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Revisiting COIN Strategies in Vietnam

That “Generals are always fighting the last war” may be true, but this is often because they are fighting a different war from their opponent. According to Clausewitz, it is key to military strategy to find the “center of gravity” in any war. If one does not, or focuses on the wrong ‘center’, the battles and ultimately the war will be lost. In Vietnam, the United States did not come to recognize the people of Indochina as the center of gravity and focused on them too little and too late. Many post-mortems on the Vietnam War have recognized this fact. Yet in recent conflicts such as Afghanistan and Iraq—despite the battle cry of “hearts and minds”—America still believed it could win through “thunder runs”, “economy of force”, “dynamic maneuver warfare”, and remote or walled combat fortresses. Arguably, these tactics won battles, but they have not won the wars.

 

Maos Teachings

The goal and strategy of indigenous communist forces was related directly to winning over the people of Southeast Asia. They wanted to change society, not just change governments. They sought to communicate this goal to the people and mobilise them to support it, not just build a government and centrally-controlled army to fight pitched battles, though they did show ability to do so against the French and, in later stages, against the United States.

Communist forces devised effective tactics to further their strategy of revolutionary guerrilla warfare largely based upon the teachings of China’s Mao Zedong and Vietnam’s General Vo Nguyen Giap. They viewed the wars as a “struggle”—dau tranh—broken further into the “military struggle”—dau tranh vu trang—and the “political struggle”—dau tranh chinh tri. Included in the political struggle was “action among the enemy”—dich van. “Action among the enemy” referred to actions behind enemy lines taken by communist forces among the local population in areas controlled or contested by anti-communist forces. Almost all communist actions conducted in South Vietnam included detailed plans and directives for propagandizing and re-training “liberated citizens”.

The primary and most effective vehicle through which communist forces undertook these actions was the “Agit-Prop Team”, also referred to as the “Armed Propaganda Team” (APT). These teams were first used by the Viet Minh to quickly disseminate news of the 1945 Japanese surrender and standing up of the communist government throughout the countryside—quickly pushed aside by