Book Review | Corps Competency? By Michael F. Morris
Corps Competency?: III Marine Amphibious Force Headquarters in Vietnam. By Michael Morris. Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas, 2024. ISBN 978-0700636938. Maps. Photographs. Glossary. Notes. Sources Cited. Index. Pp. vii, 348. $54.99.
Dr. Michael Morris, a retired Marine Colonel, provides an instructive lesson on corps-level failures in his book, Corps Competency?: III Marine Amphibious Force Headquarters in Vietnam. Dr. Morris provides an invaluable case study on a little-understood echelon in a little-understood war. Corps Competency is impressively researched, succinct, and logically organized. Although written primarily for a Marine audience, this book is a must-read for all current practitioners interacting with any corps-sized echelon.
The Corps in Future Combat
To win on the future battlefield, the U.S Army is revitalizing its corps level headquarters. Napoleon developed the corps headquarters to serve as a flexible, self-sufficient level of command to orchestrate multiple divisions. Today’s Army states the corps is the most flexible echelon of command capable of controlling forces at the operational and tactical levels of war. During the US Global War on Terror, corps headquarters focused on broader counterinsurgency (COIN) tasks such as supporting governance and reconstruction. These roles were proper for the fighting insurgencies and Afghanistan and Iraq, but they are very different than the large scale combat operations (LSCO) as seen in Ukraine today. Institutional knowledge in COIN does not translate to LSCO and visa versa. To further complicate matters, corps in future fights will likely need to execute both types of fights simultaneously. Today’s Russian Army provides a contemporary warning to this challenge.
The Russian Army mistakenly thought momentary tactical success against an irregular enemy in Syria demonstrated their capability to win against their near-peer Ukrainian adversaries. Fighting anti-Assad rebels in the desert did not require a Russian corps level headquarters to synchronize maneuver and effects in a contested, hybrid modern battlefield. Assad’s recent downfall illuminate Russian military failures in consolidating tactical gains into strategic outcomes. In Ukraine, examples of Russian senior command and control failures abound, but one of the most illustrative is the failed 2022 Siverskyi Donets River Crossing where an entire battalion tactical group was destroyed.
To avoid the mistakes of Russian adversaries in Ukraine, US corps headquarters must continuously improve its ability to actively direct combat operations and leverage tactical victories into strategic ones. A key part of this development on the corps in combat must include accessible historical studies. Since the future battlefield is more likely to include both conventional and irregular threats, The Vietnam War still offers painful lessons in hybrid warfare.
Out of its Depth: The Senior Marine HQ in Vietnam
In Corps Competency?, Dr. Morris briefly retraces the history of III MAF’s history in Vietnam from when it arrived in 1965 to guard the Da Nang Airfield through its rise to control all military operations in the northern I Corps region of South Vietnam to its eventual withdrawal in 1971.
Dr. Morris’s primary argument is that the III Marine Amphibious Force (MAF) was not properly prepared to fight a sustained, hybrid war in South Vietnam. As a result, III MAF failed to leverage tactical success into strategic success. Functioning as a corps-level command, III MAF was the senior land headquarters in the I Corps region, located along the demilitarized zone of South Vietnam. III MAF’s mission was a radical departure from the swift, amphibious operations it had been trained and organized for. Dr. Morris analyzes the MAF’s response to this new mission through its war fighting functions: command and control, intelligence, operations, logistics, and plans. In each of these categories, Dr. Morris combines well researched data with telling anecdotes to highlight how MAF commanders and staff executed the war they wanted to fight rather than the one they faced. Out of their littoral comfort zone, III MAF faced sustained conflict against the conventional North Vietnamese Army (NVA) and Vietcong guerrilla forces.
In this operating environment the MAF had three primary lines of effort: training the friendly Army of the Republic of Vietnamese (ARVN), defeating regular North Vietnamese Army (NVA) forces, and pacification or COIN of the countryside. Dr. Morris argues that the MAF mistakenly overemphasized the COIN line of effort at the extreme detriment of the other two. By minimizing the ARVN forces and failing to deny NVA access into south Vietnam, Dr. Morris argues that III MAF set conditions for which ultimately defeated the fledgling Republic of Vietnam. Unchecked to enter South Vietnam, the NVA developed organic resupply chains that didn’t solely rely on the local populace, circumventing III MAF’s COIN efforts. These logistical tentacles enabled the climactic 1975 Spring Offensive, a massive simultaneous attack by the NVA which defeated an ARVN force inadequately trained and unsupported by the Americans.
