Clear, Hold, and Destroy: Pacification in Phú Yên and the American War in Vietnam. Robert J. Thompson. Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press, 2021.

“It became necessary,” stated an anonymous U.S. Army corporal to reporter Peter Arnett, “to destroy the town to save it.”[1] It is one of the most infamous quotes of the American experience in Vietnam, effectively summarizing the hypocritical, illogical, and destructive nature of the American war in Vietnam. That the quote is likely apocryphal does not diminish its power, as it strikes at the core of the conundrum in Vietnam: how to defeat, by military means, an indigenous enemy while not destroying what is trying to be saved?

Thompson underscores the centrality of conventional military forces in the implementation of pacification.

The American response to the dilemma of creating a democratic society while waging a guerilla war was pacification, a European concept born out of colonization that was relatively new to Americans. In Clear, Hold, and Destroy: Pacification in Phú Yên and the American War in Vietnam, Army University Press historian Robert J. Thompson III closely analyzes Phú Yên, a mountainous and agricultural coastal province in Vietnam’s central highlands, to understand the gestation of American pacification, how it was implemented, and why it ultimately failed. In this study of the American commitment in Vietnam, Thompson underscores the centrality of conventional military forces in the implementation of pacification. This accessible but comprehensive book is the product of Thompson’s dissertation at the University of Southern Mississippi, and his extensive archival research is evinced by the nearly sixty pages of endnotes that support his 251-page tome.

The book has a brief introduction and conclusion, but is otherwise organized into nine chronological chapters on the American pacification efforts from 1965 to 1975. In reference to pacification, Thompson cheekily asks, “What the hell does this mean?” But his introduction provides clues to the answer that emphasize the need for this provocation. According to Thompson, pacification “entailed sound security behind which allegiance to Saigon could mature,” but pacification was also “a highly mechanized, lethal process concerned with securing Saigon’s legitimacy, not the hearts and minds of the South Vietnamese people.”[2] This contradiction reveals the central tension of the book.

Thompson would have been as justified in devoting a chapter to the word “control” as he was in defining pacification.

Deemed “the other war” by General William Westmoreland, pacification was an amalgamation of physical security, economic and social development, and political engagement. Thompson would have been as justified in devoting a chapter to the word “control” as he was in defining pacification. He uses control almost entirely as a pejorative, as in subjugating the population, but he quotes the French Colonel Robert Trinquier—whose writings on pacification deeply influenced a generation of Americans—as defining control as a process by which the government could extract loyalty from the population by providing protection from guerillas.[3] When British counterinsurgency expert Sir Robert Thompson (no relation to the author of the book under review), whose success in Malaya was the blueprint for American pacification efforts, spoke of controlling the countryside, the inference was that of Trinquier’s definition of allegiance through security, not a Stalinesque fidelity through fear.[4] By 1965, even if there were semantic differences in the term pacification, there was unanimity among the American policy-makers that pacification required security, so that economic, social, and political development could follow. Thompson’s  thesis in Clear, Hold, Destroy is solid in this respect—pacification was conventional warfare, but pacification was envisioned as a multi-pronged effort, with security the primary, but not only, objective.

Thompson’s assessment is that the “other war” concept is a myth; there was only one war, a war to defeat the communists.

Thompson contends in his book that these differing perspectives, even different interpretations of the very definition of the term, negatively affected pacification. On this account, the evidence is less clear. What is relevant is that General Westmoreland and the Army did not believe in the overall concept, and despite earlier military successes, Westmoreland was never willing to devote the forces away from his “big unit war” to enable the success of pacification. Thompson’s assessment is that the “other war” concept is a myth; there was only one war, a war to defeat the communists. Fair enough. But this is a strategic assessment, not a tactical one. There were tactical differences that hindered the early pacification efforts due to a disunity of effort. As Thompson also demonstrates, there was an important distinction between the “control” of a population and the allegiance of the populace that was never sufficiently settled both within the American civil and military authorities and their South Vietnamese allies.

