RN

by Richard Nixon

  Our official party consisted of a chief of staff, Phil Watts; my administrative assistant, Chris Herter, Jr.; my secretary, Rose Woods; a Navy doctor; and a military aide to handle protocol matters. Only two Secret Service agents accompanied us on the trip. In comparison with what is provided for official trips today, this would be considered a pitifully small staff, but they more than made up in dedication what they lacked in numbers. There was relatively little press interest in the trip, and only one reporter from each of the three wire services came with us.

  We had sent wires ahead to all our embassies indicating that I wanted strictly social events to be kept to a minimum. I let it be known that I was bringing only one dinner jacket and would not be packing a white tie or striped pants. Since we would not have more than four formal dinners in any one country, Pat took four formal gowns so that she could wear a different one on each occasion.

  I also asked the State Department to arrange my schedule so that I could meet as many different kinds of people as possible—students, laborers, businessmen, intellectuals, politicians in and out of office, military men, farmers. I was told that this would be very unusual, very unorthodox, and very undiplomatic. I replied that unless these meetings were arranged for me I would have to arrange them on my own. There was the same kind of resistance when Pat requested her own itinerary. Wives of visiting officials from Washington customarily spent most of their days shopping or socializing. But Pat wanted to play an active part in the trip, visiting schools, hospitals, orphanages, clinics, museums, and marketplaces to meet the people and to let the people meet her. We deliberately ruled out shopping parties except on the few occasions when our embassy officials told us that our hosts would be offended if she did not purchase the local handicrafts.

  Pat also asked to meet with representatives of women’s organizations, and her visits gave great impetus to the new respect for women that was slowly beginning to develop in many of the countries we were visiting.

  Phil Watts worked out a procedure whereby we were met at each stop by a senior foreign service officer from the embassy in the next country on our itinerary. During the flight the officer would update the briefings I had received before we left. This enabled me to conduct my meetings without using notes, a practice I had begun on the Herter Committee trip, when I found that using or making notes seems to inhibit spontaneous conversation. Some of the most useful conversations I have had during my visits with foreign leaders have been during automobile rides to and from airports, when only they and I and an interpreter were present.

  Our first stops were in New Zealand and Australia, where we were warmly received. Of the many political leaders I met on this trip, by far the most impressive was Australia’s Prime Minister Sir Robert Menzies. His extraordinary intelligence and profound understanding of issues, not only in the Pacific but throughout the world, made an indelible impression on me. Had he been born in Britain rather than in Australia, I am convinced that he would have been a great British Prime Minister in the tradition of Winston Churchill.

  We plunged into Asia when we landed at Djakarta, Indonesia. We were greeted by President Sukarno, whose tastes were as rich as his people were poor. In no other country we visited was the conspicuous luxury of the ruler in such striking contrast to the poverty and misery of his people. Djakarta was a collection of sweltering huts and hovels. An open sewer ran through the heart of the city, but Sukarno’s palace was painted a spotless white and set in the middle of hundreds of acres of exotic gardens. One night we ate off gold plate to the light of a thousand torches while musicians played on the shore of a lake covered with white lotus blossoms and candles floating on small rafts.

  Sukarno was well educated and acutely aware that he exerted a magnetic hold over his people. He had led them to independence by ousting the hated Dutch rulers, and had given them a battle cry that stirred their pride and touched their hearts: merdeka—“freedom.” But as a leader of almost unlimited power, Sukarno had become a mixture of political brilliance and corrosive vanity. He was very proud of his sexual prowess, which was the subject of countless rumors and stories—many of which he probably started himself. Be that as it may, his palaces were filled with some of the most exquisite women I have ever seen. My briefings had stressed this side of his character and his great susceptibility to flattery along these lines.

  Sukarno was the main personification of a common problem in the newly created nation-states of Asia and Africa. He was a brilliant revolutionary leader but he was totally inept as a nation-builder once independence was achieved. Like Nasser in Egypt and Nkrumah in Ghana, he could be very successful in tearing down the old system, but he could not concentrate his attention on building a viable new one to replace it. These men could not lead their nations as effectively as they had led their revolutions, and their nations—and the world—are still paying the price for that failing.

  Sukarno ruled with such an iron hand that the Communists had not been able to make much headway in Indonesia. But at our next stop, Malaya, we came face to face with the new kind of Communist warfare that was already threatening the stability of the entire region. Communist guerrilla forces were challenging the struggling Malayan government, which was just getting ready to make the break from British colonialism. The British were not making the mistake that the Americans made in the early days of the war in Korea and were to make later in Vietnam, of trying to fight a guerrilla war with conventional tactics and traditional strategy. Instead, the British trained the natives and enlisted their wholehearted support in the fight against the insurgents.

  In Kuala Lumpur I met with the High Commissioner, Field Marshal Sir Gerald Templer, a wiry, tough, emotional leader who had served under Eisenhower in North Africa. He told me, “What I am trying to do is convince all the native leaders and the native troops that this is their war, that they are fighting for their independence, and that once the guerrillas are defeated it will be their country and their decision to make as to whether they desire to remain within the British Commonwealth.”

