What is Reddit's opinion of A Bright Shining Lie: John Paul Vann and America in Vietnam?

From 3.5 billion Reddit comments

Hello, International Relations major here. I've been lurking this sub for a while but I know nothing about comics so I usually have nothing to contribute. This on the other hand, is basically what I spend all my time studying. I'm late to the thread so not sure anyone will see this but oh well.

R1: If we're really generous and ignore tons of realities about modern warfare like logistics and alliance systems, the strongest country they could overpower would be a large but weak nation like Congo, or a very small rich country like Denmark.

If you wanted to try and base this on reality and just assumed the various militias started in their present locations, agreed to merge, and then picked a country to attempt to invade, they would utterly fail.

Bonus: Probably none

Suggested reading:

Paths to Victory: Lessons from Modern Insurgencies

A Bright Shining Lie: John Paul Vann and America in Vietnam

The Road Not Taken: Edward Lansdale and the American Tragedy in Vietnam

All the upvoted comments in this thread are massively over-hyping the criminal faction. The set up of the question pretty much nullifies all advantages these groups normally have. When the OP says "illegal faction" he's essentially referring to what we call non-state actors. A state is a sovereign government, so an NSA refers to a group that has no legal sovereignty and therefore no legal monopoly on violence in any given geographical space.

The perceived success of NSA's is due to the fact that they almost literally always fight with homefield advantage and against grossly incompetent states. Most (militant) NSA's exist in the power vacuums created by failed states such as Somalia, Syria, Yemen, parts of Africa, etc. Additionally, many of the NSA's that people here seem to perceive as successful are actually funded by states. The Houthis are only able to exist in Yemen because Iran funds them. The Viet Cong were only able to persist in Vietnam with the support of North Vietnam, Russia, and China. As soon as all violent NSAs worldwide united into some Extremist Supergroup and tried to invade a state, the other states who were previously supporting some of these NSAs would pull their support. Pakistan only supports the Afghani Taliban because it gives them influence in Afghanistan. If the Taliban merged with ISIS and fucked off to invade Brazil or some shit, the Pakistanis would have zero reason to keep supporting them.

1) The NSAs (criminal/terrorist supergroup faction) would lose a huge chunk of their funding immediately upon uniting

This brings us to the next fatal flaw. NSAs heavily depend on fighting irregular (guerrilla) warfare on their home turf. They are virtually always defending rough terrain that they are better adapted to then the invading force, and often hiding among civilians that support them. The Taliban can't fight effectively in the terrain that the Colombian drug cartels or FARC can, and same with ISIS, Boko Haram, Al-Shabaab, Hezbollah, AQ, etc. None of those groups are particularly experienced at urban warfare either. The Mahdi Army was but Sadr disbanded them. As soon as the NSAs united and tried to invade some third country they would not only lose the terrain advantage, the defending conventional military would have a terrain advantage. The NSAs would also lose the ability to hide among civilians and the ability to avoid direct combat. Some special forces groups can wage irregular warfare in terrain they don't live in, but the NSA's don't have SF.

2) NSAs trying to attack a random third country would lose all of the tactical advantages that make them viable in the first place.

So now let's consider what would actually happen if this NSA military tried to invade a random country. This is basically impossible. Moving your military from your home to attack a foreign country requires what we call power projection. A country that can project power regionally is called a "regional power". A country that can project power to other regions but not necessarily globally is called a "great power". A country that can project power across the entire globe at will is called the United States of America. Ok sorry, it's called a <strong>superpower</strong>, but seriously there's only one right now and in the entire history of humanity there has been a MAXIMUM of three. The USSR during the Cold War, and arguably the British Empire before de-colonization. Currently, Russia is arguably only a regional power, and yet they're one of the strongest countries in the world. When France, Italy, and the UK intervened in Libya a few years ago, they essentially ran out of missiles and the US had to bail them out. These are three of the richest countries in the world with professional military forces that have existed for centuries.

So... could a blob of every NSA in the world supply an invasion force in a foreign country? Fuck no. Some of the drug cartels certainly have impressive logistics networks, but those took ages to set up, exist mostly in friendly territory, and can't supply enough material for a massive invasion force. Smuggling tons of cocaine into Miami or New York by dissolving it into paint and then separating it out afterwards (or whatever the fuck Escobar did) is indeed impressive... but you can't smuggle a tank like that.

3) The NSAs don't have the infrastructure for the insane complexity of a modern war in a foreign country. Even if they tried to merely occupy one of the countries a militia currently exists in, this would in practice still be a foreign country for all the other groups who have to get there in the first place AND remain supplied.

Also they don't have an air force

Also they don't have a navy

Also they don't have significant amounts of armor (tanks, APCs, etc)

Also they don't have a global communication network

Also they don't have a skilled intelligence service

Also they don't have consistent military training

etc.

When Saddam's army retreated from Kuwait while lacking air support in 1991, the allied air force bombed them into the ground so ruthlessly it became known as The Highway of Death. It was so brutal some people thought it was a war crime. In Afghanistan in 2001 (maybe early 2002), some US SF had a similar experience annihilating a convoy of supposedly 1000 Taliban fighters in pickup trucks just by using laser designated bombs.

In any scenario based on reality, the "illegal" groups (aka Non-State Actors) wouldn't even be able to group up and invade a single country, and even if they did they'd get fucking obliterated by the first moderately competent standing army they encountered.

Bright Shining Lie.

I wouldn't recommend another survey book like Bryson's (as good as that is). Vietnam: A Bright Shining Lie This biography on John Paul Vann is especially relevant in light of the current crop of wars.

WW2: William Shirer's Rise and Fall of the Third Reich is the seminal read. I'd also highly recommend his Berlin Diary, which he wrote as the war was unfolding. It's rare to find a book written from this kind of perspective, written so candidly and well.

I don't know of any exemplary non-fiction history of WW1: MacMillan's Versailles 1919 is certainly a rich vein if you're deeply familiar with the terrain, but it can be tough plodding otherwise.

Prior to WW1, some good studies are Rockefeller (Chernow's Titan: the Life of John D Rockefeller is excellent) and Teddy Roosevelt certainly straddles the new epoch in a phenomenal way.