No More Vietnams

by Richard Nixon

  On November 20, our talks reopened in Paris. Kissinger presented Thieu’s proposed changes, as well as some of our own. Hanoi’s delegates objected strongly. After several tough negotiating sessions, I concluded that if we were to reach an agreement, we would have to abandon most of Thieu’s major demands. I instructed Kissinger to seek a settlement along the lines of the October agreement. But Hanoi now began to stonewall us. It hardened its positions on the unresolved issues and pulled back concessions it had made on some resolved questions. Having reached an impasse, we recessed the talks.

  On December 4, when the talks reconvened, Hanoi turned even more obstinate. Its delegates not only categorically rejected every change we had requested, but also withdrew some that had already been agreed upon during the last round and introduced several new and unacceptable demands of their own. Kissinger reported to me, “There is almost no doubt that Hanoi is prepared now to break off the negotiations and go another military round. Their own needs for a settlement are now outweighed by the attractive vision they see of our having to choose between a complete split with Saigon or an unmanageable domestic situation.” In the following days, although we succeeded in resolving some issues, the North Vietnamese reopened others. They gave us just enough each day to keep the negotiations going, but not quite enough to conclude an agreement. With the prospects for an agreement actually receding, Kissinger and I reluctantly concluded that the enemy had made a deliberate decision to prolong the war.

  On December 13, we recessed the talks. I had decided that since Hanoi had made up its mind to continue the war, we had to make a move that would change its mind. We had to convince the North Vietnamese by our actions, not just by our words, that they were better off concluding an agreement on our terms than continuing the fighting. This meant stepping up the bombing of North Vietnam. On December 14, I issued an order to reseed the mines in Haiphong Harbor, to resume aerial reconnaissance throughout North Vietnam, and to bomb military targets in the Hanoi-Haiphong complex with B-52s. It was the most difficult decision concerning Vietnam that I made during my entire presidency. But I had no choice. I was convinced that if we did not compel the North Vietnamese to agree to our terms, Congress would force us to accept defeat by agreeing to a withdrawal in exchange for our POWs.

  On December 17, we began the mining operation, and within twenty-four hours 129 B-52s flew bombing runs over North Vietnam. Over twelve days we sent B-52s on 729 missions and fighter-bombers on about 1,000, dropping a total of more than 20,000 tons of bombs. Our targets—which included communications facilities, railroad yards, power plants, airports, fuel depots, and the like—all had military significance.

  Our bombing provoked hysterical outbursts from our critics. A newsmagazine wrote that “civilized man will be horrified at the renewed spectacle of the world’s mightiest air force mercilessly pounding a small Asian nation in an abuse of national power and disregard of humanitarian principles.” One newspaper wrote that it caused millions of Americans “to cringe in shame and to wonder at their President’s very sanity.” One columnist said the bombing was the action of “a maddened tyrant,” and another stated that we had “loosed the holocaust.” One senator said it was a “stone-age tactic.” Another called it “the most murderous aerial bombardment in the history of the world” and “a policy of mass-murder that’s being carried on in the name of the American people.”

  Seldom has so much heated rhetoric been so wrong. Our critics denounced our actions as the “Christmas carpet bombing.” But they were wrong on both points: We did not bomb on Christmas day, and we never covered whole areas with a carpet of bombs, as had been the case with our bombing of German and Japanese cities during World War II. Our pilots struck only at specific military targets and had explicit orders to avoid collateral damage to civilian areas—even if this exposed them to greater risks.

  Our critics should have known better than to make the utterly false accusation that we were indiscriminately bombing civilians. Hanoi at the time had put the number of civilian fatalities at between 1,300 and 1,600. Regrettable though these accidental losses were, they did not approach the death tolls that resulted when the Allies deliberately bombed civilian targets in World War II. Over 35,000 civilians were killed in the triple raid on Dresden, over 42,000 died in six nights of bombing in Hamburg, and over 83,000 Japanese were killed in just two days when we fire-bombed Tokyo in 1945. If we had targeted civilian areas during the December bombing, North Vietnamese losses would have been a hundred times higher than they were.

