Will the CORDS Snap? Testing the Widely Accepted Assumption that Inter-Agency Single Management Improves Policy-Implementation by Patrick Vincent Howell Department of Political Science Duke University Date:_______________________ Approved: ___________________________ Peter Feaver, Chair ___________________________ David Rohde ___________________________ Kyle Beardsley, Supervisor ___________________________ Henry Brands Dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Department of Political Science in the Graduate School of Duke University 2018 i v ABSTRACT Will the CORDS Snap? Testing the Widely Accepted Assumption that Inter-Agency Single Management Improves Policy-Implementation Title by Patrick Vincent Howell Department of Political Science Duke University Date:_______________________ Approved: ___________________________ Peter Feaver, Chair ___________________________ David Rohde ___________________________ Kyle Beardsley, Supervisor ___________________________ Henry Brands An abstract of a dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Department of Political Science in the Graduate School of Duke University 2018 Copyright by Patrick Vincent Howell 2018 Abstract Since the end of the Cold War, the US Government’s difficulties in implementing policies requiring integrated responses from multiple agencies have led to a number of calls to reform USG inter-agency policy-implementation; similar to how the 1986 Goldwater-Nichols Act improved the “jointness” of the various military services. All of these major studies and reports, most prominent being the 2008 “Project on National Security Reform”, similarly recommended adopting a Unity of Command approach that authorizes a single manager to synchronize the operations of all departments and agencies in time, space, and purpose. All of these studies directly or indirectly base their recommendations off a single case study from the Vietnam War that implemented the policy of pacification (counter-insurgency)- CORDS (Civil Operations Revolutionary Development Support). However, the causal relationship between single management and effective pacification has never been established as a fact; it is a rather a widely- held, but untested, assumption. This project will supplement archival research from the US and Communist perspectives with current qualitative and quantitative research on counter-insurgency (COIN) and CORDS in Vietnam to test the assumption that single management made CORDS effective. By generating a detailed list of alternative explanations for improved pacification in Vietnam in addition to CORDS, it will use three different political science methods (comparative, congruence, and process-tracing) iv to eliminate the infeasible hypotheses and rank order the remaining feasible hypotheses. The triangulation of this research question shows that, while the causal connection between single management and effective pacification in Vietnam is not an absolute fact, it is an extremely strong and likely assumption. v Contents Abstract ......................................................................................................................................... iv List of Tables ................................................................................................................................ xii List of Figures .............................................................................................................................xiv 1 Introduction ............................................................................................................................. 1 1.1 CORDS—a Unique Interagency Organization ........................................................ 3 1.2 Key Terms in the Interagency Reform Debates ..................................................... 11 1.3 Constitutional Impediments to Interagency Operations ..................................... 13 1.4 Current Strategic Challenges Requires Interagency Solutions ........................... 16 1.5 Interagency Strategic Solutions Require National Security Reform .................. 19 1.6 National Security Reform Proposals Are Based on the CORDS Program ........ 21 1.7 Research Design Testing the Effectiveness of CORDS ......................................... 24 1.7.1 Literature Review of Pacification in Vietnam ................................................... 24 1.7.2 Research Problem and Objective ......................................................................... 31 1.7.3 Research Question and Hypothesis .................................................................... 32 1.7.4 Inferential Strategy ................................................................................................ 34 1.7.5 Case Selection and Methodologies ..................................................................... 35 1.7.6 Contribution ........................................................................................................... 38 1.8 Way Ahead ................................................................................................................. 39 2 Relevance of CORDS to the Current Policy Debate on Interagency Reform ............... 41 2.1 History of Defense Reform: Integrating the Four “M” Agencies in DIME ....... 42 vi 2.2 Informative Pseudo Interagency Reform from World War II ............................. 60 2.3 History That Rhymes: Integrating All National Security DIME Agencies ........ 65 2.4 The Influence of CORDS and/or 1986 GNA on Current Interagency Reform Proposals ................................................................................................................................ 76 2.5 Insights from Comparing “M” & “DIME” Reform ............................................... 90 2.6 Summary ..................................................................................................................... 93 3 Comparative Analysis of Pacification Programs in Vietnam ......................................... 94 3.1 Contribution ............................................................................................................... 94 3.2 Research Design ......................................................................................................... 94 3.2.1 Case Selection and Unit of Analysis ................................................................... 94 3.2.2 Design and Methodology ..................................................................................... 95 3.2.3 Outcome Variable (Control over time) ............................................................... 98 3.2.4 Explanatory Variables for Improved Control over Time .............................. 105 3.3 The Empirical Data- Trends in Control ................................................................ 113 3.3.1 History of the Major Communist Decisions and Actions .............................. 115 3.3.1.1 Prelude to the 1959 Communist Insurgency ........................................... 115 3.3.1.2 Description of Dau Tranh: the Vietnamese Communist Doctrine for Insurgency ..................................................................................................................... 123 3.3.1.3 Losing Control from 1959 to 1964 ............................................................ 130 3.3.1.4 Neither Winning nor Losing from 1965 to 1967 ..................................... 136 3.3.1.5 Gaining Control from 1967 to 1972 .......................................................... 141 3.3.1.6 Losing the War from 1972 to 1975 ............................................................ 146 3.4 Quantitative USG Assessments ............................................................................. 148 vii 3.5 Trends in Control over Time in South Vietnam .................................................. 151 3.6 Pacification in Vietnam Data Set ........................................................................... 154 3.7 Comparative Analysis ............................................................................................. 156 3.7.1 Summary of Data Set .......................................................................................... 156 3.7.2 “Before-After” Analysis ..................................................................................... 157 3.7.3 Observations and Way Ahead ........................................................................... 163 4 Congruence Analysis of Pacification Programs in Vietnam ........................................ 165 4.1 Contribution ............................................................................................................. 165 4.2 Overall Strategy for Congruence Analysis .......................................................... 165 4.2.1 Framework to Compare Explanatory Variables ............................................. 166 4.2.2 Outcome Variable- COIN Wins vs Changing Control .................................. 169 4.2.3 Explanatory Variables- COIN literature vs. Pacification in Vietnam .......... 170 4.3 Integration and Extension of Existing Statistical Research Explaining COIN Outcomes ............................................................................................................................. 171 4.3.1 Weakness in Statistical Analysis of COIN ....................................................... 172 4.3.2 Data Sources: Existing Large-n COIN Research Projects .............................