC by Kevin Bolan - looks at Binh Dinh province and Operation WASHINGTON GREEN, where 173d Airborne moved into direct pacification support). With no territorial security your ability to reform local governance, improve economic conditions etc was a all a pretty moot point and in Phuoc Tuy at least the NLF/PAVN were able to erase any progress made on these fronts in sporadic bursts of violence pretty regularly.

I'm confuse how can you talk about militarize without graph?? What's this z out decisionmaking context???

Just tell us how big the commie bazooka was and we'll calk it even!!!!

Also where is quick reply

I'll caulk you

starku wrote:I'll caulk you

bring it

caulking at high noon, 50 paces

cool

how was security and governance distributed between the americans et al and the south vietnamese govt? were CORDS people working in conjunction with the government, or were they totally independent, or was it a shitmix of both? did CORDS liaise with ROV reconstruction/ministries, what was the relationship there?

was the security approach following a inkspot approach of ever widening securitization from safe areas, or was it more interdiction based, with COPs all over.

tangentially related, were airborne or air mobile troops used often, or regularly in relentless pursuit? was the chase given up when exhausted troops were extracted, was there an unwillingness (at the institutional level, did tactical concerns trump operational ones?) to follow into "here be dragons" territory? did MACV even have the resources for these kinds of ops? were the bulk of south vietnamese security forces trained in "the american" manner, or were local forces utilized in more native methodology? i know at least some were, but the local defence forces mustered by combined action platoons, for example, had very mixed results, even if CAP seemed sort of successful.

also i totally havent read the papers you recommended last time, and now i've totally forgotten!

also the forever war. sooooo gooooood!

artemas wrote:cool

how was security and governance distributed between the americans et al and the south vietnamese govt? were CORDS people working in conjunction with the government, or were they totally independent, or was it a shitmix of both? did CORDS liaise with ROV reconstruction/ministries, what was the relationship there?

Territorial security and governance was supposed to be the sole responsibility of the RVN. There was never an integrated command structure in the same way there was in Korea; CORDS had an advisory system down to district level but they had no actual power and were separate to whatever US Army/USMC units were local.

So in Phuoc Tuy you had CORDS Advisory Team 89 whose structure matched that of local government - so the Province Senior Advisor ran with the Province Chief and there were district advisors in the five districts etc. Deputy PSA was (IIRC) the CIA case officer for the province and ran stuff like the Provincial Reconnaissance Units, Census-Grievance, Revolutionary Development Cadre etc. 1 Australian Task Force didn't have any sort of formal responsibility for Phuoc Tuy or a formal relationship with either the advisory structure or the actual government, just a responsibility to dominate it's TAOR/TAOI - which happened to coincide roughly with the boundaries of Phuoc Tuy. This caused a lot of teeth-gnashing postwar with a few of the ex TF COs saying that they basically didn't have a proper mission and that this reflected the political nature of the deployment.

was the security approach following a inkspot approach of ever widening securitization from safe areas, or was it more interdiction based, with COPs all over.

The former between 1966 and late 1968. In theory the heart of the pacification process were the Revolutionary Development Cadre - 59 man groups who could do it all. They'd move into a hamlet, dig some wells, knock off the Viet Cong infrastructure, teach the villagers how to grow miracle rice, and be able to defend themselves if and when Viet Cong local units tried to bump them off in the night. Protection from larger units was supposed to come from the Popular Force, Regional Force and ARVN units assigned to protect them. Once they'd secured one hamlet they'd move to the next - classic ink spot. In reality this escalating system of security was always less-than-perfect and RDC rarely had the training to complete their mission. Even if they did, they'd move on and security would immediately deteriorate because the local PF/RF/ARVN were muppets.

So with the start of the Accelerated Pacification Campaign in Nov 68, they basically abandoned ink spot and went wide and shallow - partly because it was a sort of land grab in anticipation of negotiations between the DRV/VWP and RVN opening sometime in 1969. APC also saw US units being used more and more in direct support of pacification rather than in search-and-destroy missions against the NFL/PAVN main force units to form a shield, as they were under Westmoreland.

tangentially related, were airborne or air mobile troops used often, or regularly in relentless pursuit? was the chase given up when exhausted troops were extracted, was there an unwillingness (at the institutional level, did tactical concerns trump operational ones?) to follow into "here be dragons" territory? did MACV even have the resources for these kinds of ops?

