An Interview with General Jack Keane

The Philosophy Behind the Iraq Surge:

An Interview with General Jack Keane

by Octavian Manea

Download the Full Interview: An Interview with General Jack Keane

How would you describe the US Army’s mind-set in approaching the war in Vietnam?

I think we took an army whose primary focus was conventional operations against the Warsaw Pact in Europe and took it to war in South Vietnam. In the first three years of the war we were trying to use conventional tactics against an unconventional enemy. That strategy failed miserably. And it was not until General Abrams came in and took over from General Westmoreland who changed the strategy to a counterinsurgency strategy which was designed to protect the population. We saw significant progress against the insurgency and then, by 1971, three years later, it was essentially defeated.

Should we understand that World War II, the Korean War, and preparation for Fulda Gap campaigns – all this operational heritage – had an impact in shaping the mind-set of the US Military vis-í -vis executing war?

Yes.

What should have been the lessons learned from the Vietnam experience?

I think we learned all the right lessons in how to defeat an insurgency because we succeeded. We lost the war for other reasons, but in terms of defeating the insurgency, I think we learned the right lessons in terms of the preeminence of and the importance of protecting the population, winning the population to your side, using minimum amount of force, dealing with a government that is not effective and dealing with a population that has legitimate grievances against that government. Most insurgencies obviously have some legitimate grievances against the government — otherwise – it wouldn’t be an insurgency to begin with. I think we codified the major tenets of the counterinsurgency we learned and it was in our memory up until 1975. When the war ended we purged it from our lexicon and put the doctrine we had developed on the shelf and embraced war against the Warsaw Pact and Soviet Union. I think it has much to do with how the war ended in Vietnam. The fact that it did not come out favorably to us – I think the military leaders of the time just wanted to get rid of it like a cancer.

Download the Full Interview: An Interview with General Jack Keane

Interview with General Jack Keane conducted by Octavian Manea (Editor of FP Romania, the Romanian edition of Foreign Policy).