Nagl Criticized at MIBOLC

My class here at MIBOLC was assigned to read several chapters of "Learning to Eat Soup with a Knife" as part of our COIN curriculum. While I think it would have behooved us to read the entire book (easy for me to say, since I've already read it)I have overall been impressed with the importance places on COIN/Stability and Support/Low Intensity Conflict throughout this course.

But the chapters they assigned us to read were not really about COIN, they focused on the organization culture of the American and British Armies during the insurgencies in Malaya and Vietnam (Chapters 8-9). Valid information, of course, but not as COIN oriented as one would expect in a module on COIN.

After reading the chapters, we were expected to have a class discussion on the concepts. The instructor began the discussion by claiming that Nagl is inherently unfair to the U.S. Army throughout the book by comparing it to the British Army. This, in my opinion, is a grave error that undermines all that there is to be learned from the book.

Nagl does not claim that the two conflict were similar - that would be an unfair conjecture as there are vast difference between Malaya and Vietnam that contributed to the success of the UK and lack thereof by the US. But to compare the two organization cultures that contributed to success or failure in two COIN situations is not illegitimate. My instructor's argument was that the UK had a history of colonialism that contributed to its success in limited wars with political goals and the United States did not, thus it was unfair to compare the two.

This focus on "fairness" misses the point of Nagl's study and such an attitude hinders learning from the lessons of history. Yes, the UK did have an organizational advantage over the United States, but a refusal to learn from the UK's success simply because our histories were dissimilar is a grave mistake born of an narrow minded ideal of the supremacy of the U.S. Armed forces. A humble willingness to learn from other nation's success would behoove the U.S. Army, scrambling to excuse our mistakes due to historical differences will not.