Reckless: Henry Kissinger and the Tragedy of Vietnam

by Robert K. Brigham

  Nixon ordered the Joint Chiefs and Creighton Abrams to conduct a study of their own on the feasibility of the escalation proposals developed by Kissinger’s working group. He wondered whether Kissinger had gone far enough in his proposals and was hoping that the military brass would embrace more intensive attacks against North Vietnam. On September 25, the military planning group met with Nixon at the White House to present their findings. Operating under the name “Pruning Knife,” the military group gave Nixon old wine in new bottles. Since almost every possible military option had been considered before, the Pruning Knife report really did not contain the bold or imaginative planning Nixon had hoped to see from his military experts. Furthermore, there was considerable disagreement among the top military planners on whether any of Kissinger’s escalation options were even viable. Pruning Knife studied the familiar recommendations of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, but left Nixon frustrated. He told his aides that the military brass needed to think bigger. He wanted to make the DRV leadership serious about negotiations. “I was not elected to preside over the senseless attrition of American lives by a deluded foe,” Nixon exclaimed.88 Yet the president refused to endorse escalation at the meeting. Instead, he retreated to Camp David and ruminated about how Hanoi had underestimated just how tough he was.

  Sensing that the chief executive was waffling, something he was prone to do, Kissinger went on the offensive. He arranged for the president to telephone when he was on the line with Dobrynin. Kissinger took Nixon’s call, then returned to Dobrynin and reported, “The president just told me in that call that as far as Vietnam is concerned, the train had just left the station.” Dobrynin said he hoped it was “an airplane” and not a train because “an airplane can still change its course of flight.” Kissinger replied, “The president chooses his words very carefully. He said train.”89 Kissinger often used others to stiffen Nixon’s resolve. He had orchestrated the call with Dobrynin to push Nixon toward action. Nixon eventually ordered Kissinger to convince Moscow and Hanoi that he was a “madman” capable of doing almost anything not to lose the war in Vietnam. Earlier in the year, the president had told an aide, “I want the North Vietnamese to believe I’ve reached the point where I might do anything to stop the war. We’ll just slip the word to them that, ‘for God’s sake, you know Nixon is obsessed about communism. We can’t restrain him when he’s angry—and he has his hand on the nuclear button,’ and Ho Chi Minh himself will be in Paris in two days begging for peace.”90 But when the Pruning Knife and Duck Hook military escalation options came upon his desk for approval in early October 1969, he balked. He thought that Kissinger, in promoting military escalation against North Vietnam, was underestimating the impact of domestic politics.

  Nixon knew that there were serious problems in Congress. Senator Charles Goodell, a Republican from New York, had put forward a resolution in late September demanding that all US troops be withdrawn from Vietnam by the end of 1970. The resolution also prohibited the use of congressionally appropriated funds for Vietnam after December 1970. The resolution was defeated easily in the Senate, but Senators Mark Hatfield, Jacob Javits (another New York Republican), and George McGovern proposed similar legislation over the next three weeks. Kissinger later blamed Goodell and the antiwar movement for backing Nixon into a corner. “Having transmuted the war into a domestic conflict between good and evil at home,” Kissinger wrote after the war, “the Peace Movement preferred—for reasons it viewed as highly moral—America’s collapse in Vietnam to an outcome which, precisely because it might be considered ‘honorable,’ might also whet the government’s appetite for further foreign adventures.”91

  But Kissinger would not give up. In early October, he wrote to Nixon outlining the final contingency military operations the Duck Hook planning had produced. Although he suggested that his paper did not address the “relative merits of [military escalation],” Kissinger nonetheless argued that “to achieve its full effect,” military action against Hanoi had to be “brutal.” He warned Nixon that once they moved toward escalation, “we should not allow ourselves to be deterred by vague, conciliatory gestures by Hanoi.” There would be some pushback from the American public and Congress, Kissinger concluded, but serious problems could be avoided if “each action” against the DRV was “short and compact.”92 He thought someone with Nixon’s considerable political skills could hold the country together by expertly explaining the reason for escalation. The next day, Nixon took the paper and its author with him to his retreat in Key Biscayne, Florida. With Kissinger at his side, he pondered his various options for escalating the war. As the day dragged on, it became clear that the president was increasingly uncomfortable with the path Kissinger had outlined.

  The paper put Nixon on the horns of a dilemma. Encouraged by Kissinger to escalate the war in Vietnam as cover for the readily apparent US weakness in Paris caused by the American troop withdrawals, Nixon also had to consider his domestic opponents and the growing antiwar movement. He knew full well that the National Mobilization Committee to End the War in Vietnam (MOBE) was planning a massive nationwide demonstration against the war on October 15. If he escalated the war against Hanoi before the protest, it might be an accelerant to the antiwar movement. If he waited to act until after October 15, it would look as though he was “making the tough move after the 15th just because of the rioting at home.”93 Keeping Congress in line also presented the president with enormous difficulties. Kissinger kept flattering the president, but it was only a matter of time before Nixon dismissed his strategy altogether.

