Counterinsurgency Warfare Examined in "Jungle of Snakes"

This readable book analyzes four guerrilla wars and the lessons to be drawn from them. There's the counterinsurgency in the Philippines after the Spanish-American War of 1898, the War in Algeria, the Malayan insurgency, and the Vietnam War.

In all cases, there was a nationalistic movement against an occupier. That alone gives the guerrillas an almost insurmountable home team advantage.

All also had in common a bloody ferocity that the public has become more acquainted with as time passes as media exposure evolved towards 24/7 coverage. It is the nature of guerrilla warfare that much of the most unpleasant tasks are done without public scrutiny, even as the level of scrutiny by journalists has increased with the decades.

The Philippines action was a fight to consolidate the American hold on a country won from Spain in an era when Americans were receptive to the idea of an imperial state. Eventually, the Americans beat the local insurgency but at great cost.

In Algeria, the military won their battle against homegrown insurgents, but the political winds had shifted and deGaulle, seeing the post-war era as the end of colonialism, decided that Algeria must be released.

The Malayan insurgency was won by the British because the insurgents were Chinese...a large minority unpopular with Malayan natives, but a minority nevertheless...and because the British were able to provide security from the rebels while denying them resupply and chasing them down.

There were many differences in Viet Nam where Americans worked as allies of the Saigon government and not as the government. The Viet Cong benefited from the lessons of Mao's principles of guerrilla warfare, were resupplied from outside, had an excellent propaganda effort, and had the home team advantage. Like all guerrillas in these examples, they also had the knowledge that the counterguerrilla effort would in time come under pressure from home to cut losses and withdraw. That was their greatest strength, in fact.

Fighting a guerrilla war is a long-term commitment and the American public did not have the patience.

The domino theory that was the basis for American involvement in Viet Nam debacle was a fallacy, the author claims, in that after the fall of Viet Nam, the victors turned on each other rather than seek other conquests. I don't think the fact that other countries were not toppled by Communist regimes is proof that the domino theory was wrong...conditions constantly shift and new factors could have arisen to alter conditions. (Cambodia, at least, did for a time go Communist and a Red revolution in Indonesia reportedly failed earlier because of American presence in Southeast Asia.) Because of the myriad factors and their shift in importance during the period, the likelihood of the domino theory seems unproven and may actually be unprovable.

Pacification was our best bet, but General William C. Westmoreland, urged on by election conscious civilians who ran the Johnson Administration, had to rely on largely conventional means of fighting...bringing the VC and later the North Vietnamese Army into open warfare.

Which, of course, they had every reason to refuse to do unless they had the odds with them.

Finally, with the withdrawal getting underway under Nixon, pacification efforts picked up with efforts made to organize, arm, train, and support local militia units. But it was too little, too late. Especially without support for the South Vietnamese government, with numerous problems including crippling corruption...military officers had to actively participate in the chain of graft, even if normally honest, to maintain their positions.

As is well understood these days, the military won a decisive victory when the Viet Cong executed the abortive Tet Offensive, but politically the Johnson Administration lost the trust of Americans in the process who only wanted out.

In addition, as the author suggests, since the wrong military policy was already being vigorously pursued, there's no reason to believe that the VC might not have eventually been able to recover from that debacle.
(There have been claims that Vo Nguyen Giap would never have authorized the Tet Offensive but he was out of favor at the time; this may be true, but I've only heard one or two claims of this type and it could be intended to shore up Giap's reputation.)

One inescapable lesson the author points up is that successful efforts in the Philippines and Malaya, and even Algeria where the military effort was successful but a political loss, draconian methods were needed to beat the guerrillas. Constant media coverage could very easily play to the guerrilla's advantage.

This account is excellent, especially the author's summaries at the end of each section, pointing out how the cause was won or lost. An epilogue brings the issue up to date.

Definitely worth getting.