A democracy was attacked. The United States saw a threat to an ally and also to the entire world order, but feared that sending troops could unleash nuclear war. So instead it provided weapons. And a small number of American Special Operations trainers began to quietly cooperate with the local military.
Such was the situation in South Vietnam in 1961, a few years before full US military involvement, when the US presence was limited to a military ‘advisory group’.
That is how it is today in Ukraine. As a bloody conflict continues, small teams of US Special Operations veterans train Ukrainian soldiers near the front lines and, in some cases, help plan combat missions.
There is, however, a remarkable difference. In Vietnam, the trainers were active troops under the control of the Pentagon. In Ukraine, where the United States has avoided sending troops, the trainers are civilian volunteers, supported by online donations and entirely under their own steam.
“This is why I became a green beret,” said Perry Blackburn Jr., a retired Army Special Forces lieutenant colonel who spent 34 years in uniform in Iraq, Afghanistan, Ethiopia, Egypt, Somalia and Jordan. . He is now a civilian in Ukraine, doing what he once did in the military: training local troops to fight a common enemy.
“It would be a shame not to use my talents in a real time of need,” said 60-year-old Mr. Blackburn, one of the few Special Forces soldiers to enter Afghanistan on horseback at the start of the US invasion in 2001, is now funding similar efforts through thousands of small online donations from the public.
“At my age I have seen enough deaths and I want to try to stop the bloodshed,” he said. “We need to give people the tools to defend themselves.”
Whether this new form of crowdfunded military aid makes sense is up for debate. Some experts warn that the presence of American volunteers could lead to some sort of tragic accident that entangles the United States in a Vietnam-style escalation. Russia says it would treat volunteer fighters as mercenaries and could be executed if captured. The United States is discouraging Americans from participating in the conflict. It recalled its 150 military trainers before the war started and now relies on several dozen commandos from other NATO countries to coordinate the arms flow into Ukraine.
But the volunteers reject the idea that they might be fomenting a bigger war. Instead, they say, they are working to prevent one by training Ukrainian fighters to better resist the Russians and deter further aggression.
Anyway, Americans are in Ukraine. An unknown number are fighting on the front line. Others volunteer to join casualty evacuation teams, bomb disposal specialists, logistics experts and trainers. At least 21 Americans have been injured in fighting since the start of the war, according to a group of volunteers who evacuated them. Two have been killed, two have been captured and one is missing.
Mr. Blackburn and a small group of volunteers work directly with the Ukrainian military, learning marksmanship, maneuvering, combat first aid and other basic skills, while constantly changing locations of training camps to avoid Russian missile attacks.
They say they are doing it all without any input from the Pentagon.
“We have no communication with the US military, period,” he said in an interview from his home in Tampa, Florida, where he recently returned to resupply before returning to the war zone. ‘That’s a line they don’t want to cross. They do not take any responsibility for our well-being or our actions.”
Understanding the war between Russia and Ukraine better
Then he laughed and added, “In fact, they would probably do the exact opposite.”
Not all volunteers who want to work with the Ukrainian military have decades of experience. Mr Blackburn and several other veterans in Ukraine said they had encountered potential trainers with overblown resumes and, in some cases, no military experience at all.
In a statement, the Department of Defense said it is “not affiliated with any of these groups” and recommends “U.S. citizens not travel to Ukraine or leave immediately if it is safe to do so.”
Before the war, the US military regularly deployed uniformed trainers to Ukraine. As soon as Russia invaded, the Biden administration withdrew all troops. “We will not fight the third world war in Ukraine,” President Biden said.
The president promised that the United States would continue to support Ukraine with weapons and has pledged $6.8 billion in security assistance. US troops train Ukrainian troops in Poland and Germany. But Mr Biden drew a clear line in May by saying that the US military would not fight the Russians directly.
However, the attempt to avert direct conflict left a void just as the Ukrainian military’s demand for training skyrocketed. And freelance volunteers fill it.
“We are conducting US foreign policy in a way the military cannot,” said Andrew Milburn, a retired Marine Corps Special Operations colonel who leads a group of volunteer veterans who provide training and advice.
