Picture the scene: the occupants of the White House become fixated by a far-flung region of the globe, believing vital American interests are tied to its fate. Before these interests can be realised, however, the US military must defeat a brutal insurgency campaign.

As the months become years, Washington finds itself under pressure to demonstrate that its policy is succeeding by pulling US soldiers out. Its response is to accelerate efforts to train and equip the locals into a competent military of their own, so they can take the place of foreign soldiers and manage their own security. American boys can then return home with their heads held high, rather than in body bags.

Does this sound familiar? It is a broad overview of the Bush administration's current Iraq policy. Western funds and expertise are being used to rebuild the Iraqi military and police, for they will guard post-Saddam Iraq after foreign soldiers leave. However, the scenario also bears uncanny echoes to the policy of a very different American administration, circa 1968.

Richard Nixon came to office promising to withdraw American forces from Vietnam with honour. He coined the phrase 'Vietnamization' to describe accelerated efforts to train his local allies, the Army of the Republic of Vietnam (ARVN), to hold off the communists. Although this was just one tier of his policy – blowing the enemy to oblivion wherever they may be was the other – the ARVN would ultimately defend South Vietnam in the long-term.

Mentioning the 'V' word when analysing current events in Iraq is usually avoided, and rightly so. Comparing the Vietcong insurgency to its Iraqi counterpart is a largely redundant exercise because each occurred under vastly differing circumstances. Separated by geography and international context, they present incomparable topographical and military conditions.

Yet, in both cases, the long-term success of US policy, as well as its immediate exit strategy, was entirely dependent upon building a competent indigenous security force to take the strain. In this single dimension at least, Vietnam can provide a telling history lesson. However, our first port of call must be to take stock of the situation in Iraq.

It is common to speak of a 'lost year' for security sector reform. Following Saddam's fall in March 2003, the Iraqi Army was formally disbanded, contributing to a power vacuum that fostered widespread looting and the insurgency's birth.

It was not until the Coalition handed power to an Iraqi government in June 2004 that serious recruitment could begin. Since then insurgents have mounted suicide attacks against police and army recruitment facilities with gruesome regularity, killing 213 recruits in February 2005 alone.

However, in a country of 25 million, rife with unemployment, there are always more Iraqis ready to stand in line. Training continues apace under the auspices of the Multinational Security Transition Command-Iraq (MNSTC-I), staffed by advisors from an array of western militaries. Its efforts divide between the regular Iraqi Police, the Iraqi Army and special 'SWAT' style police battalions that will take on heavily armed insurgents.

The NATO contribution exemplifies how training works in practice. Some of its advisors are deployed in Iraq, while others train recruits 'offshore' in Jordan. Overall NATO aims to pump out 1,500 Iraqi officers per year through this arrangement.

Clearly, this is a long-term project, but with violence still rife, time is an absent luxury. A statistical war has erupted over whether the Pentagon has been meeting its own targets for raising new Iraqi battalions. The Washington-based think-tank globalsecurity.org estimated that, by October 2004, a shortfall of 165,000 existed between strength of the Iraqi Army on paper, and those ready and equipped to fight. Its damning conclusion is that "the US has made essentially no progress in increasing the number of Iraqi forces during the year 2004".

Despite the slow pace, Washington is keen to stress the improving state of affairs. In April 2004, when the burnt bodies of four US security contractors were dragged through the streets of Fallujah, US soldiers moved in while their Iraqi Army counterparts refused, mutinied and even defected to the rebels.

Fast-forward to November 2004 and US forces once again moved into Fallujah, but this time fought side-by-side with Iraqi units. The latter may have been outnumbered 5:1 by the former, but the symbolic importance of their deployment in combat was significant.

Such showcase displays evoke memories of joint US-ARVN operations in Vietnam. In 1970, America led nearly 9,000 ARVN allies into neighbouring Cambodia to locate and destroy Vietcong supply lines and staging bases. The invasion failed however, with US advisors bemoaning the low military worth of the ARVN.

One year later. Laos was the next target. The ARVN fought bravely to their objective but, hamstrung by poor leadership, they eventually pulled out and left thousands of dead and dying comrades to the enemy.

In one area alone Vietnamization did pay early dividends, and that was by allowing US troop withdrawals to begin. Nixon publicly proclaimed his policy a success, but privately he despaired at its military shortcomings.

As American withdrawals gathered pace, US expertise, funding and political commitment to the ARVN waned. With its umbilical cord to the west finally cut in the early 1970s, South Vietnam was doomed to its fate. The militarily deficient ARVN replaced US soldiers, and Saigon fell to the communists in 1975.

Will Baghdad similarly fall once the west scales back its direct commitment? Only time can tell, but, in the meantime, the lesson is brutally simple: military reconstruction in Iraq must not be cosmetic. Instead, it must exhibit real substance and produce an indigenous security force of real military worth.

Critics of the war commonly demand 'an immediate end to occupation', as if this would somehow appease western guilt for invading Iraq in the first place. Yet the fallacy of what they suggest is too great to comprehend. A premature withdrawal of western soldiers would clearly be disastrous for Iraq, leaving an embryonic Iraqi security force to fend off an emboldened insurgency.