Editing Strategic Hamlet Program (section)

== Ideological origins ==
[[Harry S. Truman|Truman]]'s [[Point Four Program]] in 1949 aimed to integrate '[[third world]]' countries—i.e., those not aligned with NATO nor the Soviets—into the capitalist liberal economy to win 'hearts and minds.'<ref>{{Cite journal|last=Patterson|first=Thomas G|date=1972|title=Foreign Aid under Wraps: The Point Four Program|url=http://www.jstor.org/stable/4634774|journal=The Wisconsin Magazine of History|volume=56|issue=2|pages=119–126|jstor=4634774}}</ref> The U.S. believed that by developing the 'third world' through education, sanitation, and reforming their economic and political systems, it could bring countries ‘out of the phase where rural revolutionary forces could come to power’ and create a path towards democracy.<ref name="Latham 2000 151">{{Cite book|last=Latham|first=Michael|title=Modernization as Ideology: American Social Science and 'Nation Building' in the Kennedy Era|publisher=University of North Carolina Press|year=2000|location=Chapel Hill|page=151}}</ref> This was a similar to the stance that the U.S. took towards colonising the [[History of the Philippines|Philippines]].<ref>{{Cite journal|last=Anderson|first=Warwick|date=1995|title=Excremental Colonialism: Public Health or the Poetics of Pollution|journal=Critical Inquiry|volume=21|issue=3|pages=664–690|doi=10.1086/448767|s2cid=161471633|JSTOR=}}</ref>

After the failure of the [[Presidency of Harry S. Truman|Truman]] and [[Presidency of Dwight Eisenhower|Eisenhower]] administration, [[John F. Kennedy|Kennedy]] enacted a ‘[[flexible response]]’ program, which would increase the spectrum of military responses available to the U.S. to fight counterinsurgency.<ref>{{Cite book|last=Stromseth|first=Jane E|title=Origins of Flexible Response|publisher=Macmillan|year=1988|location=London|pages=1–2}}</ref><ref name=":1">{{Cite book|last=Latham|first=Michael|title=The Cambridge History of Science: Modern Social and Behavioural Sciences|publisher=Cambridge University Press|year=2003|editor-last=Porter|editor-first=Theodore|location=New York|pages=730|chapter=Modernization|editor-last2=Ross|editor-first2=Dorothy}}</ref> This response aimed to pre-empt the conditions which lead to guerrilla warfare and ultimately local support for communist nationalism: poverty, disease and hunger.<ref name=":1" /><ref>{{Cite book|last=Latham|first=Michael|title=Modernization as Ideology: American Social Science and 'Nation Building' in the Kennedy Era|publisher=University of North Carolina Press|year=2000|location=Chapel Hill|pages=167–170, 194}}</ref> The Strategic Hamlet Program was one such example of Kennedy's 'flexible response' initiative. The strategy was guided by an integrated model of social, economic and political change, in which the intensification of the war would lead to a transformation in Vietnamese society. It was hoped that an awareness of the material benefits of capitalism would catalyse the development of a new set of modern values and loyalties.<ref name="Latham 2000 151"/>

The Strategic Hamlet Program was also closely tied to [[Modernization theory|modernisation theory]] promoted by [[Walt Whitman Rostow|W.W. Rostow]], underpinning US Foreign Policy during the [[John F. Kennedy|Kennedy]] and [[Lyndon B. Johnson|Johnson]] administrations. "Kennedy, his advisers, and the American foreign aid mission began to shift away from conventional military tactics and toward a comprehensive counterinsurgency program that integrated military action with a strategy of social engineering. By the end of 1961, the administration would become committed to defeating the [[Viet Cong|Vietcong]] through modernisation".<ref>{{Cite journal|title=Modernization as Ideology: American Social Science and 'Nation Building' in the Kennedy Era|doi=10.1163/2468-1733_shafr_sim160180015}}</ref> The Program was designed to strike at the heart of the Revolution’s political and social roots. US policymakers believed that, if Diem’s regime became the focus of popular aspirations, “nation-building and political development might stem the tide.” [[Walt Whitman Rostow|W.W. Rostow]] believed that responses to Communist warfare would have to harness the modernisation process that the insurgents sought to exploit. Thus, efforts at containment “needed to accelerate social progress” – it was anticipated that, if momentum could take hold in undeveloped areas, and social problems could be solved, the chances of insurgents seizing power would dramatically decline. Hence the promotion of modernization was regarded as means by which to “shut the narrow window of opportunity on which aggressors depended”.<ref>{{Cite book|last=Latham|first=Michael|title=Modernization as Ideology: American Social Science and 'Nation Building' in the Kennedy Era|publisher=University of North Carolina Press|year=2000|location=Chapel Hill|pages=166–169}}</ref>

In utilising the practice of modernisation, the US expressed a confidence on a global scale that it should be a “universal model for the world”.<ref>{{Cite book|last=Gilman|first=Nils|title=Mandarins of the Future: Modernization Theory in Cold War America|publisher=Johns Hopkins University Press|year=2003|pages=4}}</ref> This approach "contributed directly to justifying the militaristic approach to third world politics, above all in Vietnam”.<ref>{{Cite book|last=Gilman|first=Nils|title=Mandarins of the Future: Modernization Theory in Cold War America|publisher=Johns Hopkins University Press|year=2003|pages=197–198}}</ref>

The concept of modernisation relied on the belief that all societies, including Vietnam, passed along a linear trajectory from 'traditional' and economically unsophisticated, to 'modern' and able to harness nature through industrialisation, technology, and literacy rates.<ref>{{Cite book|last=Latham|first=Michael|title=The Cambridge History of Science: Modern Social and Behavioural Sciences|publisher=Cambridge University Press|year=2000|location=New York|pages=722}}</ref>

