Introduction

The Americans conceived pacification as a means to defeat a communist insurgency and help build a national political community in South Vietnam. Pacification encompassed both military efforts to provide security and programs of economic and social reform and required both the United States (US) Army and a number of US civilian agencies to support the South Vietnamese. The unification of American military and civil support of pacification under a single manager, the US military commander in South Vietnam, represented a watershed. A Central Intelligence Agency official involved in South Vietnam since the early 1960s, William Colby was in charge of American support of pacification from 1968 to 1971. A handful of studies have centered on particular facets of pacification, such as refugee resettlement or the Phoenix program. Poor coordination and duplication of effort characterized American support of pacification. The basic concepts of pacification emerged from the counterinsurgency doctrine of the late 1950s and early 1960s.