American official, Robert Samson "The Americans (lost the war because) they offered the peasant a constitution; the Viet Cong offered him his land and with it the right to survive". Land reform in southern Vietnam after reunification According to Trung Dinh Dang, a scholar at the Cornell School of Government and Politics Of Asia and The Pacific, the Vietnamese Communist Party struggled to carry out the socialist transformation of agriculture in the south of Vietnam following the unification of the country. The contemporary party leaders initially considered land reform initiatives to be a temporary measure toward mass collectivisation. Dang posits that further land reform initiatives set the grounds for conflict between the party and Southern Vietnamese. Land reform initiatives encountered unexpected difficulty in the southern region and its implementation could not be achieved for many years. According to Dang, agrarian reform in the south failed to benefit the majority of villagers, instead perpetuating inequality, sowing discord, and creating unrest. Instead of eliminating land-based exploitation, it created a new strata of exploiters in the form of local officials that abused their power to secure land for themselves and their relatives instead of impoverished peasants. See also Land reform in North Vietnam Land reform in Vietnam Land reform Nguyen Van Thieu Richard Nixon References External links JFK and the Diem Coup – Provided by the National Security Archive. The Pentagon Papers, Vol. 2 Ch. 4 "The Overthrow of Ngo Dinh Diem, May–November, 1963", pp. 201–76 Vietnam Agrarian politics Ngo Dinh Diem South Vietnam