Civil Operations and Revolutionary Development Support

CORDS (Civil Operations and Revolutionary Development Support) was a pacification program of the governments of South Vietnam and the United States during the Vietnam War. The program was created on 9 May 1967, and included military and civilian components of both governments. The objective of CORDS was to gain support for the government of South Vietnam from its rural population which was largely under the influence or controlled by the insurgent communist forces of the Viet Cong and the People's Army of Vietnam (North Vietnamese Army).

Unlike earlier pacification programs in Vietnam, CORDS is seen by many authorities as a "successful integration of civilian and military efforts" to combat the insurgency. By 1970, 93 percent of the rural population of South Vietnam was believed by the United States to be living in "relatively secure" villages. CORDS had been extended to all 44 provinces of South Vietnam, and the communist insurgency was much reduced. Critics, however, have described the pacification programs and CORDS in terms such as "the illusion of progress". CORDS was, in the estimation of its first leader, Robert W. Komer, "too little, too late."

With the withdrawal of U.S. military forces and many civilian personnel, CORDS was abolished in February 1973. CORD's temporary successes were eroded in the 1970s, as the war became primarily a struggle between the conventional military forces of South and North Vietnam rather than an insurgency. North Vietnam prevailed in 1975.

The continuing struggle during the Vietnam War to gain the support of the rural population for the government of South Vietnam was called pacification. To Americans, pacification programs were often referred to by the phrase winning hearts and minds.

The anti-communist Ngo Dinh Diem government of South Vietnam (1955–63) had its power base among the urban and Catholic population. The government controlled the cities and large towns but Diem's efforts to extend government power to the villages, where most of the population lived, were mostly unsuccessful. The Viet Cong were gaining support and mobilizing the peasantry to oppose the government. Between 1956 and 1960, the Viet Cong instituted a land reform program dispossessing landlords and distributing land to farmers.

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