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AS the United States extricates itself from Afghanistan and is being pulled again into the Middle East, it is easy to forget that it is 40 years since American forces were driven out of Vietnam.
A BBC documentary to mark the anniversary showed the anguish of the Vietnamese who had served US forces, but were left behind as the North Vietnamese advanced upon Saigon — later renamed Ho Chi Minh City — in a lightning thrust. The film made the point that Hanoi had been encouraged in its aggression by Nixon’s Watergate scandal, and his subsequent resignation.
Since then, America has been involved in a number of wars, big and small. And while it has prevailed in minor conflicts in Grenada and Panama, its technological edge and vast war machine have failed to impose Washington’s will on either Iraq or Afghanistan.
Although different American administrations have declared victory and withdrew from Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan, the fact is that they could not meet their military and political goals in any of these countries. And when a state launches an offensive war far from its shores and fails to achieve its stated objectives, then to all intents and purposes, it has been defeated.
Some 550,000 US troops were fighting the elusive Vietcong.
Of the three conflicts, only the Vietnam war had an ideological dimension: at the height of the Cold War, the threat of a communist takeover of South Vietnam caused John Kennedy to send in ‘advisers’ to prop up the military regime in Saigon; this small force was steadily augmented until there were some 550,000 American troops fighting the elusive Vietcong. As a resilient enemy refused to crack, the Pentagon escalated its campaign to include the bombing of North Vietnam and Cambodia. More bombs were dropped than all of the airborne munitions dropped on Germany in the Second World War. Agent Orange, a chemical defoliant designed to deprive the Vietcong guerrillas of jungle cover, killed tens of thousands, and has caused even more deformed babies.
But in defeat, few lessons were learned. American generals in Afghanistan tried and failed to defeat a slippery foe who, like the Vietcong, could melt into the population. And again, a brutal occupation generated resistance from a fiercely proud people. Just as the Afghans had defeated the British and the Soviets, the Vietnamese had resisted the Chinese for centuries; fought against Japanese occupation; and then defeated the French colonial power.
The American armed forces are the best equipped and trained anywhere, and Washington spends as much again as the rest of the world on defence. Why, then, has it been unable to defeat poorly armed guerrillas on so many battlefields? The answer lies as much in politics as it does in tactics and strategy.
As satellite television and the internet connect the world ever more closely, conflicts reach our screens in real time in a manner inconceivable even a generation ago. So while American bombers could bomb civilian targets in North Vietnam without the rest of the world knowing about casualties, now bloggers and amateur reporters stream videos and accounts of atrocities almost instantly.
This easy access to information serves as a check to elected governments responsive to their own citizens, as well as to the wider community. So while I’m sure there must have been American commanders itching to carpet bomb areas resisting their troops, this kind of brute force is getting harder to apply.
Then there is the reluctance to accept heavy casualties: while nearly 60,000 American soldiers died in Vietnam, the numbers in Iraq and Afghanistan were far lower. One reason is the quick evacuation of wounded soldiers to field hospitals by helicopter. But ultimately, Americans, while highly supportive of their military, soon sicken of the sight of their soldiers returning home in body bags from some distant land they know and care little about.
It is for this reason that American military planners have been working on remotely controlled as well as fully autonomous defence systems that would keep their soldiers and pilots from harm’s way. Drones are only one example of this evolution; many more are heading to a conflict zone near you.
What else do these examples of asymmetrical warfare teach us? Clearly, ideology, political will and the desire to expel a foreign invader provide poorly armed fighters with a level of motivation that is not taught in military academies, or grasped by armchair warriors in Washington.
Much has been written about the ‘battle for hearts and minds’. But the fact is that a foreign invader can hardly expect to convince an Afghan or an Iraqi that he is occupying his country and killing his countrymen for his own good. Almost by definition, an extended occupation will multiply resistance.
Obama understands this, and hence his determination to pull US troops from Afghanistan, and his reluctance to commit forces elsewhere. For his prudence, he has been dismissed as a wimp by his adversaries. But there are times when it takes greater courage to refuse to fight.
Published in Dawn, July 18th, 2015
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