Reckless: Henry Kissinger and the Tragedy of Vietnam

by Robert K. Brigham

  Copyright

  Copyright © 2018 by Robert K. Brigham

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  First Edition: September 2018

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  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data has been applied for.

  ISBNs: 978-1-61039-702-5 (hardcover); 978-1-61039-703-2 (ebook)

  E3-20180716-JV-NF

  CONTENTS

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  Preface

  Acronyms

  Key Players

  Map

  CHAPTER ONE: The Apprentice, 1965–1969

  CHAPTER TWO: The Lone Cowboy, 1969

  CHAPTER THREE: Bold Moves, 1970

  CHAPTER FOUR: The Standstill Cease-Fire, 1970–1971

  CHAPTER FIVE: A War for Peace, January 1–August 31, 1972

  CHAPTER SIX: Peace Is at Hand, September 1972–January 1973

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Notes

  Index

  For Monica and Taylor

  “It either works or it doesn’t, and it doesn’t matter.”

  —Richard M. Nixon

  PREFACE

  THIS BOOK CHRONICLES Henry Kissinger’s management of the Vietnam War. It focuses on his efforts to combine military strategy with diplomacy to extricate the United States from Vietnam with honor. Kissinger inherited a weak bargaining position on Vietnam, but he still believed that he, and he alone, could deliver a favorable peace agreement.

  When Henry Kissinger entered the White House in 1969 as President Richard Nixon’s national security adviser, there were over 500,000 US troops in Vietnam. American combat deaths were about two hundred each week, a number that was likely to grow as Communist forces increased their assault on South Vietnam. The cost of the war to US taxpayers was $30 billion per year. Kissinger believed that these conditions demanded a negotiated settlement to the war. There were simply too many explicit constraints on US power to make a military victory likely. “However we got into Vietnam,” he observed, “whatever the judgment of our actions, ending the war honorably is essential for the peace of the world.”1

  An honorable peace, according to Kissinger, had to meet several essential conditions. First, there had to be a lasting cease-fire between North Vietnam and South Vietnam. This cease-fire had to include the neighboring countries of Laos and Cambodia, both of which had been caught up in the conflict. Second, there must be a mutual US–North Vietnamese troop withdrawal from South Vietnam. North Vietnamese forces operating in Laos and Cambodia also had to be redeployed to North Vietnam. Third, North Vietnam had to recognize the Demilitarized Zone as an international boundary. Fourth, with the signing of a peace agreement, all prisoners of war had to be released. Finally, Kissinger argued that any negotiated settlement had to leave the Saigon government in full political control in South Vietnam. He initially rejected North Vietnam’s proposals for a coalition government in South Vietnam, which he feared would “destroy the existing political structure and thus lead to a Communist takeover.” His goal, therefore, was to negotiate a final peace agreement in Paris that traded an American exit from Vietnam for political guarantees for Saigon. “We were determined,” Kissinger wrote in his memoirs, “to do our utmost to enable Saigon to grow in security and prosperity so that it could prevail in any political struggle. We sought not an interval before collapse, but lasting peace with honor.”2

  To accomplish his strategic “peace with honor” goals, Kissinger promoted a tactical “war for peace” in Vietnam. But where has there ever been a successful “war for peace”? It’s a theorist’s concept, possible only if one is very distantly removed from the actual business of killing and dying and the aftereffects that produces. Still, with the arrogance and hubris of someone new to power, he confidently assured Nixon that he could pressure Hanoi to accept concessions it had routinely rejected during Lyndon Johnson’s presidency by combining great power diplomacy with savage military blows against North Vietnam. He also advocated attacks against North Vietnamese sanctuaries inside Laos and Cambodia and the mining of North Vietnamese ports. “I can’t believe that a fourth-rate power like North Vietnam doesn’t have a breaking point,” Kissinger told his aides during his first weeks at the White House. “Hit them,” he told Nixon, and Hanoi would beg “for private talks.”3

  Finding that delicate balance between military strikes and skillful negotiations was exactly what Kissinger believed was his specialty. In over five decades of telling and retelling his role in the Vietnam War, Kissinger has carefully constructed a narrative that is detailed, somewhat self-effacing, and on the surface, balanced. He has skillfully mixed criticism of the Nixon administration’s policies with disdain for its critics. He has both downplayed the war’s expansion on his watch and celebrated it. He blamed Kennedy-style idealism for the US entry into the war and championed his own realism for ending it. Kissinger gave the United States an honorable withdrawal from Vietnam, he claims, by linking Hanoi’s geopolitical desires to security guarantees for the United States’ South Vietnamese allies. In the end, Kissinger argues that Watergate and a weak-kneed Congress had made it impossible to defend South Vietnam, not his failures as a negotiator or strategist.

