Advising Indigenous Forces: American Advisors in Korea, Vietnam, and El Salvador

by Robert D. Ramsey III

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 not consistently prepare. Mr. Robert Ramsey’s historical study examines three cases where 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 lessons the Army thought 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, from 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.

190 pages, Paperback

First published September 15, 2006

Reviews

[Jonathan Jeckell · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is an excellent historical review of prior US Army efforts to advise foreign military forces in combat, packed with useful lessons relevant in today's current wars and into the future. It's frustrating to note many of the same mistakes recurring again and again in successive advisory efforts, but heartening that some of the lessons outlined in this book have finally been implemented (but will they be forgotten again after the current batch of wars conclude?). This book is available on PDF for free here http://www.au.af.mil/au/awc/awcgate/a... Do not confuse the price with its value.