  Both Templer and his wife worked closely with the local leaders and treated them with respect and dignity—something that had never occurred to the Dutch in Indonesia, that the French never learned in Vietnam, and that the Americans there learned only too late. We talked about the situation in Indochina and Templer shook his head sadly. “I hate to admit this because he’s a real SOB, but what they need there is a Rhee.” Events proved Templer right. Until strong leaders capable of providing stability appeared in Vietnam—first Diem and later Thieu—there was no solid opposition to Communist infiltration.

  We spent six fascinating and frustrating days visiting Cambodia, Laos, and Vietnam, the three countries of French Indochina. Vietnam at that time was a nominal monarchy ruled by the emperor Bao Dai, whom the French had restored as a figurehead in 1949. He refused to lend his presence or even his support to the French military effort against the Communist Vietminh guerrilla forces unless France would make a guarantee of independence for Vietnam. This the French refused to do, and the result was a demoralizing standoff that benefited only the Communists.

  Bao Dai rarely saw foreigners, but while I was in Saigon he invited me to visit him at his luxurious mountain resort in Dalat. He received me in a long room whose windows looked out at the jungle hills. Barefoot servants padded in noiselessly carrying silver trays laden with fresh fruit and cups of tea.

  Bao Dai was opposed to any negotiations with the Communists. He said, “There is no point in trying to negotiate with them. At the least we would end up with a conference which would divide my country between us and them. And if Vietnam is divided, we will eventually lose it all.”

  From Saigon we flew to Vientiane, the capital of Laos, where I had a long meeting with Prince Souvanna Phouma, a young, Paris-educated member of the Laotian ruling family, who was then Prime Minister. Sixteen years later, when I was President, Souvanna Phouma was again Prime Minister, and we worked closely together trying to prevent the Communists
from taking over all of Indochina.

  From Vientiane we flew to Hanoi. A brilliant sunset bathed the land below in gold as we flew above the muddy Red River snaking its way through the jungle toward the city. Driving to the residence of the French Commissioner General of Indochina, where we were to spend the night, I could see something of the city. Unlike Saigon, which was a sprawling cosmopolitan city teeming with the diversity of the many races that lived and traded there, Hanoi was like a prosperous provincial town in France. We drove down wide tree-shaded boulevards, and through ornate wrought-iron gates I caught glimpses of large villas set amidst lawns and gardens.

  That night the Governor of North Vietnam, a French-educated Vietnamese, gave a dinner in our honor. In retrospect, my toast that night in Hanoi seems sad and ironic:

  The threat to this nation, although it has taken the form of a civil war, still derives its strength from an alien source. This source, to call it by its name, is totalitarian communism. . . .

  The struggle against the Vietminh in this country, therefore, is important far beyond the boundaries of Vietnam. On this battleground, stained with the blood of Vietnamese and Frenchmen and the peoples associated with France, are being defended the liberties and the continued national existence not only of Vietnamese, but also of Cambodians, Laotians, and of their neighbors to the west, to the south, and to the east. . . .

  We know that you are determined to resist aggression, even as we are determined to resist it. And we are resolved, as our past actions have proved, that you shall not fight unaided.

  The next morning I boarded a French military transport plane. We were in the air before the sun was up, flying low over the dense jungle. We landed on a small airstrip, where several French commanding officers waited to greet us. As soon as the engines of our plane had stopped, I could hear what I had not heard for nine years: the thudding reverberation of artillery.

  After I had met the French officers, one of them took me to the edge of the field and introduced me to their Vietnamese counterparts. I saw immediately a basic problem of the war. The French did nothing to hide the disdain they felt toward the Vietnamese. During the rest of my brief stay, without unnecessarily offending the French or embarrassing the Vietnamese, I made a point of trying to spend equal time with both groups.

  I put on battle fatigues and a helmet and we drove to the front in a convoy of jeeps. There we watched an artillery barrage against a Vietminh division holding out in the jungle around Lai Cac, a hamlet about fifty miles from the Chinese border. I talked to both the French and the Vietnamese troops, and with the sound of the mortar fire raging around us, I told them that they were fighting on the very outpost of freedom and that the American people supported their cause and honored their heroism. I could see the inspiration this gave the Vietnamese soldiers, and I reflected that the French had forfeited their loyalty by not talking to them in this way.

  When we returned to the airfield, I had lunch with the French officers in their mess. There, in the middle of the Vietnamese jungle, we had bœuf bourguignon washed down with an excellent Algerian red wine. When I thanked them for arranging such a fine meal in my honor, they replied that it was nothing special for them. I said that I would like to visit the Vietnamese soldiers’ mess. This was an unpopular suggestion, but I persisted. Finally I was led to another cluster of tents, where the Vietnamese lived and ate. As we approached the mess tent, a sharp, unpleasant odor struck our noses. “What is that they’re cooking?” I asked. One of the French officers crinkled his nose haughtily and said, “It’s probably monkey.” The Vietnamese soldiers were clearly moved by the fact that I had come to see them, and I repeated the things I had said to the officers in the French mess.

