In my last InsideGMT article, I gave some background on the Ngo Dinh Diem regime and covered some of the threats to the regime besides the Viet Cong (VC) insurgency. In this article I shift focus to the war in the countryside between the ARVN and VC players. In the early 1960s, the Strategic Hamlet program was the major counterinsurgency strategy of the Diem regime. The main goal of the program was to separate the rural population from the Viet Cong while increasing the state’s control of the countryside. Sovereign of Discord introduces new wooden strategic hamlet pieces and additional mechanics to Fire in the Lake to model this strategy.

The Strategic Hamlet Debate

To counter the rapid spread of the Viet Cong over the course of 1961, the Diem regime, in consultation with the Kennedy administration, devised a radical strategy of halting the insurgency’s progress. In spring of 1962, the Strategic Hamlet program was launched. The program is represented by the ARVN player’s Pivotal Event and may only be played once the VC player reaches a certain score threshold. The Viet Cong referred to the program erroneously as the Staley-Taylor plan, and we encourage VC players to insist on referring to it that way to maximize annoyance of the ARVN and US players for enhanced historical accuracy.

The program was designed to rapidly fortify rural settlements across South Vietnam into tightly controlled and defended hamlets that would prevent the Viet Cong from gaining access to the population. Although the program fortified many existing hamlets, it also frequently required resettling or moving villagers from their previous homes. The program was partially inspired by the New Village strategy in Malaya of relocating Chinese squatters into new fortified villages (featured in GMT’s The British Way: Malaya). However, unlike the British strategy in Malaya, the Strategic Hamlet program aimed to rapidly fortify millions of people in rural South Vietnam, rather than just a small segment of the population. The rapid nature of the Strategic Hamlet program often meant that hamlets did not receive proper aid, defending forces, or time to allow people to relocate. Therefore, the program generated significant resentment towards the Diem regime. By early 1963, some estimates put the total number of people in strategic hamlets at over 60% of the rural population of South Vietnam; however, a significant number of the hamlets were either not effectively implemented or effectively existed only on paper.

Recent scholarship indicates that the Strategic Hamlet program did create significant problems for the Viet Cong and in many areas did, at least temporarily, succeed at severing their ties with the population. However, the Viet Cong were also able to exploit the increased resentment of the population toward the program once the strategic hamlet in an area was destroyed. This tradeoff is reflected in the expansion’s new mechanics: by placing a Strategic Hamlet piece in a space, the VC player may not Rally or Tax there and also any Opposition in the space does not count toward the VC’s victory (Opposition + Bases). In addition, the Strategic Hamlet pieces count toward COIN Control and activating marching VC Guerrillas in Support spaces. However, the ARVN player must also shift the space 1 level toward Active Opposition when placed. If the Strategic Hamlet piece is removed, then the VC player will often gain a major leap in Opposition from the ARVN player’s own strategy.

The tradeoffs presented by the Strategic Hamlet program generated a debate between the Diem regime and his American and British advisors. Robert Thompson, a British advisor who had also served in Malaya, argued the strategic hamlets should be deployed slowly in relatively secure areas to deny those areas from the Viet Cong for good. Players may pursue this strategy by slowly deploying their Strategic Hamlet pieces and quickly pacifying the space to at least Passive Support, making them easier to defend from subversion by the VC player. However, Diem and his brother Nhu argued for a riskier strategy of more rapid deployment of the strategic hamlets to areas of high Viet Cong support. In game terms, the logic behind this strategy is that, by placing Strategic Hamlet pieces in Active Opposition spaces, the hamlets are able to do more damage to the VC player while also avoiding the cost of a shift toward Active Opposition. However, this makes the hamlets far easier to remove by the VC.

The Viet Cong Response

Given the threat posed by the rapidly growing Strategic Hamlet program over the course of 1962, the Viet Cong developed methods for dealing with the strategic hamlets. First, in areas where the Strategic Hamlet program was rapidly implemented with individuals sympathetic to the Viet Cong, the insurgents found it easier to infiltrate the strategic hamlets and undermine them from the inside. The VC player may therefore remove a Strategic Hamlet piece in one space selected for Subvert. This is harder to achieve in Strategic Hamlet spaces that have been brought to at least Passive Support given the difficulty of marching in an underground VC Guerrilla. The other Viet Cong method for destroying the strategic hamlets was through frontal assault. Recall that in Sovereign of Discord the ARVN player is not shielded by the presence of large numbers of US Troops like in Fire in the Lake. The VC player may remove Strategic Hamlet pieces with Attack, but first must remove any ARVN Troops, Police or Rangers, making the removal of well defended hamlets difficult. However, in the summer of 1963 the Viet Cong launched a major offensive specifically designed to destroy the Strategic Hamlet program. This offensive is represented by the VC Pivotal Event in Sovereign of Discord. With their Pivotal Event, the VC player may March and then Attack, removing Strategic Hamlet pieces first.

The ARVN were distracted by the turmoil from the Buddhist Crisis in the summer of 1963, causing the Strategic Hamlet program to suffer significant damage from the VC offensive. However, the program only seriously collapsed after the fall of Diem in the November 1963 coup. If Diem falls from the Officer Coup! Card, covered last article, the VC may remove 1 Strategic Hamlet piece from anywhere on the board and the Strategic Hamlet pieces will not carry over into a linked Fire in the Lake campaign. However, if Diem survives, players may continue using the Strategic Hamlets into the base game until Diem is removed from power by a subsequent Coup Card.

For those looking to learn more about the Strategic Hamlet program and its ultimate failure, I highly recommend Philip Catton’s Diem’s Final Failure: Prelude to America’s War in Vietnam. In our next InsideGMT article, we will cover the two foreign powers providing assistance and advisors to their respective South Vietnamese allies.

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