  As the October 15 protest neared, Nixon had one final meeting with Laird—who had finally been told of the planning groups—the Joint Chiefs, and the Pruning Knife and Duck Hook planning committees at the White House on October 11. The president set the tone early, telling the group that the purpose of the meeting was to “evaluate what we could do if it became necessary to take more military action against Vietnam.”94 Laird was the most outspoken opponent of military escalation at the meeting. He claimed that the United States had already hit all available targets and that planning any other military operations against North Vietnam “[would] take at least a year.” He favored what he called the “long haul option”: allowing Vietnamization to work by continuing to withdraw US troops to gain support for increased aid to the Saigon government.95 Although Kissinger had tried to cut him out of all Duck Hook planning, Laird had used his contacts in the White House to monitor Kissinger’s military planning. He even had secret tape recordings of Kissinger’s White House phone conversations. Finally, Laird used the opinions of top aides involved with Duck Hook, notably Tony Lake and Roger Morris, to shore up his argument that military escalation would do little to advance the peace process.96

  Kissinger sat quietly as Laird criticized every single escalation proposal. He was also silent, and no doubt discouraged, when General Wheeler, chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, delivered his report stating that Pruning Knife was not a “sound military plan” and that it had many “problem areas.”97 Kissinger had hoped that Nixon would enthusiastically embrace new attacks against North Vietnam, but the reality was that the government could not agree on the proper military path to take. Nixon feared criticism from the left and right about his Vietnam policies, and it paralyzed him during the Duck Hook debates in late October. There were no good options, and Duck Hook had simply led to strategic confusion. At the end of the meeting, Nixon kicked the can down the road again, deciding not to decide on Duck Hook’s future. He would wait until after the October 15 protests to address the nation, and he would postpone military escalation.

  The debate over escalation took its toll on Kissinger. He had entered the Nixon administration, according to the national press, as a breath of spring after the “tired men” of the Johnson years.98 But nine months later, some of Kissinger’s colleagues noticed that he was frustrated and discouraged because nothing seemed to be working in Vietnam.99 He had lost the debate over Vietnamization to Laird, and now it looked
like the Joint Chiefs, MACV, and the Pentagon would win once again. Adding to his troubles, several NSC staffers resigned in September over Kissinger’s harsh treatment. Joe Kraft, a Washington Post columnist, suggested in a column that Kissinger had cut most of the NSC out of important foreign policy decision making and that this had cost his agency influence at the White House. Nixon flew into a rage, demanding that Kissinger get Kraft to write a more favorable piece on the administration.100 The more frustrated Kissinger became, the more his famous temper interfered with his ability to influence the president, causing even more anger and frustration. Supremely aware of his carefully cultivated image as coolheaded in a crisis, after nine months of frustration over Vietnam he appeared to be “overexcited” and “over depressed” about his failures.101

  Nixon worried that Kissinger’s emotions often interfered with his ability to manage foreign affairs crises. “He’s mixed up,” Nixon once claimed.102 The president suggested that Kissinger “has the inability to see that… he himself is ever wrong.”103 Nixon also noted that “Henry is very excitable, very emotional almost.”104 Kissinger’s temper tantrums and his constant threats to resign upset Nixon. “He’s the kind of fellow that could have an emotional collapse,” Nixon once told an aide.105 The president thought it was “ludicrous” that he spent so much of his time “propping up this guy.”106 Just months after taking office, Nixon had become so tired of Kissinger’s emotional eruptions that he created a special “Henry-Handling Committee.”107 Assistant to the President John Ehrlichman, Chief of Staff H. R. Haldeman, and Attorney General John Mitchell had the job of keeping Kissinger “calm” and “on an even emotional keel.”108 Their goal was to keep him away from the president when he was upset. Ehrlichman in particular was tasked with listening to Kissinger’s constant threats to resign and his tirades against subordinates and colleagues; occasionally, he would tell Nixon that they should get Kissinger “some psychotherapy.”109

  Kissinger’s frustrations eventually led him to jettison Duck Hook. “As the scenario took shape,” he wrote after the war, “it became apparent that there was not enough consensus in the administration to pursue such a course.”110 He failed to realize, of course, that he himself had destroyed much of that consensus by cutting Laird and Rogers out of the war planning as much as possible. Both raised strong objections to Duck Hook, convincing the president that the American public could not tolerate military escalation. Nixon eventually agreed. “I believed it would be very hard to hold the country together,” he admitted after the war, “while pursuing a military solution.”111 Laird continued to argue that rallying the American people to patiently support a protracted war was the correct path to take. Polling suggested that the phased withdrawal of American troops already under way was hugely popular.112 The withdrawal was actually gaining support for Nixon’s other Vietnam policies; namely, increasing military aid to South Vietnam and using American air power when necessary to hit the PAVN now operating inside South Vietnam. Nixon liked this controlled escalation because it gave him public support, something he was always concerned about. The president worried that Kissinger did not understand politics, and that his rapid escalation plans threatened to destroy the fragile coalition that Nixon was trying to build and solidify around his Vietnam policies. Despite his best efforts, Kissinger alone could not provide the president with any guarantees that military escalation would bring Hanoi to its knees. Nixon probably would not have supported escalation so close to his original November 1 deadline anyway, but the withdrawal of Duck Hook on October 17 was certainly a momentary blow to Kissinger’s credibility inside the government.

