Tactics and Strategy

In April 1975, Colonel Harry G. Summers, U.S. Army, was visiting Hanoi in Vietnam, where he had a conversation with a Colonel Tu of the North Vietnamese Army.  "You know," said Summers, "you never defeated us on the battlefield."  After thinking for a moment, Tu responded, "That may be so, but it is also irrelevant."

Summers would later write that "One of the most frustrating aspects of the Vietnam War from the [U.S.] Army's point of view is that as far as logistics and tactics were concerned we succeeded in everything we set out to do. . . .  On the battlefield . . . the Army was unbeatable.  In engagement after engagement the forces of the Viet Cong and of the North Vietnamese Army were thrown back with terrible losses.  Yet, in the end, it was North Vietnam, not the United States, that emerged victorious.  How could we have succeeded so well, yet failed so miserably?"

Summers would write a book seeking to answer that question.  "At least part of the answer," he wrote, "appears to be that we saw Vietnam as unique rather than in strategic context.  This misconception grew out of our neglect of military strategy in the post-World War II nuclear era."  Instead of providing answers as to why the U.S. should fight in Vietnam, military and civilian leaders in the 1960s, only provided answers as to what means should be used.  "[I]nstead of providing professional military advice on how to fight the war, the military more and more joined with the systems analysts in determining the material means we were to use."

Somehow, it became an Army precept that the service did not make strategy, or worse, that there was no such thing as Army strategy.  Strategy was driven by budget considerations and became a function of resource allocation.  "The task of the Army, wrote Summers, "was to design and procure material, arms and equipment and to organize, train, and equip soldiers for the Defense Establishment."  In Vietnam, Summers would conclude, "a failure in strategic military doctrine manifested itself on the battlefield.  Because we did not focus on the political aim to be achieved . . . our so-called strategy was never a strategy at all."

Indeed, the desire of the civilian leadership in Washington was to send a message to the leadership in Hanoi; rather than seeking to defeat North Vietnam, President Lyndon Johnson hoped to persuade Ho Chi Minh to end his support for the Viet Cong insurgents in South Vietnam.  The president is supposed to set the policy and the generals are supposed to formulate a strategy to achieve that policy; because the policy was to send a message to Hanoi, the military commander in Vietnam, General William Westmoreland opted for an attrition "strategy" against forces of the Viet Cong and the North Vietnamese Army.  "Westy" hoped to inflict enough losses on the enemy that they would unable to continue the fight or be persuaded to quit fighting. The result: Tactical victory, but strategic defeat; instead of eroding the will of the North Vietnamese to fight, it was the American will that was eroded.

The ability to prevail on the battlefield, but still lose was a lesson that should have been learned during World War II.  A classic example was the Battle of the Coral Sea, a naval battle in which aircraft carriers fought each other for the first time -- which might be one reason why the Army failed to learn the lesson.  In the two day contest, the U.S. Navy lost a large carrier sunk while sinking a smaller Japanese carrier.  The tally sheet gave the tactical victory to the Japanese, but the Americans had stopped an attempt by the Japanese to invade Port Moresby on the southern coast of Papua, New Guinea, thus gaining a strategic victory.

Believing, falsely, that it had employed a counterinsurgency strategy in Vietnam, the U.S. Army after the war purged anything and everything to do with counterinsurgency.  The Army repeated the mistake of the post-World War II years by focusing on tactical proficiency in order to defeat a Soviet invasion of Western Europe.  The proficiency achieved was put on full display against a different enemy, and on a different battlefield, during the First Gulf War, which liberated Kuwait from the forces of Saddam Hussein's Iraq.

Twelve years later, that tactical proficiency was again displayed in the invasion of Iraq.  But after the fall of Baghdad, the Army was hard pressed to cope with the chaos that immediately followed, or the insurgency that rose out of it.  An Army that had wanted nothing to do with counterinsurgency, flailed around for four years trying to find a way to end the war in Iraq.  It was not until the so-called surge in 2007, that a counterinsurgency strategy was implemented under the command of General David Petraeus.

What lessons can we learn from the experience of the Army in Vietnam and Iraq?  How can we apply those lessons in our personal lives?  Do tactics and strategy matter?

To answer the latter question, one might consult the book of Alma in the Book of Mormon.  For whatever reason, Mormon chose to spend a lot of the precious space in his abridged record on the wars between the Lamanites and the Nephites.  For example, in chapter 49 he details the defenses created by Captain Moroni at the cities of Ammonihah and Noah.  In an earlier battle, the Lamanites had destroyed Ammonihah in one day, and Captain Moromi correctly surmised that the Lamanites would return to that city expecting another easy battle.  Instead, the Lamanites were deterred by the city's strong defenses and they chose, instead, to attack the city of Noah.  Again, Captain Moroni anticipated this move, and the city of Noah was even more strongly fortified; the Lamanites only attacked the city of Noah because they had taken an oath to do so.

What is our strategy?  What tactics do we employ in order to achieve that strategy?

Sometimes we lose the battle, but we still have the opportunity to win the war.


Sources:

Gordon, M. R. & Trainor, B. E. (2012). The Endgame: The Inside Story of the Struggle for Iraq, From George W. Bush to Barack Obama.  New York: Random House.

Summers, H. G. (1982). On Strategy: A Critical Analysis of the Vietnam War. New York: Dell Publishing Co., Inc.