Explaining U.S. Military Strategy in Vietnam

What would cause ademocracy to conduct a ºawed counterinsurgency campaign? What wouldlead a democracy to fail in a war against an insurgency? Why would a democ-racy choose war despite its leaders knowing it will ªght in a manner makingfailure more likely? I offered answers to these closely related but crucially dis-tinct questions in “The Myth of Military Myopia: Democracy, Small Wars, andVietnam.”1

In “The Myth of Military Myopia,” I argued that leaders of democracies shiftthe burden of providing for their nations’ defense onto the rich by substitutingcapital (armor, artillery, airpower, etc.) for military labor, thus shielding the rel-atively less wealthy “median voter” from the costs of defense and of war. Be-cause the costs of ªghting an insurgency with ªrepower are relatively low forthe median voter compared to the more labor-intensive, population security–oriented approach that is generally recognized to be more effective, rationallyshe will favor the former’s use despite the diminished prospects of victory.

In “Myth of Military Myopia,” I employed this deductive argument, which Icall “cost distribution theory,” to examine the case of the Vietnam War andshed light on an as-yet unresolved historical puzzle: Why did U.S. forces con-duct a ªrepower-intensive campaign against the Vietcong (VC) insurgency inSouth Vietnam, even as it appeared not to work? I argued that PresidentLyndon Johnson and his administration ensured that the U.S. military pursueda strategy that emphasized the ªght against conventional enemy units and re-lied on the use of ªrepower for the ªght against insurgents. Furthermore, Idrew on both primary and secondary sources to show that Johnson and his ci-vilian aides were very much aware that although members of the administra-tion considered this strategy ineffective against insurgencies, it was politicallypopular in the United States. My argument offers a more compelling accountof the ºawed U.S. counterinsurgency strategy in Vietnam than “military myo-pia” explanations, which place blame for the United States’ failure on the U.S.

Jonathan Caverley is Assistant Professor of Political Science at Northwestern University.

The author would like to thank Jennifer Light, James Mahoney, Nuno Monteiro, Michael Noonan,Elizabeth Saunders, Frank Smith, and especially John Schuessler. Lexi Neame provided invaluableresearch assistance.

1. Jonathan D. Caverley, “The Myth of Military Myopia: Democracy, Small Wars, and Vietnam,”International Security, Vol. 34, No. 3 (Winter 2009/10), pp. 119–157.

Explaining U.S. Military Strategy in Vietnam

Explaining U.S. MilitaryStrategy in Vietnam

Jonathan D. Caverley

Thinking Clearly about Causation

International Security, Vol. 35, No. 3 (Winter 2010/11), pp. 124–143© 2010 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

124

military’s intrinsic culture, its bureaucratic incentives, or its inability to learnfrom experience.2

James McAllister’s response to my article does not challenge the deductivetheory but instead makes three main arguments against the empirical claimabove.3 First, McAllister cites the large amount of primary and secondarysources that establishes the U.S. military’s disdain for labor-intensive counter-insurgency (COIN), and in that process suggests that my case rests on cherry-picked data.4 Second, he contends that all U.S. decisionmakers, both civilianand military, understood the centrality of the Government of South Vietnam(GVN) to a successful war outcome. He uses this evidence to explain whythese decisionmakers preferred to avoid further Americanizing the conºict,and to suggest that my argument regarding the U.S. military’s poor counterin-surgency efforts fails to capture the roots of the U.S. defeat. Third, McAllisterªnds unpersuasive the evidence I presented suggesting that, when establish-ing its counterinsurgency strategy, the Johnson administration consideredvoter preferences.

The logic and evidence McAllister uses to support his positions do littledamage to my argument. In this article, I explain why. In the ªrst section, Ishow how my argument ªts within the mainstream of Vietnam War historiog-raphy, and suggest that deductive reasoning can play an important role in ad-dressing puzzles remaining in this body of knowledge. In the second section, Ishow that because McAllister does not distinguish between necessary andsufªcient causal explanations, his evidence is of little use for testing cost distri-bution theory against arguments resting on military myopia. In the third sec-tion, I address McAllister’s challenge to my evidence that the Johnsonadministration expected, encouraged, and even directed its uniformed subor-dinates to take a capital-intensive approach to counterinsurgency. This sectionalso examines McAllister’s claim that my linking voter preferences to militarydoctrine is unsubstantiated. In the fourth section, I assess McAllister’s conclu-sion that my efforts to suggest policy implications stemming from my argu-ment are for naught because, in his view, the true cause of the United States’

Explaining U.S. Military Strategy in Vietnam 125

2. John A. Nagl, Learning to Eat Soup with a Knife: Counterinsurgency Lessons from Malaya and Viet-nam (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005), p. 115; Andrew F. Krepinevich Jr., The Army andVietnam (Baltimore, Md.: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1986; and Larry E. Cable, Conºict ofMyths: The Development of American Counterinsurgency Doctrine and the Vietnam War (New York:New York University Press, 1986).3. James McAllister, “Who Lost Vietnam? Soldiers, Civilians, and U.S. Military Strategy in Viet-nam,” International Security, Vol. 35, No. 3 (Winter 2010/11), pp. 95–123.4. I use “COIN” to distinguish the labor-intensive approach from all other “counterinsurgency”strategies.

failure in Vietnam was not a poor strategy but the GVN’s inability to fend foritself against its enemies. That is, the bulk of McAllister’s article defends themilitary myopia thesis, only to conclude that it did not matter for the war’soutcome. I therefore reiterate the need to distinguish between necessary andsufªcient causes to explore cost distribution theory’s implications beyond thestudy of the Vietnam War. Here again, McAllister’s alternative explanationand evidence undermine neither my causal logic nor my justiªcation for focus-ing on counterinsurgency doctrine as a source of failure in small wars.

Theory and the Historical Puzzle of Civilian Noninterference

“The Myth of Military Myopia” challenges an explanation for the U.S. defeatin Vietnam, not the historical data underpinning that explanation. With thestatement, “If accurate, [Caverley’s] argument would render entire shelves ofbooks on the Vietnam War obsolete,” McAllister creates a straw man.5 By giv-ing my theory’s historiographic implications too much credit, McAllister givesmy evidence too little. Here, I review how my argument ªts into the literatureon the Vietnam War, and how deductive causal explanations can play a valu-able role in the study of history more generally.

