ABSTRACT
The Vietnam War exposed the fundamental contradictions of the Cold War American strategic culture, confirming that war. as Correlli Barnett says, ‘is the great auditor of institutions’.1 How the war affected the Army, and the ensuing changes in the strategic culture, are a product of how the Army ‘audited’ the war. The Army saw the war as a product of bad strategy, against the wrong type of enemy and in unsuitable terrain. The mismatch between the Army’s perception and the task given to it points to a deeper problem within the unity of American strategic culture, where the executive understanding of the role of military force was instrumental and the Army’s was based on mobilisation of the nation. The war was a product of that culture and was to ‘traumatise’ it.2
