Whether the United States ever really ‘understood’ the Vietnam War is a question that resonates from the highest echelons of political decision-making down to the lowliest ‘grunt’. Received wisdoms tell us not.2 In popular literature at least, the US campaign in Vietnam is presented as a sort of grisly caricature; an indiscriminate military effort trammelled by an obsession with technology, wedded to the strategy of attrition and fundamentally ignorant of Vietnam as a social and political entity. These failings thus set the ground for a vastly inflated yet curiously half-hearted conventional military and air campaign on the part of the United States that sought to use its traditional strengths of mass, manoeuvre and firepower in order to defeat the North’s politico-military struggle for national liberation.3 Defeat was inevitable.

Why interventions such as Vietnam or Afghanistan fail to achieve their objectives is naturally a consequence of a vast range of factors. Ideology, psychology, strategy, policy, resources and timing matter hugely. As does the enemy’s own agency of course. But in addition to such weighty matters sits the perennial question of whether the external actors in each case truly understood enough of the countries and societies that they were intervening in to give their designs the maximum prospect of success. To that end, this book examines five particular case studies: The British on the North-West Frontier 1919–39, the French campaign in Algeria 1954–62, the US pacification campaign in Vietnam 1966–72, and US-led coalition operations in Iraq 2003–11, and Afghanistan 2001–present. In the context of the themes and issues highlighted so far, these examples are intended to provoke deeper thinking about the way in which forms of knowledge and understanding are brought to bear upon the process of armed intervention.

Over the course of the five case studies in this book, external actors sought to impose change upon a range of indigenous societies in order to satisfy chosen strategic objectives. Through an amalgamation of political measures and military action acting in combination to create a form of political warfare, a range of techniques were deployed to engineer favourable outcomes according to the preferences of that intervening power. Be it in the form of pacification, stabilisation or counterinsurgency, when coming up against populations that were perceived as holding the key to success these actors engaged in a variety of measures to both secure support and crush armed dissent: the offering of economic incentives and opportunity, the implementation of ambitious civic-action initiatives, the empowerment of key local leaders, the attempted reform of local and national governance structures accompanied a range of other actions designed to aid the betterment of local society. Alongside this lay the design and use of population control measures, the dissemination of propaganda, the use of psychological operations, and the attempted mobilisation of alliances and collaborators from among local groups be they class-based, tribal, ethnic or sectarian in nature. Underpinning all of these measures was the ready application of lethal violence when required.

The British experience on the North-West Frontier had revealed some of the inherent tensions that accompanied the ‘political’ approach to pacification. Most obvious of these had been the rival perspectives adopted by civilian officials and administrators on the one hand and their military partners on the other. Lurking beneath had been the question of whether the specialists detailed for the purpose of engineering a relationship between the tribes and government were sufficiently qualified to undertake that task, and whether the process was controllable in the way that they believed. And of course there was the extent to which the government was able to place the broader pacification effort in its proper strategic context and whether it could resist the temptation to allow constant challenges to its authority in the tribal areas to distort its attempts to adopt a measured approach to protecting its interests there. The Algerian War of 1954–62 would see a similar range of challenges (re-)emerge, but in far starker, far more problematic and, in the end, far more extreme ways.

The Paris Peace Conference convened in January 1919 and did not officially close until one year later, after Germany formally ratified the Treaty of Versailles, but Wilson, Lloyd George, and the leading foreign dignitaries left for home in late June, as soon as the Germans signed their treaty. The Allies designated ambassadors or under-secretaries to represent them in the conclusion of the treaties for Austria (St. Germain), Bulgaria (Neuilly), Hungary (Trianon), and the Ottoman Empire (Sèvres), the latter two not signed until 1920. As the US secretary of state, Lansing, had feared, Wilson’s direct involvement at the conference reduced him to the level of just another negotiator and his Fourteen Points to mere bargaining chips, most of which were sacrificed in whole or in part to achieve the fourteenth: the creation of the League of Nations. While the provisions regarding Germany (reparations, war guilt, near-disarmament, and loss of territory and colonies) received the most attention, outcomes haunting the world into a second great war (and in some cases, beyond it) included the borders drawn in the dismemberment of Austria-Hungary and the Ottoman Empire, as well as the decision of the conference to disregard the interests of Russia and, to a lesser extent, Italy.

The entry of the United States doomed the Central Powers in the long run but not during 1917, as the collapse of Russia deprived the Allies of their largest army at a time when the Americans could not yet make good the loss. Unable to afford a repeat of the bloody battles of 1916, the Germans resolved to stand on the defensive in the west while the U-boats (and the Bolsheviks) did their work. Meanwhile, the failure of Nivelle’s spring offensive nearly broke the French army, leaving it paralyzed by mutiny for much of the rest of the year, while British and Imperial troops attacked at Arras and Vimy Ridge in the spring, then at Passchendaele in the summer and autumn, gaining little ground at great cost. A November attack at Cambrai, ultimately indecisive, showed how tanks could be used effectively. On other fronts, Russia’s attempt to use Czech deserters against Austria-Hungary was more successful than Germany’s efforts to use Polish deserters against Russia, but not decisively so. The Allies added Greece to their ranks by overthrowing its pro-German king, but nearly lost Italy after the Central Powers achieved a decisive victory at Caporetto, and lost Romania when Russia sued for peace.