  The Vietnam War remains Kissinger’s most enduring foreign policy legacy. No war since the American Civil War has seared the US national consciousness like Vietnam. The controversies surrounding it tore the nation apart, and its legacies continue to shape US foreign relations today. Kissinger’s role in this war has been studied in detail, but this book is the first to hold his record to a scrupulous account based on his own definitions of success and the evidence provided by recently released material in the Richard Nixon Presidential Library, Kissinger’s papers at Yale University, and South Vietnamese sources contained in the National Archives in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam. On the strength of that it is clear that the national security adviser’s war for peace was more than oxymoronic: it was a total failure. Kissinger failed in each of his stated goals to achieve “peace with honor.” He failed to end the diplomatic deadlock in Paris or to negotiate a political settlement in South Vietnam that left the Saigon government a reasonable chance to survive following the American withdrawal. He failed to use great power diplomacy or military force to compel Hanoi to make compromises in the Paris negotiations. He failed to force a mutual North Vietnamese troop withdrawal from South Vietnam. He failed to neutralize Laos and Cambodia. He failed to secure a la
sting cease-fire. He failed to obtain an international border at the Demilitarized Zone. He failed to link the release of all political prisoners to a lasting cease-fire. He failed to consult the Saigon government about its future until it was too late to change course in Paris.

  At home, Kissinger also did much more harm than good. He failed to build a coalition of supportive allies for his “war for peace” within the Nixon administration or in Congress. He failed to contain US domestic opposition to his policies. He failed the president by overstating progress in Paris and the likelihood of success following US military escalation. Each of these disappointments narrowed his future options and shortened the time he had to achieve “peace with honor.”

  Kissinger’s voluminous writings on the subject have obscured his failures in Vietnam, and perhaps that is the point of them. Like the Internet, Kissinger provides huge amounts of apparent information, not all of it reliable. He’s a conspiratorially minded theorist, and he often wanders far from the facts. But facts are stubborn things, and it is possible, I think, to examine the historical record in detail to offer a more complete picture of Kissinger and his failed “war for peace.” This research has been made easier now that his monopoly on the actual historical documents has ended. Scholars now have access to hundreds of thousands of pages of National Security Council files, the verbatim transcripts of the secret meetings in Paris, and over twenty thousand pages of Kissinger’s taped telephone conversations. Utilizing this new material, this book is the first to analyze the cumulative effect of Kissinger’s strategic and diplomatic failures on the final peace agreement. It demonstrates how Kissinger’s misplaced faith in his own abilities to secure an honorable peace prolonged the war unnecessarily and sealed South Vietnam’s fate. For all his faults, Kissinger (no matter what) could not change reality on the ground. He made a bad situation worse, however, with his reckless assumptions about the use of force and diplomacy.

  ACRONYMS

  ARVN Army of the Republic of Vietnam (South Vietnamese Army)

  COSVN Central Office Southern Vietnam, Communist Party’s headquarters for South Vietnam

  DMZ Demilitarized zone separating North Vietnam and South Vietnam

  DRV Democratic Republic of Vietnam (North Vietnam)

  GVN Government of Vietnam, also known as RVN (South Vietnam)

  JCS US Joint Chiefs of Staff

  MACV US Military Assistance Command Vietnam

  NLF National Liberation Front, Communist front organization in South Vietnam

  NSC National Security Council

  NVA North Vietnamese Army, also known as PAVN

  PAVN People’s Army of Vietnam (North Vietnamese Army)

  PLAF People’s Liberation Armed Forces, military arm of the NLF, derogatorily called Viet Cong

  POW prisoner(s) of war

  PRG Provisional Revolutionary Government, NLF’s government-in-waiting

  RVN Republic of Vietnam, also known as GVN (South Vietnam)

  RVNAF Republic of Vietnam Armed Forces (South Vietnam’s armed forces)

  KEY PLAYERS

  Creighton Abrams MACV commander, 1968–1972, US Army chief of staff, 1972–74

  Nguyen Thi Binh PRG/NLF foreign minister

  Mai Van Bo Head of DRV’s commercial legation in Paris

  Leonid Brezhnev General secretary of the Communist Party, Soviet Union, 1964–1982

  David Bruce Special ambassador to Paris negotiations

  McGeorge Bundy National security adviser to presidents Kennedy and Johnson, 1961–1966

  William Bundy Assistant secretary of state for the Far East, 1964–1969

  Ellsworth Bunker US ambassador to South Vietnam, 1967–1973

  Anna Chennault Member of the “China lobby,” vice president of Flying Tiger Line and secret contact to the Saigon government

  Frank Church US senator (D-ID), cosponsor of the Cooper-Church Amendment

  Charles Colson Special counsel, Nixon administration

  John Sherman Cooper US senator (R-KY), cosponsor of the Cooper-Church Amendment

  Bui Diem South Vietnam’s ambassador to the United States, 1965–1972

  Ngo Dinh Diem President of the RVN, 1955–1963

  Anatoly Dobrynin Soviet ambassador to the United States

  Pham Van Dong DRV prime minister

  Le Duan Secretary-general of the Vietnamese Communist Party, 1960–1986

  John Ehrlichman Counsel and assistant to the president for domestic affairs under Nixon

