History Paper

1. What insights will the military professional hope to gain comparing the US counter-insurgency in Vietnam with the current Western counter-insurgency effort in Afghanistan?
The military tend to use the strategy and tactics which are the most efficient in a specific environment. The strategy and tactics may differ but some strategies and tools used by military may be similar. In this respect, it is possible to single out counter-insurgency, which was used by the US military in Vietnam and which is currently applied by the US-headed allies in Afghanistan. In actuality, the military have great expectations concerning the use of counter-insurgency because they suppose to win the war with minimal efforts and casualties using the local military forces to maintain the loyal regime, like the one in Afghanistan. However, the actual effectiveness of counter-insurgency can be challenged, taking into consideration the negative experience of using counter-insurgency in Vietnam. Nevertheless, the US military still expect to use the full potential of counter-insurgency as they use a bit different tactics and strategy to carry out counter-insurgency and to maintain the loyal, pro-American regime in Afghanistan. On comparing the counter-insurgency in Vietnam and Afghanistan, the military can reveal the effective ways to the implementation of this strategy in different political and military context that may facilitate the elaboration of a new, more effective approach to the application of the counter-insurgency.
On analyzing the use of counter-insurgency by the US military, it is worth mentioning the fact that within the last half of a century they have changed counter-insurgency tactics. In this respect, it is possible to refer to the experience of the US military in Vietnam and Afghanistan. The use of counter-insurgency in Vietnam proved to be a total failure of the US military. In this respect, it should be said that the US military attempted to use counter-insurgency as they heavily relied on the support of the local population of their military actions and strategy along with the extensive US military presence in Vietnam. At the same time, the US military failed to gain the support of a considerable part of the local population of Vietnam, which became one of the primary causes of the failure of counter-insurgency. Moreover, instead of supporting the US military and the regime loyal to the US, the local population supported mainly the guerilla army and pro-Communist North Vietnam. In such a situation, counter-insurgency relied on the pro-American regime of South Vietnam and the US military proper. In other words, the US military could not implement counter-insurgency effectively because they relied on themselves mainly and on the loyal regime which could not survive without the extensive US military support. As for the local population, it proved to be hostile to the US presence in Vietnam because Americans were associated with colonists and the local population united efforts to overthrow Americans and pro-American regime that naturally led to the failure of counter-insurgency and the US military intervention at large (Pike, 1996). One of the instances of the failure of counter-insurgency in Vietnam was the creation of Strategic Hamlets, fire-free zones with the rural population living in fenced camps. In such a way, the US attempted to gain the support of the local population and deprive guerrillas of the source of supply. However, Americans failed to gain the support of the local population, while the systematic destruction of crops raised Vietnamese rural population against Americans.
Obviously, counter-insurgency proved to be ineffective in Vietnam, although specialists (Patti, 1980) argue that the Vietnam War was only partly counter-insurgency. Nevertheless, the key lesson the military should have learned from counter-insurgency used in Vietnam was the necessity to gain the support of the local population to maintain the loyal regime and defeat insurgency. In fact, counter-insurgency still had a significant potential and the US military used it in Afghanistan but counter-insurgency in Afghanistan was different from the one used in Vietnam.
In spite of the extensive presence of the US military, they mainly served to overthrow the hostile regime in Afghanistan and establish a pro-American regime, which is currently ruling in Afghanistan, at least officially. On defeating the Taliban regime, the US military focused on the maintenance of peace and selective military operations, instead of large-scale bombardment and destruction of guerillas along with the civil population (Parker and Fellner, 2004). Moreover, counter-insurgency in Afghanistan is grounded on the formation of the local military forces which can maintain stability and the ruling regime in Afghanistan, whereas the US military and its allies are supposed to withdraw from Afghanistan as soon as the local military are strong enough and guerillas destroyed.
Nevertheless, counter-insurgency in Afghanistan was not very successful because the US military still fail to gain the large support of the local population, whereas large territories of Afghanistan are still under the control of Taliban. Therefore, the US still relies on the loyal regime mainly but the US military are more successful in training of the local military forces and involvement of international military forces to keep peace in Afghanistan, instead of support of the loyal regime proper as American attempted to do in Vietnam.
On comparing counter-insurgency in Vietnam and Afghanistan, the military can reveal the consistent changes that occurred in the course of the last few decades between the wars. The difference between counter-insurgency in Vietnam and Afghanistan reveals the changes in the modern world that implies the necessity to introduce changes into the tactics and strategy of the military. In this regard, the counter-insurgency should change respectively to the change in the political, socioeconomic and military development of the modern world.
Thus, it is possible to conclude that the population support is crucial in terms of counter-insurgency because without the support of the local population counter-insurgency proves to be ineffective.

 
References:
Parker, A. and Fellner, J. (Jan. 2004). “Above the Law: Executive Power after September 11 in the United States.” World Report 2004, Human Rights Watch.
Potter, L. and G. Sick. (2004). Iran, Iraq, and the legacies of war. New York: MacMillan.
Patti, Archimedes L.A. (1980). Why Vietnam? Prelude to America’s Albatross. University of California Press.
Pike, D. (1996) PAVN: People’s Army of Vietnam, Presidio.