A new report from the Army War College is garnering headlines and will likely become a hot topic of discussion. The report, “Iraq and Vietnam: Differences, Similarities, and Insights,” is written by two scholars at the Army’s Strategic Studies Institute. Dr. Jeffrey Record and Dr. W. Andrew Terrill argue that while the two conflicts share few military similarities, the political parallels are ominous. In particular, they warn of long-term damage to American interests abroad and growing unrest at home. The following is their prefatory summary.
“Unfolding events in Iraq have prompted some observers to make analogies to the American experience in the Vietnam War. The United States has, they argue, stumbled into another overseas ‘quagmire’ from which there is no easy or cheap exit.
“Reasoning by historical analogy is an inherently risky business because no two historical events are completely alike and because policymakers’ knowledge and use of history are often distorted by ignorance and political bias. In the case of Iraq and Vietnam, extreme caution should be exercised in comparing two wars so far apart in time, locus, and historical circumstances. In fact, a careful examination of the evidence reveals that the differences between the two conflicts greatly outnumber the similarities. This is especially true in the strategic and military dimensions of the two wars. There is simply no comparison between the strategic environment, the scale of military operations, the scale of losses incurred, the quality of enemy resistance, the role of enemy allies, and the duration of combat.
“Such an emphatic judgment, however, may not apply to at least two aspects of the political dimensions of the Iraq and Vietnam wars: attempts at state-building in an alien culture, and sustaining domestic political support in a protracted war against an irregular enemy. It is, of course, far too early predict whether the United States will accomplish its policy objectives in Iraq and whether public support will ‘stay the course’ on Iraq. But policymakers should be mindful of the reasons for U.S. failure to create a politically legitimate and militarily viable state in South Vietnam, as well as for the Johnson and Nixon administrations’ failure to sustain sufficient domestic political support for the accomplishment of U.S. political objectives in Indochina. Repetition of those failures in Iraq could have disastrous consequences for U.S. foreign policy.”
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