Martin Van Creveld: Why Iraq Will End Like Vietnam (with Insights from Moshe Dayan)

[Martin Van Creveld is professor of history at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. He has written a number of books that have influenced modern military theory, including Fighting Power, Command in War, and most significantly, The Transformation of War. He is also the author of The Rise and Decline of the State.]

As Shakespeare once wrote, they have their exits and their entries. Between about 1975 and 1990, following the US defeat in Vietnam, military history was extremely popular among the US Armed Forces. After 1991, largely as a result of what many people considered the “stellar” performance of those Forces against Saddam Hussein, it went out of fashion; after all, if we were able to do that well there was not much point in studying the mistakes our predecessors made. Now that comparisons between Vietnam and Iraq have suddenly become very fashionable indeed, history is rushing right back at us. Here, I wish to address the differences and the similarities between the two wars by describing Vietnam as it was experienced by one man, Moshe Dayan.

As of 2004, Dayan is remembered, if he is remembered at all, mainly as the symbol of Israeli military power on the one hand and as one of the architects of the Israeli-Egyptian Peace Agreement on the other. In 1966 he was fifty-one years old. Having resigned his position as chief of staff in January 1958, he spent the next two years studying Orientalism and political science at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. In 1959 he was elected to Parliament and spent five years as minister of agriculture; serving first under his old mentor, David Ben Gurion, and then under Levi Eshkol. In November 1964 he resigned and found himself a member of the opposition.

Long interested in literature, a superb speaker when he wanted to, in 1965 he published his first book, Sinai Diary, which proved that he could write as well as fight. He was, however, developing an attitude of having seen it all, done it all; a feeling that his twin hobbies, archaeology and an endless string of mistresses, could only relieve up to a point. Hence, when the most important Israeli newspaper of the time, Maariv, proposed that he go to Vietnam as a war correspondent he jumped on the idea. The articles he wrote were published in Maariv as well as the British and French press. In 1977, by which time he was serving as foreign minister under Menahem Begin and engaged in peace-talks with Egypt, the Hebrew-language articles were collected in book form and published. In the preface Dayan explains they were too long to be included in the memoirs he had published a year before; perhaps his real aim was to warn Israelis of the consequences that might ultimately follow if they did not get rid of what he called “the blemish of conquest.” If so, unfortunately he did not succeed.

Dayan knew nothing about Vietnam, and prepared himself thoroughly. His first visit was to France where he had many acquaintances from the time of the Israeli-French alliance of the mid-nineteen fifties; some of these people had served in, and helped lose, the First Indo-China War. His very first contact was a retired Air Force General by the name of Loission. In Loission’s view American public opinion was to blame for not putting its full support behind the War – to which should be added, in parentheses, that at the beginning of the War that support had been overwhelming. He thought the War could easily be won if only American public opinion agreed to bomb North Vietnam back into the Stone Age. As it was, a combination of Viet Cong terrorism and propaganda prevented the world, as well as the South Vietnamese themselves, from seeing how righteous the American cause was; he even believed that, had free elections been held, the Vietnamese might have wanted the French back. He ended the conversation by asking for his ideas to be kept secret. Dayan, who did not think those ideas constituted “a ray of light to an embarrassed world,” readily agreed....

[On a visit to the Pentagon] ... his feeling that the Americans did not really know where they were going was reinforced. Everywhere he went he was received courteously enough. Everywhere he went the people he encountered were committed and extremely hard working. Intensely patriotic, they seemed proud of what they were doing and would not admit any errors. At one point he asked whether they had changed their methods since they first went to Vietnam and was told that they did not have to do so since everything worked much better than expected. Thereupon he noted that the US Military never made any mistakes; however, that comment he kept to himself. He was subjected to a flood of statistics – so and so many enemies killed, so and so many captured – meant to prove that the situation was well under control and that large parts of the territory of South Vietnam, as well as its population, were now safe against terrorist attack. As he noted, however, even a few elementary questions revealed that things were far from simple. Later he was to discover how right he had been in this; in the whole of South Vietnam there was not a single road that was really safe against the Viet Cong. Nor was there anything to prevent the enemy from returning even to those places that had been most thoroughly “cleansed” and “pacified.”

The three most important figures he met were the deputy head of the National Security Council, Walt Rostow, General Maxwell Taylor who was then acting as special adviser to President Johnson, and Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara. Rostow, a Harvard-based economist, had published a famous book in which he explained how the developing world would catch up with the developed one in four clear, well-defined, stages. Now he told Dayan that the desire for economic growth would drive the peoples of Asia closer to the US. Dayan, who had observed how determined Israel Arab’s neighbors had been to get rid of their Western overlords even at heavy economic cost, doubted it; had he been alive today, no doubt he would have expressed the same idea about the situation in Iraq. Rostow also believed, or pretended to believe, that the forthcoming elections in South Vietnam would be free and democratic and thus strengthen the Government in waging the War. Still he was the first American to whom Dayan spoke who was prepared to admit that the US objective was not just to help South Vietnam but to set up a permanent military political presence in South East Asia so as to counterbalance the growing power of China. To that extent, the conversation with him was the most useful of those he had had so far.