  Years later, Nixon and Kissinger both agreed that it was a mistake to cancel Duck Hook. “In retrospect,” Nixon confessed, “I think we should have done it [Duck Hook]. I was worried how it would affect our chances of improving our relations with the Russians and Chinese. And I didn’t feel the traffic would bear it within the administration.” Nixon had feared resignations by Laird and Rogers if he’d gone ahead with Kissinger’s plan, and he later said, “I just wasn’t ready for that.”113 Shortly after the 1973 Paris Peace Accords, which ended American military involvement in Vietnam, journalist William Safire asked Kissinger whether he would have done anything differently. He responded: “We should have bombed the hell out of them the minute we took office.” Even with a Nobel Peace Prize in hand for his role in the peace negotiations, a bitter Kissinger regretted not following through on the Duck Hook threat: “We could have ended the war much sooner,” he claimed, “if we had been willing to do in 1969 what we ended up doing in 1972.”114 Despite these overly optimistic reflections, Kissinger found himself at the end of October 1969 without a viable Vietnam policy.

  Accordingly, it would be up to the president to cobble something together in time for his speech in early November. Nixon understood that he would have to respond directly to the Moratorium, as the antiwar protests of October 15 were now called. Hundreds of thousands of protestors gathered in cities across the country to protest America’s involvement in Vietnam. Joining the young antiwar activists were members of Congress and even some returning veterans. Kissinger wanted Nixon to use his upcoming televised speech to lash out at the antiwar protestors, whom he in part blamed for Duck Hook’s postponement even though he had joined Nixon in killing the proposal. He told Nixon that the protestors were “dividing the country and making it impossible to settle the problem [the war] on a reasonable basis.”115 But Nixon thought he could do even more with his speech. He believed that he could actually shore up support for increased aid to South Vietnam and new attacks against Communist troops and sanctuaries, while withdrawing US troops.

  On November 3, Nixon finally went before the American public to outline his new Vietnam policy. What became known as the Silent Majority speech firmly established Vietnamization as the cornerstone of the Nixon Doctrine. The “primary mission of our troops,” Nixon announced, “is to enable the South Vietnamese forces to assume the full responsibility for the security of South Vietnam.” Vietnamization would allow the United States to simultaneously reduce American casualties and terminate the war on honorable terms. By withdrawing its troops and demanding that the DRV do the same, the United States was setting the stage for the South Vietnamese to settle the political issues of the war amongst themselves. Nixon believed that this policy would garner public support, allowing the public and Congress to continue to support the Saigon government until it could compete politically and militarily on its own. Nixon emphasized that the United States was withdrawing its troops from a position of “strength and not from weakness.” He also spoke of the US commitment to South Vietnam and warned that antiwar activists were actually making peace more difficult. He called for support from those he labeled the “great silent majority” and concluded with a shrewd and dramatic warning: “North Vietnam cannot humiliate the United States. Only Americans can do that.”116

  Nixon’s Silent Majority speech did what Kissinger could not: it reconciled the contradictory elements of American public opinion on the war. By leaving the escalation option out of the speech, the president relied almost exclusively on Laird’s policy proposals, at Kissinger’s expense. The national security adviser did not take this slight lightly. In what must have been a humiliating and torturous month of November, Kissinger simultaneously stroked the president’s ego for his masterful handling of the November 3 speech and plotted to overturn the gains that Laird and Rogers had made inside the White House. The night of the speech, Nixon phoned Kissinger on three separate occasions for reassurance that he had done well. Kissinger assured Nixon that the speech was “great” and that “if we did not reach the people tonight, it is impossible to do so.”117 Nixon agreed that they would get a “great reaction from the average person.”118 As for Rogers and Laird, much to Kissinger’s delight, the president suggested that they “should have been ecstatic about the speech” but that “neither showed that—they haven’t got the guts. I think they’ll have to go.”119
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  Kissinger followed up the phone conversations with several memos to the president pointing out the weakness of Vietnamization and condemning Rogers’s new effort to negotiate a cease-fire. In late October, Rogers had suggested extending the traditional Christmas holiday truce with a more permanent and negotiated cease-fire. The issue should have come before the NSC during a November meeting, Kissinger reported to Nixon, but the State Department tried “to circumvent this procedure and organize a bureaucratic consensus which would have limited your [the president’s] ability to determine the best course on the basis of an orderly review.”120 An orderly review was rarely part of Kissinger’s management of the NSC. However, he reminded Nixon that he had already informed the secretaries of state and defense that “this is a time for us to stand on what we have offered and let Hanoi take stock and give some indication it is willing to participate in genuine negotiations. I think it would be very detrimental to our overall objective if there were any dope stories that we were offering a stand still cease-fire or any other diplomatic concession at this time.”121 Even the Communists rejected the idea of a cease-fire, he wrote the president.122 These memos aimed specifically at Rogers and Laird are unusual even for an administration known for secrecy and intrigue. Still, Nixon wanted to keep all options on the table, so he asked Kissinger to explore how all of this would play out in Paris.