Word: saigon
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...past the Viet Cong could expect to win the war simply by preventing Saigon from extending its control in the rural areas. This the Viet Cong can still do but it is no longer sufficient to achieve victory. Increasingly the Viet Cong must also demonstrate their ability to win support and to exercise authority in the cities. So far, they have been even less successful in these efforts than the Government has been in winning support in the countryside. In this sense, history--drastically and brutally speeded up by the American impact--may pass the Viet Cong by. Societies...
...often argued that this process should begin with the creation of a coalition government. There are, however, many disadvantages to such an approach. Neither the NLF nor Saigon wants a coalition with the other, and it is difficult to envision how the existing leaderships could work together. From the viewpoint of the Government such an arrangement would, as one moderate Vietnamese leader put it, simply allow "the wolves into the chicken pen." More specifically it would surrender to the Viet Cong a major share in the exercise of authority in urban areas, which is precisely what they have been unable...
Conversely, it would be difficult for the NLF to enter into association with a group of men whom it has repeatedly denounced as puppets and traitors. Even if external pressure from the United States, Hanoi and the Soviet Union produced something in Saigon which could be labeled a "coalition government," it clearly would not be a coalition government in fact. A "coalition" implies sustained cooperation between autonomous groups. If there was a reasonable balance of power within the Government, however, it would be a government divided against itself, a temporary expedient which neither side would expect to endure; each side...
...participants for urban riots and insurrections. After the war, massive government programs will be required either to resettle migrants in rural areas or to rebuild the cities and promote peacetime urban employment. In the meantime, while the war continues, urbanization is significantly altering the balance of power between the Saigon Government and the Viet Cong...
...Viet Cong cut many of the transportation and communication routes into the cities in an apparent effort to isolate urban areas from each other and from the surrounding countryside. The most notable action here concerned road and water communication routes between the relatives secure areas of the Delta and Saigon. The weeks following the offensive saw a sharp drop in the previous level of supplies moving over these routes. This caused some economic dislocation in both the farmlands and the cities, but not of either a prolonged or highly threatening character...