  Daniel Ellsberg RAND analyst who leaked the Pentagon Papers

  Zhou Enlai Premier of the People’s Republic of China

  Vo Nguyen Giap General and minister of defense, PAVN

  Barry Goldwater US senator (R-AZ) and 1964 Republican nominee for US president

  Alexander Haig Deputy national security adviser, Nixon administration

  H. R. Haldeman White House chief of staff for President Richard Nixon

  Mark Hatfield US senator (R-OR), cosponsor of the Hatfield-McGovern Amendment

  Hubert Humphrey Vice president of the United States under President Johnson

  Lyndon Johnson President of the United States, 1963–1969

  Nikita Khrushchev Premier of the Soviet Union, 1958–1964

  Henry Kissinger National security adviser, Nixon administration, 1969–1973

  Alexei Kosygin Premier of the Soviet Union, 1964–1980

  Nguyen Cao Ky Vice president of South Vietnam, 1967–1971

  Melvin Laird Secretary of defense in the Nixon administration, 1969–1974

  Anthony Lake National Security Council staff member under Kissinger

  General Hoang Xuan Lam South Vietnamese general who led 1971 invasion of Laos

  Henry Cabot Lodge Jr. US ambassador to South Vietnam, 1963–1964, 1965–1967

  Winston Lord National Security Council staff member; accompanied Kissinger to Paris

  George McGovern US senator (D-SD) and Democratic Party US presidential nominee, 1972, cosponsor of the Hatfield-McGovern Amendment

  Robert S. McNamara Secretary of defense for Presidents Kennedy and Johnson, 1961–1967

  John McNaughton Assistant secretary of defense, 1961–1967

  Mike Mansfield US senator (D-MT)

  Duong Van Minh Former South Vietnamese general and politician

  Ho Chi Minh President of the DRV, 1945–1969

  John Mitchell US attorney general in Nixon administration and chair of the Committee to Re-Elect the President (CREEP)

  Thomas Moorer Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, 1970–1974

  Edmund Muskie US senator (D-ME) and US presidential candidate, 1972

  John Negroponte US Foreign Service officer; participated in Paris peace talks

  Richard Nixon President of the United States, 1969–1974

  General Lon Nol Led coup against Prince Sihanouk in Cambodia

  William Porter US delegate to the avenue Kléber/Paris Peace Talks

  Nelson Rockefeller Governor of New York, US Republican presidential candidate, 1964

  Peter Rodman National Security Council staff member; accompanied Kissinger to Paris

  William Rogers Secretary of state in the Nixon administration, 1969–1973

  Jean Sainteny French politician; served as messenger for Nixon with Ho Chi Minh

  Norodom Sihanouk Head of state of Cambodia, 1960–1970

  Ray Sitton US Air Force colonel who gave Kissinger bombing targets for secret attacks on Cambodia

  William Sullivan Coordinated avenue Kléber/Paris peace talks for Nixon

  Nguyen Van Thieu President of the GVN

  Le Duc Tho DRV Politburo member; negotiated with Kissinger in Paris

  Xuan Thuy DRV diplomat; negotiated with Kissinger in Paris

  General Co Van Vien South Vietnam’s defense minister

  General Vernon Walters US military attaché at the embassy in Paris

  General Earle Wheeler Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, 1964–1970

  Mao Zedong Chairman of
China’s Communist Party

  Courtesy of the University of Texas Libraries, the University of Texas at Austin

  CHAPTER ONE

  THE APPRENTICE, 1965–1969

  IN THE EARLY MORNING of November 25, 1968, Henry Kissinger, a Harvard professor and longtime foreign policy adviser to perennial Republican presidential hopeful Nelson Rockefeller, walked into the Pierre Hotel at the intersection of Fifth Avenue and Sixty-First Street in Manhattan, and took the elevator to the thirty-ninth floor to Richard Nixon’s transition headquarters. Nixon had just narrowly defeated Democrat Hubert Humphrey in the 1968 US presidential election and was wasting no time putting his new administration together. The Pierre was an unlikely place for the president-elect to have his transition headquarters, given its ties to the East Coast establishment that Nixon so despised. Kissinger, however, had spent much of his adult life trying to gain entry into that world, courting Rockefeller and others who saw democratic collapse as one of the century’s most pressing concerns. Yet Kissinger and the president-elect held many views in common. Both were classical realists who believed the world needed strong leaders that acted without passion to restore order and stability to the international system. They placed great emphasis on what Kissinger called “consequential diplomacy”—the role of great men in advancing the interest of the nation and in shaping political outcomes.1 They thought that the United States alone was strong enough to defeat fascism, communism, and other forms of tyranny. They also considered themselves self-made men. Neither was born to the upper class. Each had achieved great heights because of talent, not patronage.

  Kissinger later claimed that he was surprised by the invitation to the Pierre. He had spent much of the 1960s supporting other Republicans at Nixon’s expense. He had declared that Nixon was “unfit to be the president” and thought the president-elect was “a hollow man” who had a dangerous “misunderstanding of foreign policy.”2 He recognized Nixon’s personal insecurities, and they worried him. Haunted by the inconsequential life his father had led, Nixon was a striver and a loner, someone who demanded loyalty and wanted to be admired. Kissinger saw these characteristics as potentially damaging in the nuanced world of foreign affairs. But Nixon had power, something Kissinger had been seeking without much luck for over a decade.