RN

by Richard Nixon

  I considered the question period that followed Agnew’s remarks a disgraceful performance on the part of the White House press corps. As if it were our fault that Dong had written this letter, one reporter asked, “Mr. Vice President, let us take the bull by the horns. Isn’t seizing upon this letter a last-minute attempt to dampen down the Moratorium by the administration?”

  The media generally either played down the Dong letter or indicated that the administration had unreasonably fastened upon it as an excuse for the repression of legitimate dissent.

  I had to decide what to do about the ultimatum. I knew that unless I had some indisputably good reason for not carrying out my threat of using increased force when the ultimatum expired on November 1, the Communists would become contemptuous of us and even more difficult to deal with. I knew, however, that after all the protests and the Moratorium, American public opinion would be seriously divided by any military escalation of the war.

  A quarter of a million people came to Washington for the October 15 Moratorium. Despite widespread rumors that some of the more radical left-wing organizations would provoke violent confrontations with police, the demonstrations were generally peaceful.

  Opinion within the administration was divided over how to respond. Kissinger urged that I do nothing at all and let the protest run its course, lest I upset our foreign policy strategy. John Ehrlichman, however, was upset by our apparent indifference to the sincere fervor of many of the protesters and urged that I declare a National Day of Prayer on October 15 as a show of tacit support for the underlying goal of peace.

  The Washington Post praised the protesters and said that the Moratorium was “a deeply meaningful statement” of the anguish they felt about the war. Elsewhere, however, reservations were expressed. The Washington Star, for example, said, “What counts is whether the demonstration, regardless of intention, does in fact give encouragement to Hanoi and thereby presumably prolongs the war.” As if in answer to that point, the Vietcong Radio said that the Communists had gained “strong encouragement” from the Moratorium.

  The Vietnam Moratorium raised, for the first but by no means the last time in my administration, a basic and important question about the nature of leadership in a democracy: should the President or Congress or any responsible elected official let public demonstrations influence his decisions?

  I had strong opinions about this question, and I decided to address it head on. I asked that one letter be selected from all those we had received criticizing my press conference statement that I would not be affected by the protests and that a reply be prepared to it.

  The letter the staff chose was from a student at Georgetown University. In it, he stated, “It has been my impression that it is not unwise for the President of the United States to take note of the will of the people; after all, these people elected you, you are their President, and your office bears certain obligations. Might I respectfully suggest that the President reconsider his pre-judgment.”

  I replied, “If a President—any President—allowed his course to be set by those who demonstrate, he would betray the trust of all the rest. Whatever the issue, to allow government policy to be made in the streets would destroy the democratic process. It would give the decision, not to the majority, and not to those with the strongest arguments, but to those with the loudest voices. . . . It would allow every group to test its strength not at the ballot box but through confrontation in the streets.”

  On the night of October 15 I thought about the irony of this protest for peace. It had, I believed, destroyed whatever small possibility may still have existed of ending the war in 1969. But there was nothing I could do about that now. I would have to adjust my plans accordingly and carry on as best I could. At the top of the page of preliminary notes I was making for my November 3 speech, I wrote: “Don’t get rattled—don’t waver—don’t react.”

  THE SILENT MAJORITY

  After the Moratorium attention immediately began to focus on my speech. Most doves in the media and Congress assumed that I had been so impressed—or so frightened—by the Moratorium that I had decided to announce major new troop withdrawals in order to blunt the impact of the next Moratorium scheduled for November 15. An AP wire story on October 20 stated that I might offer a cease-fire in the speech, and some papers reported this in front-page headlines. Flora Lewis, writing in the Boston Globe, stated categorically that I would announce the withdrawal of 300,000 men during 1970 and that I had ordered the Pentagon to work out the necessary schedules. Dan Rather, on a special CBS news report on the Moratorium, claimed that I was considering stepped-up troop withdrawals, fewer B-52 raids, a reduction in fighting, and perhaps even a cease-fire before the end of the year. In the Senate, Hugh Scott called for a unilateral cease-fire. Since he was Minority Leader, his statement was widely interpreted as a White House trial balloon. Hubert Humphrey predicted that I would announce a major program for the “systematical and accelerated withdrawal of U.S. forces” from Vietnam.

  How far off the mark these predictions and expectations were can be seen in notes I made for the November 3 speech in the early morning hours of October 22:

  They can’t defeat us militarily in Vietnam.

  They can’t break South Vietnam.

  Include a paragraph on why we are there.

  They cannot break us.

  As the November 1 deadline approached, three factors strongly influenced my thinking about the ultimatum. The first was that American casualty figures in Vietnam had been reaching new lows. I knew that these reductions might be a ploy on the part of the Communists to make escalating the fighting that much more difficult for me.

  The second factor was the possibility that the death of Ho Chi Minh might have created new opportunities for reaching a settlement that deserved a chance to develop.

  The third factor was a conversation I had on October 17 with Sir Robert Thompson, the British expert on guerrilla warfare.

  “What do you think of the ‘option to the right’?” I asked. “What would you think if we decided to escalate?”

