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128 of 134 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Very enjoyable PhD Thesis, December 8, 2005
Exceptionally well written book. If this reviewer understands the forward correctly, Maj Nagl (now LCOL) wrote this book as his PhD thesis at Oxford University. However, it reads like a popular and best-selling history and not with a dry stilted academic tone.
Likewise, this book is exceedingly well researched. Despite feeling fairly well-read on military history in general and Vietnam in particular, I must have jotted down 20 - 30 books for future reference and study. One can certainly see that LCOL Nagl earned his PhD at Oxford.
The best part of the book is that it is not really about fighting a counter-insurgency, but rather about how institutions learn (or fail to learn) when confronted with radical change. In this sense, the British come off much better in the Malay experience than America does in Vietnam.
However, the book has several weaknesses.
First, the book has several errors of fact in the examples of the Chinese Civil War. These are not glaring errors, but since LCOL Nagl uses the Chinese Civil War as a basis to begin his discussion of the Malay conflict, they are relevant. Strangely, the revolutionary doctrine that Mao exports more closely resembles what LCOL Nagl reports vice what actually happened so, perhaps, for the purpose of this book, this failing is an academic one.
Second, Nagl implies that only had we followed all the great ideas the British had, we could have easily won in Vietnam. This is not knowable and may ultimately be false. The conflict in Vietnam was far more violent than the one in Malaya. Likewise the Viet Minh and North Vietnamese Army had several advantages that the Chinese Terrorists (CTs) in Malaya did not. Just a short listing of those are: (1) an effective standing Army, (2) large and powerful allies who provided technical and logistic support, (3) political and geographical points of refuge beyond the reach of the United States, and (4) an enemy (the regime in South Vietnam) that were a religious minority (Catholic) attempting to rule over a majority (Buddhists). Indeed, in Malaya, the CT's were the ethnic minority.
Third, while the best part of the book is the assessment of how a large bureaucracy learns, these ideas are not spelled out to this reader's satisfaction. The question of how an agency learns is not answered adequately.
Overall, this book is an excellent read and raises many important questions. However, it falls a bit short in providing adequate answers to these questions.
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80 of 86 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Nagl wrote the book on counterinsurgency - before the current war in Iraq, August 22, 2005
How does an army learn to fight an effective counterinsurgency? Sound relevant to today's headlines? John Nagl asked this question before it was "cool" - before the pundits of CNN or MSNBC knew how to spell "counterinsurgency". This book - Learning to Eat Soup with a Knife - is his answer. John is a scholar and a soldier who combines academic prowess and firsthand experience in counterinsurgency. LTC John Nagl is a West Point graduate (and in the interests of disclosure, a classmate of the reviewer), an armor officer, a Rhodes Scholar, a former instructor of International Affairs at West Point, and a veteran of the insurgency in Iraq.
The insurgency in Iraq had not begun when the hardcover edition of his book came out in 2002. Unfortunately, it's not at all certain that the people who opened the current war in Iraq read it. This 2nd edition includes a new author's preface discussing the relationship between his earlier scholarship and his recent combat experiences in Iraq. He candidly discusses what he now thinks of his own work based upon his first-hand experience with insurgency.
The depth of LTC Nagl's research is evident in every chapter and should satisfy the rigor of academia while, at the same time, his writing style is clear, concise, and leaves little doubt as to his reasoning. To be successful in an age of insurgencies, Nagl concludes that the Army "will have to make the ability to learn to deal with messy, uncomfortable situations an integral part" of its organizational culture. It must, per T.E. Lawrence, be comfortable eating soup with a knife. Victory in a fluid insurgency requires the ability to learn and to adapt and may even require differing victory conditions, organizations, and core competencies depending upon the context.
Nagl's own experiences have only hammered home the truth of this necessity. His unit was required to change its equipment, its organization, and develop new core competencies to transform from a tank battalion focused on a Soviet-style armored threat into a counterinsurgency (see "Professor Nagl's War" in the NY Times Sunday Magazine, Jan. 11, 2004). They integrated people and tools not normally found in a battalion task force in conventional battle (such as Civil Affairs and Counterintelligence teams - see "Soldier Uses Wits to Hunt Insurgents" by Greg Jaffe in the Wall Street Journal, Sep. 10, 2004). They hunted the enemy while at the same time acting as impromptu diplomats, aid workers, military and police trainers, and tribal mediators. This experience in Iraq was what Nagl describes as the most intense learning experience of his life.
This book was worth it - without the new information - as a hardcover at $89.95. At $17 in paperback, "Learning to Eat Soup with a Knife" should be on the shelf of every American interested in the current situation in Iraq and in how the US can prevail.
