Civil Operations and Revolutionary Development Support
CORDS (Civil Operations and Rural Development Support) was a pacification program of the governments of
Unlike earlier pacification programs in Vietnam, CORDS is seen by many authorities as a "successful integration of civilian and military efforts" to combat the insurgency. By 1970, 93 percent of the rural population of South Vietnam was believed by the United States to be living in "relatively secure" villages. CORDS had been extended to all 44 provinces of South Vietnam, and the communist insurgency was much reduced.
With the withdrawal of U.S. military forces and many civilian personnel, CORDS was abolished in February 1973. CORDS temporary successes were eroded in the 1970s, as the war became primarily a struggle between the conventional military forces of South and North Vietnam rather than an insurgency. North Vietnam prevailed in 1975.
South Vietnamese attempts at pacification
The continuing struggle during the Vietnam War to gain the support of the rural population for the government of South Vietnam was called pacification. To Americans, pacification programs were often referred to by the phrase
The anti-communist Ngo Dinh Diem government of South Vietnam (1955–63) had its power base among the urban and Catholic population. The government controlled the cities and large towns but Diem's efforts to extend government power to the villages, where most of the population lived, were mostly unsuccessful. The Viet Cong were gaining support and mobilizing the peasantry to oppose the government. Between 1956 and 1960, the VC instituted a land reform program dispossessing landlords and distributing land to farmers.[3]: 11–5
In 1959, Diem revived the agroville program of the French era with the objective of moving peasants into new agricultural settlements which contained schools, medical clinics, and other facilities supported by the government. The program failed due to peasant resistance, poor management, and disruption by the VC using
The next iteration of the pacification program came in 1964 with, for the first time, the direct participation in planning by the
American and North Vietnamese involvement
In 1965, both the United States and North Vietnam rapidly increased the numbers of their soldiers in South Vietnam. Communist forces totaled 221,000 including an estimated 105 VC and 55 PAVN battalions. American soldiers in Vietnam totaled 175,000 by the end of the year, and the ARVN numbered more than 600,000. Commanding General William Westmoreland rejected the use of the U.S. army to pacify rural areas, instead utilizing U.S. superiority in mobility and firepower to find and combat VC and PAVN units. Intensification of the conflict caused many peasants and rural dwellers to flee to the cities for safety. The number of internal refugees increased from about 500,000 in 1964 to one million in 1966. By December 1966, South Vietnam could only claim—optimistically in the U.S.'s view—to control 4,700 of the country's 12,000 hamlets and 10 of its 16 million people[3]: 31–43
In February 1966, President
Development of the program
Komer argued that the pacification success desired by Johnson could only be achieved by integrating three tasks. The first and most basic requirement for pacification had to be security, because the rural population had to be kept isolated from the VC and PAVN. If this was achieved, the insurgents' forces had to be weakened both by destroying their infrastructure among the population and by developing programs to win over the people's sympathy for the South Vietnamese government and the U.S. forces. The third point emphasized by Komer was that the new strategy had to be applied on a large scale in order to turn around what had been up until then, at best, an indecisive war.[5]: 77–91
Organizationally, these goals implicitly required that efforts be concentrated under a single command. In Komer's view, only the U.S. military had the resources and personnel to implement a large-scale pacification plan. After initial reservations, Westmoreland agreed with the plan, but civilian agencies still balked. Johnson overruled them, and on 9 May 1967, CORDS was created. Komer was appointed one of Westmoreland's three deputy commanders with the title of ambassador and the equivalent rank of a three-star general. This was the first time in U.S. history that an ambassador had served under a military command and been given authority over military personnel and resources.[6][5]: 14
Komer chose a military officer as his deputy and repeated the pattern of having either a civilian in charge of every component of CORDS with a military deputy or, alternatively, a military commander with a civilian deputy. He consolidated all the diverse pacification and civil affairs programs in Vietnam—military and civilian—under the authority of CORDS. Starting with a staff of 4,980, CORDS expanded to 8,327 personnel in the first six months of its operation. In 1968, CORDS was working in all 44 provinces and eventually was functioning in all 250 districts of South Vietnam.[7] About 85 percent of CORDS personnel were military, the remainder civilians.[2]: 12 Each province was headed by a Vietnamese province chief, usually a colonel, who was supported by an American provincial senior adviser. The adviser's staff was divided into a civilian part which supervised area and community development and a military part which handled security issues.[5]: 83
Organization and function
CORDS at the Corps level (I, II, III, and IV Corps) had an organization similar to its headquarters organization in Saigon. A three-star general headed each corps with a deputy commander for CORDS, usually a civilian. Within each Corps, all 44 South Vietnamese provinces were headed by a native province chief, usually an ARVN army colonel, who was supported by an American province senior adviser, either military or a civilian. The province adviser's staff was divided into a civilian part which supervised area and community development and a military part which assisted the Vietnamese with security operations.[5]: 83
