The London School of Economics and Political Science The Counter-Revolutionary Path: South Vietnam, the United States, and the Global Allure of Development, 1968-1973 Simon Toner A thesis submitted to the Department of International History of the London School of Economics for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy, October 2015. 1 Declaration I certify that the thesis I have presented for examination for the MPhil/PhD degree of the London School of Economics and Political Science is solely my own work other than where I have clearly indicated that it is the work of others (in which case the extent of any work carried out jointly by me and any other person is clearly identified in it). The copyright of this thesis rests with the author. Quotation from it is permitted, provided that full acknowledgement is made. This thesis may not be reproduced without my prior written consent. I warrant that this authorisation does not, to the best of my belief, infringe on the rights of any third party. I declare that my thesis consists of 90,215 words. 2 Abstract This dissertation examines the theory and practice of development in South Vietnam’s Second Republic from the aftermath of the 1968 Tet Offensive to the signing of the Paris Peace Accords in 1973. Based on Vietnamese and American archival material, it explores the development approaches of both the South Vietnamese and United States governments. In particular, it examines the ways in which South Vietnamese elites and U.S. officials in Washington and Saigon responded to the various development paradigms on offer to postcolonial states between the 1950s and 1970s, namely modernization theory, community development, land reform, and an emerging neoliberal economics. In doing so the dissertation makes three primary arguments. In contrast to much of the literature on the final years of the American War in Vietnam, this dissertation argues that development remained a crucial component of the United States’ and South Vietnamese strategy after the Tet Offensive. It highlights both the continuities and changes in U.S. approaches to international development between the Johnson and Nixon years as well as arguing that debates about development strategies in Vietnam during this time presaged larger shifts in international development later in the 1970s. Secondly, it argues that South Vietnamese elites had a transnational development vision. They not only employed U.S. theories of development but also drew on the lessons offered by other states in the Global South, particularly Taiwan and South Korea. Finally, the dissertation argues that the South Vietnamese government employed development to earn domestic legitimacy and shore up its authoritarian governance. The dissertation makes three historiographical interventions. Firstly, it illuminates U.S. development practice in the Nixon era. Secondly, the dissertation shows that South Vietnamese officials shaped development outcomes, thus granting agency that is largely absent from accounts of this period. Finally, it demonstrates that historians must place South Vietnam within the larger framework of decolonization and East Asian anti-Communism. 3 Table of Contents Abstract 3 Table of Contents 4 List of Abbreviations 5-6 Note on the Text 7 Acknowledgements 8-9 Introduction 10 Chapter One 58 Contested Visions: the Politics of Economic Reform in South Vietnam Chapter Two 100 “He Behaves Like an Economic Man”: Agricultural Development and Land Reform in South Vietnam Chapter Three 148 Creating Clean, Modern Citizens: Public Health in South Vietnam Chapter Four 190 “The City Will Always Win”: Urban Development in South Vietnam Conclusion 236 Bibliography 255 4 Abbreviations ADB- Agricultural Development Bank APC – Accelerated Pacification Campaign ARVN- Army of the Republic of Vietnam CAP- Community Action Programme CDD- Community Development Directorate, CORDS CIA- Central Intelligence Agency CIA-FOIA- Central Intelligence Agency Freedom of Information Act Electronic Reading Room CIP- Commodity Import Programme CORDS- Civil Operations and Revolutionary Development Support DDRS- Declassified Documents Reference System DENTCAP- Dental Civic Action Programme DoD – Department of Defence FCO- Foreign and Commonwealth Office Files FHPA- Family Happiness Protection Association [Hội Bảo Vệ Hạnh Phúc Gia Đình] FRUS- Foreign Relations of the United States GMD - Guomindang GVN- Government of the Republic of Vietnam IPPF- International Planned Parenthood Federation IRRI- International Rice Research Institute ISI- import-substitution industrialization JDG- Joint Development Group KAP- Knowledge, Attitudes and Practices Survey LBJL- Lyndon Baines Johnson Library LTTT- Land-to-the-Tiller Programme 5 MACV- Military Assistance Command, Vietnam