Unnoticed Expert Mastering Irregular Warfare Worthy of Pentagon's Attention Today
Bernard Fall, a professor at Howard University and a former French Resistance fighter, made significant contributions to our understanding of revolutionary warfare, particularly during the Vietnam War. His insights, grounded in his study of Maoist thought, French military officers who commanded in Indochina, and Vietnamese anti-colonialist thought, continue to inform modern US military strategy.
Fall's analysis shed light on the nature and strategies of guerrilla and insurgency warfare, emphasizing the importance of mass political mobilization, popular support, and the resilience of revolutionary forces over conventional military power. This challenge to traditional Western military doctrines, focused on large-scale battles and firepower, was crucial in understanding the French defeat in the First Indochina War and the challenges faced by the US in Vietnam.
One of Fall's most notable works, "Street Without Joy," published in 1961, argued that military capabilities and technologies are insufficient when complex politics and long-standing grievances motivate diverse populations to engage in conflict. His book, "The Two Viet-Nams: A Political and Military Analysis" (1963), and "Hell in a Very Small Place: The Siege of Dien Bien Phu" (1966), further explained why conventional military superiority failed to secure victory against insurgent forces who used asymmetric tactics, blending with civilian populations and leveraging nationalist and ideological motivations.
Fall's thoughts about prioritizing conventional warfare in Vietnam seem prescient, given the US military's recent prioritization of large-scale combat operations. However, his work highlights the importance of a population-centric approach, intelligence gathering, and the limits of technological and firepower dominance in irregular conflicts.
Tragically, Fall died in February 1967 when he tripped a landmine while on patrol with US Marines in Thua Thien province, near Hue, Vietnam. His scholarship, however, continues to influence military strategy. His work presaged later counterinsurgency frameworks, including those applied during the Iraq and Afghanistan conflicts, where understanding revolutionary dynamics and the sociopolitical environment became vital for operational success.
Recent studies, such as a 2019 RAND study, reveal a pattern of failed campaigns that reflect "the wavering emphasis on the will to fight in military doctrine." This underscores the continued relevance of Fall's insights, reminding us of the primacy of politics in war, as demonstrated in works like "The Ledger: Accounting for Failure in Afghanistan" by David Kilcullen and Greg Mills.
In contemporary US military strategy, Fall's scholarship remains a foundational reference for understanding the complexity of modern asymmetric conflicts and the limitations of purely conventional military responses. His legacy continues to inspire, as demonstrated by Nathaniel L. Moir, author of "Number One Realist: Bernard Fall and Vietnamese Revolutionary Warfare," who is a critical infrastructure analyst with New York state's Office of Counter Terrorism and a research associate in the Applied History Project at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University.
Born in Vienna in 1926 to a Jewish family, Fall emigrated to France in 1938 and joined the Resistance after his mother was deported to Auschwitz and his father was murdered by the Gestapo. During his time in the Resistance, Fall's unit targeted collaborators to undermine Nazi and Vichy authority. After the war, Fall worked as a translator during the early stages of the Nuremberg trials in 1946 and continued to work for the War Crimes Commission, analyzing the widespread use of slave labor by the Krupp manufacturing corporation.
In 1952, Fall moved to the United States as one of the first International Fulbright Scholars, earning a master's degree in political science at Syracuse University. His subsequent work for the Special Operations Research Office and the Human Relations Area Files, and his invitations to speak with Special Forces soldiers preparing to deploy to Vietnam, further cemented his role as a key figure in shaping US military strategy during the Vietnam War.
J. William Fulbright, Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman, often met with Fall, and his scholarship shaped Fulbright's views on Vietnamese history and Sino-Vietnamese communist relations, as detailed in Fulbright's book "The Arrogance of Power." Fall's scholarship also influenced Fulbright's disagreements with President Lyndon B. Johnson's war policies, culminating in the televised Vietnam hearings in 1966.
In summary, Bernard Fall's contributions were significant because they provided a nuanced framework for understanding the nature and strategies of revolutionary warfare during the Vietnam War, and these insights have informed and remain relevant to US military approaches to similar asymmetric conflicts in the contemporary era.
- Bernard Fall's work on the nature and strategies of revolutionary warfare, emphasizing political mobilization, popular support, and the resilience of revolutionary forces, continues to influence current US military strategy, particularly in the context of large-scale combat operations and asymmetric conflicts.
- Modern US military strategy benefits from the insights of Bernard Fall regarding the importance of a population-centric approach, intelligence gathering, and the limits of technological and firepower dominance in irregular conflicts, as demonstrated by his assertion that military superiority failed to secure victory against insurgent forces in Vietnam.
- In the realm of education and self-development, ongoing scholarship continues to emphasize the relevance of Fall's work in understanding contemporary conflicts, as evidenced by recent studies like the 2019 RAND study, which highlight the primacy of politics in war, and works like "The Ledger: Accounting for Failure in Afghanistan" by David Kilcullen and Greg Mills.