Like supporters of the military myopia explanation for U.S. failure inVietnam, I concluded that the United States focused on ªghting the enemy’smain forces rather than insurgents, especially in the pivotal years of 1966 and1967, a defensible if not undisputed position. My claim that the United Statespursued a counterproductive, ªrepower-intensive counterinsurgency is evenless debatable, as McAllister acknowledges.6 I do not challenge the well-established ªnding that Johnson and his civilian advisers directly managed theground war much less than they did the air war.

Any contribution to the historical literature I make results from providing ananswer to a question rarely addressed in studies of the Vietnam War: Why wasan administration that was willing to directly manage most other aspects ofthe war effort unwilling to closely supervise a ground campaign that appearedto be failing?7 A deductive theory based on simple assumptions about voters

International Security 35:3 126

5. McAllister, “Who Lost Vietnam?” p. 110.6. Ibid.7. I am hardly the ªrst to argue that the Johnson administration rejected a more intensivepaciªcation strategy. See, for example, Robert Buzzanco, Masters of War: Military Dissent and Poli-tics in the Vietnam Era (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1996), p. 252. See also Richard A.Hunt, Paciªcation: The American Struggle for Vietnam’s Hearts and Minds (Boulder, Colo.: Westview,1995), p. 79; and Elizabeth N. Saunders, Leaders at War: How Presidents Shape Military Interventions(Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2011), chap. 5.

in democracies and civilian supremacy over the military can suggest causesthat historians have left unaddressed. In the equilibrium predicted by such atheory, little evidence may exist of civilians directing the military explicitly.8

Inductive approaches will therefore discount the causal link between civilianleaders’ preferences and the conduct of the military. Agreement by the Johnsonadministration and the U.S. military on the United States’ counterinsurgencystrategy, however, is not evidence that the military controlled this strategy. It isfor this reason that considerable weight should be given to my ªnding that,when civilian leaders and the military disagreed, the former emphasized mainforces and ªrepower more than the latter.

Counterinsurgency, Military Myopia, and Civilian Preferences

McAllister correctly states that, empirically, my “main argument is thatWestmoreland and the military repeatedly tried to convince civilian ofªcials toadopt a labor-intensive COIN strategy and that ‘the president summarily re-jected the COIN option on multiple occasions.’”9 McAllister claims that I amwrong in asserting that the exclusion of U.S. forces from paciªcation missions“was promoted solely by civilian policymakers against the better advice or rec-ommendations of the military.”10 This would be a grave error, had I actuallymade this argument.

In “The Myth of Military Myopia,” I provided several examples of civiliansin the Johnson administration directing the U.S. military to use ªrepower in-stead of more ground forces in the war in Vietnam, but at no point did I denythat Westmoreland largely shared this preference. I do not suggest otherwisebecause (1) doing so would be wrong, and (2) this shared preference doesnothing to contradict my theory. McAllister’s emphasis on Westmoreland’s en-thusiasm for ªrepower and conventional combat in rebuttal to my argumentbelies a misunderstanding of cost distribution theory’s implications. To showwhy, I revisit my theory’s causal logic.

Military myopia explanations of the Vietnam War take a largely inductiveapproach. These accounts claim to provide a necessary and sufªcient reasonfor the ºawed U.S. counterinsurgency effort in Vietnam, one based on charac-teristics inherent to the U.S. military. By contrast, cost distribution theory is a


8. For the purposes of this article, I use “civilians” to refer to members of the Johnsonadministration.9. McAllister, “Who Lost Vietnam?” p. 109.10. Caverley, “The Myth of Military Myopia,” p. 146.

deductive theory about public and government preferences. This theory positsthat, in democracies, civilian leaders’ approval, and ultimately the voters’ sup-port, is necessary for both ºawed counterinsurgency and military myopia.11

Thus, not only are civilian preferences an important mechanism leading topoor counterinsurgency, but to a large extent, they make spurious the roleplayed by military myopia. My article denied neither military myopia’s exis-tence nor its effect on warªghting in Vietnam. Instead, it sought to establish“both military myopia’s limitations and its need to be nested within a theoryof civilian leaders and the public that elects them.”12 In hindsight, a better (iflonger) title for my article might have begun with “The Myth of MilitaryMyopia’s Causal Power.”

Figure 1 depicts the relationship of cost distribution and military myopiatheories to the dependent variable of ºawed counterinsurgency. Military myo-pia elaborates on causal relationship 1, where the military’s predilection forconventional and ªrepower-heavy warfare (MM) is a sufªcient cause of a poor,capital-intensive counterinsurgency (CC). Cost distribution theory offersa causally prior independent variable, which for simplicity’s sake I call “civil-ian preferences” (CP), as a necessary condition for MM, or causal relationship2. My theory suggests that although MM is not necessary for CC, CP is. Werethe military simply a transmission belt for civilian preferences, democracieswould still engage in CC, or causal relationship 3. The causal role of MM istherefore diminished.13

Evidence of causal relationship 1 does nothing to undermine cost dis-tribution theory. If the military fought the insurgency exactly as I suggestedcivilians preferred, its conduct would have been indistinguishable from the ev-idence McAllister presents. Cost distribution theory is consistent with RichardBetts’s claim that “army leaders remained less alienated than those in the otherservices because they were less adamant than the navy and air force in theirdifference with administration strategy and because the President and theOfªce of the Secretary of Defense did not restrict or monitor ground tactics onanything approaching the scale of which they controlled the air war.”14 I sug-gest that the two parts of Betts’s explanation are closely related.


11. Ibid., p. 155.12. Ibid., p. 121.13. For a formal discussion of this logic, see James Mahoney, Erin Kimball, and Kendra L. Koivu,“The Logic of Historical Explanation in the Social Sciences,” Comparative Political Studies, Vol. 42,No. 1 (January 2009), pp. 114–146.14. Richard K. Betts, Soldiers, Statesmen, and Cold War Crises (New York: Columbia UniversityPress, 1991), p. 11.