  Our bombing achieved its purposes. Militarily, we had shattered North Vietnam’s war-making capacity. Politically, we had shattered Hanoi’s will to continue the war. Admiral James Stockdale, one of our POWs who was awarded the Medal of Honor when he returned, later described the scene when the prisoners heard the explosions as the bombs began hitting their targets. He wrote that “cheers started to go up all over the cellblocks of that downtown prison. This was a new reality for Hanoi.” He observed that the bombing took a heavy psychological toll on the enemy: “One look at any Vietnamese officer’s face told the whole story. It telegraphed accommodation, hopelessness, remorse, fear. The shock was there; our enemy’s will was broken.” Our POWs knew that they were coming home, even if our editorial writers did not.

  Hanoi quickly accepted our first offer to resume the talks. We had forced Hanoi to come back to the negotiating table to end the war through a fair settlement. On January 8, when our high-level negotiations reconvened, North Vietnam agreed to our basic terms within forty-eight hours.

  • • •

  On my sixtieth birthday, January 9, 1973, I received a cable from Kissinger informing me that all the outstanding issues had been resolved; only the formalities remained. When I heard the news, I should have been elated. Some White House staff members were puzzled that we did not raise a glass to toast “peace with honor” after America’s longest war. But for most Americans Vietnam was a war without heroes, without victory parades, without celebrations. For many in the news media, the only heroes were the antiwar politicians, the antiwar demonstrators, and those who evaded military service rather than those who served.

  There are those who believe that while war is an acutely traumatic and personal experience for soldiers who risk their lives on the battlefield, it is essentially an impersonal experience for a President who sends them into battle. A President, it is assumed, spends his time moving pins on a war map, reading reports on enemy body counts, and ordering the bombing of schools and hospitals. He is supposedly so obsessed with what happens to nations that he is oblivious to what happens to people.

  But for Presidents, too, war is an intensely traumatic, personal ordeal. Like all Presidents, my four predecessors—Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, and Johnson—were men who cherished peace. Each one of them wanted to avoid going to war in Vietnam if at all possible. But they were hardheaded realists who knew that peace under communism has killed far more people than wars against Communists. And they recognized that a Communist conquest of Vietnam would be detrimental to American interests not only in Southeast Asia but also in the rest of the world.

  I had been intimately associated with the history of Vietnam for twenty years. In 1953, as Vice President, I had made an official visit to the French colonial cities of Saigon and Hanoi. In 1954, I had participated in the National Security Council debate about whether to use American air power to prevent the fall of Dien Bien Phu. In 1956, I developed a close friendship with President Diem. I had great respect for him as a strong anti-Communist leader. I was deeply saddened when I learned of his assassination in 1963 and was shocked when I heard that the United States had encouraged and masterminded the coup that resulted in his death. In the mid-1960s, I visited South Vietnam a number of times and developed a deep respect for our fighting men. I also felt a strong affection for the South Vietnamese people—a courageous nation that was suffering the ravages of a cruel war waged by a ruthless enemy who treated even women and children as legiti
mate targets for terrorism, torture, and murder.

  In 1969, when I became President, I wanted nothing more than to end the war as quickly as possible, but in a way that would both prevent the imposition of Communist repression upon the South Vietnamese people and discourage other Communist aggressors from launching such wars in the future. I had to deal with other great foreign policy issues during my presidency, but a day never passed when the war in Vietnam was not prominent among my concerns. I hated the Vietnam war. But even more, I hated all wars. I knew that I must not end the Vietnam War in a way that would lead to more and larger wars in the future.

  It was my responsibility to see the war from afar—and to make the decisions that would hasten its end on an honorable basis. But I also saw the war in intensely personal terms. I spent hours on letters to the next of kin of our soldiers who had been killed in action. No matter how hard I tried to give them personal warmth, I was never satisfied with the final product. It always seemed too cold. There were just no words to express adequately the heartfelt emotions I experienced when I heard about the death of an American who was killed in the prime of life in the service of his country.