Can't think of any examples at operational level of pursuit, but it's far from my area of expertise. Definitely was a willingness to crash NLF/PAVN base areas (in Vietnam - obviously Cambodia/Laos were off limits) but main force units were notoriously hard to pin down.

were the bulk of south vietnamese security forces trained in "the american" manner, or were local forces utilized in more native methodology? i know at least some were, but the local defence forces mustered by combined action platoons, for example, had very mixed results, even if CAP seemed sort of successful.

ARVN were trained American style. There were various schools established for the PF, RF etc but TBH the issue was more about the basic skills of soldiering, and simple motivation. Reading reports from Aus WOs going out with RF patrols even late in the war after years of tutelage and it's still problems like noise discipline that are tripping them up - which is more about choice than ignorance or a particular armies 'style'.

also i totally havent read the papers you recommended last time, and now i've totally forgotten!

also the forever war. sooooo gooooood!

Good thing I've forgotten which ones I recommended.

ARVN were trained American style. There were various schools established for the PF, RF etc but TBH the issue was more about the basic skills of soldiering, and simple motivation. Reading reports from Aus WOs going out with RF patrols even late in the war after years of tutelage and it's still problems like noise discipline that are tripping them up - which is more about choice than ignorance or a particular armies 'style'.

thats what i figured, but i wonder how fleet of foot the american (and american trained) guys were vs the far more lightly armed opponent. Like, in afghanistan, the US is training lots of police and ana guys to fight with american equipment, and fight from vehicles, which means they get more ammo, body armour, trained to fight from big, armed and armoured humvees, etc. compared to the "local way", where they have only a few mags, no armour, little food or medicine, and little toyota pickups for transport. the one has better survivability, fighting endurance, and firepower, the other is more mobile, and can go places the other can't.

but yeah, if they dont want to fight, its pretty tough ti make them.

(as an aside, the ANA has problems with desertion obviously, but part of the problem is that there is no banking system, so cash is given directly to the soldier. given the state of the country, it often takes weeks to travel home to get the money to his family,-. sometimes this is reflected in desertion stats, and sometimes the soldier just decides not to go back to the unit. it doesnt help that brigades and kandaks are tied to geographic areas (ie, the south) due to continuity of mentorship, and so if you get assigned to one of those units its basically "welcome to war-ville". did ARVN units have similar problems?)

so, it seems like a bunch of different methods were tried, and most failed just because RVN had problems with traction in the general populace. i guess it was a bit of a knifes edge with allowing RVN to do things themselves to build legitimacy vs doing things yourself if you want them done right (more right? righter?). sounds a bit like a damned if you damned if you dont muddle.

when did the aus tf leave the mission? what sort of methods were used after they had gone vs what they practised? how did they compare?

the answer to that last question has vexed me greatly

1ATF didn't theoretically have any sort of training responsibility for RVN forces in Phuoc Tuy. In practice the standard was so poor that in late 1967 1 Australian Reinforcement Unit formed a Mobile Advisory Training Team that bedded down with certain RVN units; haven't been able to find out much about that unit yet or what kind of training program they used.

Where it gets complicated is that members of the Australian Army Training Team Vietnam were embedded in the wider CORDS/MACV advisroy structure that was responsible for training. Not sure to what extent 'Australian' methods came through in that training, as I said I think most of the training was so basic that any distinction is meaningless. However from 1970 AATTV was concentrated in Phuoc Tuy, forming MATTs of their own. This AATTV presence stayed in the province until the end of 1972, whereas 1ATF left by the end of 1971. Again, most of the stuff those MATTs was doing was really basic - how to ambush, how to construct and maintain basic defences around your compound, etc.

Your commentary on the ANA is interesting, that was basically the same criticism levelled against the US in Vietnam but with nowhere near the same detail. I suspect the biggest problem is giving these armies the logistical tail of a Western army and then expecting that to last. It didn't/couldn't in Vietnam and you'd suspect it won't in Afghanistan.

yeah, and it carries over to the way that nation bulding in afghanistan has occurred, being (mostly) centralized, top-down stuff, which is hugely expensive (and assumes a tax base). vietnam seems similar, with belated efforts later on trying to piece things together.

re australian methods, did australia have a distinct COIN doctrine from the americans, was it ever formalized, and was it congruent with the practice?

one cultural artifact in the ANA is the common identity as a military force designed to protect against external threats (in particular the Pakistani Army), rather than the more internal threats that are the real problem. This can lead to soldiers not taking "policing" seriously, thus undermining their ability at successful COIN. Did ARVN ever have this institutional/cultural phenomena?

