The US military campaign in Vietnam was supposedly a ‘limited’ war. Calculative practices were vital for military and civilian leaders in managing the conflict and claiming progress against objectives. The most infamous accounting measure was ‘body count’, one of many performance indicators used by the US military in a conflict deeply influenced by the logics and practices of war managerialism. This article explores an important example of Vietnam-era calculative practices: Sharpening the Combat Edge, a 1974 US Army handbook that provides a tangential history of the war in the Mekong Delta, while offering military commanders practical systems to ‘aid decision-making’ in current and future conflicts. Drawing on the concepts of accounting for death and war managerialism, the article deconstructs the accounting practices marshalled in this text. It argues that Sharpening is a powerful example of the legitimating roles that accounting for death can play in promoting and normalising state violence.
AppyCG (1993) Working-Class War: American Combat Soldiers and Vietnam. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press.
2.
ArmstrongP (1985) Changing management control strategies: The role of competition between accounting and other organizational professions. Accounting, Organizations and Society10(2): 124–148.
3.
BacevichAJ (2008) The Limits of Power: The End of American Exceptionalism. New York: Metropolitan Books.
BaritzL (1998) Backfire: A History of How American Culture Led Us into Vietnam and Made Us Fight the Way We Did. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press.
6.
BelcherO (2019) Sensing, territory, population: Computation, embodied sensors, and hamlet control in the Vietnam War. Security Dialogue50(5): 416–436.
7.
BergerudEM (1991) The Dynamics of Defeat: The Vietnam War in Hau Nghia Province. Boulder, CO: Westview Press.
8.
BermanL (1983) Planning a Tragedy: The Americanization of the War in Vietnam. New York: W.W. Norton.
9.
BevanGHoodC (2006) What’s measured is what matters: Targets and gaming in the English public health care system. Public Administration84(3): 517–538.
10.
BloomfieldBBurrellGVurdubakisT (2017) Licence to kill? On the organization of destruction in the 21st century. Organization24(4): 441–455.
11.
BoettcherWACobbMD (2006) Echoes of Vietnam? Casualty framing and public perceptions of success and failure in Iraq. Journal of Conflict Resolution50(6): 831–854.
12.
BousquetA (2008) Cyberneticizing the American war machine: Science and computers in the Cold War. Cold War History8(1): 77–102.
13.
BrighamRK (2006) Iraq, Vietnam and the Limits of American Power. New York: Public Affairs.
14.
BuntingJ (1972) The Lionheads. London: Sidgwick & Jackson.
15.
BurkeC (1992) Marching to Vietnam. The Journal of American Folklore102(406): 424–441.
16.
CaputoP (1977/2017) A Rumor of War. London: The Bodley Head.
17.
ChwastiakM (2001) Taming the untamable: Planning, programming and budgeting and the normalization of war. Accounting, Organizations and Society26(6): 501–519.
18.
ChwastiakM (2006) Rationality, performance measures and representations of reality: Planning, programming and budgeting and the Vietnam War. Critical Perspectives on Accounting17(1): 29–55.
19.
ChwastiakM (2015) Torture as normal work: The Bush administration, the Central Intelligence Agency and enhanced interrogation techniques. Organization22(4): 493–511.
20.
ClemisMG (2018) The Control War: The Struggle for South Vietnam, 1968-1975. Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press.
21.
CobbinPEBurrowsGH (2010) The British Navy’s 1888 budgetary reforms. Accounting History15(2): 153–172.
22.
ColeGKellyP (2020) Management Theory and Practice. Boston, MA: Cengage Learning.
CoulsonA (2009) Targets and terror: Government by performance indicators. Local Government Studies35(2): 271–281.
25.
CraigRAmernicJTourishD (2014) Perverse audit culture and accountability in the modern public university. Financial Accountability & Management30(1): 1–24.
26.
DaddisGA (2011) No Sure Victory: Measuring US Army Effectiveness and Progress in the Vietnam War. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
27.
DaddisGA (2012) The problem of metrics: Assessing progress and effectiveness in the Vietnam War. War in History19(1): 73–98.
28.
DaddisGA (2014) Westmoreland’s War: Reassessing American Strategy in Vietnam. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
29.
DaddisGA (2021) Pulp Vietnam: War and Gender in Cold War Men’s Adventure Magazines. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
30.
DavenportTHHarrisJG (2017) Competing on Analytics: The New Science of Winning. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Business School Press.
31.
DearbornJ (2015) Data Driven: How Performance Analytics Delivers Extraordinary Sales Results. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley.
32.
DumbrellJ (2012) Rethinking the Vietnam War. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
33.
Eagleton-PierceMKnafoS (2020) Introduction: The political economy of managerialism. Review of International Political Economy27(4): 763–779.
34.
EisenbergCW (2023) Fire and Rain: Nixon, Kissinger, and the Wars in Southeast Asia. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
35.