My theory assumes the ultimate dominance of civilians in the determina-tion of security policy, and thus agreement between the administration and itssubordinates is to be expected. It would indeed have been odd if PresidentJohnson had appointed a commander in Vietnam (MACV) who did not sharehis views. H.R. McMaster describes the Vietnam-era military as being at itsCold War nadir in terms of policy inºuence.15 The Kennedy and Johnson ad-ministrations ensured their principal military advisers were handpicked “teammen, not gladiators.”16 Beyond appointments, civilian leaders can shape theiruniformed subordinates’ actions in many indirect ways. The Joint Chiefs ofStaff anticipated the Johnson administration’s preferences in developing andpresenting their campaign plans.17 Statements to the American public alsoinºuenced and constrained the military; a 1965 Air Force Policy Letter forCommanders and a 1968 Air University Review article cite Defense SecretaryRobert McNamara’s televised statement that “what the U.S. sought in SouthVietnam was a limited objective, and it would be accomplished with the low-est possible loss of lives and not necessarily with the lowest expenditure ofmoney.”18 Given this state of civil-military relations, and the Johnson adminis-tration’s deep involvement in every other aspect of the war’s conduct, I sug-gested applying Occam’s razor to its relative lack of interference in the groundwar.

That many in the administration, including President Johnson, understoodthe importance of paciªcation in Vietnam does not damage my case either. In-deed, I noted this understanding in my article.19 Both civilians and the military


15. H.R. McMaster, Dereliction of Duty: Lyndon Johnson, Robert McNamara, the Joint Chiefs of Staff,and the Lies That Led to Vietnam (New York: HarperCollins, 1997).16. George C. Herring, LBJ and Vietnam: A Different Kind of War (Austin: University of Texas Press,1994), pp. 29–30.17. McMaster, Dereliction of Duty, pp. 329–334.18. Robert McNamara interview, February 8, 1965, quoted in “Air Force Policy Letter for Com-manders,” February 15, 1965. References to both the interview and the policy letter are in RobertM. Kipp, “Counterinsurgency from 30,000 Feet: The B-52 in Vietnam,” Air University Review, Vol.19, No. 2 (January–February 1968), pp. 10–18.19. Caverley, “The Myth of Military Myopia,” p. 146.

Figure 1.

recognized the labor-intensive principles of COIN and that ªrepower was apoor substitute. Nevertheless, they pursued ºawed counterinsurgency. For ex-ample, the famous February 1966 Honolulu conference convened by Johnson,which “clearly endorsed an improved paciªcation effort,” supports my claimsbecause the concrete instructions given to Westmoreland in Honolulu made at-trition “the primary operational objective.”20

To show that civilian preferences (CP) is a superior explanation to militarymyopia (MM) requires focusing on relationships 2 and 3 in ªgure 1. The evi-dence for these relationships may not be plentiful given that cost distributiontheory predicts civil-military harmony in equilibrium. On the other hand, anyªnding of instances where civilians helped direct, shape, and reinforce the mil-itary’s capital-intensive campaign (i.e., relationship 2) means that “cost distri-bution theory explains more aspects of the war” than does military myopia.21

Despite the existence of the military’s enthusiasm for ªrepower in Vietnam,linking civilian preferences to counterinsurgency strategy absent a role formilitary myopia (relationship 3) is not entirely counterfactual, given theJohnson administration’s dealings with more COIN-oriented civilians such asAmbassador Henry Cabot Lodge (who axiomatically did not suffer from mili-tary myopia).

Conversely, the most direct way for McAllister to overturn my argument isto provide evidence that the Johnson administration preferred paciªcationmore strongly than the military did, and yet the military’s strategy of mainforce focus, ªrepower, and attrition prevailed. Instead, he provides muchmaterial in support of relationship 1 and challenges some of my evidence forrelationship 2.22

The Civilian Role in the Historical Record

Space precludes addressing all of McAllister’s empirical objections, but giventhat my argument neither claims nor requires constant civil-military disagree-ment, this is unnecessary. I therefore tackle the aspects of McAllister’s rebuttalthat truly bear on my theory (causal relationship 2 in ªgure 1), brieºy high-light evidence that McAllister disregards, and acknowledge aspects where he


20. Michael A. Hennessy, Strategy in Vietnam: The Marines and Revolutionary Warfare in I Corps,1965–1972 (Westport, Conn.: Praeger, 1997), pp. 82–83.21. Caverley, “The Myth of Military Myopia,” p. 131.22. A competing explanation might assign causal priority to MM, but make CP necessary as well.Deborah D. Avant argues that the “electoral circumstances” of civilians prevented them from in-ducing the U.S. Army to change its conventional bias. I assign civilians a much more positive role.Avant, Political Institutions and Military Change: Lessons from Peripheral Wars (Ithaca, N.Y.: CornellUniversity Press, 1994).

adds corrections and nuance. In so doing, I address his claim that I engaged inpoor scholarship.

“The Myth of Military Myopia” sought to establish three ªndings. First, thepublic in a democracy has a preference for spending treasure over blood. Sec-ond, the government considers this preference in developing and approving acapital-intensive strategy. Third, the government must explicitly direct the mil-itary to employ this strategy.23 McAllister focuses primarily on this last propo-sition, makes some observations on the second, and says little about the ªrst. Iwill do likewise.

the administration’s inºuence in the ground campaign

McAllister’s case against my article rests largely on the role of the Johnson ad-ministration in determining the ground strategy in Vietnam. Contrary toMcAllister’s assertion, my article presented more than “three examples to ar-gue that the administration rejected a labor-intensive COIN approach.”24 Forexample, he does not acknowledge Westmoreland’s 1964 recommendation tomaintain an advisory approach in Vietnam rather than initiate bombing orground operations, justiªed by Westmoreland’s deep involvement in a “labo-ratory experiment in paciªcation.”25 Nonetheless, this section concentrates onthe three points addressed by McAllister.

the phase ii debate, 1965. McAllister objects to my interpretation ofNational Security Adviser McGeorge Bundy’s September 23, 1965, memo as arejection of paciªcation strategy.26 This memo was part of the Johnson admin-istration’s debate over “Phase II” troop deployments and expansion of thestrategic bombing campaign, Operation Rolling Thunder. In my article, I ar-gued that during this debate Bundy and other administration members sug-gested that if U.S. troops were not going to be used against the enemy’s mainforce, they need not be deployed at all.

