0 - The Black Vault

T14E BOM CORPORATION
Decreases in the country's firepowei capacity (concurrent with Hanoi's
heightened aggression) only further exacerbated moral and discipline
problems in the RVNAF, As General Cao Van Vien explains,
For the first time in the war the RVNAF were
in the decided position of urderdog, Gone was
their superiority in firepower and mobility, the
very things that helped t'ier,, maintain tactical
balance in the face of an enemy who held the
initiative.39/
Table 8-5 illustrates the comparative decrease in (US)
the period 1969 through January 1975. 40/
RVNAF firepower for
Partially as a result of this
decrease, RVNAF casualty and desertion rates increasea, contributing
further to the country's rapid loss uf morale.
But perhaps the most significant (and, hence, debilitating) problem
that faced South Vietnam, (directly impinging on the US follow-on effort,)
was the GVN's own political fragility. As Ambassador Ellsworth Bunker
autly noted in 1972,
"They [the Saigon leadership] fear that they are not
yet well en, augh organized to compete politically with such a tough, disciplined
crganization". 41,/ Corruption, inpfficiency, and the South Vietnamese
public distrust of its government's leaders and progranms made it
extraorainarily difficult for the GVN to mobilize national resources to
meet the requirements of the period, to complement the US follow-on support
effort, and, most important, to compensate for tLie gradual elimination of
U, physical and moral support.,
D.ý
INSIGHTS
The foregoing discussion gives rise to a number of important insights
regarding the nature arid efficacy of the US follow-on effort to South
Vietnam
. President Nixon failed to ensure or establish congressional
support for his post-war military-economic aid program for the
GVN, and the success of the US follow-on effort in SVN dependd
):
8-20