EllsbergD (1972) Papers on the War. New York: Simon & Schuster.
36.
EllsbergD (2003) Secrets: A Memoir of Vietnam and the Pentagon Papers. London: Penguin.
37.
EvansRTempleTNelsonL (2024) Know thy enemy and know yourself – the role of operational data in managing the mines and booby trap threat in Vietnam, 1965-73. War in History31(4): 349–368.
38.
EwellJEHuntIA (1974) Sharpening the Combat Edge: The Use of Analysis to Reinforce Military Judgement. Washington, DC: Department of the Army.
39.
FultonWB (1985) Riverine Operations, 1966-1969. Washington, DC: Department of the Army.
40.
FunnellWChwastiakM (2010) Editorial: Accounting and the Military. Accounting History15(2): 147–152.
41.
FunnellWChwastiakM (2015) Accounting at War: The Politics of Military Finance. Abingdon: Routledge.
42.
GantmanE (2005) Capitalism, Social Privilege and Managerial Ideologies. Basingstoke: Ashgate.
43.
GartnerSMeyersME (1995) Body counts and ‘success’ in the Vietnam and Korean Wars. Journal of Interdisciplinary History25(3): 377–395.
44.
GibsonJW (1986) The Perfect War: Technowar in Vietnam. New York: Atlantic Monthly.
45.
GreentreeT (2013) Bureaucracy does its thing: US performance and the institutional dimension of strategy in Afghanistan. The Journal of Strategic Studies36(3): 325–356.
46.
GreinerB (2010) War Without Fronts: The USA in Vietnam. London: Vintage.
47.
HackworthDHEnglandE (2003) Steel My Soldiers’ Hearts. New York: Simon & Schuster.
48.
HackworthDHShermanJ (1989) About Face: The Odyssey of an American Warrior. New York: Simon & Schuster.
49.
HalberstamD (1969/1992) The Best and the Brightest. New York: Ballantine.
50.
HessGR (1994) The unending debate: Historians and the Vietnam War. Diplomatic History18(2): 239–264.
51.
HodgkinsonTCaputoTMcIntyreML (2019) Beyond crime rates and community surveys: A new approach to police accountability and performance measurement. Crime Science8(13): 1–7.
52.
HoodC (1991) A public management for all seasons?Public Administration69(1): 3–19.
53.
HopkinsGW (2000) Historians and the Vietnam War: The conflict over interpretations continues. Studies in Popular Culture23(2): 99–108.
54.
HopwoodAG (1987) The archaeology of accounting systems. Accounting, Organizations and Society12(3): 207–234.
55.
HoskinKWMacveRH (1988) The genesis of accountability: The West Point connections. Accounting, Organizations and Society13(1): 37–73.
HuntIA (2010) The 9th Industry Division in Vietnam: Unparalleled and Unequalled. Lexington, KY: University of Kentucky Press.
58.
HuntIA (2013) Losing Vietnam: How America Abandoned Southeast Asia. Lexington, KY: University of Kentucky Press.
59.
HyndmanNLapsleyI (2016) New public management: The story continues. Financial Accountability & Management32(4): 385–408.
60.
JohnsonC (2004) The Sorrows of Empire: Militarism, Secrecy and the End of the Republic. London: Verso.
61.
KaldorM (2013) In defence of new wars. Stability: International Journal of Security & Development2(1): 1–16.
62.
KaplanF (2020) The Bomb: Presidents, Generals, and the Secret History of Nuclear War. New York: Simon & Schuster.
63.
KavanaghJFrederickBStarkAChandlerNSmithMLPovlockMDavisLEGeistE (2019) Characteristics of Successful U.S. Military Interventions. Santa Monica, CA: Rand Corporation.
64.
KerrC (1963/2001) The Uses of the University. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
65.
KinnardD (1977/2007) The War Managers. Annapolis: Naval Institute Press.
66.
KirbyR (2007) Operation Snoopy: The Chemical Corps’ ‘People Sniffer’. Army Chemical Review1: 20–22.
67.
KlikauerT (2013) Managerialism: A Critique of an Ideology. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
68.
KlikauerT (2015) What is managerialism?Critical Sociology41(7–8): 1103–1119.
69.
KlikauerT (2023) The Language of Managerialism: Organizational Communication or an Ideological Tool?Berlin: Springer.
70.
KolkoG (1985) Anatomy of a War: Vietnam, The United States, and the Modern Historical Experience. New York: Pantheon Books.
71.
KomerRW (1972) Bureaucracy Does Its Thing: Institutional Constraints on U.S.-GVN Performance in Vietnam. Santa Monica, CA: Rand Corporation.
72.
KomerRW (1986) Bureaucracy at War: U.S. Performance in the Vietnam Conflict. Boulder, CO: Westview Press.