  During the Christmas holidays each year, I called the next of kin of our killed in action on a random basis. Usually, their mothers answered the telephone. I called to give them a lift, but frequently they ended up giving me a lift—probably without knowing how much I needed it. In their voices there was no self-pity and no recrimination, only simple and eloquent expressions of support for the actions I was taking to bring the war to an end. I vividly recall a conversation I had shortly before Christmas in 1971 with a widow whose only son had been killed in action. I could sense the loneliness and sadness in her voice and was deeply moved when she told me at the end of our talk that she went to mass every day and always said a rosary for me and my family.

  Most Americans are now aware of the heroism of our prisoners of war. But the families who prayed for their return were also heroic. Mrs. Nixon and I met with members of the League of Families a number of times. It was an emotional and heartwarming experience to hear them express support for the administration’s policies and reject the demands of antiwar politicians that we accept defeat and simply withdraw our forces in exchange for our POWs. I often marveled at how our nation could produce men of such courage and devotion to country as our POWs, but in a different way the wives and mothers who remained at home were even more courageous.

  I knew that there were heroes in the Vietnam War. I was reminded of this whenever I presented the Medal of Honor and read the citation to its recipient or, if it was awarded posthumously, to the next of kin. The overwhelming majority of those who received the Medal of Honor came from modest backgrounds. Many would call them “common men.” But when each was confronted with the ultimate challenge—risking his life to save the lives of other—she demonstrated that he only had to be tested to display uncommon qualities of extraordinary courage and patriotism.

  All wars are alike in the personal tragedies that occur on the battlefield. What distinguished the war in Vietnam was the trauma we suffered on the home front. It was the most divisive foreign war in American history. It turned senators and congressmen who had been my friends for over twenty years into bitter adversaries when I was President. It turned many in the news media who previously prided themselves on being objective into viciously biased critics of the American war effort. Most journalists have always shown a liberal bias in their reporting, but during the Vietnam War their views were completely out of step with the country. In the presidential election of 1972, when I won with 61 percent of the vote, my antiwar opponent received 81 percent of the votes of the members of the national news media. Their antiwar views showed in their reporting. Equal credibility was granted to enemy propaganda and United States government statements; and while our statements were greeted with skepticism, North Vietnam’s word was usually taken at face value. Secret documents were published whenever reporters could get their hands on them. Reporters considered it their duty to try to oppose government policy by whatever means were available. The Vietnam War started the tradition of “adversary journalism” that still poisons our national political climate today.

  But what distressed me most was the effect of the war on our young people. I wanted the new generation of Americans, who had been taught to hate America during the 1960s, to learn to love and respect their country. I was proud that the voting age was lowered to eighteen years during my administration and that the military draft was ended in 1973. As Vice President, I had found that my public appearances before college audiences were, for me, among the most stimulating and satisfying ones that I made. I was unable to make such appearances during the war years as President because of security problems. I could still see them: young people by the thousands demonstrating against the war during the presidential campaigns of 1968 and 1972, along the route of the inaugural parade in 1969, and at every public appearance I made as President. One group of young antiwar protesters confronted me before I delivered a speech at a convention in colonial Williamsburg, Virginia. A young girl, who could not have been more than seventeen years old, broke through the Secret Service barricade. She came up to me, and screamed, “Murderer!” Then she spit in my face.

  And I knew I would never forget the most profoundly depressing moment for me during the war years of my presidency: It was when I saw the pictures in the newspaper of the two girls and two boys who had been killed at Kent State University on May 4, 1970.