McAllister correctly notes that Bundy’s memo did not explicitly repudiatepaciªcation.27 Rather, Bundy summarized Westmoreland’s ground war plan,which prominently features paciªcation, and observed that “the problemarises as to how we use our substantial ground and air strength effectivelyagainst small-scale harassment-type action, whether we should engage inpaciªcation as opposed to patrolling actively, and whether, indeed, we shouldtaper off our ground force build-up.” The memo reports the administration’s


23. Caverley, “The Myth of Military Myopia,” p. 131.24. McAllister, “Who Lost Vietnam?” p. 110.25. Caverley, “The Myth of Military Myopia,” p. 149. See also McMaster, Dereliction of Duty, p. 188.26. McAllister, “Who Lost Vietnam?” p. 110.27. Ibid.

tasking Lodge with developing a plan involving “the concentration of GVNforces on paciªcation and the reliance on U.S. forces to handle large-scale VCactions.”28 This notion that more U.S. troops should be sent only to engage inmain force battles also appears in Bundy’s earlier memo recommending that“we should explicitly and plainly reserve decision about further major deploy-ments. After all, we have not yet had even a company-level engagement withViet Cong forces which choose to stand their ground and ªght.”29

Secretary of State Dean Rusk reiterated this plan in a telegram to Lodge:

We need to consider just how we propose to use our greatly increased groundand air strength, especially the degree to which it can and should be employedin any wider countryside efforts beyond necessarily slow securing efforts closeto our base areas. (We also question whether and how we can move from pa-trolling to real paciªcation in these areas—can ARVN [the Army of SouthVietnam] and GVN police take advantage of our nearby strength for this pur-pose in these areas?) There is even a residual question whether further in-creases in strength at presently planned pace are wise, or whether we shouldin some small degree defer further increases.30

These linked concerns over manpower and paciªcation also appear inBundy’s October 26, 1965, draft telegram to Westmoreland and Lodge, whichcontained a number of observations prompted by a military brieªng on PhaseII, the ªrst being that “these plans focus sharply upon a dominant ªghting rolefor U.S. ground forces. They appear to imply that aggressive operations will beconducted almost exclusively by U.S. forces.”31

Notes from a July 22, 1965, presidential meeting (one of the few to includethe Joint Chiefs of Staff) provide an additional example of administration resis-tance to paciªcation. They record Marine Commandant Wallace Greene argu-ing, “The enclave concept will work. Would like to introduce enough Marinesto do this.” McNamara observes that Greene is asking for “men over andabove the Westmoreland request.” Johnson responds, “Then you will need80,000 more Marines to carry this out.”32 More Marines for paciªcation werenot forthcoming.


28. Foreign Relations of the United States (FRUS), 1964–1968, Johnson Administration, Vol. 3, Doc. 151,http://www.state.gov/www/about_state/history/vol_iii/index.html. McNamara’s Phase II de-scriptions barely mention paciªcation. See ibid., Doc. 67, “Use of Forces” section; and Doc. 149. Be-cause McAllister frequently criticizes my interpretation of primary sources, this article will citematerial that can be easily found and interpreted by interested readers.29. Ibid., Doc. 83.30. Ibid., Doc. 141.31. Ibid., Doc. 183. Westmoreland complains of these interfering cables in William C.Westmoreland, A Soldier Reports (New York: Da Capo, 1989), p. 161.32. FRUS, 1964–1968, Vol. 3, Doc. 76. The enclaves concept called for concentrating U.S. forces in

Westmoreland may have largely agreed with the civilian leadership’s focuson enemy main forces, but the civilians were well informed on the strategicoptions, clearly in charge, and concerned whether Westmoreland and othersunderstood their preferred strategy. The memos discussed above support civil-ian preferences over military myopia (causal relationship 2 in ªgure 1); theyalso support causal relationship 3, because they show that the administrationpushed the less ªrepower-centric Lodge in a similar direction.

westmoreland’s conops, 1966. McAllister disagrees that Westmoreland’sdescription of his 1966 campaign plan to his civilian superiors representeda shift toward paciªcation. Once again, his criticism centers on showingevidence of military myopia (causal relationship 1), whereas the plan’s sig-niªcance for theory testing is in civilian leaders’ negative reaction toWestmoreland’s explicit intention for “a signiªcant number of the U.S./Free World Maneuver Battalions” to be involved in paciªcation (relation-ship 2).33 Subsequent decisions and directives by the administration favoringWestmoreland’s plan over Lodge’s much more paciªcation-oriented plan fur-ther underscore that the military was not the ultimate cause of the ªrepower-intensive campaign of 1966.

National Security Adviser Walt Rostow noted the Westmoreland plan’s shift“towards paciªcation,” observing that it “underlines the need to mount a max-imum political campaign, overt and covert, designed to defect VC and startSaigon VC negotiations . . . required to match Westmoreland’s military planwhich is, clearly, in the right direction; although he and Lodge must engage[Prime Minister] Ky and the ARVN fully if it is to work.” Johnson’s order tohave his principal paciªcation adviser, Robert Komer, “spark this inspiration”(and Komer’s subsequent focus on the GVN throughout 1966) referred to get-ting the GVN rather than the U.S. military more heavily involved in paciªca-tion.34 On the other hand, the president’s directive that Westmoreland shouldnot consider his concept of operations approved was clearly prompted by re-tired general and former Ambassador to Vietnam Maxwell Taylor’s scathinganalysis of the domestic political problems inherent in Westmoreland’s shift-ing emphasis, however modest, toward paciªcation.35

Whereas Taylor considered Westmoreland’s paciªcation plans overly ag-gressive, Lodge believed that they did not go far enough and recommended a


fortiªed population centers and increasing control of the surrounding areas gradually, a strategycloser to COIN than Westmoreland’s or Johnson’s. Hennessy, Strategy in Vietnam, pp. 74–77.33. FRUS, 1964–1968, Vol. 4, Doc. 220.34. Ibid.35. Ibid., Doc. 221; and Caverley, “The Myth of Military Myopia,” p. 151.

more ambitious U.S. effort while lambasting Westmoreland’s approach. InLodge’s words,

MACV speciªcally states that what it calls “offensive operations” areconducted so as to create the opportunity to destroy terrorism, that is“paciªcation”.

