What role did technology play in the outcome of two civil wars, each chosen from a different region?

Sun Tzu once wrote, “One may know how to conquer without being able to do it.” The truth of his words is reflected in the outcomes of both the Vietnam War, and Fidel Castro’s Cuban revolution: the belligerents who seemed to have every advantage found themselves defeated. In the case of the former, the losses of the Vietnamese Communists were far more significant than those of their better-equipped counterparts in the South, and yet they found their country unified by 1975. With the latter case, Fidel Castro’s army of revolutionaries established a new regime in 1959, having overcome the technological and military superiority of Batista’s army. With each of these wars, the immediate impression one gets is not that of a civil war, but each were indeed fitting of that title - wherein citizens of one country were fighting each other. In Vietnam, the North Vietnamese Communists and the Vietcong (from the South) fought against Southern Vietnamese soldiers, albeit soldiers armed with weaponry and support from the United States and the Philippines. In Cuba, Castro’s revolutionaries rose up against Fulgencio Batista’s nationalist army, and it was indeed a case of Cubans fighting Cubans. Mao Tse Tung put forth that for a guerrilla campaign to be successful, it must eventually evolve into a conventional war; as soon as this occurs, both of these conflicts become civil wars by definition. In this essay, it is the role of technology in the outcomes of the two wars that will be examined. In what shapes and forms did technology sway the results of each war? How significant was its influence, in each case? Within the context of this essay, technology will be defined as the constructions, crafts, and devices that either internally or externally impacted the war. It will be concluded that in each war, the nature of the conflict meant that the implementation of appropriate technology and tactics were able to overcome the blunt force of advanced technology, and that the technology of concepts played a significant role; one often overlooked in the study of each war. This conclusion will be reached through an evaluation of the three ways technology manifested itself. The first is the use of advanced technology, where the technological capacity of one belligerent far surpassed the other; the second is the use of technology befitting the specific circumstances in which the adversaries fought; the third way technology can be seen is the technology of ideas - this is perhaps the most complex, but the integration of concepts played a heavy handed role in both the immediate ethos and the long term legacy of each conflict. An examination of each war reveals that one side’s use of advanced technology against their adversaries was an ineffective deterrent to them in the pursuit of their larger goal - as such, advanced technology seemed not to play a major role in the outcome of either war. Military historian Alex Roland describes the hubris of the South Vietnamese, who assumed that the “superior military technology” the Americans supplied them with would “virtually guarantee success.” And in a sense, it did. The endeavour of the South Vietnamese was in many ways a tactical success due to the quality of their weaponry. In 1966, the M-16 rifle was redesigned to perform better in the wet, dirty conditions that prevailed in ground combat during the Vietnam War. Financed by the United States, the South Vietnamese Army (SVA) had all the modern equipment they might require, including tanks with mounted machine guns; gas powered M-60s, as well as up to 250 000 men by 1968 - they clearly outmatched their enemies. Those who argue a Liberal Realist perspective herein identify one of the primary failings of the oppressors - they could not understand that military prowess would not crack the resolve of the Vietnamese Communists. Lyndon B. Johnson, speaking on the war, said to the American public, “I am confident we shall overcome…” - and that the American soldiers needed only to persist with their efforts. And yet, it was freedom fighter Ho Chi Minh himself who said, "You can kill 10 of my men for every one I kill of yours, yet even at those odds, you will lose and I will win.” This perfectly expresses the greatest tragedy of the Vietnam war: the belligerents failed to understand the war they were fighting. For the Vietnamese Communists, the war was one of endurance and attrition; certainly not one that they would lose simply because their losses were greater than those of their enemies - therein lay the explanation for their eventual victory. The advanced technology that the South Vietnamese were equipped with did little to prevent them from unifying their country; instead, it only increased the degree of devastation the country faced. The Cuban Revolution carries a largely similar narrative. Whilst there was no incredibly advanced technology being implemented at all, out of the belligerents in the Cuban revolution, there was no doubt that Batista’s forces held the upper hand in terms of technology. Castro’s 26th of July movement saw 82 men disembark the Granma armed only with 90 rifles, 3 machine guns, around 40 pistols and 2 hand-held anti-tank guns. Batista’s army and national police force, meanwhile, were armed with all type of American armament; multiple military ranks, the F4U fighter aircraft, hundreds of infantry weapons as well as 75mm and 105mm artillery pieces. This relatively advanced technology seemed to do them little good, given that in January 1959 Castro’s rebel army was able to establish the first Communist state in the West. Thus, it’s safe to say that in each case study, the nature of the war was such that advanced technology failed to significantly impact the outcome of the war farther than adding to casualties. The use of appropriate technology - in terms of geography, resources, and the nature of the war - was far more significant in each of these civil wars than that of advanced technology; indeed, the guerrilla band in both wars used the terrain to their advantage, and their relative lack of resources seemed not to be a major factor when considering the final outcomes of each war, as both used what was available to its maximum capacity. This looked different in each war. In Vietnam, appropriate technology was guerrilla technology. The Communist forces implemented attacks that fit the terrain in which they fought. Mines and booby traps applied