The ensuing chapters per annum that constitute the bulk of Thompson’s work are an exhaustive, detailed analysis of pacification efforts in Phú Yên. Several themes emerge from this analysis, one being the American need for data. This led to a myriad of measuring sticks—rice production, scorecards, the ill-fated Hamlet Evaluation System—to assess the success of pacification efforts. Each proved unsatisfactory to the task. Scapegoating is another leitmotif. The Americans and South Vietnamese blamed each other. Both blamed the South Koreans. Among the Americans, the  military blamed the civilian authorities and vice versa. Everyone blamed the South Vietnamese officials in charge of Phú Yên.

As Thompson traces the American efforts in the province, another theme emerges: the fanatical tenacity of the People’s Liberation Armed Forces (PLAF)—familiarly known by the derogatory term, the Viet Cong (VC)—and the North Vietnamese Army (NVA). In support of this motif, Thompson’s narrations of military engagements and tactics are described with judicious expertise, though the repeated citation of the same source can burden the prose. As the book is a critique of the ineffectual American and South Vietnamese pacification efforts, the PLAF is juxtaposed as a resilient and sagacious adversary. But the PLAF, while resolute and effective, leaned heavily on acts of terrorism and coercion in the form of kidnapping, assassination, sabotage, indoctrination, forced labor, and unfair taxation as their means of controlling the population. Despite the success of the PLAF in Phú Yên, Thompson does not address the irony that the ultimate success of the North Vietnamese in the conflict was due to the conventional large army tactics of the NVA.

Starting in the chapter on 1967, Thompson’s prose is inundated with the delusion of pacification success by American policy-makers. Thompson writes of the “myth of progress,” the “perception of success,” there is an “illusion,” a “façade,” or an “aura.”[5] This assessment by Thompson is unfair. The American military and civilian authorities—reorganized by Robert Komer under the newly created Civilian Operations and Revolutionary Development Support (CORDS)—did achieve success in Phú Yên during this time, with the North Vietnamese’s own reporting stating that their control of the province was reduced from 260,000 of the 360,000 inhabitants to a mere 20,000.[6] That the Americans and South Vietnamese could not maintain these gains is not evidence that they were illusory.

It is to Thompson’s credit that his focus on the provincial level unearths more topics on the larger goals of pacification that would have strengthened his work and will benefit future scholars and policy-makers.

But the 1968 Tet offensive had a deleterious effect on pacification, revealing the frustrating paradox of the Vietnam War. The Army of the Republic of Vietnam and American forces repelled the offensive and inflicted great losses on the PLAF. The South Vietnamese populace displayed no desire to join communists, signifying the second of three failed efforts by the North Vietnamese to invoke a general uprising by the South Vietnamese. Though his analysis of the socio-psychological toll on the South Vietnamese villagers is less convincing, Thompson’s assessment deftly evinces the destructive physical toll the counteroffensive had on the countryside. The effect of Tet on the American public is well-documented, leading the Americans to implement the oxymoronic “Accelerated Pacification,” and eventually Vietnamization. In Thompson’s estimation, pacification never recovered after Tet.

As Vietnamization reduced the American footprint in 1971, U.S. Army Captain Courtney Frobenius lamented that the Americans failed to understand that the key to success in Vietnam  was winning the village and the people. Thompson concurs with Frobenius’ assessment in his conclusion, warning that Americans should not become involved in countries they do not understand. Thompson does not return to the fact that this realization was made in the earliest stages of American involvement in Vietnam. Edward Lansdale and State Department officials, including Roger Hilsman, among others, understood that this was a political war and advocated for a socio-economic and security strategy. Thompson is correct in stating that American impatience, South Vietnamese corruption, and PLAF determination contributed to dooming the American pacification efforts in Vietnam, but the multitude of American voices suggest that ignorance was a reason for the failure.[7]

Because of the complexity of cultural and social mores, a definition of pacification remains elusive.