The practice of village relocation within the Strategic Hamlet Program, holds foundations in [[Walt Whitman Rostow|Rostow’s]] modernisation theory which recommended “destroying the external supports to guerrilla insurgents”.<ref>{{Cite book|last=Gilman|first=Nils|title=Mandarins of the Future: Modernization Theory in Cold War America|publisher=Johns Hopkins University Press|year=2003|pages=197}}</ref> Relocation aimed to reduce the connections between the Vietcong and the Southern Vietnamese population, aiming to deter communist influence. “Modernizers aimed to replicate{{snd}}by force if necessary{{snd}}the stable, democratic, capitalist welfare state that they believed was being created in the United States”.<ref>{{Cite book|last=Gilman|first=Nils|title=Mandarins of the Future: Modernization Theory in Cold War America|publisher=Johns Hopkins University Press|year=2003|pages=20}}</ref>

The Strategic Hamlet Program also reflected wider ideas of [[American exceptionalism|American Exceptionalism]]. In their approach towards Vietnam, the US saw itself as a moderniser and an exemplary form of democracy. “The Strategic Hamlet Program projected a national identity for the US as a credible world power ready to meet revolutionary changes”.<ref>{{Cite book|last=Latham|first=Michael|title="Modernization at War: Counterinsurgency and the Strategic Hamlet Program in Vietnam", Modernization as Ideology: American Social Science and "Nation Building" in the Kennedy Era|year=2000|pages=152}}</ref> Perceptions of Vietnamese as "backwards" and subordinate to "Western Progress" resulted in the conclusion by US analysts that the Vietnamese were “incapable of self-government and vulnerable to foreign subversion".<ref>{{Cite journal|last=Latham|first=Michael|date=2006|title=Redirecting the Revolution? The USA and the Failure of Nation Building in South Vietnam|journal=Third World Quarterly|volume=27|issue=1|pages=29|doi=10.1080/01436590500368743|s2cid=154956991}}</ref>

The US media and government spokesmen presented the Strategic Hamlet Program and its projects of village relocation and social engineering as “reflections of benevolent American power”. In challenging communism against the backdrop of the Cold War, the Strategic Hamlet Program “revised older ideologies of imperialism and manifest destiny” stemming from notions of American Exceptionalism.<ref>{{Cite book|last=Latham|first=Michael|title='Modernization at War: Counterinsurgency and the Strategic Hamlet Program in Vietnam', Modernization as Ideology: American Social Science and 'Nation Building' in the Kennedy Era|year=2000|pages=153}}</ref>

In aiming to deter the Vietnamese peoples from Communist and Vietcong influence, the US retained the “sense of national mission projected by an ideology of modernisation”. The US government aimed to defeat the threat of Communism in Vietnam to maintain its exceptionalist vision of “America's superior society and its transformative potential”.<ref>{{Cite book|last=Latham|first=Michael|title='Modernization at War: Counterinsurgency and the Strategic Hamlet Program in Vietnam', Modernization as Ideology: American Social Science and 'Nation Building' in the Kennedy Era|year=2000|pages=206}}</ref> The adoption of modernisation theory “reflected a sense that the United States should be a universal model”.<ref>{{Cite journal|last=Latham|first=Michael|date=2006|title=Redirecting the Revolution? The USA and the Failure of Nation Building in South Vietnam|journal=Third World Quarterly|volume=27|issue=1|pages=31|doi=10.1080/01436590500368743|s2cid=154956991}}</ref>

The Program also had roots in Vietnamese policymaking. Diem's government had its own views of how to deal with the related issues of counter-insurgency and nation building, modern ideas which presented an alternative to the political agenda of both his regime's US ally and his Communist opponent. The Strategic Hamlet Program was, arguably, the clearest embodiment of these ideas. Although strategic hamlets aimed to separate the Communist-led guerrillas from the peasantry by regrouping and fortifying thousands of rural settlements, they were not merely a device to defeat the armed insurgency. [[Ngo Dinh Diem]] also saw them as a way of mobilizing the population politically and generating support for his regime; they were the centre-piece of the government's plans to modernize the [[Republic of Vietnam|RVN]] and simultaneously free it from dependence on the United States.<ref>{{Cite journal|last=Catton|first=Philip|date=1999|title=Counterinsurgency and Nation Building: The Strategic Hamlet Programme in South Vietnam, 1961–1963|journal=The International History Review|volume=21|issue=4|pages=919|doi=10.1080/07075332.1999.9640883}}</ref>

[[Ngo Dinh Diem]] made efforts to limit foreign involvement in the hamlet programme, particularly as the United States put a great deal of pressure on the regime in 1961 to accept US policy prescriptions for defeating the insurgents. Such demands further solidified notions within the Diem regime that its ally was overbearing and meddlesome; indeed, US pressure encouraged the Ngos to see the hamlet programme as a way to free South Vietnam from dependence on the United States for economic and military aid, as well as a way to satisfy their other political goals. Whilst the United States eventually supported the hamlet scheme, most US officials were 'somewhat bewildered by the sudden appearance of a major activity that had not been processed through their complex co-ordinating staffs'.<ref>{{Cite journal|last=Catton|first=Philip|date=1999|title=Counterinsurgency and Nation Building: The Strategic Hamlet Programme in South Vietnam, 1961–1963|journal=The International History Review|volume=21|issue=4|pages=923–924|doi=10.1080/07075332.1999.9640883}}</ref>