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Learning to Eat Soup with a Knife
John A. Nagl
Counterinsurgency Lessons from Malaya and Vietnam
University Of Chicago Press
August 2007
On Sale: September 15, 2005
280 pages
ISBN: 0226567702
EAN: 9780226567709
Hardcover
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Non-Fiction
Invariably, armies are accused of preparing to fight the
previous war. In Learning to Eat Soup with a Knife,
Lieutenant Colonel John A. Nagl—a veteran of both Operation
Desert Storm and the current conflict in Iraq—considers the
now-crucial question of how armies adapt to changing
circumstances during the course of conflicts for which they
are initially unprepared. Through the use of archival
sources and interviews with participants in both
engagements, Nagl compares the development of
counterinsurgency doctrine and practice in the Malayan
Emergency from 1948 to 1960 with what developed in the
Vietnam War from 1950 to 1975. In examining these two events, Nagl—the subject of a recent
New York Times Magazine cover story by Peter Maass—argues
that organizational culture is key to the ability to learn
from unanticipated conditions, a variable which explains why
the British army successfully conducted counterinsurgency in
Malaya but why the American army failed to do so in Vietnam,
treating the war instead as a conventional conflict. Nagl
concludes that the British army, because of its role as a
colonial police force and the organizational characteristics
created by its history and national culture, was better able
to quickly learn and apply the lessons of counterinsurgency
during the course of the Malayan Emergency. With a new preface reflecting on the author's combat
experience in Iraq, Learning to Eat Soup with a Knife is a
timely examination of the lessons of previous
counterinsurgency campaigns that will be hailed by both
military leaders and interested civilians.
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