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35 of 37 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Timely and Relevant, June 11, 2003
This review is from: Counterinsurgency Lessons from Malaya and Vietnam: Learning to Eat Soup with a Knife (Hardcover)
My own multiple interests in organizational redesign, learning and adaptation, and national security issues led me to read this book. MAJ Nagl is an armor officer, a Rhodes Scholar, and a former instructor of International Affairs at West Point. His book, Counterinsurgency Lessons from Malaysia and Vietnam: Learning to Eat Soup with a Knife, discusses the way armies learn within the frameworks of the British experience with counterinsurgency in Malaya and the American experience in Vietnam. It is particularly timely as the army finds itself in a global war against shadowy networks more reminiscent of insurgencies than conventional armies. These networks have turned the "rules" upside down. Networks that can change direction at will or that can go in different directions simultaneously are not easily defeated by bureaucratic juggernauts that require fifteen years to field a new weapon system or that still apply failed tactics from thirty years ago. Victory in multiple, rapidly changing environments requires the ability to learn and to adapt and may even require differing victory conditions, organizations, and core competencies depending upon the context. MAJ Nagl presents a twofold thesis. First, the British Army developed a successful counterinsurgency doctrine in Malaya due to its performance as a learning institution. Second, the American Army failed to do the same in Vietnam and in fact actively resisted the necessity of learning to fight a new sort of war. But what is organizational learning? Learning theorists tend to recognize the inherently iterative nature of the learning process whether they characterize it using a simple model such as Boyd's OODA loop or Ackoff's more complex organizational learning and adaptation model. To develop his thesis, the author first looks at Richard Downie's model of the learning cycle as applied to the development of doctrine [1]. This model is more complex than the OODA cycle and less complex than some other models. Overall, Downie's model provides a reasonable framework for this study. MAJ Nagl then evaluates each army's experience using a set of questions to measure the effectiveness of each as a learning institution. To answer these questions, the author provides a summary history of insurgency itself, a description of the historical context in which each army's organizational culture developed, and the details of the respective British and American experiences in Vietnam. He finally sums up his conclusions in a "lessons learned" chapter that provides recommendations to foster learning within the army. Largely due to its historical context, the British army developed an organizational culture characterized by a focus on limited war, diverse, global experience, a decentralized organization, and doctrinal flexibility. In contrast, American military history led to an organizational culture focused on absolute victory, large wars characterized by technology and overwhelming firepower, and political and cultural naivete. After establishing the historical context for these very different organizational cultures, MAJ Nagl described in detail their specific experiences in Malaya and Vietnam. The British army in Malaya went through two distinct phases in evolution as a learning institution. During the first phase, the army was still focused on its most recent experience in conventional war in World War II and Korea despite the presence of a significant number of officers with experience in "small wars". This hindered effective learning in the face of the insurgency. During the second phase, the British army developed fully as a learning organization. The key difference between these two phases was the leadership imposed by General Miles Templer and his recognition that victory meant political victory as well as operational and tactical victory. He fostered a climate of innovation that ran the gamut from free primary schooling for children of all ethnicities (Malay, Indian, and Chinese) to extensive use of intelligence, clandestine operations, and psychological warfare to the steady development of a government capable of taking over after independence. The combination of these innovations enabled the forces fighting the insurgents to truly win the "hearts and minds" of the people of Malaya and to remove the fish (the insurgents) from the water (the people). Coupled with these innovations, and probably one of the keys to their effectiveness, was a limitation on the use of overwhelming firepower and the subordination of the military to the political. In contrast, the author effectively makes the case that the US Army in Vietnam failed to develop as a learning organization and, in fact, actively resisted the adaptations necessary to develop an effective counterinsurgency doctrine. MAJ Nagl cites ample evidence that the military refused to listen to its own civilian leadership when it called for a more politically-sensitive approach to counterinsurgency, that it rejected internal studies pointing out its own flaws and refused to learn from them, and that it did not foster tactical and operational innovation but, instead, relied upon superior technology and overwhelming firepower even when these could prove counterproductive. The US approach largely lost the "hearts and minds" of the people and lost the war politically and, ultimately, militarily. The depth of the author's research is evident in every chapter and should satisfy the rigor of academia while, at the same time, the writing style is clear, concise, and leaves little doubt as to the author's reasoning. Overall, MAJ Nagl has made an impressive contribution to the study of organizational learning that will prove valuable to anyone interested in these concepts as well as those for whom there is no substitute for victory. This study is especially relevant today. One must wonder, for example, if the Army, 10 years after Mogadishu, has developed effective doctrine for fighting on urban terrain in the developing world or has merely chosen to avoid that fight and to remain unprepared for an enemy who wisely uses terrain to avoid superior technology and firepower. To be successful in an age of "small" wars, Nagl concludes that the Army "will have to make the ability to learn to deal with messy, uncomfortable situations an integral part" of its organizational culture. It must, per T.E. Lawrence, be comfortable eating soup with a knife.
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