War Without Guns is a fascinating little historical artifact. Written by a group of US civilians, the book describes the activities of the United States Operations Mission (USOM), a branch of USAID that sent two advisors into each of the provinces of Vietnam to conduct rural economic development. Published in 1966, it seems to have been aimed to shore up a kind of elite support for involvement in Vietnam as part of a civilizing mission.

The three chapters, respectively authored by advisors in the Mekong Delta, the Central Highlands, and the coast by Da Nang, provide a candid picture of the bucolic life of the Vietnamese peasant, the good work that American advisers are doing in providing building materials, new agricultural tools, and schools and hospitals. There's also a lot of frustration with a Saigon bureaucracy that can't seem to coordinate the simplest of aid projects, such as moving textbooks from warehouses in Saigon to schools around Da Nang, and military operations that fail to dislodge the Viet Cong and provide security for the peasants.

Reading from a distance of fifty years, it's easy to see why USOM failed. They saw their actions as part of an 'economic war' to improve the standard of living of the Vietnamese peasant. Their military colleagues were responsible for the 'war war' to seek out and destroy the Viet Cong. Comparatively, the Viet Cong never lost sight of their objectives in 'political warfare', to create a system of meaning and opportunity for the peasants that lead towards Communism, and to destroy the credibility and legitimacy of the South Vietnamese government. For a variety of reasons (lack of knowledge, lack of authority, short term tours etc), Americans in USOM could not improve their Vietnamese counterparts in the Provincial governments, who always looked up at their masters rather than down towards their constituents. By such was America doomed to fail.