CORDS and the Phoenix Program in Vietnam - Term Paper Example

? CORDS and the Phoenix Program in Vietnam Cords and phoenix programs are programs that gave directives of setting up viable well coordinated and designed organizations to manage and control security and infrastructure during the Vietnam War. The history of CORDS and Phoenix programs date back in the late 1970 when the Americans noticed the need of addressing the Internal Security in South Vietnam. At this time, when Vietnam’s internal security was in question, main force operations had collapsed thereby leading to terrorism, conversion to other faiths, smuggling and penetrations into Vietnam. These forces were controlled and handled by the Viet Cong Infrastructure (VCI) which was the political and executive organization used by the communist derived the power to direct and control the people of South Vietnam. Due to this, there arose need to counter and defend against the VCI system as a way of providing the South Vietnam government with internal security and infrastructure construction and reconstruction systems. What was essentially done to counter the VCI system was known as identification and neutralization which was done by the United States Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). The entire neutralization process hence depended on the capability CIA program, which was known as the Phoenix program (Andrade?, 19). Just as discussed in the introductory bit of this paper, the Phoenix program came into existence in the period between 1967 and 1971, which was part of the CIAs effort to find intelligence access to policy levels of the Vietnam Cong Infrastructure as a way of directing development actions to the rural South Vietnam and taking control of the communist political structure by eliminating high-ranked VC cadre. In fact at this time, phoenix program received assassination allegations. In 1993, there developed alerting evidence of VCI organization emerging after the downfall of the Diem regime. The program was then obliged to join MACV and USOM’s public safety division in advocating for reorganization of GVN (Government of South Vietnam) intelligence. At this point, MACV had to carry out its operations through Civil Operations and Revolutionary Development Support (CORDS) supported by the CIAs phoenix program. The main purpose at this time was however to coordinate efforts of police, local leaders and paramilitary groups to identify and tear down insurgent operations by arresting the local enemy ranking cadre and even using force if needed. The phoenix program was however viewed as controversial as it received allegations of assassinations, and it was also imaged as an unlawful program targeting civilians (Moi?se, 42). On the positive side, phoenix program was one of the many programs of the CIA tailored towards pacification and rural security programs run in South Vietnam with a promise to the civilians that the collaboration between the government of the United States and South Vietnam was aimed at shielding them from VCI and they were even trained in self-defense by US Military Assistance Command Vietnam (MACV). After some time in 1967, the MACV had succeeded in uniting all military and civilian pacification attempts which were known as Civil Operations and Revolutionary Development Support. From this point, the CIA and MACV were intensively engaged in CORDS which was also run in unison with the Saigon administrative government. CORDS and phoenix programs hence worked as an entity by establishing an extensive network over 100 provincial and district operations committee programs in Southern Vietnam (Andrade?, 27). Basically, these committees were established to implement the CORDS and Phoenix programs. Cords programs were to come up with innovative all encompassing government approach to achieving rural pacification through development activities purposefully organized and directed with military operations and aid programs. In general, the program succeeded in incorporating civilian and military efforts under one command structure. The CORDS program under the backing of the President and senior officials of the government, it was able to stop the communist bureaucratic processes and at the same time bringing together activities aimed at sticking to the goals of the missions, as opposed to individualism driven agency’s objectives (Moi?se, 42). CORDS and Phoenix integrated program's main successes were establishing security programs before development. CORDS integrated program ensured that civilian’s security was addressed before any development projects were undertaken. This is for instance the case of the roles of pacification and development programs in South Vietnam. Enhanced training mechanism was also another success of CORDS programs. CORDS program made sure that the civilians in collaboration with the military were well trained on self-defense and a variety of courses that would spar development and growth. CORDS program also synchronized development efforts of the military and civilian agencies by merging them into one military structure (Andrade & Willbanks, 58). Another success of the programs was the operations of providing assistance to refugees and to other war victims, assisting them to reestablish their disrupted lives. Compensation, commodity and financial assistance were also given to the victims of war and refugees by providing basic needs and humanitarian aid. Finally, forming part of the success of CORDS program is promoting institutional building to meet the needs of the people and installing effective leadership policies. It had the ability to quickly change institutional and leadership policy programs to fit the needs on the ground as well as the elasticity to finding and resolving issues. Leaders and institutions were taught on methods of coming up with creative and new ideas to attain goals by understanding that bureaucratic controls may be a constraint to development (Evans, 23). The successes of this program were attributed to the potency of the particular activities of the program. It is however important to note that the integrated command structure of CORDS was also a major factor towards its successes. Some of the critiques associated with these programs were majorly directed to phoenix activities. The CIA anti-infrastructure operations were alleged to have contributed to direct capturing, killing and persuading to “neutralize” more than 80,000 cadres, to some degree fueling the conflict more. Another critique was, most of the VCI who were neutralized were low-ranked individuals rather than high-ranked individuals that phoenix integrated efforts were intended to capture. Lastly, the far reaching positive effects of this program were not felt. This was because the effectiveness of the anti-VCI operations was experiencing minimal financial impacts. Anti-VCI operations are also recorded to have involved in illegal and immoral activities (Costa, 26). CORDS integrated programs had its successes and its drawbacks during the execution of its operations. As much as the program did best in the pacification and development programs, there were some operations that should have been done differently. There was suppose to be a different approach to the operations directed towards village communities that promotes positive development and integration element plan that serves the villages fairly and equally rather than contributing to illegal and immoral activities. Development and pacification operations were also supposed to be long term through effective planning, management and funding. In summary, the lessons learned and employed during the operations of the CORDS and the Phoenix programs of Vietnam should be improved upon and used in the application of today’s world military intervention and humanitarian assistance. Greater emphasis should be focused towards developing security, economic infrastructure development, positive political democracy and global peace. Works cited Andrade, D., & Willbanks, J. H. (2008). CORDS/Phoenix: Counterinsurgency Lessons from Vietnam for the Future. Ft. Belvoir: Defense Technical Information Center. Andrade?, D. (1990). Ashes to ashes: the Phoenix program and the Vietnam War. Lexington, Mass.: Lexington Books. Costa, C. P. (2006). Phoenix Rises Again: HUMINT Lessons for Counterinsurgency Operations. Ft. Belvoir: Defense Technical Information Center. Evans, S. S. (2008). U.S. Marines and irregular warfare, 1898-2007: anthology and selected bibliography. Quantico, Va.: Marine Corps University, United States Marine Corps. Moi?se, E. E. (2001). Historical dictionary of the Vietnam War. Lanham, Md.: Scarecrow Press. A., & L, T. (n.d). Vietnam Declassified: The CIA and Counterinsurgency. Phoenix. Retrieved March 30, 2013, from http://site.ebrary.com/id/10340821 Read More