The Foreign Service Journal, November 2007

O ver the past year, President George W. Bush and other senior administration officials have on numerous occasions invoked the U.S. assistance program in South Vietnam as an experience that offers lessons for Iraq. Specifically, the Vietnam-era Civil Operations and Revolutionary Development Support program has frequently been held up as a model for the Provincial Recon- struction Teams currently operating in Afghanistan and Iraq. The CORDS teams administered both security and development pro- grams at the provincial and district levels in South Vietnam during the late 1960s and early 1970s. Like today’s PRTs, they comprised military and civilian personnel, the former always significantly outnumbering the latter. The civilians came primarily from the State Department and the U.S. Agency for International De- velopment, augmented by a limit- ed number of direct hires from other agencies (e.g., Commerce, Treasury and Agriculture). There were also a limited number of personnel whom USAID brought on board expressly for CORDS, with no promise of career employment beyond Vietnam. Yet despite basic similarities and parallels between the CORDS teams and today’s PRTs, there are also important and sharp distinctions. Lest today’s policymakers be misled into assuming that the earlier experi- ence can be replicated today, I believe it is vital to identify several critical differences that affect the Foreign Service’s ability to help Iraq and Afghanistan deal with their internal difficulties and emerge as functioning economies with demo- cratic societies. Security Constraints First and foremost, it is the overall security environment that drives how U.S. teams function and what one can realistically expect them to achieve. In Vietnam, with few exceptions (such as the 1968 Tet Offensive), the Viet Cong rarely targeted CORDS activities or personnel. They knew that the Vietnamese people for the most part welcomed reconstruction and development projects to repair roads and dikes, get rice paddies back into production, dig wells, build schools and clinics, and improve local public administration. The Viet Cong did regularly at- tempt to penetrate and subvert ham- let and village administration, but villagers, by and large, were willing to help government forces identify and eliminate those agents. The result was that civilian personnel assigned to CORDS were remarkably effective and generally did not face the sorts of severe security problems that con- strain the operations of most PRTs in Afghanistan and Iraq. The current operating environ- ment in those two countries is so dangerous — not only for PRT mem- bers, but for their colleagues based in the capitals — that one must question whether civilian personnel can work safely at all, no matter how well trained and equipped they are. In fact, I do not believe that the CORDS program could have been successful in today’s Iraq or Afghanistan. The Importance of Training A second critical difference be- tween the CORDS program in Viet- nam and the PRTs in Iraq and Af- ghanistan is the extensive training and preparation that the personnel assign- ed to the earlier program received. To prepare personnel for service with CORDS, the Foreign Service Institute established a Vietnam Train- ing Center. Each class began with a six-week introduction to the cultures, civilizations and economies of Viet- nam, other countries in Indochina and Southeast Asia, and the Pacific region. Lectures were given by American and Vietnamese instructors, as well as military and intelligence personnel. In addition, there were classes on guerrilla warfare that drew on experiences in Vietnam and other insurgency environments. (Twenty years earlier, the U.S. had successfully helped the Philippines defeat the Hukbalahap insurgency, and the British had dealt with the Malayan emergency and the Mau Mau rebellion in East Africa.) Caution: Iraq Is Not Vietnam B Y D AVID P ASSAGE N O V E M B E R 2 0 0 7 / F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L 13 S PEAKING O UT The CORDS program could not have been successful in today’s Iraq or Afghanistan.