ABSTRACT
Pacification is the term given to the efforts of the Saigon regime and the United States to create a strong, independent and viable state in South Vietnam. Its aim was to encourage the population to identify its interests with the survival of the GVN, to bind the government and the people together and hence to cut away at the NLF’s support base. Seeking a rejoinder to the NLF’s political programme, the allies sought to undertake a political and social programme of their own. The problem was, however, that the US/GVN consistently tackled pacification as one facet of a war, while the NLF placed their political and social programme at the heart of the revolution. The failure to perceive this crucial difference rendered the majority of pacification programmes ineffectual and the attempt to build a nation ultimately sterile.
