Word: saigon
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...rural areas of the South with bombs, causing large numbers of surviving civilians to flee from areas under NLF control. Crowded into teeming, poverty-striken refugee camps outside South Vietnam's cities, growing numbers of the South Vietnamese people have fallen under the political and military control of the Saigon regime...
Strangely enough, Huntington concludes that military strength alone will not be able to spread Saigon's control to all areas of the country. That, he says, "would require a much larger and more intense military and pacification effort than is currently contemplated by Saigon and Washington." The rest of the article then argues for some form of political cooperation between the Thieu regime and the NLF, which Huntington suggests can best be achieved initially on a local level. "Such a system might be labeled federal, confederal, pluralistic, decentralized--but whatever the label, it would reflect the varied sources of political...
Huntington's argument for political "accommodation," for prodding the Saigon regime into recognizing the NLF as a legitimate political force in South Vietnam, logically contradicts his praise of urbanization. For if Huntington believed urbanization could be effective, he would simply have argued for "a much larger and more intense military and pacification effort" instead of dismissing it as beyond Washington's capability. In fact, a number of government officials who are familiar with Huntington's work have suggested privately that his accolade of the urbanization program was probably a tactical ploy designed to interest "hard-headed" Washington officials...
...counter Hanoi's argument on election rigging, Nixon announced on January 25 that President Thieu of the Saigon government had agreed to step down one month before a new presidential election, and that the election itself would take place six months after the U.S. had completed its withdrawal. On January 26, Thieu's foreign minister stated that before there could be elections the PRG troops would have to lay down their arms and accept 'reintegration' into the community...
...removal of civilians on their own "free will" from northernmost to southernmost South Vietnam--which began in late October--would hinder a positive response from Hanoi to his peace plan. The relocation project grew to impressive dimensions in early January. On January 13 the PRG charged that the Saigon government's plan to relocate one million civilians would create a free-fire-zone in northernmost South Vietnam in which the U.S. could use tactical nuclear weapons. Peking and Hanoi have also expressed concern over relocation...