American Military History, Volume 2 by Richard W. Stewart

The insurgents, now called the Viet Cong, had by 1959 orga- nized several companies and a few battalions, the majority in the Me- kong Delta and the provinces around Saigon. As Viet Cong military strength increased, attacks against the paramilitary forces, and occasion- ally against the South Vietnamese Army, became more frequent. The guerrillas conducted many to seize equipment, arms, and ammunition but flaunted all their successes as evidence of the government's inabil- ity to protect its citizens. Political agitation and military activity also quickened in the Central Highlands, where Viet Cong agents recruited among the Montagnard tribes. In 1959, after assessing conditions in the South, the leaders in Hanoi agreed to resume the armed struggle, giving it equal weight with political efforts to undermine Diem and reunify Vietnam. To attract the growing number of anti-Communists opposed to Diem, as well as to provide a democratic facade for ad- ministering the party's policies in areas controlled by the Viet Cong, North Vietnam in December 1960 created the National Liberation Front of South Vietnam. The revival of guerrilla warfare in the South found the advisory group, the South Vietnamese Army, and Diem's government ill prepared to wage an effective campaign. In their efforts to train and strengthen Diem's army, U.S. advisers had concentrated on meeting the threat of a conventional North Vietnamese invasion. The South Vietnamese Army's earlier antiguerrilla campaigns, while seem- ingly successful, had confronted only a weak and dormant insurgency. The Civil Guard and Self-Defense Corps, which bore the brunt of the Viet Cong's attacks, were not under the MAAG's purview and proved unable to cope with the audacious Viet Cong. Diem's regime, while stressing military activities, neglected political, social, and economic re- forms. American officials disagreed over the seriousness of the guerrilla threat, the priority to be accorded political or military measures, and the need for special counterguerrilla training for the South Vietnamese Army. Only a handful of the MAAG's advisers had personal experience in counterinsurgency warfare.

Yet the U.S. Army was no stranger to such conflict. Americans had fought insurgents in the Philippines at the turn of the century, con- ducted a guerrilla campaign in Burma during World War II, helped the Greek and Philippine governments to subdue Communist insurgencies after the war, and studied the French failure in Indochina and the Brit- ish success in Malaya. However, the Army did not yet have a compre- hensive doctrine for dealing with insurgency. For the most part, insurgent warfare was still equated with the World War II–type of guerrilla or partisan struggles behind enemy lines in support of conventional op- erations. Only beginning to emerge was an appreciation of the political and social dimensions of insurgency and its role in the larger framework of revolutionary war. Insurgency meant above all a contest for political legitimacy and power-a struggle between contending political cultures over the organization of society. Most Army advisers and Special Forces went to South Vietnam in the early 1960s poorly prepared to wage such a struggle. A victory for counterinsurgency in South Vietnam would require Diem's government not only to outfight the guerrillas but also to compete successfully with their efforts to organize the population in support of the government's cause.