<p>It has been said that the only thing new in the world is the history you don’t know. This Global War on Terrorism (GWOT) Occasional Paper (OP) is a timely reminder for the US Army about the history we do not know, or at least the history we do not know well. The Army has recently embarked on massive advisory missions with foreign militaries in Iraq, Afghanistan, and elsewhere around the globe. We are simultaneously engaged in a huge effort to learn how to conduct those missions for which we do no consistently prepare. Mr. Robert Ramsey’s historical study examines three cases in which the US Army has performed this same mission in the last half of the 20th century. In Korea during the 1950s, in Vietnam in the 1960s and 1970s, and in El Salvador in the 1980s the Army was tasked to build and advise host nation armies during a time of war. The author makes several key arguments about the lesson the Army though it learned at the time. Among the key points Mr. Ramsey makes are the need for US advisors to have extensive language and cultural training, the lesser importance for them of technical and tactical skills training, and the need to adapt US organizational concepts, training techniques, and tactics to local conditions. Accordingly, he also notes the great importance of the host nation’s leadership buying into and actively supporting the development of a performance-based selection, training, and promotion system. To its credit, the institutional Army learned these hard lessons, form successes and failures, during and after each of the cases examined in this study. However, they were often forgotten as the Army prepared for the next major conventional conflict. These lessons are still important and relevant today. In fact, prior to its publication the conclusions of this study were delivered by the author to several of the Army’s current advisory training task forces. We at CSI believe this GWOT OP can contribute significant insights to the Army as it works to prepare for and conduct its current advisory missions.~</p>

Advising Indigenous Forces: American Advisors in Korea, Vietnam, and El Salvador: Global War on Terrorism Occasional Paper 18

History

Ramsey III, Robert D.

Institute, Combat Studies

Military

CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform

Savage Wars of Peace: Case Studies of Pacification in the Philippines, 1900-1902: The Long War Series Occasional Paper 24

<p>Combat Studies Institute (CSI) presents Long War Series Occupational Paper (OP) 25, “A Masterpiece of Counterguerrilla Warfare: BG J. Franklin Bell in the Philippines, 1901-1902, by Robert Ramsey. OP 25 is a companion to OP 24, “Savage Wars of Peace: Case Studies of Pacification in the Philippines, 1900-1902. IN OP 24 Ramsey analyzed case studies from two different Philippine military districts discovering several themes relevant to today’s ongoing operations in the Long War. IN OP 25 he focuses on the philosophy that guided Bell in the conduct of one of those campaigns. Over the ages military historians have employed many types of research and writing to understand, and ultimately learn from, the past. These methods range from studies of grand strategy to studies of small unit tactics to, most recently, studies of the history of war and society. OP 25 takes a different approach, one whose origins are old and rather infrequently practiced today. This technique examines the inner thinking of a commander in an attempt to understand how he viewed the operation he was conducting. In reading Bell’s words today, it becomes clear he displayed at least two of the key attributes that constitute Clausewitz’s concept of military genius – the inner light or vision that points a commander toward victory in the fog of war and the determination to act decisively in the fact of danger. Mr. Ramsey, in his introduction, makes note of British Field Marshal Sir Archibald P. Wavell’s endorsement of this kind of history: “The real way to get value out of the study of military history is to take particular situations, and as far as possible get inside the skin of the man who made a decision, realize the conditions in which the decision was made, and then see in what way you could have improved upon it.” This quote captures the intent of this study. The collected messages and circulars issued by Bell to his subordinate commanders, and the text of the US Army’s famous General Orders 100 from which he drew that guidance, provide the means to accomplish what Clausewitz and Wavell urged us to do.~</p>

A Masterpiece of Counterguerrilla Warfare: BG J. Franklin Bell in the Philippines, 1901-1902: The Long War Series Occasional Paper 25

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