Taylor, whom he met next, was the first American to present him with a comprehensive plan for winning the War. It consisted of four elements, namely a. improving US Army operations on the ground; b. making full use of the Air Force to bomb the North; c. strengthening the economy of South Vietnam; and d. reaching an “honorable” peace with Ho Chi Minh. Asked whether he thought the US was making progress in those directions, however, he could not produce convincing indications that this was indeed the case. As the Americans themselves admitted, in spite of the heavy casualties being inflicted on the VC – Taylor estimated them at 1,000 a week – the latter’s operations kept growing more extensive and more dangerous. Nor could Taylor point to any clear progress as a result of the air campaign. He did, however, believe that the bombing formed “a heavy burden” on the North; sooner or later, the enemy would break.

Dayan’s last important contact, Robert McNamara, had a reputation of being hard to approach. This turned out to be untrue and Dayan was pleasantly surprised; at a small dinner party with Margot (McNamara’s wife), Walt Rostow and several journalists, the Secretary Defense did what he could to answer all the questions that were directed at him. He admitted that many of the figures being floated by the Pentagon – particularly those pertaining to the percentage of the country and population “secured” – were meaningless at best and bogus at worst. No more than anybody else could he explain to Dayan how the Americans intended to end the War. What set him apart was the fact that he was prepared to admit it, albeit only in a half- hearted way; as we now know, he already had his own doubts which led to his resignation in the next year. He consoled himself by saying that the War was not hurting the US economy. In other words, it could go on and on until one side or the other gave way....

Some people claim that the US won the War in Vietnam, to which I can only say that I strongly disagree. Others argue that Vietnam differed from Iraq, saying that it was essentially a conventional war that was lost because the American civilian leadership failed to provide its Armed Forces with proper strategic direction. It is of course true that there are considerable differences between the two. Still, recalling Dayan’s observations, I think there are three main reasons why the similarities are more important.

First, according to Dayan, the most important operational problem the US Forces were facing was intelligence, in other words the inability to distinguish the enemy from either the physical surroundings or the civilian population. Had intelligence been available then their enormous superiority in every kind of military hardware would have enabled them to win the War easily enough. In its absence, most of the blows they delivered – including no fewer than six million tons of bombs dropped – hit empty air. All they did was make the enemy disperse and merge into the civilian population, thus making it even harder to find him. Worst of all, lack of accurate intelligence meant that the Americans kept hitting noncombatants by mistake. They thus drove huge segments of the population straight into the arms of the Viet Cong; nothing is more conducive to hatred than the sight of relatives and friends being killed.

Second, as Dayan saw clearly enough, the campaign for hearts and minds did not work. Many of the figures being published about the progress it was making turned out to be bogus, designed to set the minds of the folks at home at rest. In other cases any progress laboriously made over a period of months was undone in a matter of minutes as the Viet Cong attacked, destroying property and killing “collaborators.” Above all, the idea that the Vietnamese people wanted to become Americanized was an illusion. All the vast majority really wanted was to be left alone and get on with their lives.

The third and most important reason why I think Vietnam is relevant to the situation in Iraq is because the Americans found themselves in the unfortunate position where they were beating down on the weak. To quote Dayan: “any comparison between the two armies… was astonishing. On the one hand there was the American Army, complete with helicopters, an air force, armor, electronic communications, artillery, and mind-boggling riches; to say nothing of ammunition, fuel, spare parts, and equipment of all kinds. On the other there were the [North Vietnamese troops] who had been walking on foot for four months, carrying some artillery rounds on their backs and using a tin spoon to eat a little ground rice from a tin plate.”

That, of course, was precisely the problem. In private life, an adult who keeps beating down on a five year old – even such a one as originally attacked him with a knife – will be perceived as committing a crime; therefore he will lose the support of bystanders and end up by being arrested, tried and convicted. In international life, an armed force that keeps beating down on a weaker opponent will be seen as committing a series of crimes; therefore it will end up by losing the support of its allies, its own people, and its own troops. Depending on the quality of the forces – whether they are draftees or professionals, the effectiveness of the propaganda machine, the nature of the political process, and so on – things may happen quickly or take a long time to mature. However, the outcome is always the same. He (or she) who does not understand this does not understand anything about war; or, indeed, human nature.

In other words, he who fights against the weak – and the rag-tag Iraqi militias are very weak indeed – and loses, loses. He who fights against the weak and wins also loses. To kill an opponent who is much weaker than yourself is unnecessary and therefore cruel; to let that opponent kill you is unnecessary and therefore foolish. As Vietnam and countless other cases prove, no armed force however rich, however powerful, however, advanced, and however well motivated is immune to this dilemma. The end result is always disintegration and defeat; if U.S troops in Iraq have not yet started fragging their officers, the suicide rate among them is already exceptionally high. That is why the present adventure will almost certainly end as the previous one did. Namely, with the last US troops fleeing the country while hanging on to their helicopters’ skids.