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. The economic aided that came courtesy of the US increased standards of living in the South Vietnamese countryside in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Pacification would succeed only in so far as the South Vietnamese people sympathized with its objectives and, if they did, only in proportion to the effort expended by Saigon. The Tet Offensive proved to be of vast significance to the progress of pacification. Vietnamization of the war was spurred by the Tet Offensive. Because President Thieu realized that America’s commitment to Saigon was beginning to falter and because the impact of the offensive had severely shocked South Vietnam and its leaders, the South Vietnamese Government was finally motivated to act.
