Document Created: 24 August 2007
Air & Space Power Journal Fall 2007
The Cambodian Campaign: The 1970 Offensive and America’s Vietnam War by John M. Shaw. University Press of Kansas (http://www.kansas press.ku.edu), 2502 Westbrooke Circle, Lawrence, Kansas 66045-4444, 2005, 352 pages, $34.95 (hardcover).
In describing his greatest victory, Field Marshal His Grace the Duke of Wellington called the Battle of Waterloo “the nearest run thing you ever saw in your life.” In an impressive debut work, John M. Shaw has produced a study suggesting that Wellington’s quotation is far more descriptive of the American experience in Southeast Asia than most people might think. Prior coverage of the American invasion of Cambodia has focused on the political ramifications of this campaign. In an account that emphasizes the operational level, Shaw accepts Richard Nixon’s argument that the move into Cambodia was the most successful operation of the war: “While historians debate the political fallout of the Cambodian incursion, there can be no doubt of the military consequences. At a comparatively light cost in friendly casualties, the incursion crippled Hanoi’s principal forward stockpiles along South Vietnam’s borders” (p. 169). As a result, the balance of power shifted towards Saigon in the early 1970s.
A now-retired US Army lieutenant colonel with a PhD in history who has taught at both the US Military Academy and Air Force Academy, Shaw brings a good deal of military and academic expertise to bear in this account. He bases his findings on an impressive and extensive examination of American military records, showing that by 1970 the Americans had essentially defeated the Vietcong and that the North Vietnamese Army posed the most direct threat to the Saigon government, with bases less than 100 miles away. The North Vietnamese, though, were vulnerable to attack after having operated out in the open for so long in Cambodia. The Army of the Republic of Vietnam gave an adequate showing in the invasion. Americans performed well and were hardly a military falling apart from political dissension at home, poor leadership, and heavy drug use among its troops. Shaw, though, is quick to show that the US Army had clearly declined in quality from its first days in Vietnam. These findings in and of themselves are provocative, much less his claim that the operation was an enormous success. What is particularly impressive about this book is how even small features—such as the photo section—support its overall focus.
Cambodian Campaign is also well written and has already won the Army Historical Foundation’s Distinguished Writing Award. Shaw conducted a number of interviews for this project, and he uses quotations in an effective fashion to enliven his narrative. The text, though, is littered with military acronyms, but that will hardly be a problem to readers of this journal.
This book will not be the last word on the offensive into Cambodia. There are a number of topics that Shaw does not address at length, such as the perspective of individual soldiers at the tactical level or what Wellington called “the other side of the hill.” But if one stops to compare the state of the literature on war 40 years after the fact to a comparable stage of two other big conflicts—the Civil War and World War II—it seems likely that this book will remain the authoritative account of US actions at the operational level for decades to come.
Should military officers read Cambodian Campaign? Yes. In fact, it should end up on reading lists at various schools in the professional military education system. Shaw has produced a study that highlights a troublesome fact about military operations in Vietnam and many other wars: operational success does not always bring with it strategic victory. It is altogether possible for soldiers, sailors, marines, and airmen to achieve their objectives and for that to mean nothing in the end.
Dr. Nicholas Evan Sarantakes
US Army Command and General Staff College
Fort Gordon, Georgia
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