ABSTRACT
During the 1968 presidential campaign, Nixon had frequently criticized Johnson's gradualist use of military force in Vietnam because it had produced neither military victory nor a negotiated settlement of the war. Achieving his goal in Indochina required that he win a military and political victory over the Communist forces in the Republic of South Vietnam (RVN) and a diplomatic victory over the DRV at the Paris negotiations. Public opinion polls taken in early 1969 showed that large majorities of Americans wanted a quick end to the US war and favored an early withdrawal of all US forces. Pacification efforts from 1969 to 1971 suffered from two related problems: First, most programs represented belated efforts to achieve a quick fix. Second, there were never enough honest and competent officials to make these programs work. Pacification programs were almost always vitiated by the corruption and incompetence that riddled the South Vietnamese bureaucracies.
