LANDGRAB 73 demonstrated that the South Vietnamese forces could hold their own against the North; it gave a clear indication to South Vietnamese leaders that the military balance of power was as much in their favor at the moment of the cease-fire as it would ever be. Although the ARVN forces were successful in decimating the enemy local forces in the South, there still remained the considerable threat of approximately 160,000 NVA regular troops still remaining in the South after the signing of the Paris agreements. This is why South Vietnamese President Thieu, despite considerable pressure from the United States to sign the agreements, vehemently opposed two key provisions of the 1973 accords: one which allowed these NVA regular troops to remain the South, and the other one specifying the withdrawal of all U.S. combat troops within 60 days after the signing.

Since Thieu felt that the military balance would never be more in his favor than it was in early February 1973 (especially after the failed Communist LANDGRAB 73 campaign), and American forces had not completely withdrawn, he decided to launch a series of military operations to seize areas still occupied by the Communists in the Mekong Delta and along the Cambodian border.5 Although these operations proved to be successful initially in establishing and maintaining control over formerly contested areas, they eventually taxed the government of South Vietnam's resources in both materiel and manpower.6 The last South Vietnamese Minister of Defense, General Tran Van Don, described the results of this disastrous policy in the following excerpt in his book:

On our side, we did not adopt the correct military strategy to deal with the inexorable Communist steamroller. We spread our forces too thin, trying to maintain a presence in and defend each province town, an ambition clearly beyond our capability. Although by this time we had an armed force of over one million men, such a method of defense did not have a chance for success.7

The North Vietnamese leadership also took note of the landgrab operations being conducted by ARVN forces during this period. Although he stops short in stating that Thieu's pacification operations were a success initially, North Vietnamese General Dung mentioned them in his book, Our Great Spring Victory; his remarks indicate that they were causing the North Vietnamese a considerable degree of difficulty in 1973:

... With this foundation the enemy threw their strength into carrying out their pacification and encroachment plans, with the intention of wiping out our lower level forces, destroying the scattered bases which we held in their zone of control, imposing an economic blockade on the border zones, and encroaching on the zones that had been liberated before the Paris Agreement was signed. Their scheme was to eliminate the existing situation, in which there were two zones of control, two armies, and two governments, and turn the South into a single zone entirely under their control. During the eleven months from the signing of the Paris Agreement until the end of 1973, the enemy used 60 percent of their main forces and all of their regional forces to begin more than 360,000 blockade and encroachment operations and security sweeps, and brought together large forces for major operations against our liberated zones....