The Kurtz Papers
JOURNAL OF SE ASIAN AFFAIRS, Vol IV, May 7th 1965.
Asymetrical Warfare in Closed and Open Terrain by Col Walter E. Kurtz
ed notes: censored and nearly all of the distributed copies destroyed, only a few issues of that volume remained intact.
The game of Go has this fascinating peculiarity that it starts with an empty board. How greater the scope of the strategy of a Go player in comparison to a Chess player, whose pieces are positioned in advance and whose moves, ruled by strict rules, can be predicted.
Displaying strength on a terrain actually means a lack of strength and uncertainty, even fear, for true strength like in Go remains hidden.
Even displaying one's weapons or intentions for that matter is a lack of understanding of the true nature of war. Wars are not won on newspapers and strategy boards but in the mind.
From uncertainty and fear stems defeat. What makes ours more than certain is the varnish of arrogance that we put on the whole situation.
The true art of war is more subtle than the calculation of the enemy's strength and range of action. It is more appropriate to know one's own strength and use it in a decisive manner at the right moment.
The way we think, in terms of aligning our forces against an enemy we seldom can even grasp is a dangerous mistake.
War is dangerous enough not to go fooling around pretending to be the strongest in the field where in fact the most visible we are, the weakest.
It is my understanding that the NVA perfectly comprehends the opportunity of appearing dissolute and unfathomable in the face of a monolithic opponent. One whose resources as great as they may be, as formidable as we consider them, do not bring them shock and awe but rather feed their appetite for destruction, ambush and plunder.
The open terrain that the jungle constitutes or the closed terrain of our bases scattered around the country, are in that regard desperate grounds for us, and they will remain such as long as we do not understand that war is not a matter of means but of strength, of struggle, and that displaying strength means an actual lack of it.
All we are presently doing in Vietnam is posturing and parading. And worse off, they know it, and undoubtedly are waiting for us to be tired of our parade.
The fact of the matter is that our army has become a place for showmanship and kids with big toys. Not a match for Ho Chi Minh and the men of Dien Bien Phu.
So we will learn, the hard way, that war terrain, open or closed, is no place for parade, no matter how grand, and that asymmetrical warfare when practiced by knowledgeable adversaries can defeat even the most formidable force, in due time.
As things stand, defeat in Vietnam, is not a matter of how, but of when.