  Thompson was clearly not in favor of escalation because it would risk a major American and worldwide furore and still not address the central problem of whether the South Vietnamese were sufficiently confident and prepared to defend themselves against a renewed Communist offensive at some time in the future. His estimate was that, continuing the current U.S. policy and assuming South Vietnamese confidence that we would not pull out, victory could be won within two years. He thought that our only chance for a negotiated settlement in the meantime would be if it were clear to Hanoi that we were there for the duration. I asked if he would go to Vietnam and make a personal study of the situation there for me and report as soon as possible.

  When I asked Thompson whether he thought it was important for us to see it through in Vietnam, he said, “Absolutely. In my opinion the future of Western civilization is at stake in the way you handle yourselves in Vietnam.”

  In view of these three factors, and recognizing that the Moratorium had undercut the credibility of the ultimatum, I began to think more in terms of stepping up Vietnamization while continuing the fighting at its present level rather than of trying to increase it. In many respects Vietnamization would be far more damaging to the Communists than an escalation that, as Thompson had pointed out, would not solve the basic problem of South Vietnamese preparedness, and that would stir up serious domestic problems in America.

  It was important that the Communists not mistake as weakness the lack of dramatic action on my part in carrying out the ultimatum. We would be able to demonstrate our continuing resolve to the North Vietnamese on the battlefield, but I thought that the Soviets would need a special reminder. Therefore when Ambassador Dobrynin came to the White House for a private meeting on the afternoon of October 20, I decided to use the encounter to make our position absolutely clear to the Soviet leadership.

  Kissinger accompanied Dobrynin to the Oval Office, and after greetings were exc
hanged the ambassador said that he had received an aide-mémoire from his government, with instructions to read it to me.

  “Go ahead, Mr. Ambassador,” I said.

  “I am instructed to frankly inform the President that Moscow is not satisfied with the present state of relations between the U.S.S.R. and the U.S.,” he began. “Moscow feels that the President should be frankly told that the method of solving the Vietnam question through the use of military force is not only without perspective, but also extremely dangerous. . . . If someone in the United States is tempted to make profit from Soviet–Chinese relations at the Soviet Union’s expense, and there are some signs of that, then we would like to frankly warn in advance that such line of conduct, if pursued, can lead to a very grave miscalculation and is in no way consistent with the goal of better relations between the U.S. and the U.S.S.R.”

  Dobrynin seemed a little uncomfortable with my silence when he had finished reading from the paper. After a moment I leaned back in my chair and opened the center drawer of my desk. I took out a yellow pad and slid it across toward him.

  “You’d better take some notes,” I said.

  He took the pad and put it on his lap.

  “You have been candid, Mr. Ambassador, and I will be equally so. I, too, am disappointed in U.S.–Soviet relations. As of today, I have been in this office for nine months. The babies should have been born by now. Instead, there have been several miscarriages.”

  Taking some of the major issues—the Middle East, trade, European security, Berlin—I analyzed point by point the problems with each. Most arose from Soviet intransigence or jockeying for position.

  Turning to China, I said, “Anything we have done or are doing with respect to China is in no sense designed to embarrass the Soviet Union. On the contrary, China and the United States cannot tolerate having a situation develop in which we are enemies, any more than we want to be permanent enemies of the Soviet Union. Therefore, we expect to make moves in trade and exchanges of persons and eventually in diplomacy. I want to repeat that this is not directed against the Soviet Union. Within ten years, China will be a nuclear power, capable of terrorizing many other countries. The time is running out when the Soviet Union and the United States can build a different kind of world.”

  Having put in the hook this far, I pulled it hard. “The only beneficiary of U.S.–Soviet disagreement over Vietnam is China,” I said, “and therefore this is the last opportunity to settle these disputes.”

  Before Dobrynin could interrupt, I moved on to Vietnam. “Prior to the bombing halt, which, as you are aware, will be one year old on November 1, Ambassador Bohlen and Ambassador Thompson and Ambassador Harriman pointed out to President Johnson that the Soviet Union could not do anything as long as we were bombing a fellow socialist country. They said that the Soviet Union would be very active with its help if we stopped. The bombing halt was then agreed to, but the Soviet Union has done nothing to help.”

  At this Dobrynin raised his hand as if to be called on, but I waved it down. “Of course, we now have an oblong table at the talks in Paris, and I know the Soviet Union contributed something to that, but we do not consider that a great achievement. All the conciliatory moves for the past year have been made by us.”

  I said that I had concluded that perhaps the Soviet Union did not want to end the war in Vietnam. “You may think that you can break me,” I said. “You may believe that the American domestic situation is unmanageable. Or you may think that the war in Vietnam costs the Soviet Union only a small amount of money while it costs us a great many lives. I do not propose to argue with this kind of assessment. On the other hand, Mr. Ambassador, I want you to understand that the Soviet Union is going to be stuck with me for the next three years and three months, and during all that time I will keep in mind what is being done right now, today. If the Soviet Union will not help us get peace, then we will have to pursue our own methods for bringing the war to an end. We cannot allow a talk-fight strategy to continue without taking action.

