CHAPTER 3

VIETNAMIZATION

AMERICAN ASSESSMENT

Vietnamization had one primary purpose: to allow the United States to withdraw its combat troops from South Vietnam and transfer the responsibility for conducting the war to the South Vietnamese. The Nixon Administration felt that with continued U.S. aid, the South Vietnamese could be equipped and trained to defend themselves.

In addition to teaching the South Vietnamese how to conduct the war in the field, a study by the BDM Corporation, on strategic lessons learned in Vietnam, points out that Vietnamization also included U.S. assistance in developing and expanding South Vietnam's military schools and institutions of advanced military learning. Astonishingly, the curriculum for junior officers at the Military Academy at Dalat was expanded to four years. The study comments on the adverse impact this action had on the military leadership of the South Vietnamese armed forces.

An excerpt from that study follows:

In the first case, the prime needs of the RVNAF, then engaged in the struggle for the national survival, required quickly trained commanders and leaders at all echelons to replace war losses and at the same time provide for its rapid expansion. Four years of commitment to this type of institution, though of important military and academic value and highly beneficial for military career attainments, was a luxury that could be ill-afforded given the impelling course of the war for the RVNAF.1

Despite this gross mismanagement of South Vietnam's most capable young military leaders, the U.S. leadership was unaware of the serious consequences of their efforts to design and train the South Vietnamese armed forces in its own image. As the BDM study concludes, the excessively long military career training forced the South Vietnamese armed forces to fight without its most capable leaders just at the time when it needed them most on the battle- field. Throughout the entire Vietnamization period, the United States felt the program was working well. In fact, U.S. military and political leaders alike used the RVNAF defeat of the North Vietnamese army during the 1972 'Easter' offensive as positive proof that the Vietnamization program was a tremendous success.