These days, given the state of the publishing industry, it is hard to believe blurbs and reviews. I thus always read the book before I even consider buying it--especially if the book is a history, and even more especially if it is a book about the history of wars in Southeast and East Asia. Half way through GIAP, by James A. Warren, I knew I was going to buy it.
I'm not sure if this book is a history, as much as it is a discussion of history--not sure if it is a biography of General Giap, as much as it is a discussion of Giap's influence on history. In any case, the book is worth it. Given the paucity of information about Giap, and the paucity of information about the PAVN--both of which depend on Vietnamese sources--it is virtually impossible to write a definitive biography of Giap. And about this, the author makes no bones. He tells us clearly when he is making a supposition or a guess. But equally clearly, his guesses and suppositions are well informed. It is hard to argue with his conclusions.
For me, this book is most valuable in the way that it destroys, once and for all, the myth that we could have defeated the PAVN by using Westmorland's tactics--or any other tactics that American generals came up with, for that matter.
Giap has the reputation of being a "butcher," but Warren ably illustrates the fact that Giap simply used the tactics and weapons available to him--the only tactics and weapons that could have defeated the world's most powerful superpower. By North Vietnamese reckoning, the military forces arrayed against the US and its allies suffered approximately 1,100,000 casualties. If you consider that US forces actively fought in Vietnam for about 17 years, then this amounts to about 64,000 casualties per year (as many as 200,000 in some years). A depressingly large number, to be sure.
But when considering Giap as a "butcher," you might take a moment to stack those statistics against American Civil War statistics. There were somewhere between 650,000 and 850,000 combat-related casualties (on both sides) in the Civil War. Which comes to about 162,000--212,500 casualties per year. Even if you factor in American and South Vietnamese losses, the number of PAVN/Viet Cong casualties per year in the American War in Vietnam were much less than losses in the American Civil War.
As Warren points out, Giap was fighting not only a Civil War, but also a war against the world's most powerful superpower--a superpower whose stated mission was to kill as many of the enemy as possible. For the US, it wasn't about taking territory or winning hearts and minds (no matter the lip service given). It was simply about killing as many of the enemy as possible.
Despite all this, Giap well understood that he had control over losses. He understood that he had control over the when and where of a given battle. He knew that, thanks to this control, losses would never even come close to accomplishing what the US sought to accomplish by killing as many of the enemy as possible. More than anything else, he well understood that the US was its own worst enemy. The military portion of the battlefield, while very important, was never Giap's first concern.
James Warren shows us a Giap who was much more than a gifted general. Giap's theories and strategies heralded a form of warfare as applicable today, as it was to the war with the Americans in Vietnam.
Though not in the same league as the best histories of wars in Southeast Asia, Warren's book nevertheless goes on the same bookshelf. His discussion of Giap and Giap's influence on history--including present day conflicts--fills an all-important void that most historians have given short shrift.
Five stars.
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