  We were back in Hanoi by one o’clock. That afternoon Pat and I made a journey about twenty-five miles northwest of Hanoi to a large refugee camp at the town of Sontay. In every village along the way the provincial officials had turned out schoolchildren and Boy Scouts to cheer us. Banners with greetings in English and Vietnamese were stretched across the road.

  Sontay was both heartrending and hopeful. Thousands of refugees, driven from their homes by the Communist guerrillas, lived in the crowded tents. Even during our short visit a steady stream of people carrying all they owned on their shoulders kept coming through the gate. These people seemed so at home with their sorrow that they conveyed a sense of dignity and even optimism which made me feel that, if the Communists could be defeated, the people of Vietnam could build a strong and successful nation. I never imagined that seventeen years later this war would still be going on, but fought by American troops instead of French, and that this very town Pat and I were visiting would serve as a prison camp for American prisoners of war.

  That night, our last in Hanoi, the Commissioner General, Maurice Dejean, gave a formal dinner for us at his official residence. Except for the sprinkling of Vietnamese faces and the lush palms and orchids in the garden outside, the occasion might have been a mayoral banquet in Dijon or Toulouse, with starched linen napkins, sparkling crystal goblets, and silver candelabra.

  Dejean was a polished and able diplomat, but his attitude displayed the same condescension that kept the French from dealing with the Vietnamese in a way that would have allowed a working partnership. In his toast, he referred to the toast delivered the night before by the Governor at the dinner he had given for us, remarking, “I could not stop myself on hearing it from feeling great pride in listening to a Vietnamese expressing himself with such clarity in a French so pure.”

  In my reply, I tried to stress the important part the Vietnamese would have to play if there were to be a victory against communism. Then I closed the toast on a personal note.

  Tomorrow morning we will leave this country. I do not know when we will return, but there is one final thought that I have, and I am sure Mrs. Nixon will have as we leave, and that is the thought of what a happy and great land this could be if only the aggressors in this land would stop their aggression. I realize that there has been talk of negotiation with the aggressors. We all want peace, but I think that we all realize too that the aggressors have not asked for peace, they have not asked to negotiate, and we all also realize that under no circumstances could negotiations take place which would in effect place people who want to be free and independent in perpetual bondage. Under the circumstances we leave with the confidence that this struggle which creates so much unhappiness and so much sorrow in this land will finally come to a victorious end.

  In Cambodia we visited the haunting and majestic ruins at Angkor Wat, and I talked with King Sihanouk. I had met him earlier in the year when he was in Washington on an unofficial visit, and my first impressions were unfortunately confirmed. He was an intelligent man, but vain and flighty. He seemed prouder of his musical talents than of his political leadership, and he appeared to me totally unrealistic about the problems his country faced.

  I left Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia convinced that the French had failed primarily because they had not sufficiently trained, much less inspired, the Indochinese people to be able to defend themselves. They had failed to build a cause—or a cadre—that could resist the nationalist and anticolonialist appeals of the Communists.

  The Vietnamese forces lived in deplorable conditions. They had no confidence in themselves, and they had no leader to inspire them. Most important, they did not have a battle cry, a merdeka, to make the difference between having to fight and wanting to fight.

  But for this very reason, if the French were to pull out, Vietnam—and possibly Laos and Cambodia as well—would fall like husks before the fury of the communist hurricane. I decided, therefore, that the United States would have to do everything possible to find a way to keep the French in Vietnam until the Communists had been defeated.

  The Chinese Communists were training and supplying the Vietminh forces in Vietnam, but nowhere was their presence more ominously felt than on Formosa, where Generalissimo and Madame Chiang Kai-shek nurtured dreams and prepared plans
for ousting the Communists from the mainland. I met with Chiang in his magnificent residence in Taipei. We talked for seven hours, Madame Chiang serving as our interpreter. When he talked about “China,” Chiang made a sweeping gesture that made it clear that he did not mean just this small island to which his rule had been reduced, but the whole country beyond the horizon. I could not tell Chiang outright that his chances of reuniting China under his rule were virtually nonexistent, but I made it clear that American military power would not be committed to support any invasion he might launch. Although I felt his plans to return to the mainland were totally unrealistic, I was impressed by his high intelligence and his total dedication to the goal of freeing the Chinese people from Communist domination.

  I arrived in Korea bearing a letter from Eisenhower to President Syngman Rhee. Rhee was unhappy with the Korean armistice that had been concluded in July. He refused to accept the division of his country, and he still cherished hopes of ruling a united nation.

  Our ambassador in Seoul, Ellis Briggs, suspected that unless Rhee were made to understand our position, he might provoke an incident or even launch an attack against North Korea because of a mistaken belief that America would not leave him to fight alone. At the embassy I talked with Arthur Dean, our special negotiator in Korea, who knew that I was bringing a message for Rhee. Dean described him with great admiration. “I hope you aren’t here to completely pull Rhee’s teeth and take the fire out of him,” he said. “He’s a great leader, and a great friend in a part of the world where most of our friends are of the fair-weather variety.”

  Everywhere in Seoul I could see the legacy of wartime pain and privation. Small children in thin cotton pajamas shivered outside tarpaper huts that offered no protection from the freezing wind. It was obvious that South Korea—always a bleak, poor land—had paid a high price for its survival.