Whither State? The Institutional Politics of American Nation-building Policy
This article discusses the difficulties associated with military-led stability and nationbuilding operations and argues that the United States’ current policy negatively affects defence capabilities, unduly influences how stability operations are prioritized and conducted, limits State Department capacities, and allows the military to be seen as the ‘face’ of American foreign policy. Several options exist for the United States to adequately address this issue to include the working within the established system, a reassignment of leadership responsibilities, or restraining the American tendency to intervene. The United States’ military has proven that it is capable of conducting nation-building operations, but at the cost of global misperception, painful inefficiency, significant risks to United States’ overall defence capabilities, and the issues of civilian control that follow from reliance on warriors in the role of diplomats.
CORDS/Phoenix: Counterinsurgency Lessons from Vietnam for the Future
AS THE UNITED STATES ends its third year of war in Iraq, the military continues to search for ways to deal with an insurgency that shows no sign of waning. The specter of Vietnam looms large, and the media has been filled with comparisons between the current situation and the "quagmire" of the Vietnam War. The differences between the two conflicts are legion, but observers can learn lessons from the Vietnam experience-if they are judicious in their search. For better or worse, Vietnam is the most prominent historical example of American counterinsurgency (COIN)-and the longest-so it would be a mistake to reject it because of its admittedly complex and controversial nature. An examination of the pacification effort in Vietnam and the evolution of the Civil Operations and Revolutionary Development Support (CORDS) program provides useful insights into the imperatives of a viable COIN program. Twin Threats: Main Forces and Guerrillas In Vietnam, the U.S. military faced arguably the most complex, effective, lethal insurgency in history. The enemy was no rag-tag band lurking in the jungle, but rather a combination of guerrillas, political cadre, and modern main-force units capable of standing toe to toe with the U.S. military. Any one of these would have been significant, but in combination they presented a formidable threat. When U.S. ground forces intervened in South Vietnam in 1965, estimates of enemy guerrilla and Communist Party front strength stood at more than 300,000. In addition, Viet Cong (VC) and North Vietnamese main forces numbered almost 230,000-and that number grew to 685,000 by the time of the Communist victory in 1975. These main forces were organized into regiments and divisions, and between 1965 and 1968 the enemy emphasized main-force war rather than insurgency.' During the war the Communists launched three conventional offensives: the 1968 Tet Offensive, the 1972 Easter Offensive, and the final offensive in 1975. All were major campaigns by any standard. Clearly, the insurgency and the enemy main forces had to be dealt with simultaneously. When faced with this sort of dual threat, what is the correct response? Should military planners gear up for a counterinsurgency, or should they fight a war aimed at destroying the enemy main forces? General William C. Westmoreland, the overall commander of U.S. troops under the Military Assistance Command, Vietnam (MACV), faced just such a question. Westmoreland knew very well that South Vietnam faced twin threats, but he believed that the enemy main forces were the most immediate problem. By way of analogy, he referred to them as "bully boys with crow-bars" who were trying to tear down the house that was South Vietnam. The guerrillas and political cadre, which he called "termites," could also destroy the house, but it would take them much longer to do it. So while he clearly understood the need for pacification, his attention turned first to the bully boys, whom he wanted to drive away from the "house."2 Westmoreland's strategy of chasing the enemy and forcing him to fight or run (also known as search and destroy) worked in the sense that it saved South Vietnam from immediate defeat, pushed the enemy main forces from the populated areas, and temporarily took the initiative away from the Communists. South Vietnam was safe in the short term, and Communist histories make clear that the intervention by U.S. troops was a severe blow to their plans.3 In the end, however, there were not enough U.S. troops to do much more than produce a stalemate. The Communists continued to infiltrate main-force units from neighboring Laos and Cambodia, and they split their forces into smaller bands that could avoid combat if the battlefield situation was not in their favor. The enemy continued to build his strength, and in January 1968 launched the Tet Offensive, a clear indication that the Americans could never really hold the initiative. Although attacks on almost every major city and town were pushed back and as many as 50,000 enemy soldiers and guerrillas were killed, the offensive proved to be a political victory for the Communists, who showed they could mount major attacks no matter what the Americans tried to do. …
The Internet and the Changing Beijing-Taipei Relations: Toward Unification or Fragmentation?
Information and its technologies facilitate the exercise of what has been called “soft power,” a concept that differentiates information from the conventional dimensions of “hard power,” which is mainly associated with military force and economic influence. Soft power, according to Nye, a former Assistant Secretary of Defense of the United States, means that “A country may obtain the outcomes it wants in world politics because other countries want to follow it, admiring its values, emulating its example, aspiring to its level of prosperity and openness. In this sense it is just as important to set the agenda in world politics and attract others as it is to force them to change through the threat or use of military or economic weapons.”1