Military in America

Peter M. Karsten

• Publisher: Free Press
• Year: 1986
• Print ISBN: 9780029191903
• eBook ISBN: 9781439106204
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Military & Maritime History
• Index: History

In The American Military Tradition historians John M. Carroll and Colin F. Baxter gather an esteemed group of military historians to explore the pivotal issues and themes in American warfare from the Colonial era to the present conflict in Iraq.

From the reliance on militia and the Minutemen of the American Revolution to the all-volunteer specialized troops of today, these twelve essays analyze the continuities and changes in the conduct of war over the past three centuries. In this completely revised second edition, new essays explore Napoleonic warfare, the American Civil War, the Plains Wars in the West, the War against Japan, the nuclear arms race, and the War on Terror. The book, while not avoiding the nature of battle, goes beyond tactics and strategy to include the enormous social and political impact of America's wars.

The Vietnam Era
and Beyond

39
American Military Performance
in Vietnam
Background and Analysis
KURT LANG

The debate continues over the wisdom, morality, and effectiveness of various American military policies in Vietnam, but some aspects of American involvement can be put into perspective. Kurt Lang compares the American military experience in Vietnam to studies of other military systems undergoing the stress of combat, and offers an explanation of the observed decline in cohesion and unit effectiveness as the war wore on.

A RUSSIAN ARCHDUKE is reported to have said that he hated war because “it spoiled armies.” His observation fits, most uncomfortably, the American experience in Vietnam. There signs of partial dissolution of the armed forces coincided with increasingly strident opposition at home to further involvement in the conflict. Increases in the various indicators of military ineffectiveness pretty much paralleled the rising curve of anti-war sentiment, as measured by polls.¹

That the military faced a problem in Vietnam is clear, though its exact nature and extent remain in dispute. Military self-examinations have sometimes ignored the escalation of peace protests. Other analysts have blamed unsoldierly conduct or the permissiveness of American society² or argued that the brutalizing nature of the warfare moved soldiers to recognize the immorality and illegitimacy of the U.S. intervention in Southeast Asia but said little about the countervailing role of organizational and home-front support for the war.

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SOURCE: Kurt Lang, “American Military Performance in Vietnam: Background and Analysis,” Journal of Political and Military Sociology, VIII (1980): 269-286.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Most of the citations to the sources consulted by the author in this essay have been omitted from this volume for brevity and economy. The reader should consult the original source of the essay for the complete scholarly documentation.

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This paper seeks to review what happened in Vietnam within the context of other twentieth-century wars. It focuses on five propositions each of which is supported by a considerable body of evidence and/or is useful as a postulate to help explain the progressive demoralization of armies:

1. The effects of combat stress are cumulative and tend to depress performance below officially prescribed levels.
2. Organizational disintegration results from the failure of groups in which soldiers function to transmit and/or enforce appropriate norms of conduct.
3. The extent of dissolution is affected more by concrete tactical and organizational realities that directly affect soldiers than by the more abstract moral and political principles to which national leaders tend to appeal.
4. Political dissent typically spreads from civilians to troops rather than the other way around.
5. Rising antiwar sentiment on the home front affects dissolution in two ways: directly, by tacitly condoning or explicitly encouraging some forms of deviance, and indirectly, by limiting the sacrifices authorities can legitimately demand and the range of options available for countering deviant tendencies.

The basic question is this: do these propositions hold for Vietnam? If war “spoiled” the American army, does the explanation these propositions provide suffice? Or must we view Vietnam as a unique historical experience?

Support for these propositions comes from studies of past wars. In two cases—the South African War (1899-1902) between the British and the Boer Republic and the French effort to pacify Algeria (1954-1961)—there are similarities to the Vietnam experience: a disparity of strength between opponents with a major power employing its arsenal of modern weapons against an essentially guerilla force. In strictly numerical terms, this disparity was even greater in the Boer and Algerian confrontations than in Vietnam. Yet the British expedition proved unexpectedly costly, especially in lives lost, while the French effort ended in what can only be called a defeat, with the Algerian nationalists gaining full independence. In both wars atrocities were charged. A resettlement program through which the British sought to separate the Boers from their supply base anticipated one element of American Vietnam policy. Nor was the measurement of progress against an invisible enemy by body counts, strict inventories of weapons and ammunition captured, and the mapping of “pacified” areas new to Vietnam. Used by the French in Algeria, these indicators were criticized, as they would be in Vietnam, as having only a tenuous relation to reality. These “little wars,” it should also be noted, were launched with considerable popular support, with opposition being muted at first but becoming more vocal as the war bogged down. In terms of demands placed on individuals in the name of the national interest, there is a more meaningful comparison to be made between the Vietnam experience and the world conflicts of 1914-18 and 1939-45.

