Table Of ContentMILITARY ANTHROPOLOGY
MONTGOMERY McFATE
Military Anthropology
Soldiers, Scholars and Subjects
at the Margins of Empire
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© Montgomery McFate, 2018
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Montgomery McFate
Title: Military Anthropology: Soldiers, Scholars and Subjects at the Margins of Empire / Montgomery McFate.
Description: Oxford [UK]; New York: Oxford University Press, [2018]
ISBN: 9780190680176 (print)
ISBN: 9780190934729 (updf)
ISBN: 9780190934941 (epub)
The book is dedicated to my son, Vale Danger Vaughn Carlough, without whose surprise arrival I
would never have settled down enough to write anything.
CONTENTS
Acknowledgements
List of Acronyms
1. Introduction: Gerald Hickey and the Dangers Inherent
2. Robert Sutherland Rattray and Indirect Rule
3. Ursula Graham Bower and Military Leadership
4. Gregory Bateson and Information Operations
5. Tom Harrisson and Unconventional Warfare
6. John Useem and Governance Operations
7. Jomo Kenyatta, Louis Leakey and the Counter-Insurgency System
8. Don Marshall and the Strategic Objective
9. Conclusion: David Prescott Barrows and the Military Execution of Foreign Policy
Notes
Index
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
This book was produced with support from the Minerva Program in the U.S. Office of Secretary of
Defense. Many thanks are due to Tom Mahnken and Erin Fitzgerald who dedicated time and energy
to bringing social science research into the Department of Defense. I would like to thank the many
people who helped along the way, including Jonathan Crist, Lynn Tesser and Kim Hardee at U.S.
Institute of Peace who provided support during my tenure as a Jennings Randolph Fellow, during
which some of the earliest drafts of these chapters were written. Thanks are also due to Conrad
Crane of the Army Heritage and Education Center at Carlisle Barracks and Greg Wilcox for helping
with access to Don Marshall’s papers. Many people at the U.S. Naval War College provided support
and assistance, including Ambassador Mary Anne Peters who encouraged me to audit the Joint
Maritime Operations course (and to Professor Chris Gregor, Professor Steve Forand and CAPT Alan
Abramson who made the experience very productive). Many people read drafts of various chapters,
including Professor Doug Hime, Professor Milan Vego, and Professor Wolff von Heinegg, for which I
thank them warmly. Professor Chris Demchak provided constant encouragement and friendship.
Georgette Wilson proofread each chapter and tracked down a few stubbornly elusive citations, for
which she deserves much credit. I would also like to thank the wonderful librarians at the U.S. Naval
War College (especially Jack Miranda) and the awesome administrative professionals (especially
Sherri Whitmarsh and Dalton Alexander) who made the process smoother. My deep thanks to the
Center for Naval Warfare Studies and Analysis who supported me throughout this research,
including Professor Drew Winner, Dean Barney Ruble, Rachael Shaffer and Dean Tom Culora. Most
special thanks and gratitude are owed to Professor Pete Dombrowski who provided endless cheap
coffee and deep insights.
LIST OF ACRONYMS
AEF American Expeditionary Force
ANA Afghan National Army
AQI Al Qaeda in Iraq
ARPA Advanced Research Projects Agency
ARVN Army of the Republic of Vietnam
BG Brigadier General
C3CM Command, Control, Communications, Countermeasures
CA Civil Affairs
CCIR Commanders’ Critical Information Requirements
CENTCOM United States Central Command
CIA Central Intelligence Agency
CIMA Coordinated Investigation of Micronesian Anthropology
CMO Civil-Military Operations
CO Cyberspace Operations
COMUSMACV Commander of the United States Military Assistance Command Vietnam
CPA Coalition Provisional Authority
DIA Defense Intelligence Agency
DIME Diplomacy, Information, Military, Economic
DoD Department of Defense
DOTMLPF Doctrine, Organization, Training, Materiel, Leadership, Personnel, Facilities
EW Electronic Warfare
FFIR Friendly Force Information Requirements
FLN Front de Libération Nationale
GAO Government Accountability Office
GLOBE Global Leadership and Organizational Behavior Effectiveness
GVN Government of South Vietnam
HNIR Host Nation Information Requirements
HTS Human Terrain System
HTTs Human Terrain Teams
IJC ISAF Joint Command
IO Information Operations
IRCs Information Related Capabilities
ISAF International Security Assistance Force
JAG Judge Advocate General
JFC Joint Force Commander
JIPOE Joint Intelligence Preparation of the Operational Environment
JMO Joint Maritime Operations
KAU Kenya African Union
KCA Kikuyu Central Association
LTG Lieutenant General
MACV Military Assistance Command Vietnam
METT-T Mission-Enemy-Terrain-Troops-Time
MILDEC Military Deception
MISO Military Information Support Operations
MO Morale Operations
NCA Network of Concerned Anthropologists
NSC National Security Council
NSPD National Security Presidential Directive
NSS National Security Strategy
NVA North Vietnamese Army
OPMEP Joint Chiefs of Staff Officer Professional Military Education Policy
ORHA Office of Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance
OSINT Open-source Intelligence
OSS Office of Strategic Services
PA Public Affairs
PF Popular Forces
PIR Priority Intelligence Requirement
PME Professional Military Education
PPDs Presidential Policy Directives
PROVN Program for the Pacification and Long-Term Development of Vietnam
PSB Pacific Science Board
REC Radio-Electronic Combat Vietnam
SIGINT Signals Intelligence
SIM Scientific Investigation of Micronesia
SOCOM Special Operations Command
SORO Special Operations Research Office
USNA United States Naval Academy
VC Viet Cong
1
INTRODUCTION
GERALD HICKEY AND THE DANGERS INHERENT
Where is your data?
