ABSTRACT
The program was pacification, a precursor to modern counterinsurgency. The principal focus of pacification was support of and advice to the Vietnamese government's counterinsurgency efforts, rather than US forces directly conducting such operations. South Vietnamese would have to win the insurgency struggle themselves, it was believed, and therefore they had to lead and fight the battles directly in that struggle. Five distinct periods define the often tortured development of pacification and the use of civil-military advisory teams in Vietnam. The first extended from 1954 to 1961 and involved an initial understanding of the importance of bringing popularly responsive government to the rural areas which had been under direct Communist rule, indirect influence or under the influence of religious sects not friendly to any centralized government. CORDS (Civil Operations and Revolutionary Development Support), originally created in 1967 with its use of civil-military advisory teams, became an effective mechanism for supporting Vietnamese counterinsurgency.