  As I reflected on the war, my thoughts turned to Lyndon Johnson. Since leaving office, he had been dying of a broken heart emotionally. He died of a broken heart physically one day before we initialed the Paris peace agreements. The war in Vietnam had destroyed this intensely proud, strong, and patriotic President just as if he had been killed in battle. Over and over he had heard the obscene chant “Hey, hey, LBJ, how many kids did you kill today?” After four years of war, he finally gave up. He spent the last years of his life on his ranch in Texas, unmourned and unappreciated by hundreds of leaders in politics and business whom he had helped during his years in Washington. He had thought they were his loyal friends. But now that he could do nothing for them, they had deserted him.

  Because he died before the public announcement of the conclusion of the Paris agreement, I later wondered whether he had learned that the war was over before his death. I was relieved to find that Bob Haldeman had talked to him by phone on January 15. In 1969, Johnson had told me that the sixteen bombing halts he had ordered in Vietnam had all been mistakes. He urged me not to make the same error. I assured him that I would not. In their conversation, Haldeman informed Johnson that all bombing had been stopped. He responded simply, saying, “Well, I know what that means.”

  My elation on hearing that the Vietnam War finally was ending was tempered most of all by a profound recognition of the opportunities we had lost during America’s longest war. Over 50,000 lives had been lost. Over $50 billion had been spent. And over ten years had elapsed—time that could never be recovered. Vietnam paralyzed our efforts on many other fronts. I had initiated many new social and domestic programs during my presidency, but I had been able to make very little progress on them because so much of our resources had to be devoted to the war in Vietnam, and because the atmosphere had been so poisoned by the controversy over the war.

  Thus, when I received the news from Paris, I reacted with relief rather than elation. I was determined to make up for those lost years. But I knew that the peace was fragile. I intended to take whatever actions were necessary to keep the peace so that our sacrifices would not have been in vain. I knew that the enemy would keep the peace only if he was convinced that the price of breaking it would exceed whatever gain he could make by doing so.

  • • •

  Was it all worth it? Our intervention had saved 19 million people from totalitarian tyranny for eighteen years—from 1954 to 1972. Our tenacity had made similar wars less likely in that period by deterr
ing those who would launch them and by buying time for nations like Indonesia, Thailand, and the Philippines to build up their internal strength so they could resist attempts to turn them into another Vietnam. I knew all our gains depended on convincing Congress that simply concluding the Paris peace accords did not end our responsibilities. A peace agreement is only as good as the will of the parties to keep it. We knew we would have to demonstrate to the North Vietnamese that we had the will to enforce the peace agreement.

  On January 27, 1973, almost twenty years after the French had lost the first Vietnam War, we had won the second Vietnam War. We signed the peace agreement that ended the war in a way that won the peace. We had redeemed our pledge to keep South Vietnam free. Now, to keep the peace, we had to take whatever actions were necessary to prevent a third Vietnam War.

  HOW WE LOST THE PEACE

  We won the war in Vietnam, but we lost the peace. All that we had achieved in twelve years of fighting was thrown away in a spasm of congressional irresponsibility.

  When the Paris peace accords were signed in January 1973, a balance of power existed in Indochina. South Vietnam was secure within the cease-fire lines. North Vietnam’s leaders—who had not abandoned their plans for conquest—were deterred from renewing their aggression. Vietnamization had succeeded. But United States power was the linchpin holding the peace agreement together. Without a credible threat of renewed American bombing of North Vietnam, Hanoi would be sorely tempted to prepare to invade South Vietnam again. And without adequate American military and economic assistance, South Vietnam would lack the power to turn back yet another such invasion.

  Congress proceeded to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. Once our troops were out of Vietnam, Congress initiated a total retreat from our commitments to the South Vietnamese people. First, it destroyed our ability to enforce the peace agreement, through legislation prohibiting the use of American military power in Indochina. Then it undercut South Vietnam’s ability to defend itself, by drastically reducing our military aid. Within two years the balance of power swung decisively in Hanoi’s favor. When the North Vietnamese Army was poised to launch its final offensive, South Vietnam’s army was in its weakest condition in over five years, reeling from the effects of congressional budget cuts that had strapped it with severe fuel and ammunition shortages.