Clear, Hold, and Destroy is a comprehensive and stimulating analysis of pacification efforts in Phú Yên. It is to Thompson’s credit that his focus on the provincial level unearths more topics on the larger goals of pacification that would have strengthened his work and will benefit future scholars and policy-makers. Though Thompson does reference the French efforts in pacification during the First Indochina War, a more thorough analysis would have been welcomed to evince the taint of colonialism and foreign interference the concept had at the village level.[8] An appraisal of how pacification fit into larger questions of nation-building and counterinsurgency that came into vogue with the Flexible Response doctrine of the Kennedy Administration would have also been welcomed.[9] Despite being integral to the broader counterinsurgency effort, the role of the Central Intelligence Agency and the implementation of the controversial Phoenix program is not extensively covered.[10] Also important, but not fully explored, is the internecine struggle between the U.S. Army and Marines over the principles and importance of pacification, with the Army’s anti-pacification stance winning despite the successes of the Marines’ Combined Action Platoons.[11]

Because of the complexity of cultural and social mores, a definition of pacification remains elusive. It may be best thought as how Supreme Court justice Potter Stewart described pornography: “I know it when I see it.” Thompson set out to show the primacy of the military in the pacification of Phú Yên and masterfully accomplished his goal. Of the recent American foray in Afghanistan, an oft-quoted Taliban adage goes, “You have all the watches, but we have all the time.” True enough for the American experience in Vietnam. Yet Thompson’s book on Phú Yên leaves a sinking feeling that the limited American time in Vietnam was squandered.

Daniel R. Hart earned his Bachelor’s degree in history and government from Bowdoin College and his Master’s degree in history from Harvard University. His thesis on the relationship between Ambassador Henry Cabot Lodge and President John F. Kennedy during the war in Vietnam is being edited for publication. He is a regular contributor to The VVA Veteran and his work has appeared in Passports, Army History, Air & Space Power Journal, and H-Net.

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Header Image: President Lyndon B. Johnson in Vietnam: With General William Westmoreland in a jeep, Cam Ranh Bay, Vietnam, 26 October 1966 .(U.S. National Archives and Records Administration)

Notes:

[1] New York Times, February 7, 1968, February 8, 1968; Bloomberg, February 8, 2018.

[2] Robert J. Thompson III, Clear, Hold, And Destroy: Pacification in Phú Yên and the American War in Vietnam (Norman: University Of Oklahoma Press, 2021), 6, 9.

[3] Roger Trinquier, Modern Warfare: A French View of Counterinsurgency (New York: Praeger, 1964). National Security Council aide Michael Forrestal wanted to make every U.S. Army officer read Trinquier’s book.

[4] The British counterinsurgency expert is of no relation to the author of the reviewed book. Robert Thompson, Defeating Communist Insurgency: The Lessons of Malaya and Vietnam (New York: Praeger, 1966).

[5] Thompson, Clear, Hold, And Destroy, 83-84 and passim.

[6] Vietnam Documents and Research Notes Series Translation and Analysis of Significant Viet-Cong/North Vietnamese Documents, Problems of a North Vietnamese Regiment, October 1967, Documents 2-3, U.S. Army Military History Institute, Carlisle, PA, 26; Thomas W. Scoville, Reorganizing for Pacification Support (Washington: Center of Military History, 1982).

[7] For example, John C. Donnell, Viet Cong Motivation and Morale in 1964 (Santa Monica: Rand, 1965); Raymond D. Gastil, Four Papers on the Vietnamese Insurgency (Croton, NY: Hudson Institute, 1967).

[8] Chester L. Cooper, The American Experience with Pacification in Vietnam, Vol. 3 (Arlington: Institute for Defense Analyses, 1972). Thompson could have also explored the migration of villagers. See Terry Rambo, The Refugee Situation in Phú-Yên Province (McLean: Human Sciences Research, 1967).

[9] This literature is extensive. For example, Douglas S. Blaufarb, The Counterinsurgency Era (New York: Free Press, 1977).

[10] Thomas L. Ahern, Vietnam Declassified: The CIA and Counterinsurgency (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2010).

[11] Most recently, Ted N. Easterling, War in the Villages (Denton: University of North Texas Press, 2021). There were no CAPs in Phú Yên.