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Differences, and parallels, aplenty

By Brendan Nicholson

April 9, 2004

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International security experts point to significant differences between the wars in Vietnam and Iraq - as well as dangerous parallels.

Brigadier Adrian D'Hage, a defence specialist who won the Military Cross in Vietnam, said some parallels were not obvious. In Vietnam the guerillas were able to attack from the jungles then melt away. "In Iraq the suburbs have become the jungle."

Brigadier D'Hage said the US had no clear strategic goal in Vietnam. "In Iraq they fought to remove Saddam but it's not clear what they are doing now."

Alan Dupont, a senior fellow at the Lowy Institute for International Policy, said that to suggest Iraq was another Vietnam was a false analogy.

Vietnam was essentially a civil war between the two parts of a partitioned state; Iraq was more a case of tribalism asserting itself. "There are very few parallels," Dr Dupont said. "The political strategic situations were dramatically different."

He said Vietnam became a quagmire essentially because North Vietnam was supported by China and the Soviet Union.

"That is not the case in Iraq, notwithstanding the fact that a few countries are sympathetic to some of the groups opposing the coalition," Dr Dupont said.

Dr Dupont said the Americans fought in Vietnam with "one arm tied behind their back" in that they did not send troops into North Vietnam.

Also, a broad coalition of nations have forces in Iraq, which was not so in Vietnam.

Dr Dupont said a significant difference now was the US public's reluctance to accept high casualties. He said that compared with almost any other major conflict, coalition casualties in Iraq were very low. On a bad day in Iraq, 12 marines were killed, but at the height of the Vietnam War the US was losing 200 men a week.

Derek Woolner, a strategic policy adviser during the Vietnam War, who now lectures at the University of NSW, said there were great socio-political similarities between Vietnam and Iraq which could make it "this generation's Vietnam".

"They won't be exactly the same and it hasn't occurred yet, but the danger is there," Dr Woolner told ABC radio.

"The major similarities I see and the reason that I see the current circumstances in Iraq having the potential to develop into a Vietnam-like situation, are that the Americans do not seem to have entered there with any clear perceptions of what they wanted to achieve. Those that they had now must be recognised as impossibly rosy-eyed."

Australian Defence Association executive director Neil James said the Vietcong in South Vietnam were resupplied from a major adversary next door, which was not so in Iraq, invalidating the comparison.



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