Controlling populations is a major issue in wars of all kinds, and more practically in so-called wars of national liberation. The Vietnam War was a textbook case, as it pitted two combat cultures against each other: lethal and informational. The Viet Cong managed to establish a very strong position among the rural South Vietnamese population. The Saigon government sought to weaken this influence by combining ground operations with special forces and the physical elimination of cadres within the communist politico-military apparatus. The Phoenix Program failed to break the cognitive encirclement that forced the United States to withdraw from Vietnam without being militarily defeated.
