Coursework title: Seminar Portfolio (2000 words seminar portfolio for Peace, Conflict and Diplomacy Since 1945 module)
Professor: Dermot McCann
Student’s Name: Evangelia Dimou
Student Number: 15030635
Deadline: 20 May 2016
Contents
THE VIETNAM WAR 3
Bibliography 5
THE KOREAN WAR 6
Bibliography 8
THE VIETNAM WAR
1. What is guerilla warfare and how should it be countered?
The purpose of this seminar portfolio is to evaluate two issues of the Vietnam War. First to explain what is guerilla warfare and how should it be countered and secondly analyze why was the US unable to defeat the Vietcong. To assess these issues I will refer to academic literature
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In Vietnam they had to deal with guerilla warfare. Guerilla warfare is an unconventional form of warfare where the defender is less powerful militarily than the enemy. In that case the defender needs to attack in an unconventional way in order to defend and protect its territory. The Vietcong knew very well and better than anyone the mainland and could easily hide, make traps for the enemy’s soldiers and adopt a strategy of hit and run as they did in Dien Bien Phu. (Bernstein, …show more content…
In the case of Vietnam War such a successful strategy would be to secure the government’s base areas, separate the insurgents from the population and eliminate the insurgent infrastructure. In an area that it is controlled by insurgents should be either destroyed or the main body of guerillas expelled and then the area should be kept for pacification. Another part of a successful counter-insurgency strategy is to locate the troops of guerillas with the help of the local intelligence. Local intelligence can make operations focused on the infrastructure of the insurgents. Such operations might eventually lead to the location of their troops. After the areas are cleared the most important thing then is for the government’s forces to prove that they will stay in the area as long as it takes in order to make sure that the people are able to defend themselves and responsible for that against the insurgents. This method of counter-insurgency requires that the neighboring areas should be pacified one by one. This could be achieved if the counter-insurgency forces were edging outward controlling more and more territory. (Bernstein,