0 - The Black Vault

THE BDM CORPORATION
CHAPTER 5
PACIFICATION AND VIETNAMIZATION
The building of a serious pacification program in
* Vietnam was in one aspect a progressive disillusionment
with one scheme after another.
A. INTRODUCTION
Douglas S. Blaufarb
The Counterinsurgency Era: U.S.
Doctrine and Performance, 1977 l/
The objective of the whole people of my country is a
unified democratic and strong Vietnam .,. to reach this
objective, our National Leadership Committee has promoted
three main policies: first, military offenses;,
second, rural pacification; and third, democracy,
General Nguyen Duc Thang
Chief, National Pacification Campaign,
Address to the Honolulu Conference
February 7, 1966 2/
!1•-
Between 1954 and 1975 the GVN, with US aid and support, struggled to
devise a successful pacification and development strategy for South Vietnam.
The complex goal of achieving a politically and economically viable
society under an effective government supported by the people proved to be
eiusive. Various programs were attempted, often at US insistence. Many of
those programs were well intentioned but ill-devised blends of stop-andstart
military and police operations, social-control techniqdes, emergency
welfare efforts and
attempts to extend political-administrative linkage
from Saigon to the countryside. Almost without exception, the early
* programs failed to yield the desired results. By the time that Pacification,
and for that matter Vietnamization, began showing signs of finally
working, the nature of the struggle had c& nged and South Vietnam began to
crumble under the DRV's conventional military pressures.
Ij The evolution of pacification in RVN, as well as that of the USinspired
Vietnamization Program, will be described and analyzed in this
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