The troops (as opposed to the officers) who ultimately brought victory in South Africa were essentially a mercenary force, mostly recruited among the poor and therefore considered expendable. In Algeria, the elite paratroopers did most of the fighting; the draftees did little more than serve as garrison troops in the towns.

Within this comparative framework, we shall now take up each of the propositions, examining in turn (1) the effect of stress, (2) the value of group cohesion, (3) tactics and strategy, (4) political influences and (5) the process of politicization in understanding the performance of U.S. troops in Vietnam.

1
THE STRESS FACTOR

It is difficult for anyone not directly involved to realize how disorienting and debilitating combat can be, and until fairly recently, military historians have not provided much information on the battle experience of soldiers at the tactical level. S. L. A. Marshall pioneered by documenting the large number of combat soldiers in World War II who failed to direct fire against the enemy even when clearly in a position to do so. The battle outcome, obviously, rested on relatively few men. Further disquieting news was found in reports of the behavior of American POWs held in North Korean and Chinese camps. Though only a score refused repatriation, many more, including officers, falsely confessed to germ warfare or otherwise “collaborated” with their captors. In the American soul-searching that followed, the universal aspect of such responses (for example, among Communist soldiers in Korea …) was often overlooked.

The Korean war was not the first occasion on which the not-so-total commitment of citizen soldiers to self-sacrifice became a political issue. In World War I psychological casualties gave rise to controversy: should a soldier without debilitating physical injury but unable or unwilling to go on be granted casualty privileges? Did a diagnosis of “shell-shock”—repeated close hits affecting a man’s nervous system causing him to lose control—imply a legitimate injury? As the war dragged on, the notion of psychiatric breakdown due to stress gained some acceptance; but the British army, continuing to emphasize its disciplinary aspects, executed an unusually large number of men for desertion.

American experience in Vietnam reenforced observations in World War II: a disproportionate number of evacuations for neuropsychiatric reasons occurred during initial exposure to combat when anxiety was at its peak and the “new guy” had not yet been integrated into the informal soldier group. Psychiatric facilities close to the battle zone were designed to speed and maximize the return to active duty of those men with less serious symptoms.

The logistic revolution brought on by the military exploitation of the railroad, of motor transport, and of aircraft has underlined the cumulative effects of stress. While increased mobility has favored the quick knock-out blow, as in Hitler’s Blitzkrieg campaigns, it also has speeded the flow of replacements so that armies now carry on where heavy losses would once have meant an end to hostilities. Until World War I there were always more deaths from disease than battle deaths, but protracted combat with increasingly lethal weapons has reversed the balance. Meanwhile military planners have become aware that after a certain time spent in combat, even the most effective soldier becomes indifferent and may end on the neuropsychiatric casualty list.

Certain measures can, however, extend the period of combat effectiveness indefinitely. One is giving troops frequent brief breaks. However, Ahrenfeldt while noting the positive effect of the American belief that every man has a “breaking point,” found that more frequent rest periods sometimes contributed to ineffectiveness. A strictly delimited tour of duty probably had similar effects. For instance, when the Americans increased the number of missions required for rotation, delaying the potential date for going home, the onset of anxiety symptoms among air crews was correspondingly delayed. Thus treating anxiety as a medical rather than a disciplinary problem has side effects. Still, by using the medical channel to rid themselves of misfits, unit commanders could avoid time-consuming steps that might ultimately reflect on their own competence.³

In Vietnam the kind and amount of stress on troops was affected by the specific nature of the warfare being waged. Intermittent but brief contact with the enemy; fairly large permanent base camps that, while not so secure as rear echelons in previous wars, provided time for rest, clean up and equipment care between periodic forays; precisely delimited tour of overseas duty; and screening procedures designed to weed out the unfit all helped reduce American neuropsychiatric casualty rates far below those of the Second World War and Korea. Until late 1968, neuropsychiatric casualty rates among American soldiers whether stationed in Vietnam, Europe, or the United States were quite similar, and there was general satisfaction with the morale an...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Introduction
• The Colonial Era
• The Revolutionary Era
• The Early Republic
• The Civil War Era
• From Civil War to World War I
• The Era of World War I
• The Era of World War II
• The Cold War Years
• The Vietnam Era and Beyond