But the phrase “offensive operations” is deªned as meaning to “seek outand destroy”. . . . I believe that the Vietnamese war will certainly never be wonin this way; that the phrase “offensive operations” should be deªned as “splitup the Viet Cong and keep him off balance”; and that U.S. participation inpaciªcation operations should be stepped up.36

Contrary to McAllister’s assertion, this strategic disagreement was far from a“minor element,” nor is Lodge’s memo “devoted entirely” to a “managementissue” over whether the U.S. embassy in Saigon or MACV would lead thepaciªcation effort.37 According to the FRUS editor, Lodge sent “several similarcommunications” including a November 6 telegram wherein “he stated thatthe crux of the problem was security, not defective organization, and that theªrst priority was more U.S. troops allotted to paciªcation.”38

Johnson favored Westmoreland’s greater preference for ªrepower and em-phasis on main force battles over Lodge’s more labor-intensive option. Withcharacteristic disingenuousness, in the memo below, Johnson threatens to shiftpaciªcation responsibilities from Lodge to MACV even as he appears to agreewith the ambassador:

There does not seem to me to be any major difference between your ideasof what is needed to make paciªcation work, and those of my chief advisersand myself. Bob McNamara and the Joint Chiefs realize, as does GeneralWestmoreland on the basis of the dispositions he is increasingly making, that alimited number of U.S. combat forces must be detailed to be the catalysts forthe Vietnamese.

What worries them is rather that if the U.S. takes over too much of the job,the ARVN will tend to sit back and let us ªght that “war” too. I’m sure thatyou are no more eager than we are to let this happen. As a matter of fact, get-ting the U.S. military more heavily engaged in refocusing ARVN on the heartof the matter is one reason why we here have seriously considered chargingMACV with paciªcation. I hope you will ponder whether this is not in the endthe best way to achieve the aim you seek.39


36. FRUS, 1964–1968, Vol. 4, Doc. 294.37. McAllister, “Who Lost Vietnam?” p. 114.38. FRUS, 1964–1968, Vol. 4, Doc. 294; and ibid., Doc. 290 n. 2.39. Ibid., Doc. 310. See also Hunt, Paciªcation, p. 79. Johnson also understood that the military sim-ply had more resources at its disposal for paciªcation but makes no reference to this here.

In this context, McAllister’s selection from this document of Johnson’s obser-vation that, “[i]f showing ARVN the way on paciªcation can take up to tenpercent of our troops, it also deserves the full time attention of some of ourbest generals,”40 represents a presidential threat that continued insistence onthis percentage of U.S. troops for paciªcation would result in the military be-ing given the assignment.

philosophy of the war, 1967. McAllister objects to my characterization ofthe 1967 policy debate as being over paciªcation when it largely dealt with theneed to head off additional manpower requests from the military.41 The wholepoint of my article, however, is that these two issues cannot be separated; civil-ians continued to favor main force engagements and were prepared to shiftforces away from the “less essential” (McNamara’s phrase) paciªcation mis-sion in an effort to limit new personnel deployments.42 While the main policydecision was ostensibly over whether the president should approve the JointChiefs’ request for roughly 200,000 more troops or authorize a much smallernumber, Assistant Secretary of Defense John McNaughton’s May 6, 1967,memo to McNamara argues that limiting troop numbers is not enough be-cause “the strategy falls into the trap that has ensnared us for the past threeyears. It actually gives the troops [to MACV] while only praying for theirproper use.”43

To show the Johnson administration’s position on the troops’ “proper use,”I turn to the person likeliest to recommend the most aggressive COINapproach the president would tolerate. Robert Komer wrote a memo onApril 24, 1967, “deliberately designed to plead an alternative case.”44 In it, hedirectly addresses the use of U.S. forces in the ªrst paragraph of his list ofrecommendations,

MACV’s justiªcation for these added forces needs further review. . . . If enemymain force strength is now levelling off because of high kill ratios, etc., wouldthe added US forces be used for paciªcation? General [William E.] DePuyestimates that 50% of US/ROK [Republic of Korea] maneuver battalions are


40. McAllister, “Who Lost Vietnam?” p. 114.41. Ibid., p. 22.42. FRUS, 1964–1968, Vol. 5, Doc. 177.43. FRUS, 1964–1968, Vol. 5, Doc. 161. McAllister rightly notes my incorrect attribution to this May6 memo of several quotations from McNaughton’s version of a Draft Presidential Memorandum(DPM). Both documents are described at length in Mike Gravel, ed., The Pentagon Papers: The De-fense Department History of United States Decisionmaking on Vietnam, Vol. 4 (Boston: Beacon, 1971),pp. 477–489. The FRUS volume includes a DPM version sent to the president by McNamara.FRUS, 1964–1968, Vol. 5, Doc. 177. I thank McAllister sincerely and take full responsibility for thiserror.44. Ibid., Doc. 147.

already supporting RD [Revolutionary Development, i.e., paciªcation] bydealing with the “middle war”, the VC main force provincial battalions. Howgood are US forces at paciªcation-related tasks, as compared to RVNAF [Re-public of Vietnam Armed Forces]? What are the trade-offs? A major US forcecommitment to paciªcation also basically changes the nature of our presencein Vietnam and might force us to stay indeªnitely in strength.45

To “reduce or obviate the need for a major US force increase,” Komer ªrstrecommended “an all-out effort to get more for our money out of” SouthVietnam’s military, including an increase in the number of U.S. advisers by amere 1,200, or “the strength of one USMC [U.S. Marine Corps] maneuver bat-talion.” The other steps involved a minor expansion of civilian paciªcationpersonnel, bigger local militias, better intelligence collection, land reform, refu-gee management, and a transition to an “effective, popularly-based GVN.”Komer concludes, “The above package could be combined with other US uni-lateral measures—let’s say a minor force increase to 500,000 [from about470,000], accelerated emphasis on a barrier, and some increased bombing—tofurther optimize its prospects.”46

