Andrew Krepinevich

An important but flawed book that should be read by anyone serious about understanding the Vietnam war. The author is primarily concerned with what is called the "Army concept" which is the US Armies idea of why it exists and what future wars it existed to fight in the 1960's. That war was a conventional war against the Soviet Union in central Europe. Instead the war it fought was a counterinsurgency war in Vietnam. The author's case is that the US Army took it's conventional mindset and fought the Vietnam War using that instead of counterinsurgency methods. That a policy of attrition was used which left the population to be dominated by the Viet Cong. I think that case is mostly proven.

My criticism is three fold.

Firstly it doesn't cover the policy of Containment, the grand strategy of the US during the Cold War. Without discussing this policy it makes decisions made regarding Vietnam seem without context and irrational.

Secondly the book finishes in 1968, it is a common thing in books on the war but wrong. There is still 7 years of war to be fought and nothing within that time is important or can change anything?

Thirdly why are the Communists invisible? Nothing that America does has any effect on the Communist war effort. That is simply not true, the Communists were forced to change constantly because of the American forces and that includes at a strategic level.

I think the book is an important critic of the US Army and government in Vietnam, it is important to question assumptions, but it is far from the final answer on the war. Finally the story is that this book destroyed the authors career in the US Army, it's rare to read the sentence that destroyed a career but here it is on page 262:

"That this strategic war of annihilation against North Vietnam still evokes support in some Army quarters reinforces the notion that for some the learning process proceeds at a glacial pace, if at all."

No employer is going to be happy with that sentence!… (mais)

The Last Warrior may suffer from overly high expectations for those who’ve heard of the enigmatic Andrew Marshall. For one, it’s constrained by the plain fact that much of Marshall’s work product remains classified. Krepinevich and Watts are both Marshall proteges, so as one would expect, they treat their subject with a gentle touch. If they level any criticism, it’s that Marshall could have been more assertive at times, but it’s quickly excused as professional detachment. Another limitation of the book -- and the authors are upfront about it -- is that it was not intended to be a biography, but rather an intellectual history of the man. A book with a man’s name in the title that reveals only the highlights of his life and little of his personality leaves one a bit thirsty. The book is, rather, a post WWII history of net assessment in the United States presented through the lens of Andrew Marshall’s experience. As far as Marshall’s contributions to the national security discussion go, they are according to the authors (1) his insistence that the CIAs estimate of how much GNP was being consumed by military production in the USSR, (2) recognizing that the U.S. was in the midst of a revolution in military affairs, and (3) anticipating China’s rise. It seems, however, that Marshall’s greater contribution to national security is the analytical rigor he brought to the generation of forecasts, while trying to temper them with the realities of a non-linear environment inhabited by (at times) non-rational actors. He was a leader and a role model in that he always sought to ask a better question; no use in rushing for answers if you haven’t framed and formulated the right question. In sum, the book doesn’t offer a great deal of insight into either ONA or its father. In the end, we’re still left to assume that Marshall did great service to the nation, based mostly on his longevity in the inauspicious A-ring office he inhabited.… (mais)