CORDS focused on U.S. support for Vietnamese efforts at pacification in three broad areas: security, centralized planning, and operations against the VC. Komer quickly increased the number of U.S. military advisers assigned to
A major priority of CORDS was to destroy the VC's political and support infrastructure which extended into most villages of the country. The Phoenix Program was CORDS' most controversial activity. Seven hundred American advisers assisted the South Vietnamese government in identifying, capturing, trying, imprisoning and often executing members of the VC infrastructure. Between 1968 and 1972, the Phoenix program, according to CORDS statistics, neutralized 81,740 VC of whom 26,369 were killed. 87 percent of those deaths were attributed to conventional military operations by South Vietnam and the U.S.; the remainder were executed and, in the opinion of critics, were often innocent or non-combatants and were assassinated by "death squads."[5]: 17–21
Tet and its aftermath
On January 24, 1968, Komer warned that "something is in the wind." Seven days later the Tet Offensive was launched by the VC and PAVN. Tet weakened the Saigon government's presence in the countryside, which had been aided by CORDS. The RF/PF abandoned the countryside in some areas to defend cities and towns, suffering more than 6,500 casualties, including desertions. Tet was a military victory but a psychological defeat for South Vietnam and its American ally, but heavy VC casualties facilitated an early return to the countryside by South Vietnamese authorities and CORDS.[3]: 133–43 Project Recovery distributed food and construction material to rural dwellers and involved CORDS in reconstruction efforts in the cities and towns. By May 1968, the rural population living in "relatively secure" hamlets had returned to pre-Tet levels of 67 percent. Ambassador Ellsworth Bunker, CIA official William Colby, Komer's successor as head of CORDS and the new head of MACV, General Creighton Abrams, persuaded the South Vietnamese government to embark on an accelerated pacification program. The casualties suffered by the VC and the PAVN, during Tet and their subsequent offensives in 1968, enabled CORDS to strengthen its programs in the countryside.[3]: 144–59
Evaluations of CORDS
In February 1970,
CORDS was designed to combat the peasant-based
With the war coming to rely more on the conventional military forces of South and North Vietnam, pacification under CORDS became less relevant. After the withdrawal from Vietnam of U.S. military forces and many civilian personnel, CORDS was terminated in February 1973.[11]
CORDS was successful in several ways. The program successfully integrated U.S. military and civilian efforts to defeat the insurgency in South Vietnam. Communication and cooperation between the U.S. and South Vietnamese government improved; CORDS revitalized several earlier failed attempts at pacification; CORDS leaders Komer and Colby persuaded South Vietnam to take the offensive in rural areas after Tet to challenge the long primacy of the Viet Cong in many areas of the country; and CORDS had some impact of persuading the South Vietnamese government to replace corrupt and incompetent officials.[11]: 115–6
However, the CORDS pacification programs "could not overcome the South Vietnamese government's defective execution of plans and programs, its omnipresent corruption, or its inability to develop a sturdy, self-sustaining political base."[11]: 116 In light of the outcome of the war, CORDS founder Komer attributed the eventual failure of pacification to "too little, too late".[2]: 100 Richard Hunt concluded similarly in his book Pacification: The American Struggle for Vietnam's Hearts and Minds that "the advocates of pacification hoped it would cause a fundamental transformation of South Vietnam. But even if that transformation had occurred it would most likely have taken too long and would in any case have exhausted the patience of the American people, inevitably eroding political support in the United States."[3]: 279
See also
References
- ^ a b Fisher, Christopher, "The Illusion of Progress" Pacific Historic Review, Vol 75, No. 1 (Feb 2006), pp. 25–55
- ^ a b c Coffey, Maj. Ross (March–April 2006). "Revisiting Cords: The Need for Unity of Effort to Secure Victory in Iraq". Military Review.
- ^ ISBN 9780813311821.
- ^ Ahern, Thomas, Vietnam Declassified: The CIA and the Counterinsurgency Lexington, KY: University of Kentucky Press, 2009, pp. 77–78
- ^ a b c d e Andrade, Dale; Willbanks, James (March–April 2006). "CORDS/Phoenix. Counterinsurgency Lessons from Vietnam for the Future". Military Review.
- ISBN 9781517302221.
- ^ White, Jeremy Patrick "Civil Affairs in Vietnam" Center for Strategic & International Studies http://csis.org/files/media/csis/pubs/090130_vietnam_study.pdf Archived 2014-08-20 at the Wayback Machine, accessed 20 May 2014
- ^ Stewart, Dr. Richard W. "CORDS and the Vietnam Experience: An Interagency Organization for Counterinsurgency and Pacification" Security Assistance: U.S. and International Historical Perspectives Leavenworth, KS: Combat Studies Institute Press, 2006, pp. 257–258 http://usacac.army.mil/cac2cgsc/carl/download/csipubs/2006Symposium.pdf, accessed 22 May 2014
- ^ Vann, John Paul "Opening Statement" Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Feb 17-20, 1970, http://www.virtual.vietnam.ttu.edu/cgi-bin/starfetch.exe?vbD2hmHECIZKQUVMKlF7h33wD.1pjN0Bs@J7DG6RZzPTyDoG9j7hwX444GE72qP.bM1YIymqBmpBfX4yPa.STEvRw6QS.WQgYQog8VNzW6A/0440308002.pdf Archived 2016-03-04 at the Wayback Machine, accessed 27 May 2014
- ^ Record, Jeffry and Terrill, W. Andrew, "Iraq and Vietnam: Differences, Similarities, and Insights" May 2004, pp. 24–25, http://www.strategicstudiesinstitute.army.mil/pdffiles/oo367.pdf, accessed 27 May 2014
- ^ ISBN 978-1612512280.
External links
- CORDS-related materials available from the USAID Development Experience Clearinghouse (USAID/DEC)