73.
KrepinovichAF (1986) The Army and Vietnam. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press.
74.
LapsleyI (2009) New public management: The cruellest invention of the human spirit?Abacus45(1): 1–21.
75.
LebovicJH (2010) The Limits of U.S. Military Capability: Lessons from Vietnam and Iraq. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press.
76.
LewyG (1978) America in Vietnam. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
77.
MacKayJ (2023) The Counterinsurgent Imagination: A New Intellectual History. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
78.
MarlantesK (2011) What It Is Like to Go to War. London: Corvus.
79.
Mayer-SommerAP (2010) So many controls; so little control: The case of Isaac Henderson, Navy Agent, 1861-4. Accounting History15(2): 173–198.
80.
MccannL (2017) ‘Killing is our business and business is good': The evolution of’ war managerialism' from body counts to counterinsurgency. Organization24(4): 491–515.
81.
MoermanLvan der LaanS (2022) Accounting for and accounts of death: Past, present and future possibilities. Accounting History27(1): 6–23.
82.
MorrishLSauntsonH (2016) Performance management and the stifling of academic freedom and knowledge production. Journal of Historical Sociology29(1): 42–64.
83.
MoskosP (2008) Cop in the Hood: My Year Policing Baltimore’s Eastern District. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
84.
MoyarM (2006) Triumph Forsaken: The Vietnam War 1954-1965. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
85.
MurphyAJ (2020) Making managers in the U.S. military: The case of the Army Management School, 1945-1970. Management & Organizational History15(2): 145–159.
86.
NeerRM (2013) Napalm: An American Biography. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.
87.
ParkerM (2002) Against Management: Organization in the Age of Managerialism. Cambridge: Polity Press.
88.
PlotnickR (2012) Predicting push-button warfare: US print media and conflict from a distance, 1945-2010. Media, Culture & Society34(6): 655–672.
89.
PollittC (2013) The logics of performance management. Evaluation19(4): 346–363.
RoweCShieldsMBirnbergMJ (2012) Hardening soft accounting information: Games for planning organizational change. Accounting, Organizations & Society37(4): 260–279.
97.
SargiacomoMServalliSCarnegieGD (2012) Accounting for killing: Accountability for death. Accounting History17(3–4): 393–413.
98.
SealWRohdeCGarrisonRHNoreenEW (2018) Management Accounting. New York: McGraw Hill.
99.
ShapleyD (1993) Promise and Power: The Life and Times of Robert McNamara. New York: Little Brown & Company.
100.
SheehanN (1988) A Bright Shining Lie. London: Picador.
101.
ShepherdS (2018) Managerialism: An ideal type. Studies in Higher Education43(9): 1668–1678.
102.
ShoreCWrightS (2015) Governing by numbers: Audit culture, rankings and the new world order. Social Anthropology23(1): 22–28.
103.
SorleyL (2006) The conduct of the war: Strategy, doctrine, tactics, and policy. In: WiestA (ed) Rolling Thunder in a Gentle Land: The Vietnam War Revisited. New York: Harcourt and Brace, 174–191.
104.
SorleyL (2007) A Better War: The Unexamined Victories and Final Tragedy of America’s Last Years in Vietnam. New York: Mariner Books.
105.
StrathernM (1996) From improvement to enhancement: An anthropological comment on the audit culture. Cambridge Journal of Anthropology19(3): 1–21.
106.
StrathernM (ed) (2000) Audit Cultures: Anthropological Studies in Accountability, Ethics and the Academy. London: Routledge.
107.
SweetP (2019) The sociology of gaslighting. American Sociological Review84(5): 851–875.
108.
ThomasW (2015) Rational Action: The Sciences of Policy in Britain and America, 1940-1960. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
109.
ThompsonRJ (2021) Clear, Hold, and Destroy: Pacification in Phú Yên and the American War in Vietnam. Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press.
110.
TinkelmanD (2024) ‘Money does not stink’ – Accounting and slavery. Accounting History29(2): 314–332.
111.
TolsonJJ (1973) Airmobility, 1961-1971. Washington, DC: Department of the Army.
112.
TurseN (2008) A My Lai a month: How the US fought the Vietnam war. Asia-Pacific Journal6(11): e20.
113.
TurseN (2013) Kill Anything That Moves: The Real American War in Vietnam. London: Picador.
114.
TwyfordE (2020) A thanatopolitical visualization of accounting history: Georgio Agamben and Nazi Germany. Accounting History26(3): 352–337.
115.
WardGBurnsK (2017) The Vietnam War: An Intimate History. New York: Alfred A. Knopf.
116.
WattsJ (2016) JFK and the Masculine Mystique: Sex and Power on the New Frontier. New York: Thomas Dunne Books.
117.
YoungMB (1991) The Vietnam Wars, 1945-1990. New York: HarperCollins.