Competing Theories of Victory
Consistent with the Marine history in small wars, the III MAF theory of victory was to prioritize counterinsurgency. By winning the populace, the Marines hoped to deprive the NVA from their base of support. The Marines developed the Combined Action Platoons, where squads of Marines partnered with local Vietnamese militia to secure friendly villages. Dr. Morris argues that while III MAF was able to increase its control over more of the population, its counterinsurgency failed to destroy the Vietcong shadow government and did not offer an alternative political strategy to address local concerns. It is hard not to see reflections of Afghanistan in this approach where massive US-funded infrastructure did little to sway to support the central government because their more immediate needs were unmet. Although III MAF prioritized the COIN mission, they simultaneously needed to defeat the regular NVA threat.
Dr. Morris argues that III MAF failed to defeat the NVA in I Corps because they, as well as the rest of Military Advisory Command-Vietnam (MACV), relied on a punishment strategy instead of a denial strategy. The punishment strategy called for a mobile defense to conduct search and destroy operations towards achieving the elusive cross-over point when the NVA would not be willing to replace their casualties. These search and destroy operations forced US-led forces into tactical offense as soldiers and marines crossed the deadly final 50 meters to engage entrenched NVA and Vietcong forces. Attrition cut both ways. Ultimately, the US lacked the political will of North Vietnam to replace casualties. Although, III MAF’s higher headquarters proscribed the doomed war of attrition, Dr. Morris does not let the Marine command off the hook. He rightly argues that a senior headquarters has a duty to offer dissenting voices and an alternative theory of victory.
While providing a war fighting function analysis of III MAF in Vietnam, Dr. Morris paints a damning picture of a corps level headquarters unprepared for its operating environment and unable to adequately adapt. Unsatisfied with simply picking holes in how III MAF fought, Dr. Morris also explores paths not taken.
Dr. Morris argues that III MAF’s best opportunity to win in I Corps was to adopt a denial strategy by building the McNamara line in their sector. The McNamara line was a defensive system of obstacles, early warning sensors, and fortifications supported by mobile reserves to prevent Northern communist incursions. There is still debate regarding whether the McNamara Line would have proven effective. However, the logic of forcing the enemy into the tactical offense while cutting off their line of communications is consistent with the classic lessons on warfare espoused by Carl von Clausewitz and Antoine Jomini.
An Overzealous Critic?
In the finest tradition of the Marine leaders, Dr. Morris is not shy in his criticism of his beloved Corps. Morris acknowledges that there is plenty of blame to go around for the loss of Vietnam, but this does not excuse III MAF for their mistakes. For example, when addressing the punishment strategy, he acidly writes, “Like a loyal lemming, III MAF followed MACV over the conceptual cliff of an attrition strategy based on search and destroy tactics.” Dr. Morris does recognize Marine successes, such as the Combined Action Platoons, but his zeal for criticism may not give the MAF enough credit. By Dr. Morris’s own admission, III MAF did successfully turn the counterinsurgency tide following the 1968 Tet Offensive before being ordered to withdraw. Dr. Morris does not consider whether the MAF counterinsurgency approach would’ve worked if not prematurely stopped by political mandate. However, whether Dr. Morris is always fair to the MAF is beside the point. His goal is to provide an objective evaluation of III MAF to inform contemporary practitioners.
Dr. Morris’s analysis is not without its own faults. He does not systematically compare III MAF with its adjacent Army corps headquarters to support his argument about the MAF’s ineffectiveness. An equal treatment of all the MACV corps headquarters would likely reveal that none were especially effective in Vietnam. While focused on the MAF, the war fighting function chapters would benefit from more visual aids. The command-and-control section could utilize a command and control diagram to better depict the sprawling organization the III MAF found itself in charge of. Additionally, the operations section should include a more detailed map of the northern I Corps area with unit boundaries and key terrain. With these blemishes, Corps Competency? is still incredibly well researched and well argued.
Conclusion
Morris provides an indispensable case study of a corps-level headquarters fighting a sustained hybrid war for modern practitioners. To win on the future battlefield, Marine and Army corps must achieve what III MAF could not. They must properly balance countering irregular and conventional threats with a cohesive operational approach. As the Russians are learning in Syria and Ukraine, this is no easy task. Preparing for hybrid war at a large scale requires education rooted in history. Books like Corps Competency? offer important lessons in hybrid warfare, but only if they are read and acted upon.
