The Red Queen’s Race: Operation Washington Green and Pacification in Binh Dinh Province, 1969–70

This article examines Operation Washington Green, conducted by the 173rd Airborne Brigade in Binh Dinh province, South Vietnam. It was a model operation that tested the ability of a regular U.S. Army unit to execute a sophisticated counterinsurgency mission that required the brigade to deploy in static detachments to secure rural hamlets and train co-located South Vietnamese Territorial units, and to strictly limit its use of indirect firepower. Because the operation closely matched recommendations made by many critics of U.S. military operations in Vietnam, it offers insights into the likely effectiveness of their recommended alternative strategy focusing on population control.