(as another aside, of the three armed ministeries during the soviet days in Afghanistan, internal, defence and secret police, the secret police seemed to have the highest retention of soldiers, and appeared to have the best performance. I wonder if that was due to a mindset difference of "rooting out dissidents" vs war-fighting in other departments? Which vietnamese units had the best performance? is it possible to identify departments or commands that were better, or did they suffer from an egalitarian incompetence?)

dont mind me, imma just ask super difficult questions that historians have made or lost careers over for a little bit

yeah Australia had it's own COIN doctrine that was derived from the experience in Malaya - Counter Revolutionary Warfare, Pamphlet 11 of 'The Division in Battle', published in 1965. Thing is though cause it was based on the Malayan experience it immediately recognised the political nature of insurgencies and the limited role an armed force would play in such a conflict; it also assumed there would be an integrated civilian-military command structure at all levels. Obviously in Vietnam there wasn't, so the Australian role was a bit more limited.

not sure on the Vietnamese units/agencies with the highest retention rates. Probably the PRUs, because the CIA specifically targeted people who were fanatically anticommunist thanks to a blood feud or something similar.

in other news - do you know much about what the Australians did in Rwanda? I only recently became aware that we had a fairly significant (by Aus standards) deployment there.

no, i did not. this in and around 1994, or what? most canadians are only familiar with the perspective of romeo dallaire, the un commander, for obvious reasons.

Yeah I think so. I know bugger all about Rwanda really and while I knew Australians were involved on the periphery (an artist called George Gittoes went over with them, created this really harrowing body of work out of it - also did a move in Iraq in 2004 called Soundtrack to War which is rad) it wasn't till I was taking a mate through the War Memorial a couple of weeks ago that I discovered that our committments to both Somalia and Rwanda were pretty sizeable - sent 1RAR to Somalia and a three company force (1 logistics, 1 infantry and 1 medical) to Rwanda as part of UNAMIR II.

i know rwanda got up to 2500 peacekeepers before the genocide, and over 5000 after, but was never totally sure what the makeup was. pretty typical for dozens of countries throwing a hundred or so, and only a couple putting in real strength.

you mentioned that the australian army became a garrison force for 25 years after vietnam, does this include peacekeeping?

yeah but in very small numbers...we sent a battalion to Somalia in 1991 and a communications unit to Cambodia around the same time and they were by far our biggest deployments until INTERFET IIRC.

Just found this article on the Australians in Rwanda...fuck.

christ thats horrible

in unrelated news

have you ever read Military Orientalism by Patrick Porter?

just saw it at the library, but i already have 20 books i need to power read through

My god, that's fucked.

No wonder half the people we sent to Rwanda got PTSD.

the sad part is that americans probably think 'un fails scrap whole plan omg'

because helping survivors is a waste of time if you cant' force a country to do what you want, or soemthing

Well America doesn't like having other people tell it's troops what to do and while they do the humanitarian thing occasionally, it seems to be the Navy doing the work.

the us has avoided getting involved in un peacekeeping mostly because A) as aaaron said, they arent groovey with putting american soldiers under non-american control, B) they dont ever want to get involved in a mess without having a clear mission with clear command and a goal (unless they started it) C) for a while they had a sort of paralysis in handling "operations less than war" and D) they honestly have difficulty in operating in a coalition, if they arent top dog (this is related to A)

tldr the us is half right, and there are serious problems involved if you get stuck in a mess with no real idea or plan or wherewithal to resolve the issue

the american opinion of "un is useless get rid of it" is mirrored by the opinion in other western countries where "the un and peacekeeping will solve everything there certainly are no legal holes no sir"

i literally think i have never ever heard anyone say that

it's just americans saying how it's best to jsut take over coutnries and make them what you want

what, that peacekeeping is good?

obviously i exaggerated, but most people in the west are pretty content to leave it at "peacekeeping is good and we should do more of it", without considering whether or not it is likely, or able, to solve anything

its also pretty popular to just accuse the us if things turn sour

in canada, there was even a while in the 90s where it became pretty popular to just think that the role of the cf could be played by a gendarmerie

of course i guess it depends on whether the people you're getting these opinions from are internet people

Well there was a good few decades where people in Canada thought that peacekeeping was all peaceful and quiet. Rather then a combination of low level hostilities, constant tension and outright combat. I've heard a number of times that is was worse for guys on UN ops because half the time you couldn't stop anything, and in places like the Balkans the factions would constantly fuck with you.