Beruflich Dokumente
Kultur Dokumente
Jones_Blowtorch_P5.indd 1
12/27/12 11:51 AM
President Lyndon B. Johnson, right, meeting with Robert Komer on November 16,
1967, in the Oval Office (LBJ Library photo by Yoichi Okamoto, White House Photo Office
Collection)
Jones_Blowtorch_P5.indd 2
12/27/12 11:51 AM
Blowtorch
Robert Komer, Vietnam, and American Cold War Strategy
Jones_Blowtorch_P5.indd 3
12/27/12 11:51 AM
Jones_Blowtorch_P5.indd 4
9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
12/27/12 11:51 AM
To Sharon
Jones_Blowtorch_P5.indd 5
12/27/12 11:51 AM
Jones_Blowtorch_P5.indd 6
12/27/12 11:51 AM
Contents
Acknowledgments ix
Introduction
Chapter 2
30
Chapter 3
Komers War
51
Chapter 4
71
Pacification Czar
Chapter 6
93
113
Chapter 7 In Country
134
152
170
190
215
234
248
267
Conclusion
283
Notes
289
Bibliography
363
Index
391
Jones_Blowtorch_P5.indd 7
12/27/12 11:51 AM
Jones_Blowtorch_P5.indd 8
12/27/12 11:51 AM
Acknowledgments
Jones_Blowtorch_P5.indd 9
12/27/12 11:51 AM
x Acknowledgments
and the staff at the U.S. Army War College Library, David Keogh and the
staff at the U.S. Army Military History Institute, Regina Greenwell and staff
at the Lyndon Baines Johnson Presidential Library, Stephen Plotnick and
the staff at the John F. Kennedy Library, Susan Lemke and the staff at the
National Defense Universitys library, and Dale Andrade at the U.S. Army
Center of Military History. I also received skilled and efficient assistance
from the staffs at the Library of Congress and the libraries of Georgetown
University, the George Washington University, Penn State Universitys
Dickinson School of Law, and Harvard University as well as those at the
Albert F. Simpson Historical Research Center at Air University, the Office
of the Secretary of Defense Historians Office, the U.S. Senate Historians
Office, and the publications staff at the RAND Corporation. I want to
express my appreciation to the Lyndon Baines Johnson Foundation for providing a Moody Grant, which allowed me to conduct extensive research in
the Johnson archives.
Several people who knew Robert Komer graciously gave me time from
their schedules to speak with me. Douglas Komer, Robert Komers son,
was of invaluable help and provided me a copy of his fathers unpublished
memoir. Several others shared their recollections with me or furnished useful background information about the periods of Komers government service, including George Allen, Francis Bator, Richard Boverie, Harold P.
Ford, Hank Gaffney, P. X. Kelley, David Newsom, William Odom, Harold
Saunders, Michael Sheridan, Christopher Shoemaker, Walter Slocombe,
James A. Thomson, and Peter Swartz.
Parts of this book were published previously in Parameters and Imperial
Crossroads: The Great Powers and the Persian Gulf. I thank the editors of
these publications for allowing me to reproduce some of the material here.
I am especially indebted to Jeffrey Macris, the editor of the latter, for recommending me to the Naval Institute Press. At the Naval Institute Press,
I am fortunate to have Adam Kane as both my advocate and as an accomplished editor of this work. He read the manuscript with a vision of what
it could be, and with his encouragement, it improved incalculably. Also at
Naval Institute Press, I want to thank Claire Noble and Marlena Montagna
for guiding me through the marketing and production processes, and Julie
Kimmel, who as copy editor not only improved my prose but also pressed
me to clarify my thoughts and arguments.
Lastly, I owe my wife, Sharon, a depth of thanks that cannot be measured or repaid. She is a superb reader and editor, sometimes my toughest
Jones_Blowtorch_P5.indd 10
12/27/12 11:51 AM
Acknowledgmentsxi
critic, but she always wanted what was best for me as I labored on this manuscript. I appreciate her patience and efforts on my behalf, large and small,
without which this book would not have been realized.
