The war in Iraq is over, and the war in Afghanistan is ending for Americans after 13 years. A war-weary populace is looking for a peace dividend, and the Department of Defense is drawing tight its financial belt. The world remains fraught with enemies of western society, though, and recent events in Europe and Asia would indicate a return to a bipolar balance of power in the international relations realm of politics. Low-intensity conflict, nation-building, expeditionary counterinsurgency, stability operations, armed intercession and proxy wars will rise from our Cold War history books and revisit themselves upon us again. How to do more with less is the eternal question of every leader. Regarding that issue, this study offers a perspective relative to combat advisorship in a conflict. The purpose of this study is to analyze the advisory years of South Vietnam (1955-63) and the American advisory efforts in the El Salvadoran Civil War (1979-1992) with an eye toward effectiveness--how well did the advisors, and their charges, execute their individual counterinsurgency campaigns. Determining good or poor execution requires a synthesis of counterinsurgent doctrine, theory, and history. The mechanism used for this determinant is a comparative case study. This study takes theory, doctrine, and the history of the events of the two wars, sifts them through Gordon McCormick's "Mystic" Diamond Model of counterinsurgency operations, and derives conclusions of effective use of advisors. Analyzing El Salvador and Vietnam from a counterinsurgent perspective reveals some interesting correlations between the effectiveness of a governmental counterinsurgent force, and the echelon of a host governance upon which U.S. advisory forces placed the most emphasis. There is a correlation that can be drawn from the research: the higher the echelon in a host country that can be influenced, the more success the overall counterinsurgent effort eventually has. Eventually is the operant word, because similar to the travails experienced by Ramon Magsaysay in the Philippine Hukbalahap insurrection, nullifying the effects of the insurgency required fundamental restructuring of the elements of state control of the populace, control and administration of the coercive powers of the state, and significant social changes within the beleaguered countries social constructs. Efforts such as these require time, money, and blood. South Vietnam failed to commit to a restructuring effort despite the admonitions and exhortations of advisors, and fell to the predations of North Vietnam, but not before dragging a generation of Americans into the fight. El Salvador acknowledged the existence of the communist enemy as a competing social narrative, addressed the social dissonance that gave impetus to the insurgency, and arrived at a negotiated peace accord that created a far more politically and socially stable nation.

Approved for public release; distribution is unlimited. The opinions and conclusions expressed herein are those of the student-authors and do not necessarily represent the views of the U.S. Army Command and General Staff College or any other governmental agency. (References to these studies should include the foregoing statement.)