MEDCAP- Medical Civic Action Programme MEP- Malaria Eradication Programme MLRA- Ministry of Land Reform and Agriculture MOH- Ministry of Health MORD- Ministry of Rural Development MPW- Ministry of Public Works NARA- National Archives and Records Administration NLF- National Liberation Front NSC- National Security Council PAVN - People’s Army of Vietnam PRG- Provisional Revolutionary Government PSDF- People’s Self-Defence Forces PTTDNCH- Phủ Tổng Thống Đệ Nhị Cộng Hòa (Office of the President of the Second Republic) RD- Revolutionary Development RVN- Republic of Vietnam SRI – Stanford Research Institute TTLTQGII- Trung Tâm Lưu Trữ Quốc Gia II (National Archives Center II) TTU-VVA- Texas Tech University, Vietnam Virtual Archive UKNA- United Kingdom National Archives USAID- United States Agency for International Development USD- Urban Self-Development Programme VSD- Village Self-Development Programme VSSG- Vietnam Special Studies Group 6 A Note on the Text: While Vietnamese documents obviously include diacritics, U.S. documents do not include diacritics for Vietnamese personal names and place names. Therefore, I have included Vietnamese diacritics in my translations of Vietnamese documents in the footnotes but for the sake of consistency I have chosen not to include them in the main body of the text. 7 Acknowledgements This dissertation is the product of thousands of hours of reading and archival research, hundreds of hours of intensive language study and international travel, and tens of thousands of cups of tea and coffee. As I look over it now, I am reasonably proud of what I have accomplished though I know none of it would have been possible without the assistance of dozens of people and institutions. This dissertation was supported by generous funding from LSE IDEAS, the Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations, the LBJ Foundation, the Roosevelt Studies Center, the Royal Historical Society, the Economic History Society and LSE’s International History Department. I owe special thanks to Cato Stonex for his enormously generous sponsorship of the LSE IDEAS Stonex PhD Scholarship in International History. One of the great pleasures of doing this dissertation has been making so many friends along the way. Among the current crop of graduate students and recent PhDs in the ‘U.S. and the World’ field are brilliant people who are passionate about their research and teaching, making the current state of the academic job market all the more depressing. So much of what I’ve learned about international development is the result of conversations and email exchanges with Paul Adler and James Lin. I will count myself very lucky if I am ever again on a conference panel as thought-provoking as ours at SHAFR 2013. Paul and James, as well as Daniel Bessner, Sean Fear, Vanessa Freije, Artemy Kalinovsky, Aaron Moulton, Will Mountz, Chris Miller, Stuart Schrader, and Tom Tunstall Allcock, all deserve thanks for reading portions of the dissertation, shaping my thinking and/or sharing their wisdom on what it is to be a historian. I have also been tremendously fortunate to meet and interact with senior scholars in my field. Mark Bradley, Nick Cullather, Chris Endy, Tom Robertson and Hang Nguyen commented on portions of this dissertation at various conferences. Their feedback, as well as conversations with Ed Miller and Daniel Immerwahr, proved instrumental in helping me (re)conceptualise and refine my project. I must also thank Bob Brigham, who sparked my interest in the Vietnam War through his wonderful graduate seminars at University College Dublin in 2007-2008, and thank Hang Nguyen again for writing more letters for me than she should have put up with! Archivists at the National Archives in College Park, the LBJ Library, the Nixon Library and the Ford Library pointed me in the right direction when I might otherwise have been overwhelmed. In particular, John Wilson at the LBJ Library and Donna Lehman and Jeremy Schmidt at the Ford Library were very generous with their time. The prospect of conducting research in the Vietnamese archives was the most daunting (and exciting) part of the entire dissertation experience but it would have been even more daunting had my Vietnamese language teachers at the National University in Hanoi not been so helpful in preparing me. Cô Hương and Cô Mai deserve special thanks in this regard. Once I arrived at National Archives Center II in Ho Chi Minh City the archivists were very welcoming and extremely helpful, putting up with my questionable pronunciation and endless requests for photocopying. During my research trips to Saigon in 2013 and 2014, Tony Giusti, Ruairi Lamb, Kevin Li, Trinh Luu My, Haydon Cherry, Alec and Cat Worsnop, Bao Kham Chau, and Brett Reilly gave me plenty of reasons to spend as