The client gets a vote: counterinsurgency warfare and the U.S. military advisory mission in South Vietnam, 1954-1965

Abstract

ABSTRACTThe belief that U.S. military advisors in South Vietnam did not know how to conduct a counterinsurgency campaign underpins belief that reforms are necessary for counterinsurgency success. However, contemporaneous U.S. documents show that military officers in the advisory period, 1954–1965, believed in the need for reforms and pressed their South Vietnamese counterparts to implement them. If advisors urged their partners to liberalize and democratize, yet the state remained autocratic, repressive, and corrupt, what explains the South Vietnamese failure to reform? I identify the client state’s ability and will to resist reforms as an important overlooked element of counterinsurgency campaigns.