Jones_Blowtorch_P5.indd 11
12/27/12 11:51 AM
Jones_Blowtorch_P5.indd 12
12/27/12 11:51 AM
Introduction
n March 1996 the historian Douglas Brinkley, a thirty-five-yearold professor at the University of New Orleans and the author
of three books, including biographies of two giants in American
Cold War history, Secretary of State Dean Acheson and the first secretary of
defense, James Forrestal, strolled into the lobby of the Cantigny Conference
Center in Wheaton, Illinois. He was there to participate in a conference on
the Vietnam War sponsored by the U.S. Naval Institute and the McCormick
Tribune Foundation. The next day he would chair a panel titled Lyndon
Johnsons War, named for the title of a book that one of the panelists,
Professor Larry Berman, had written to substantial critical acclaim.1
As a young scholar from a different generation, Brinkley felt that one of
the benefits of such a conference was the opportunity to meet for the first
time the men whose memoranda and memoirs he had been reading for
years as part of his research. He soon spied one of the officials who had been
intimately involved in the formulation and implementation of U.S. policy
during the Vietnam WarRobert W. Komer. The septuagenarian Komer
was a participant on Brinkleys panel, so the professor strode over to introduce himself. After making his introduction, Komer replied, So youre the
ass whos moderating me tomorrow. Brinkley was taken aback a little bit
by this pugnacious and rude response, but the reason for it soon became
apparent. Komer told him that he had just learned that Brinkley expected
him to give a speech at tomorrows panel. He was not prepared to give a formal address on such short notice, and he held Brinkley personally responsible for not informing him of this requirement beforehand. After all, Komer
snarled, he had not heard from Brinkley since he first contacted him about
1
Jones_Blowtorch_P5.indd 1
12/27/12 11:51 AM
2 Introduction
Jones_Blowtorch_P5.indd 2
12/27/12 11:51 AM
Introduction
3
biographies of presidents and cabinet officers or the political and administrative histories of presidential administrations: second echelon officials
who were the authors and implementers of American foreign policy during this era.5 In a more exact and focused sense, this book is history from
the middle.6
History has largely ignored Robert Komer. Perhaps his association with
an unpopular war as an adviser to President Lyndon Johnson and as head
of U.S. counterinsurgency efforts under Gen. William Westmoreland in
Vietnam explains the omission. Perhaps his brash self-confidence, which
earned him many enemies, accounts for it. His moniker, Blowtorch, was
an apt description of his aggressive personality. U.S. ambassador to South
Vietnam Henry Cabot Lodge Jr. conferred the nickname on him, relating
to a group of newspaper reporters that Komers resolute determination to
have the direction of his superiors carried out was akin to having a blowtorch aimed at the seat on ones pants.7 Nonetheless, because he was such
a colorful character, Komer assumes a number of cameo roles in various
books, often reduced to caricature, a self-important sycophant, or a person
so outlandishly optimistic that he is of no importance other than to serve as
comic relief or a symbol of American hubris.8
The facts are far different, but two difficulties confront the biographer
in recovering Komers life and work. He left no cache of letters, diary, or
journal of his experiences, and his unpublished memoirs are lifeless. As a
longtime member of the U.S. intelligence community, his secretiveness is
understandable, and he was not a man given to philosophical musings. We
attain only a glimpse of his personality and activities through the numerous
interviews that historians and journalists conducted with him, principally
covering his responsibilities concerning the Vietnam War, and what others said about him. It is only in the official memoranda, cables, and other
government documents as well as the books and articles he wrote where his
voice is clearest.
The other difficulty in recovering Komers career is that he assumed
multiple roles during the Cold War in which he had a major influence on
U.S. national security policy and strategy in addition to shaping public discourse on defense matters. In this respect, he differs from many of his contemporaries. The historian John Prados argues that most of the leading
national security officials of the 1960sand this contention is likely true of
the entire Cold War periodwere administrators, not innovators and initiators.9 Fewer still were strategists.
Jones_Blowtorch_P5.indd 3
12/27/12 11:51 AM
4 Introduction
McGeorge Bundy, as an example, seldom operated based on a carefully thought-out diplomatic strategy. Kennedy and Johnsons secretary of
defense, Robert McNamara, in his exuberance over the Kennedy administrations staring down the Soviets during the Cuban missile crisis as the
two nations stood on the brink of nuclear Armageddon, went so far as to
declare, There is no longer such a thing as strategy; there is only crisis management.10 Apocryphal or not, this remark is the utterance of a technician,
for as Gen. John Galvin pointed out, a strategist comprehends the complexity of the international environment and the human dimension, appreciates the constraints of the use of force, and discerns what is achievable and
what is not achievable by military means.11
Presidents were often of a similar cast. Kennedy and Johnson, the
two presidents Komer served directly, did not evince an interest in strategy, approve an overarching strategy, or even direct that a major review of
U.S. strategy be conducted. Jimmy Carter, in whose administration Komer
served, was another president without a larger, strategic design.12 This is not
surprising. As Colin Gray observes, The politician is a person untrained in
strategic analysis.13
Komer is also an exception to Prados contention. His strategic vision
is most perceptible in his proposals regarding U.S. policy toward the socalled neutralists, the states that did not align themselves ideologically with
the United States or the Soviet Union. In sharpening this vision, Komer
was unlike many of his colleagues, some of whom have been accused of not
questioning the basic American ideological design for the Cold War: that
the world was divided into two basic hostile camps; that the free world
was the area synonymous with U.S. strategic interests; that every outpost
of freedom, no matter how insignificant in itself, must be denied to the
Communists or the entire free world would be threatened.14 Komer was
not a cold warrior in the pejorative meaning of that term; he did not see the
strategic environment in simplistic, bipolar, and Manichean distinctions.
As a strategist, he had to be cognizant of American strategic culture
and its values and ideals to create a strategy consistent with national experience so that it achieved the domestic consensus necessary for political
backing. Thus, he was a pragmatist. As the fabled strategist Bernard Brodie
noted, pragmatism is a habit of thinking, and since strategy is essentially
the pursuit of success in certain types of competitive endeavor, a pragmatic
approach is the only appropriate one. Thus, one weighs a strategic concept
or idea by investigating as thoroughly as possible the factors necessary to its
Jones_Blowtorch_P5.indd 4
12/27/12 11:51 AM
Introduction
5
Jones_Blowtorch_P5.indd 5
12/27/12 11:51 AM
6 Introduction
Jones_Blowtorch_P5.indd 6
12/27/12 11:51 AM