Johnson and Komer chose Westmoreland’s version of counterinsurgencyover Lodge’s more labor-intensive paciªcation approach, but Westmorelandalso frequently appeared more interested in paciªcation than his civilian mas-ters. Because McAllister relies heavily on Westmoreland’s memoir, I give it thelast word on this subject: “In reality, despite my policy of using American unitsto oppose the enemy’s main forces, more American troops were usually en-gaged on a day-by-day basis, helping weed out local opposition and support-ing the paciªcation process, than were engaged in the big ªghts.”47 Thisdescription of Westmoreland’s ground war little resembles the civilian desiresand expectations depicted in the above memos.

the administration’s inºuence on air and armor decisons

Although McAllister focuses primarily on the Johnson administration’s in-volvement (or lack thereof) in conducting the ground war, he also challengesmy evidence that it played an important role in ensuring that airpower wasused to the maximum extent feasible in South Vietnam, and that civilian policydecisions shaped the use of armor in Vietnam by the U.S. Army.48 Below, Ibrieºy respond to these objections.


45. Ibid.46. Ibid.47. Westmoreland, A Soldier Reports, p. 146.48. McAllister, “Who Lost Vietnam?” pp. 104–105.

The Johnson administration’s involvement in airpower targeting in SouthVietnam is not debatable. A 1966 U.S. Air Force analysis describes the B-52missions in the South as a “major administration decision.”49 McNamaraclearly instructed the reluctant Joint Chiefs that the South had priority over theNorth when determining how to use airpower assets.50 The defense secretarylater mooted that a Rolling Thunder pause would be more acceptable to theAmerican public if these planes’ missions were shifted to the South.51

McNamara set the number of sorties in South Vietnam (1.2 per aircraft perday), and B-52 strikes in the South had to be approved up through early 1966by McNamara, Rusk, and the president.52 Even after the civilian micromanag-ing subsided, it is unclear what further measures McNamara needed beyondsetting the aircraft and sortie numbers in country, allowing unrestricted air op-erations in the South, and strongly restricting them in the North to ensureairpower’s copious use in the South. Westmoreland’s back-channel complaintsto other generals only provide additional support for my case.53

Likewise, contrary to McAllister’s claim, civilian decisions shaped the armyleadership’s use of armor. The analysis by the commanding general of the U.S.Army’s Armor School states explicitly why it was hardly used in Vietnamthrough 1966: “Because of the troop ceiling . . . the severely limited logisticalbase, and the many misconceptions about the country, armored units were notseriously considered for early employment in Vietnam.”54 MACV did not con-trol the number of soldiers at its disposal but could decide which units to de-ploy. Westmoreland and other army leaders favored less heavily-armoredunits because they understood that Vietnam was not a conventional war, andthought that lighter battalions would be most effective given manpower con-straints. This emphasis by the military commanders is hard to square with mil-itary myopia’s claims of an obsession with ªrepower rather than soldiers.

The ªrst signiªcant heavy armored unit arrived in Vietnam only in Septem-ber 1966 after being largely stripped of its main battle tanks.55 According to


49. Jacob Van Staaveren, “USAF Plans and Operations in Southeast Asia, 1965” (Washington,D.C.: USAF Historical Division Liaison Ofªce, 1966), pp. 39–40.50. Ibid. See also FRUS, 1964–1968, Vol. 3, Doc. 183. McAllister’s claim that “civilians attempted toinstruct the military to recognize the merits of gradualism and limitations” conºates operations inthe South and North. McAllister, “Who Lost Vietnam?” p. 107. Civilians advocated gradualismonly in the North, despite bombing’s public popularity, to avoid antagonizing China and theSoviet Union.51. FRUS, 1964–1968, Vol. 3, Doc. 231.52. Van Staaveren, “USAF Plans and Operations in Southeast Asia,” p. 46; and William W.Momyer, Airpower in Three Wars (Maxwell Air Force Base, Ala.: Air University Press, 2003), p. 114.53. Caverley, “The Myth of Military Myopia,” p. 142.54. Donn A. Starry, Armored Combat in Vietnam (New York: Arno, 1980), p. 55.55. Westmoreland’s memoir claims “enthusiasm” for the army’s primary main battle tank, theM-48 “Patton,” but the facts reported in Starry speak otherwise. This is one of many empirical rea-

Donn Starry, the impact of the 1967 pro-armor study cited by McAllister “wassomewhat less than many hoped for,” in part because “in November 1966,Defense Secretary McNamara imposed an absolute troop ceiling on U.S. forcesin Vietnam. This arbitrary ceiling was well below the total number already in[MACV’s] proposed troop program.” Starry continues, “If more armoredforces were wanted, other units had to be given up in order to get them,” andMACV apparently did not want to give up any existing units.56 In Starry’s ac-count, armored units became an important factor in battles against the large1968 enemy offensives and during the subsequent drawdown “because theyprovided mobility and ªrepower at far less cost in manpower than any othertype of unit.”57 In sum, civilian manpower decisions drove the army’s shiftfrom favoring soldiers to deploying larger numbers of tanks.

public preferences and administration decisionmaking

McAllister challenges my linking of public opinion to government preferencesfor substituting ªrepower for labor.58 Establishing direct links between pollsand presidential action is a well-recognized problem, and I did not pretend toshow conclusive evidence.59 Instead, in “The Myth of Military Myopia,” I ar-gued that members of the administration believed that ªrepower, and espe-cially airpower, was the most politically acceptable means of prosecuting thewar. While bombing was clearly an inefªcient way to ªght the insurgency,the American public strongly believed that it was an important replacementfor manpower and a means of protecting soldiers’ lives, and civilian leadersconsidered their strategy options accordingly. Here, as before, I focus on thetwo examples from my article that McAllister uses to support his claim—apresidential meeting on January 5, 1966, and a phone call between McNamaraand Johnson on January 17, 1966, both of which addressed the “bombingpause” (i.e., a temporary cessation of the Rolling Thunder bombing campaignin North Vietnam)—rather than all the other pieces of primary evidence I mar-shaled to support my claims.

