A Reflection of the Army: West Point and Counterinsurgency, 1962-1968 - Paperback

by United States Military Academy Tactical (Author)

American military planners had no reason to believe that Vietnam would be the place of its first defeat. A motley assortment of black-clad Viet Cong guerillas in South Vietnam did not seem like a threat to the military might of the United States. How did the leadership and war planners allow this to happen? Did they fail to understand the political nature of this conflict and were they unwilling to modify their convential strategy to deal with an insurgency? The Army disregarded counterinsurgency, preferring to prepare for what it saw as the more serious threat-a major war in Europe involving the Soviets. President John F. Kennedy's aide Roger Hilsman suggested in 1962 that the U.S. Military and ''West Pointers" felt there could only be a military solution to Vietnam and that 'winning the hearts and minds was somebody else's job West Point's reluctance to teach counterinsurgency to its cadets during this period reflected the Army's conventional perspective on strategy and tactics prim to and during the Vietnam War.