0 - The Black Vault

THE BDM CORPORATION
INSIGHTS
Pacification and Pacification
Vietnamization 0 Early GV' attempts at establishing pacification
and rural development programs failed because they
were little more than ill-devised blends of stop
and start:
- military and police opera-ions
- social control techiques
- emergency welfare efforts
- attempts to extend political-administrative
linkage from Saigon to the countryside.
* During the period, the GVN failed to come to terms
with the communist movement ana their own fundamental
political weaknesses, which were:
- their inheritance of France's colonial legacy
- their debilitating internal pursuit of power
- their reliance on US aid and doctrine rather
than internal political support.
* In turn, the US efforts to support GVN pacification
programs were the product of:
- reliance on conventional military methods,
equipment. and training
- culturally unsuitable and impractical
approaches to development
- an inability to devise conceptually relevant
programs
- ineffective and insufficient application of
leverage on the GVN.
* After 1968, the GVN, with strong jS aid, turned
things around, and achieved success in their
pacification and developmernt programs primarily
because:
- priority was finally given to security --
protecting and involving the people in their
own defense
- policies of land reform and economic redistribution
were promoted
* The one key thing which the Thieu government
failed to do during this period of pacification
progress was to fashion a political community.
President Thieu failed to institutionalize his
government, thereby losing the gains made through
pacification. Regardless, there is little doubt,
having the advantage of hindsight, that pacification
finally worked. The North Vietnamese ultimately
could not have won the war via insurgency,
but rather they had to resort to conventional
military offensives by PAVN troops. In that sense
EX-8