Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #468921 in Books
• Published on: 1988-03-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 344 pages

From Publishers Weekly
Krepinevich, a major with the Strategic Plans and Policy Division of the Army, raises serious questions about the military's ability to learn from its mistakes in Vietnam. The emphasis here is on the Army's stubborn insistence on pursuing a strategy of attrition, through large-unit operations and heavy firepower, and largely ignoring the political and social dimensions that form the foundation of successful counterinsurgency warfare. The result was a high-cost, low-payoff strategy which the Army stuck with until civilian leaders in the defense establishment openly challenged the policy after the Tet Offensive. Krepinevich praises the pacification programs of the Marines and suggests that their methods could have been profitably employed by the Army. More significantly, he suggests that the Vietnam experience has had little effect on the doctrine by which the Army is currently preparing for future low-intensity engagements. Illustrations.
Copyright 1987 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal
Why was the U.S. Army in Vietnam? What was the nature of the war? What was the Army's plan for winning? Was there a possibility the war could have been won? A career Army officer, Major Krepinevich answers these questions and argues in a cogent and probing analysis that the Army believed that its might and firepower left it no room to lose; and that, because of that belief, it really had no chance to win. This excellent book is well researched in recently declassified documents and well written. Because it is a broad survey, it opens more questions than it answers, leaving many interesting side trails for further research. For all readers interested in Vietnam, especially those who supported the war. Edward Gibson, James Madison Univ. Lib., Harrisonburg, Va.
Copyright 1986 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Review

"A story the moral of which Americans will ignore -- are ignoring -- at their peril." -- William L. Hauser, New York Times Review of Books.

"[Krepinevich] has focused on the U.S. Army, assessing its ability to meet the challenges posed by our military involvement in Vietnam from 1959 to 1975... From the Army perspective the account is certainly accurate, and devastating." -- William E. Colby, Washington Monthly

Customer Reviews

Most Interesting book I've read on the Vietnam War
This book deserves to be far more widely read than it is--and I have no idea why it isn't. Krepinivich's thesis is a brilliant one--the US army was "conceptually" unprepared to fight the Vietnam war: it brought a cold war mentality to the jungles of Vietnam and spent the first seven or eight years of the war trying to "find" this war. The US army imagined that the Viet Cong was a variant of the Soviet army--they "must" have been controlled by a central organization and "must" have had "hidden armies" lurking in the jungle. Decively defeating them would, the Army believed, end the war.

In fact, Krepinivich convincingly argues, the VC was not in the jungle at all--but in the cities along the coast. "We should have done less 'flit'in' and more 'sit'in'", he says.

The war was actually fought more effectively after US troop reduction prevented the "jungle search" strategy from being implemented. This was something akin to what the Marines performed in I Corps: rather than participate in large scale jungle sweeps, troops were divided up and put in small villages with radios. The strategy was more hazardous as troops, because of their small numbers might be overrun. However, it was more effective because it allowed allied forces to prevent the VC from retaking a village after they had withdrawn from their major operation.

This book should eventually allow for US military operations in the first part of the war to be put in the context of greater US cold war culture. The "willing blindness" of the US military during much of the sixties came from what amounts to a cultural fixation on a way power was imagined to function. Even in '71, Nixon believed that the Vietnamese communists was controled by a "COSVN", which functioned like a sort of "tumor": nip the tumor and the body will fall. This, Krepinivich proves, was all part of the American imaginary. Our blindness went far beyond the generals: it was part of our culture.

Army unprepared for war in Vietnam
This is an excellant book that should be read by every military professional and anybody interested in civil-miltary relationships and what happened in Vietnem. The authors premise is that the Army was unprepared for a war in Vietnam. Krepinevich states that Army training, doctrine and organization was geared toward a conventional conflict like what had happened in WWII and Korea. The Army was not prepared to fight a counterinsurgency against a foe that was only going to fight when they had to and when the circumstances and odds were in their favor. The senior leadership of the Army thought the war would be won be killing VC and NVA. According to Krepinevich this is all wrong. To defeat an insurgency you must protect and convince the people of the country you are trying to save that their fortunes lay in siding with you. If the people aren't going to back you then you will lose. It doesn't matter how many VC you kill. The Army's senior leadership did not want to deal with the pacification programs that would have won the war. Many in the military like to lay the blame for the loss in the war at the feet of the politicians in Washington. And there is justification for that. But Krepinevich makes a strong arguement that the war would have still been lost due to the poor/lack of strategy by our military leaders. Reading this book really angered me. Prior to this I had just finished reading "Street Without Joy" by Bernard Fall and I could not help but note the similarities between the failed French efforts and our own. It was like reading the same book over again except the units and the names of the leaders were different. There were almost no lessons learned by our senior leadership from the French debacle.

The best book on Vietnam
Krepinevich has a cult following among professors and students at the Marine Corps Command and Staff College. After reading his work I understand why. It is rare that ones comes across a book that radically changes the way one looks at military history. Thousands of books have been written on Vietnam and the movies "Platoon" and "Apocalypse Now" brought the war to millions of Americans. Until I read this book, I thought I understood the causes and conduct of the war. Krepinevich brilliantly analyzes how the U.S. Army planned for and conducted the war. How it tried to fight the war it wanted to fight, vice the war as it actually existed. Army leadership brought their conventional mindset to the jungles of Vietnam. The inability to adapt to change proved a greater threat to the U.S. Army than the North Vietnamese Army. The book rises above the personal narrative style that dominates most Vietnam books. Instead, the book is based on solid military analysis. Even more telling was how the U.S. Army failed to grasp the lessons of counter-insurgency following Vietnam and quickly returned to the conventional mindset it preferred. The writing is crisp and powerful. The lessons of this book remain vital today as the U.S. continues to struggle on how to best defeat America's latest enemies.