Mare Somniorum

“Learning to Eat Soup with a Knife, Counterinsurgency Lessons from Malaya and Vietnam” is a look at the very history of military experience under pressure. How do two very different military machines deal with the previously unknown? This is shown to be as much a cultural experience as a military one. How the military is formed and what it has fought for helps shape not just the military structure and its doctrine, but also how hard it becomes to change the institution itself.

To review both wars from a military perspective, Nagl seeks to understand how well either military became learning institutions. Nagl looks at how the institutions changed over time in their respective situations and how they saw themselves as well as their enemies at large. It is, without a shadow of a doubt, a stark review of US military mentality. Trying to change how the war in Vietnam was waged was hard, even though several attempts were made from within the US military hierarchy. As an anonymous U.S. Army officer replied in 1969 to one of the last attempts at a change of policy:

I’ll be damned if I permit the United States Army, its institutions, its doctrine, and its tradition to be destroyed just to win this lousy war.

“Learning [...]“, University of Chicago Press paperback, p. 172

Templer, once he took over the British leadership in Malaya strongly desired and nurtured new ideas, realistic goals and honest news. Westmoreland however very much fronted the “can do” attitude and ensured that the only acceptable review of the way the war in Vietnam was fought was written by the people who were responsible for the current strategy.

It is, all in all, a highly informative work on every level the book seeks out. The authors new preface from his combat experiences in Iraq also help to illuminate the current status of the US military. The book is highly recommended reading.