Declassified per Executive Order 13526, Section 3.3
NND Project Number: NND 63316. By: NWD Date: 2011
- G. Did U.S. assistance through 1960 result in creation of a South Vietnamese Army in the image of the U.S. Army?
While it would probably be incorrect to assert that the U.S. created a complete "mirror image" of its own forces in the Vietnamese defense establishment, consideration of the mission, strategy, tactics, organizations, manpower policy, equipment, and training of that establishment indicates that conscious and unconscious U.S. efforts did result in emphasis on conventional forces (at the expense of paramilitary forces) "governed by the concept of a war front enabling use of the superior weaponry and technology of the West against a guerrilla force that was potentially the spearhead of a more massive thrust out of North Vietnam."114
1. Evolution of the mission of the VNA has been described. The fact is that assignment of a dual mission to VNA led rapidly to formation of a regular military establishment designed primarily to counter the threat of overt invasion from the North. Countering the internal threat—as is so often the case—was downgraded to the status of a "lesser-included capability in the regular forces."115
2. The strategy of the regular establishment was described as early as 1956 as
- defensive in nature and involves the conduct of a delaying action against external aggression of sufficient duration and effectiveness to hold as much ground as possible, and retain the key strategic entity, the Saigon Complex, in order to permit the arrival of the foreign military assistance which will be necessary to preserve her territorial integrity and national sovereignty....This defensive strategy must not only include consideration of the enemy threat in the form of overt military aggression from outside her borders but also from separate or concurrent extensive guerrilla and clandestine activities conducted by indigenous dissident groups or foreign military and political cadres already present or infiltrated into the country.116
The latter threat was countered by the territorial regiments in 1956; these regiments were abolished in 1959, with the advent of the 7 standard division force. Thus on the strategic level the regular forces came to reflect the strategy evolved by the U.S. in Korea and elsewhere.
3. On the tactical level the Vietnamese forces also came to reflect standard U.S. doctrine—with one possible exception, that of "pacification."
- Thus the tactical doctrine which will probably emerge from the present [1956] reorganization and training period will most likely
