This paper will explore the uses of Psychological Warfare (PSYOP) and efforts made to gain acceptance within the US military during the Cold War, and in particular the Vietnam conflict. Vietnam presented the US with a number of challenges; climate, terrain, an often concealed enemy, culture, and above all, history. It was occupied by the Chinese for over a thousand years, by the French for nearly eighty years, and by Japan during World War Two. These incursions were met with fierce and prolonged Vietnamese resistance. American strategists, contemplating US military involvement in Vietnam, hoped psychological warfare might win hearts and minds, and ultimately, the war By John Morello, DeVry University, College of Liberal Arts and Sciences. The War for the Mind Psychological operations or PSYOP as it’s called is not an unknown quantity to American military leaders. Ideally, psychological operations would be used to complement U.S. economic, political and military initiatives abroad. But it always seemed as if the political, military, and economic objectives of the United States were operating separate of each other, and psychological operations were even more remote. In Weapon on the Wall, historian Murray Dyer complained about the lack of organization of psychological operations as an auxiliary to the military dimension of statecraft. “It was not organized in World War I”, he said. “It was not organized in World War II. It was not organized in the Korean War. It still is not organized.” (p. 55). Dyer’s lament was based on the idea that while
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