American Military History, Volume 2 by Richard W. Stewart

The critical state of rural security that came to light after Diem's death again prompted the United States to expand its military aid to Saigon. General Harkins and his successor, General William C. West- moreland, urgently strove to revitalize pacification and counterinsur- gency. Army advisers helped their Vietnamese counterparts to revise national and provincial pacification plans. They retained the concept of fortified hamlets as the heart of a new national counterinsurgency pro- gram but corrected the old abuses, at least in theory. To help implement the program, Army advisers were assigned to the subsector (district) level for the first time, becoming more intimately involved in local paci- fication efforts and in paramilitary operations. Additional advisers were assigned to units and training centers, especially those of the Regional and Popular Forces (formerly called the Civil Guard and Self-Defense Corps). All Army activities, from aviation support to Special Forces, were strengthened in a concerted effort to undo the effects of years of Diem's mismanagement.

WILLIAM C. WESTMORELAND (1914– ) General William Westmoreland, a West Point graduate and highly experienced officer who had served in World War II and Korea, was forced to fight the war in Vietnam under severe limitations. Without the authority to attack North Vietnam, or even the enemy base areas in Laos and Cambodia, he relied instead on attrition to wear the enemy down. Confronted by two interrelated threats-Com- munist main-force units and guerrillas-Westmoreland chose to emphasize the main-force war, which he considered the more immediate threat. He believed that mobility and firepower could prevent a war of attrition from turning into a stalemate and that by 1967 the North Vietnamese would reach a "cross- over point," after which they would be unable to re- inforce the war in the South. After Vietnam, General Westmoreland served as Chief of Staff of the U.S. Army from 1968 to 1972.