The Marines, Counterinsurgency, and Strategic Culture

Chapter 6
Setting the Stage
Small Wars and the American Mind
Many of the lessons lost, lessons embraced, and persistent blind spots that
make up the fabric of the Marine counterinsurgency experience are not a
product of Marine Corps culture alone but are the natural outgrowth of the
national culture from which Marines are drawn. Both because of troops’
sensibilities as Americans and the additional pressure of an American public
requiring a behavioral standard, American culture plays a major role. When
American cultural proclivities are reinforced by the cultural preferences of
the American military as a whole and Marines in particular, these cultural
predispositions—whether strategically sound or not—acquire particularly
robust form.
The Banana Wars episodes and later the Combined Action Platoon
(CAP) program in Vietnam reveal a pattern of consistently competing cultural
mores—some of these drawn from national heritage, some inspired by
membership in the larger strategic culture of the nation’s military service,
and some endemic to the Marine Corps itself. Which of these emerged as
most influential on behavior may not have been easy to predict at the outset
and offer some insight into the complicated picture of learning from war.
Before proceeding further, a brief snapshot of each small- wars intervention
is in order. The pages of this chapter cannot afford a detailed examination
of the political machinations that drove each of these conflicts and
the personalities who waged them. Happily, this is treated in good form
elsewhere. 1 What is necessary here is an overview sufficient for the purpose
of painting a broad portrait of basic aims, length of stay, contours of the
effort, and general outcomes.