McAllister uses the January 5 meeting notes to “illustrate Caverley’s ten-


sons why I favored the primary record over Westmoreland’s post facto recollections, a decisionthat McAllister ªnds “troubling.” Westmoreland, A Soldier Reports, p. 178; Starry, Armored Combatin Vietnam, pp. 72–73; and McAllister, “Who Lost Vietnam?” p. 105.56. Starry, Armored Combat in Vietnam, pp. 86–89.57. Ibid., p. 137.58. McAllister, “Who Lost Vietnam?” p. 97.59. The research McAllister cites is far from conclusive. For example, Lawrence R. Jacobs and Rob-ert Y. Shapiro largely focus on Johnson’s inability to lead public opinion. Jacobs and Shapiro,“Lyndon Johnson, Vietnam, and Public Opinion: Rethinking Realist Theory of Leadership,” Presi-dential Studies Quarterly, Vol. 29, No. 3 (September 1999), pp. 592–616.

dency to reach conclusions about public opinion’s impact on decisionmakingthat are at variance with readily accessible evidence.”60 Ironically, McAllisterchooses a document almost entirely devoted to Johnson’s ostentatious, globaldiplomatic effort known as the “peace offensive,” which emphasized thebombing pause’s popularity abroad, not in the United States. The notes reportthat, following a lengthy brieªng on outreach attempts to foreign leaders, Sec-retary of State Rusk distinguished explicitly between domestic and interna-tional support for the pause: “Our position will erode here if we wait muchlonger to resume the bombing but abroad we will lose support if we resume.”Johnson responds, “The diplomatic offensive boils down to saying that we areready to reason this out. One poll shows that 73 percent of the American peo-ple wanted us to increase our diplomatic efforts. In the last twelve months, 200conferences have been held by Secretary Rusk in an attempt to get negotiationsgoing.”61 The president thus identiªes popular support in the United Stateswith diplomacy, of which the pause was a component. The connection of thepause to diplomacy is further established in the January 17 phone call. Afterexpressing surprise at the pause’s domestic popularity, Johnson askedMcNamara, “[D]o you think we’re going to have a sentiment that will supportour resumption if everybody feels this way about it?” McNamara replies, “Ithink so, Mr. President, particularly among the great majority of the people inthis country. I think you’ll ªnd some foreign leaders will criticize you if you re-sume bombing. . . . But I think the great majority of the people in the countrywill believe that you gave them [the North Vietnamese government] a reason-able time, over a month, and there was no movement at all on their part.”62

Johnson’s belief that the American public preferred to achieve its aims inVietnam with minimal warªghting is neither surprising nor damaging to mycase. Johnson also believed, however, that he would soon face strong politicalpressure to ªght for those aims should diplomacy fail, and that airpower wasthe public’s preferred means of doing so. Not coincidentally, December 7, 1965,notes on Johnson’s deliberation over the pause contain some of his most fa-mous musings on domestic politics and the war: “I think we’ll be spendingmore time defending ourselves from hawks than from doves. . . . We’re spend-ing too much time with crybabies. Average fella doesn’t have much respect.Afraid we’ll lose our own ªghting men. . . . We’ve got a new election here. Thisis a priority problem. It comes ahead of poverty & education. It’s a new ball


60. McAllister, “Who Lost Vietnam?” p. 118.61. FRUS, 1964–1968, Vol. 4, Doc. 7.62. Ibid., Doc. 26.

game. 1966 election.”63 As additional evidence, consider Rostow’s September1966 memo declaring, “Bombing in the North is our equivalent of Viet Congguerrilla operations in the South.” The memo’s ªnal paragraph reads in full, “Iadd an amateur political judgment: a ‘pause’ during the campaign, withoutsolid evidence that a move towards peace will promptly follow, could be quitedangerous during the campaign, as well as providing evidence of over-anxietyand lack of perseverance to Hanoi.” McNamara’s handwritten note next to thisparagraph reads, “I am inclined to agree that a ‘pause’ prior to Novemberwould be unwise.”64 No plausible interpretation of this paragraph exists otherthan that Johnson’s two most important national security aides consideredRolling Thunder a source of electoral strength in the upcoming midtermelections.

I conclude this section by returning to another Rostow memo that encapsu-lates most of my empirical claims about the driving factors of U.S. strategy inVietnam but also prompts McAllister’s assertion that by “altering the wordingof Rostow’s memo in a manner conducive to his thesis, Caverley is recasting amemo that is almost exclusively about policy into one focused on public opin-ion.”65 McAllister objects to my interpretation of the word “turn-around” inthis memo, and I regret any confusion this caused. Still, my use of this worddoes nothing to change the thrust of Rostow’s concluding paragraph:

The turn-around in policy can be managed, over a period of some weeks, inthe context of Buddha’s birthday, etc., fairly easily; but if we get no diplomaticresponse in that period—and I do not expect one—and if we set aside option A(closing the top of the funnel), we shall have to devise a way of presenting ourtotal policy in Viet Nam in a manner which is consistent with diminished at-tacks in the Hanoi-Haiphong area; which is honest; and which is acceptable toour own people. Surfacing the concept of the barrier may be critical to thatturn-around, as will be other measures to tighten inªltration, an improvedARVN effort in paciªcation, and the provision of additional allied forces topermit Westy to get on with our limited but real role in paciªcation—notably,with the defense of I Corps and the hounding of provincial main force units.66

Rostow is clearly discussing the likely public reception of a policy turnaround.Unlike McAllister, I do not see how in the context of “presenting our total pol-icy” in a manner “acceptable to our own people,” the phrase “surfacing the


63. FRUS, 1964–1968, Vol. 3, Doc. 223. See also ibid., Doc. 215.64. FRUS, 1964–1968, Vol. 4, Doc. 232.65. McAllister, “Who Lost Vietnam?” p. 120.66. FRUS, 1964–1968, Vol. 5, Doc. 162. “Closing the funnel” refers to interdicting the supply linesto enemy forces in South Vietnam from the North.

concept of the barrier” describes the actual use of the anti-inªltration barrierrather than its revelation to the public.67 McAllister points out that this is a“typical,” aggressive memo from the president’s national security adviser thatis largely devoted to examining alternative policies in Vietnam, a memo thatconcludes with a paragraph addressing public support for the war.68 I agree.