Give me something I can put in the computer.
Don’t give me your poetry.
Robert MacNamara1
In 1964 Gerald Hickey, a military anthropologist working for the U.S. government, visited a Special
Forces Camp in the highlands of Vietnam to conduct research for a RAND study. The camp at Nam
Dong had been built deep inside Viet Cong territory to provide protection for the surrounding
villages. A twelve-man Special Forces Team, A-726 commanded by Capt. Roger Donlon, was tasked
with advising and training 311 Vietnamese Civilian Irregular Defense Group militiamen. The camp
itself—heavily fortified with sandbag walls, concrete bunker pits, machine gun posts and external
wire—was guarded by sixty Nung tribesmen, many of whom had previously served as mercenaries
in the French Army.
During the afternoon of 4 July 1964 Hickey accompanied the Special Forces soldiers to a local
village where they distributed medicine. After dinner that evening, many of the soldiers had an
uneasy, ominous feeling that something was about to happen. A Special Forces sergeant asked
Hickey if he wanted a weapon, promptly handing him an AR-15 rifle. At 2:26AM, a white
phosphorous explosion engulfed the mess hall. “Suddenly the command post was a mass of flames,
which were rapidly spreading to other buildings in the heat, smoke, and dust of a firestorm. Mortar
rounds landed everywhere, grenades exploded, and gunfire filled the air. In a matter of minutes, the
camp had become a battlefield.”2 A huge explosion lifted Hickey off his feet and smashed him
against a wall. “For an instant I experienced a strange feeling of detachment as if I were outside
watching myself. My whole body ached as I lay on the ground trying to catch my breath.”3 Dusting
himself off, Hickey zigzagged across a road and jumped into a trench full of “very tense” Nungs who
were firing at the barbed wire perimeter. The Nung leader offered Hickey a cigarette. “You’re a
professor,” the Nung leader said in Vietnamese, “what are you doing here?” Hickey replied that he
had come to “relax in the mountains,” which provoked a laugh.4
The Viet Cong continued firing mortars into the camp until a U.S. air strike began to pound their
positions. Captain Donlon suddenly appeared at the edge of the trench, badly wounded from
gunshots and shrapnel in the leg, forearm, shoulder and stomach. “Are you OK?” Donlon asked.
“God, Captain,” Hickey answered, “get in the trench, you’re wounded!” Donlon refused, telling
Hickey that the inner perimeter was holding but three members of his team were dead. Donlon
asked if they had enough ammo, and Hickey replied that they only had part of one clip. “I’ll get you
more,” Donlon said, disappearing into the smoke and explosions.5
As dawn broke, the Viet Cong retreated into the jungle. In the morning, as Hickey recalled, the
scene before me was worse than any nightmare I could remember. The whole camp was a blackened smoking
ruin and ammo was still exploding. There were bodies and pieces of bodies everywhere—on the cluttered parade
ground, in the grasses, and on the wires. … The smoky air was heavy with the odor of death and destruction.6
As the wounded were evacuated by helicopter, the Viet Cong continued firing small arms into the
camp from their positions in the jungle. But the main battle was over, and the 372 men at Nam Dong
had held the camp against a reinforced Viet Cong battalion of 900. For his heroism that night,
Captain Roger Donlon was the first man in the Vietnam War to win the Medal of Honor. Hickey went
back to Saigon to write his report, “The American Military Advisor and His Foreign Counterpart,”7
which describes many barriers to cross-cultural interaction between the U.S. military and
indigenous military units still pertinent today.
Hickey’s career tracks almost perfectly with U.S. involvement in Vietnam. Having become
interested in Indochina in the early 1950s as a graduate student at the University of Chicago,
Hickey first visited Vietnam in 1956, shortly after Ngo Dinh Diem became the first President of
South Vietnam. Hickey was present in Ban Me Thout in January 1968 at the beginning of the North
Vietnamese assaults now known as the Tet offensive. He fought at Nam Dong, which was the basis
for a battle scene in the 1968 film The Green Berets. Hickey sailed away from Saigon a few years
before the war officially ended in 1975.
Hickey’s fundamental insight—just as applicable today as it was during the Vietnam War—was