Speaking by phone from a village about 15 miles from the front lines in eastern Ukraine, Mr. Milburn that his efforts supported American causes while cutting the United States from involvement. “I’m plausible denial,” he said. “We can do the work, and the US can say it has nothing to do with us, and that’s absolutely true.”
Shortly after the outbreak of war, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky called on international volunteers to join the fight against Russia. The first Americans to heed his call were often amateur adventurers and military misfits looking for action, several volunteers said in interviews.
The group that focuses on training is generally older and more experienced. Many have climbed the ranks of elite Special Operations units and have done similar work around the world.
During 31 years with the Marine Corps, Mr. Milburn served in senior positions in the United States Army’s Joint Special Operations Command, including as commander of the Marine Raider Regiment. He initially went to Ukraine as a freelance journalist, but said he changed course after confronting inexperienced students, shopkeepers and other civilians with handguns from the Ukrainian army before sending them off to fight.
“This country has no shortage of tractors. They didn’t need any more,” he said, explaining why he chose not to fight. “But I knew if I could train the trigger pullers, I could have an exponential effect.”
Mr. Milburn interacted with about two dozen other Special Operations veterans in Ukraine, and they soon referred to themselves as the Mozart Group – a name chosen in response to a private Russian army company, the Wagner group. Through contacts that Mr. Milburn and others had built with Ukrainian Special Operations forces years earlier, the Mozart group soon set up training camps close to the fighting. Milburn said it had trained about 2,500 Ukrainian troops.
The group provides basic military instruction to soldiers going to the front and occasional lessons on the use of American weapons, such as the shoulder-fired Javelin anti-tank missile.
It also provides some specialized instructions and advice for Ukrainian commandos.
Mozart would be a natural channel for US military support, he said, but when he tries to contact US military officials in Western Europe, both through official communications and through the media, he gets no response.
“Every time we contact, we get rejected,” he said. “They are so afraid that something bad is going to happen and it will seem like it was the government’s job. We are persona non grata.”
But the United States would be wise to exercise caution, said George Beebe, a former head of the CIA’s Russia analysis and the director of the Quincy Institute, an impartial foreign policy research institution.
“As in Vietnam, there is a risk that we will inadvertently be pulled deeper and deeper into it, step by step,” he said. “The difference is that in Ukraine there is more at stake. It would be much easier for the United States and Russia to get into a direct conflict that could quickly become very serious.”
Few ever considered that Vietnam could turn into a massive war, he noted. US involvement began in 1955 with a group of 300 soldiers training South Vietnamese soldiers to respond to what some US officials at the time called “a minor civil war.” Slowly, the United States began to take more men and more firepower — decisions that seemed not only reasonable at the time, but necessary, Mr. Beebe said.
Americans began accompanying South Vietnamese platoons on missions, then supporting them with aircraft. As the effort grew, so did the presence of US troops. Finally, a 1964 incident in the Gulf of Tonkin drew the United States straight into the war, ultimately killing 58,000 Americans without achieving any strategic goals.
“I’m not saying escalation in Ukraine is automatic,” Mr Beebe said. “But the danger is that we will cross red lines before we know where they are.”
There are, of course, clear differences between Southeast Asia in 1961 and Eastern Europe today.
The then government in South Vietnam was unpopular, ravaged by corruption and faced with a communist insurgency in the countryside. Ukraine’s president enjoys high ratings in a country united against Russian invaders.
But as in Vietnam, Mr. Beebe said, the United States is now forced to choose between only bad options, trying to support an ally without antagonizing a powerful enemy.
Americans on the front lines say Russia is fueling a wider conflict and the United States has little choice but to respond.
Both Mr Milburn and Mr Blackburn said the United States should respond more aggressively and send more advanced medium-range weapons.
Mr Blackburn said he understood the United States’ prudence but felt it was misguided as prudence would only encourage Russian aggression.
“They destroy entire cities and randomly murder civilians. If that’s not an escalation, then what is?” he said. “I don’t see this as much as the years before Vietnam. For me it is more the years before the Second World War. People will wonder afterwards why we didn’t do more sooner.”