achieve concessions, or even seces- sion of an area,” Thiel says. “It can have a variety of outcomes that are usually tied politically.” Within an insurgency are several components. These might include an underground, which designs and im- plements the organization’s end-goal strategies, and an auxiliary, which might include full- and part-time fi ghters. And then there are the guer- rillas, which technically are an armed force for the insurgency, says Thiel. Unconventional warfare may be
used by an insurgency or to combat one. Thiel uses South Africa in the 1960s and ’70s as an example. In- surgents in South Africa were being supported and funded by a cadre within Mozambique. To disrupt Mo- zambique’s ability to fund the insur- gents within its borders, South Africa inserted special forces within Mo- zambique to form, fund, and supply its own insurgency. The tactic proved extremely eff ective, Thiel says. A much grander example is Viet- nam. After World War II, France struggled mightily to maintain its hold on Indochina but faced an ever-growing insurgency from the League for the Independence of Vietnam (more commonly known as the Vietminh), a Communist-domi- nated organization led by a peasant fi ghter named Ho Chi Minh. One of the Vietminh’s best-known military strategists, Gen. Vo Nguyen Giap, conceived a three-tiered struggle to reclaim his country: a localized guer- rilla war, then a “war of movement,” and fi nally a general uprising among the oppressed populace.
France’s failure France’s eff orts to maintain control of Vietnam via often brutal military means came to a disastrous end in 1954 with the siege of Dien Bien Phu, an isolated French military outpost 180 miles from Hanoi. Giap threw an
estimated 100,000 combat soldiers and support personnel against the French in a secretive, weeks-long buildup of herculean proportions. The siege lasted 55 days and ended with the surrender of more than 10,260 French troops. With support for the war rapidly waning at home, France was done with Indochina. A decade later, the U.S., which had sup- ported France during its campaign against the communists, stepped in to see whether it could do what the French could not. It should come as no surprise the
French saw defeat in Vietnam, notes Boot. “That war eff ort, like that of the Americans who fought in Viet- nam a decade later, violated nearly every precept of what became known as population-centric coun- terinsurgency doctrine by adopting a conventional, big-unit, fi repower- intensive strategy that alienated the
populace while failing to trap the Vietminh,” he writes in Invisible En- emies. “Moreover they could not cut off the insurgency from outside sup- port — perhaps the most reliable in- dicator of an uprising’s prospects.” Like the French, the U.S. employed
a variety of strategies to destroy North Vietnam’s ability to fi ght and, to a lesser degree, to assist and support the local populace. “I think the major lesson learned from Vietnam that really manifested itself in both Iraq and especially the village stability concepts in Afghanistan, was co-opt- ing and protecting the population,” notes Thiel. “In Vietnam, the village hamlet programs and things like that were very successful.” Unfortunately, the eff ort was in-
consistent. “The conventional U.S. military forces saw some success there but didn’t back it,” Thiel ex- plains. “And
[CONTINUES ON PAGE 84]
In 1954, French ser- vicemembers fight in the Dien Bien Phu, Vietnam, during the First Indochina War.
JANUARY 2015 MILITARY OFFICER 71
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