significant psychological pressure on SVA forces and slowed and disrupted both military operations and civilian life. The punji sticks, for example, were perfectly fit in with the condition of South Vietnam. In tropical jungles covered by dense forests and bushes, punji sticks were easily camouflaged and often virtually undetectable by the enemy. The infamous punji sticks soaked in excrement and urine received much press, but they were of negligible effect compared to the massive quantity of anti-personnel and anti-vehicle mines deployed by main communist units. These quantities increased vastly as the North stepped up infiltration into the South. Mines and booby traps applied significant psychological pressure on SVA forces and slowed and disrupted both military operations and civilian life. When they weren’t actually caught in the traps, the fear of getting wounded was enough to cause long term psychological trauma to many South Vietnamese soldiers. Despite not being notably advanced, the technology was at once focused and callous, and played a major role in the attrition, both physically and psychologically, of the South Vietnamese troops. In Cuba, much of Batista’s admittedly developed technology was rendered ineffective as a consequence of the terrain on which they fought. The topography of the Sierra Maestra in Southern Cuba proved itself to be a challenge to Batista’s army, whose tanks fared poorly on the uneven ground. In contrast, the low-fidelity weapons employed by the guerrilla band were far more easily adapted to the rough landscape, providing them with a significant advantage. Batista’s heavy-handed and strategically poor decisions in the midst of a guerrilla war allowed the Cuban rebels to make significant progress in their endeavours quite quickly. Army units were routed easily by guerrilla columns, acting as a boon to the insurgent war effort. One rebel victory alone, for example, “yielded the insurgents fourteen Springfield rifles, nine machine guns, forty-eight rifle grenades, and eight thousand rounds of ammunition.” These numbers, taken from Louis A. Perez Jr.’s Army Politics in Cuba illustrates the extent to which the guerrillas’ use of appropriate technology propelled them forward in the war, ultimately leading to their victory. They speak of a larger truth seen in both wars, wherein the use of appropriate (if simplistic) technology ensued in victory for the guerrilla fighters. The final manifestation of technology that affected the outcome of the wars is that of ideas - with this technology, it is nearly impossible to compare the two wars, though it indisputably influenced the outcome of both. The first, as seen in the Vietnam War, was cultivated externally. Vietnam was the first well televised war in the United States; as war reporters began focusing on the savagery of war and pathological issues it was having on United States soldiers, the American people began losing faith in the war effort and the government. A powerful anti-war movement sprang to life, and from it developed a series of shifts in popular American culture. There was a flourishing of anti-war propaganda, of criticism towards the incumbent government’s foreign policy, and even a brief transformation of American culture: the war triggered a period of catharsis, where artists could lament their country’s condemnable participation in the war through song, art, and poetry. The prominent shift in the focus of concepts put pressure on a government that had already been caught in controversy following the release of the Pentagon Papers. Thus, in 1969, President Nixon outlined policy called Vietnamization. Addressing the “great silent majority of (his) fellow Americans,” Nixon highlighted his intentions to slowly draw American support out of Vietnam, hoping to train South Vietnamese troops to defend themselves. And yet, given that the South Vietnamese army relied so heavily on the artillery and even the support of their American allies, it became quickly clear that they stood little chance against the North Vietnamese and the Viet Cong as the Americans began to withdraw from the conflict. In that sense, the amalgamation of anti-war concepts in the United States added pressure to the Nixon government to pull US troops out of the war, significantly weakening the SVA’s strength, and acting as a major factor in the losses they began making against the Communist forces, as well as in the final outcome of the war. Cuba, on the other hand, saw the synthesis of an ideological machine as Fidel Castro brought forth the concept of guerrilla war to the Cuban rebels. Batista’s army lost the revolution to their adversaries because they didn’t understand the sort of what they fought - and they couldn’t. Guerrilla warfare was new to the Cuban context, and this particular sort of war was an adaptation even on Mao Zedong’s and Castro was able to conjoin the military tactics behind it with the ideology he and Guevara campaigned for, leading to the creation of a system of ideas and beliefs that had not been seen before. That formidable change in the belligerents’ way of thinking drove them through the war both on a psychological and on a military level - the nature of guerrilla warfare promoted the ideology of Communism while simultaneously allowing them to use Batista’s perceived strengths against him. In the end, that shift in the psyche of the insurgents, caused by Castro’s fashioning of a technological system of ideas, played a major role in leading them to their eventual victory. For many, technology is far from the first thing that comes to mind at the mention of the Cuban Revolution, or of the Vietnam War - and yet it has, as demonstrated, had an impact in more ways than one. Malcolm Gladwell once wrote, “We need to look at the subtle, the hidden, and the unspoken,” and his words are perhaps perfectly fit to the discipline of historian - we cannot only look at what is obvious, or immediate. There needs to be a deeper examination of the facts of the war, and the stories of the people who lived it. In this essay, that examination has revealed that whilst advanced technology had limited influence on the final outcome of the wars due to their nature, appropriate technology was a major agent of impact for the eventual victors of each war. In addition, it has been seen that whoever powerful or potent the weaponry or technology, history cannot ignore the gravity of ideas, and in each of these wars, the technology of ideas played a huge role on a psychological level.