Oil Spots and Strategic Hamlets

There is some confusion in the blogosphere and in the general media about what precisely an oil spot strategy consists of. In particular, some people are arguing that the “oil spot” strategy argued for by Andrew Krepinevich is essentially the same as the “strategic hamlet” strategy tried by the United States and South Vietnam in the early 1960s. This is not the case.

The strategic hamlet program came well before the height of US involvement in South Vietnam. The idea was to protect South Vietnamese farmers from Viet Cong insurgents by collecting them in specific areas and fortifying those villages. The program was extremely disruptive to rural life in South Vietnam, as it uprooted families from their ancestral lands and forced them to live in new areas, often where land was scarce. Also, many of the “strategic” hamlets never received the funds and weapons that they were supposed to get. In any case, the South Vietnamese Army lacked the capacity to defend the hamlets from insurgents. The program was a disastrous failure.

The oil spot strategy is different, and was tried for a short while by the Marines in the mid-1960s. The motivation of an oil spot strategy is similar to that of a strategic hamlet; locals who believe they can be protected from insurgents will be less likely to support those insurgents. Instead of uprooting families and packing them into villages, however, the Marines took over the defense of an area and patrolled it regularly. The focus was not on hunting insurgents in the jungle, but rather on preventing insurgents from attacking villages and collecting taxes, weapons, and food. As people grew to fear insurgent attacks less, they would grow more cooperative with the Marines. Villagers would begin to plan for the future, the economy would improve, and the insurgents would suffer.

On a small scale these tactics worked in Vietnam, before Westmoreland shut the operation down. They probably couldn’t have won the war even if tried on a large scale, and I doubt very much that they can defeat the insurgency in Iraq. Nevertheless, it’s important to keep our terms clear.