  “Let us be frank, Mr. Ambassador,” I continued. “All you have done is repeat the same tired old slogans that the North Vietnamese used six months ago. You know very well they can lead nowhere. It is time to get discussions started, because, I can assure you, the humiliation of a defeat is absolutely unacceptable to my country. I recognize that the Soviet leaders are tough and courageous. But so are we.”

  I stopped only a moment and then went on. “I hope that you will not mind this serious talk,” I said. “If the Soviet Union found it possible to do something in Vietnam, and the Vietnam war ended, then we might do something dramatic to improve our relations, indeed, something more dramatic than could now be imagined. But until then, I have to say that real progress will be very difficult.”

  Dobrynin waited to see if I would go on. This time I did not.

  “Does this mean that there can be no progress?” he asked.

  “Progress is possible,” I replied, “but it would have to be confined essentially to what is attainable in diplomatic channels. The war can drag on, in which case we will find our own way to bring it to an end. There is no sense in just repeating the proposals of the last six months.”

  I wanted no reply to this, so I brought the meeting to a close by saying, “The whole world wants us to get together. I, too, want nothing so much as to have my administration remembered as a watershed in American and Soviet relations. But let me repeat that we will not hold still for being diddled to death in Vietnam.”

  With that I rose, shook his hand, and escorted him to the door.

  Kissinger came back in after he had seen Dobrynin to his car. “I wager that no one has ever talked to him that way in his entire career!” he said. “It was extraordinary! No President has ever laid it on the line to them like that.”

  “We shouldn’t have any illusions that it will do any good or make any difference,” I said, “but it is good to let them know that we’re not as big fools as the requirements of diplomacy may sometimes make us seem.”

  I received much conflicting advice concerning what I should say on November 3. Rogers and Laird urged me to concentrate on the hopes for peace, Rogers emphasizing the Paris talks and Laird stressing the prospects of Vietnamization. The majority of the White House staff, the Cabinet members, and the congressional leaders I consulted advocated that I use the speech to establish beyond any doubt my sincere desire for peace.

  Kissinger was advocating a very hard line. He felt that if we backed off, the Communists would become totally convinced that they could control our foreign policy through public opinion. And Dean Acheson sent word that any announcement of withdrawal schedules would put us at a disadvantage in negotiations.

  Speculation about the speech reached fever pitch as the date approached. I welcomed this because I knew that the more it was talked about, the bigger the audience would be.

  I kept my own counsel, and very few people knew the way my thinking was really going or the surprise I was planning for the antiwar agitators who thought that their street marches could force me to make foreign policy the way they wanted.

  I went to Camp David for a long weekend on October 24 and worked twelve to fourteen hours a day writing and rewriting different sections of the speech. Haldeman cleared most of my schedule during the following week so that I could continue the work uninterrupted.

  By Friday the speech had gone through twelve drafts, and I was ready to take it to Camp David for a final review. Senate Majority Leader Mike Mansfield had written down his thoughts in a memorandum, and he asked that I read it before I made any final decisions about what I would say.

  I read Mansfield’s memorandum later that night. He began by stating: “The continuance of the war in Vietnam, in my judgment, endangers the future of this nation.” He said that it was more than just the loss of lives or the waste of money and resources that concerned him. “Most serious,” he wrote, “are the deep divisions within our society to which this conflict of dubious origin and purpo
se is contributing.”

  He said that he would give articulate public support to “any or all of the following decisions if in your responsibility you decide that they are necessary, as well they may be, to a rapid termination of the war in Vietnam.” He then listed actions that amounted to a unilateral cease-fire and withdrawal. “I know that a settlement arrived at in this fashion is not pleasant to contemplate,” he wrote, “especially in view of the dug-in diplomatic and military positions which, unfortunately, were assumed over the past few years.” The memo was signed, “With the greatest respect.”

  I realized that with this memorandum Mansfield was offering what would be the last chance for me to end “Johnson’s and Kennedy’s war.” I interpreted his references to it as a “conflict of dubious origin” and to the military positions “unfortunately” assumed over the past few years as signals that he would even allow me to claim that I was making the best possible end of a bad war my Democratic predecessors had begun. I knew that the opponents of the war would irrevocably become my opponents if my speech took a hard line. But I could not escape the fact that I felt it would be wrong to end the Vietnam war on any terms I believed to be less than honorable.

  I worked through the night. About 4 A.M. I wrote a paragraph calling for the support of “the great silent majority of Americans.” I went to bed, but after two hours of restless sleep I was wide awake, so I got up and began work again. By 8 A.M. the speech was finished. I called Haldeman, and when he answered, I said, “The baby’s just been born!”

  The message of my November 3 speech was that we were going to keep our commitment in Vietnam. We were going to continue fighting until the Communists agreed to negotiate a fair and honorable peace or until the South Vietnamese were able to defend themselves on their own—whichever came first. At the same time we would continue our disengagement based on the principles of the Nixon Doctrine: the pace of withdrawal would be linked to the progress of Vietnamization, the level of enemy activity, and developments on the negotiating front. I emphasized that our policy would not be affected by demonstrations in the streets.