Civil Operations and Revolutionary Development Support
CORDS (Civil Operations and Rural Development Support) was a pacification program of the governments of South Vietnam and the United States during the Vietnam War. The program was created on 9 May 1967, and included military and civilian components of both governments. The objective of CORDS was to gain support for the government of South Vietnam from its rural population which was largely under influence or controlled by the insurgent communist forces of the Viet Cong (VC) and the North Vietnamese People's Army of Vietnam (PAVN).
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.[1] Critics, however, have described the pacification programs and CORDS in terms such as "the illusion of progress".[1] CORDS was, in the estimation of its first leader, Robert W. Komer, "too little, too late."[2]: 16
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[edit]
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 winning hearts and minds.
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 guerrilla and terrorist tactics. In 1961, the government embarked on the Strategic Hamlet Program, designed partly by Robert Thompson, a British counter-insurgency expert. The idea was to move rural dwellers into fortified villages in which they would participate in self-defense forces for their protection and isolation from the guerrillas. The United States Ambassador to South Vietnam Frederick Nolting and CIA official William Colby supported the program. General Lionel C. McGarr, chief of the Military Assistance Advisory Group in South Vietnam, opposed it, favoring instead a mobile, professional South Vietnamese Army of the Republic of Vietnam (ARVN) undertaking what would later be called Search and Destroy missions rather than defending villages and territory.[4] The program was implemented far too rapidly and coercively, and by 1964, many of the 2,600 strategic hamlets had fallen under VC control.[3]: 22–3
The next iteration of the pacification program came in 1964 with, for the first time, the direct participation in planning by the US Embassy and Military Assistance Command, Vietnam (MACV), the successor to MAAG. The Chien Thang (Struggle for Victory) pacification program was less ambitious than the Strategic Hamlet program, envisioning a gradual expansion, like an "oil spot" from government-controlled to VC controlled areas, by providing security and services to rural areas. Along with the Chien Thang program was the related Hop Tac (Victory) program, directly involving the U.S. military in pacification for the first time. Hop Tac envisioned a gradual expansion outward from Saigon of areas under South Vietnamese government control. These programs also failed as the ARVN was unable to provide adequate security and safety to rural residents in disputed areas.[3]: 25–30
Development of the program[edit]
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
Tet and its aftermath[edit]
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