Necessary versus Sufªcient Causes of Failed Counterinsurgencies

In this section I return to the question: Why do democracies fail against insur-gencies? McAllister disagrees with my claim that part of the explanation in thecase of Vietnam can be found in the United States’ reliance on a ªrepower-intensive counterinsurgency; indeed he suggests that my article presents anunfortunate distraction from the true cause of failure, which he argues lies inGVN incompetence. Rebutting this charge necessitates another discussion ofnecessary and sufªcient causation. In his conclusion, McAllister creates an-other straw man by transforming my argument into a claim that population-centric COIN is sufªcient for a successful outcome against an insurgency. In“The Myth of Military Myopia,” I made no such argument.

McAllister, on the other hand, does. He writes, “If there is one crucial les-son to take away from the history of the Vietnam War, it is to rememberWestmoreland’s principle that the government that the United States is tryingto assist in combating an insurgency must ultimately provide security and theprospects of a better life for its people.”69 To support this assertion, McAllisteremploys evidence that both the Johnson administration and the U.S. militaryfeared the Americanization of the war, which they believed would take pres-sure off the South Vietnamese forces to reform and aggressively combat the in-surgency. These American decisionmakers understood that the insurgentswould ultimately win if a competent South Vietnamese government did notemerge.70

McAllister’s argument suffers from two ºaws in causal logic. First, onecannot consider the weakness of South Vietnam’s government and the coun-


67. McAllister, “Who Lost Vietnam?” pp. 119, 120 n. 76. The editor of The Pentagon Papers sharedmy assessment. Gravel, The Pentagon Papers, Vol. 4, p. 477. Regarding the barrier, Paul N. Edwardsdescribes the McNamara Line as “a microcosmic version of the whole United States approach tothe Vietnam War” in which the operations of the entire U.S. military were centralized under civil-ian control. Edwards, The Closed World: Computers and the Politics of Discourse in Cold War America(Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1996), p. 5.68. McAllister, “Who Lost Vietnam?” p. 120 n. 76.69. Ibid., p. 123.70. Ibid., p. 108.

terinsurgency efforts of the U.S. military as separate factors. Tragically, whilethird-party counterinsurgency efforts can lead to increased incumbent govern-ment incompetence, the former is also endogenous to the latter; a sufªcientlycapable government would obviate the need for much counterinsurgency.

Second, the realization that multiple routes to failure in Vietnam existedundermines neither the power of my argument nor the justiªcation for my fo-cusing on a single cause. Both the straw man argument that poor COIN is nec-essary for failure and McAllister’s own “one crucial lesson” are empiricallyfalse. Successful counterinsurgency has many requirements, including estab-lishing government competence, instigating paciªcation, checking the enemymain force, and curtailing state sponsors of the insurgency. Each of these ante-cedent variables is necessary but not sufªcient for a victory against insurgents.Conversely, while failure against an insurgency cannot be an orphan, it needsonly one parent. As Leslie Gelb and Richard Betts put it, “The United Statescould not win by paciªcation alone, but it could not win without paciªca-tion.”71 Moreover, I argue that ºawed counterinsurgency is the one sufªcientcondition for failure to which democracies, such as the United States, may beuniquely prone.

Conclusion

In “The Myth of Military Myopia,” I sought to apply to the Vietnam War a the-ory of cost distribution within democracies, where military capitalizationserves as a means of redistributing the costs of conºict away from the medianvoter. I did this because investigations of the decision “to lose Vietnam slowly”still contain large explanatory gaps.72 I ªlled one of these gaps by arguing that,acting on a perception of the American public’s preferences, the Johnson ad-ministration deliberately, knowingly, and rationally chose a capital-intensivestrategy that made failure against the Vietcong more likely. McAllister’s chargethat I ascribed the U.S. defeat in Vietnam to “human error” belies a misunder-standing of cost distribution theory’s implications and my article’s aims.73

Although McAllister ªnds me insufªciently like a historian in my collectionand presentation of evidence, his conclusion ªnds me too much like one be-cause of what he claims is my “evident hostility” and “indictment against


71. Leslie H. Gelb and Richard K. Betts, The Irony of Vietnam: The System Worked (Washington, D.C.:Brookings Institution Press, 1979), p. 251.72. Larry Berman, Planning a Tragedy: The Americanization of the War in Vietnam (New York: W.W.Norton, 1982), p. 124.73. McAllister, “Who Lost Vietnam?” p. 122.

President Johnson, his civilian strategists, and ultimately the American peo-ple” for the U.S. defeat in Vietnam.74 McAllister offers an alternative tothis pathological practice in which I apparently engage, “a way out of the on-going Vietnam history wars because it takes scholars’ analytical focus beyondthe essential but still narrow focus on the decisions made by the political andmilitary leadership of the United States.”75 McAllister’s formulation of this“way out”—the United States lost Vietnam because it was “unwinnable at anacceptable cost”—misses my point even as it begs the question.76

Clear thinking about causality is necessary not only for answering impor-tant questions but for asking the right ones in the ªrst place. If by “indict-ment,” McAllister means “assignment of causal priority,” then I plead guiltyas charged. I lay out a clearly stated causal chain leading back to a rationalpublic that not only explains the use of a ºawed counterinsurgency strategy,but also helps address a vexing puzzle that McAllister does not acknowl-edge, much less solve: Why would a democracy choose to ªght a war it wasunlikely to win at an acceptable cost?77 Despite their disagreements, a largertruth emerges from McAllister’s article and mine: when a third-party countryªghts insurgencies, failure is overdetermined. Cost distribution theory sug-gests a reason why democracies might ªght them all the same.


74. Ibid., pp. 4, 28; and Robert Jervis, “International Politics and Diplomatic History: A FruitfulDifference,” H-Diplo/ISSF Essays, No. 1 (March 2010), http://www.h-net.org/�diplo/ISSF/essays/1-Jervis.html.75. McAllister, “Who Lost Vietnam?” p. 123.76. Ibid., p. 122.77. Caverley, “The Myth of Military Myopia,” p. 157.

Copyright of International Security is the property of MIT Press and its content may not be copied or emailed to

multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users

may print, download, or email articles for individual use.

Documents

Explaining U.S. Military Strategy in Vietnam