Reckless: Henry Kissinger and the Tragedy of Vietnam
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Nixon had hoped that the bombing would show Saigon that the United States was serious about its commitment to South Vietnam, but also to a negotiated settlement to the war. He wrote Thieu a letter as the Linebacker II raids started, explaining that the bombing was designed to get Hanoi back to the bargaining table and not a sign that the US president had given up on negotiations. He sent Haig to Saigon again with the letter that read, “I have asked General Haig to obtain your answer on this absolutely final offer for us to work together in seeking a settlement along the lines I have approved or to go our separate ways.” Nixon informed Thieu that Haig was not coming to South Vietnam to negotiate; he was coming to get an answer from Saigon. There would be no changes in text to what the United States had agreed to in Paris, and Thieu had better support the final document or Nixon would “seek a settlement with the enemy which serves US interests alone.”114
Of course, Haig reported, Thieu waffled. He agreed to meet with Haig and Bunker because, he told them, he generally agreed that he would go along with negotiations because this was his “pragmatic recognition that this would be the only way to retain US assistance.” Still, he demanded that the United States insist on the “total and verified” withdrawal of all North Vietnamese troops from South Vietnam at the same time of the total US troop withdrawal. Haig informed Thieu that the troop question had already been settled—the North Vietnamese troops would be allowed to stay in South Vietnam—and that it was now time to signal his approval of the proposed agreement. Haig agreed with Kissinger that “Thieu is more than capable of handling the North Vietnamese threat given the necessary will to do so.” Although Thieu was “irrational” and “self-serving,” Haig concluded that Saigon was ready to reach a settlement and that “now makes our options very clear.”115
Kissinger’s problems extended far beyond Thieu, however, as reaction to the Christmas bombings challenged the Nixon administration’s global standing and his own credibility. Whatever rationale Kissinger could claim for advocating the attacks against North Vietnam, his cause suffered tremendously. Public opinion polls showed that nearly two thirds of all Americans were against the attacks. Nixon’s popularity ranking dropped to 39 percent, his lowest numbers before the Watergate scandal undid his presidency.116 Pope Paul condemned the “sudden resumption of harsh and massive war actions” against North Vietnam. Critics denounced the president, calling his bombing campaign “war by tantrum.”117 Several members of Congress declared that they would end the war by withholding funds after Congress reconvened on January 3. Senator William Saxbie (R-OH) wondered whether Nixon had “taken leave of his senses.” Senate majority leader Mike Mansfield (D-MT) called the bombings a “stone-age tactic.” Democratic senator from Massachusetts Ted Kennedy said that the bombings “should outrage the conscience of all Americans.” The international press was particularly critical. The Daily Mirror described the bombing as an act of “insane ferocity, a crude exercise in the politics of terror.” The Times of London said the bombing was a “particular horror because of its massive scale and its indiscriminate character.” The Guardian reported that Nixon wanted to go down in history as the most “bloodthirsty of all American presidents.”118 There is no doubt that it would have been almost impossible for Kissinger and Nixon to continue the bombings in this environment once the new Congress was sworn in on January 3, 1973.
Therefore, on December 22, Nixon sent Hanoi a message that he would halt the bombing above the twentieth parallel if Le Duc Tho would return to Paris to resume negotiations with Kissinger. Hanoi failed to respond, so Nixon unleashed the heaviest bombings of the Linebacker II campaign. On December 26, 120 bombers hit ten targets in Hanoi, Thai Nguyen, and Haiphong. Over five hundred homes were destroyed and 215 people were killed. That afternoon, Hanoi informed Nixon that Tho would meet Kissinger on January 8 in Paris. Apparently, Tho had fallen ill during a trip to China and needed time to recover.
Nixon declared victory. He claimed that the bombings forced Hanoi to send “the first signal that they had had enough.”119 He then announced that bombing would be restricted to below the twentieth parallel. But Hanoi made it clear that an end to the bombing was not a precondition for talks in Paris. The Politburo hoped that this announcement would make it impossible for Nixon and Kissinger to claim that they had bombed North Vietnam back to the bargaining table. There is still a great deal of debate on why the talks resumed. Hanoi explains the return to Paris this way: “The Nixon administration had stopped the negotiations to bomb. Now it was stopping the bombing to resume negotiations.”120 On December 30, a White House aide announced that “negotiations between presidential adviser Dr. Kissinger and special adviser Le Duc Tho and Minister Xuan Thuy will be resumed in Paris on January 8.”121
Back to the Bargaining Table
When the talks did resume on January 8, it was clear that neither side wanted to leave Paris without an agreement. Kissinger understood that he would have to take some heat from Tho, and so he listened silently as Hanoi’s leader launched a full-scale attack on the US for its recent bombings. “You thought such activities could subdue us,” Tho told Kissinger, “but you were mistaken.” He scolded, “You have met with failure. Over the past ten years we have never shot as many planes and captured or killed as many pilots as in the past ten days.” Such actions, he continued, “tarnished the reputation of the United States,” but, he concluded, if the US wanted to negotiate a peaceful settlement, “we are prepared to do that.”122 Kissinger responded that the United States was forced to take military action because Hanoi had “no intention” of settling the conflict. But, he quickly added that it was now time to “get down to business” because he was fully prepared to “come to a rapid settlement with you.”123
Over the next four days, January 8–January 11, Kissinger and Le Duc Tho settled their remaining differences. The major breakthrough came on January 9, Nixon’s birthday, when the DMZ was designated a provisional demarcation line and Hanoi agreed that the PRG were only to be recognized in the preamble, not in the text of the agreement. The phrase “South Vietnamese parties” instead of “South Vietnam” was added to the final document as well, another Kissinger concession. And, finally, the United States dropped its demand for a simultaneous cease-fire in Laos and Cambodia, agreeing to Hanoi’s viewpoint on this matter. In short, the final agreement looked much like the October proposal. The claim by some that the bombing had forced Hanoi into making serious concessions during the January meetings simply is not reflected in the historical record.124
Kissinger called Nixon with the good news. “We celebrated the President’s birthday by making a major breakthrough in the negotiations.” He went on to tell Nixon that the agreement was near only because of “the President’s firmness and the North Vietnamese belief that he will not be affected by either Congressional or public pressure.” Not content with hyperbole, his fawning over the president soared to new levels when he assured Nixon that even Le Duc Tho recognized these positive traits.125 He warned Nixon, however, that the major problem now facing the United States was getting Thieu on board. He suggested that Nixon tell Thieu flatly that he would “proceed, with or without him.”126
Nixon agreed. “The main thing now, Henry, is that we have to pull this off, and it’s going to be tough titty.”127 He told Kissinger that the United States must go ahead with the agreement “regardless of whether Thieu goes along or not.”128 He then sent Haig to Saigon again to make it clear to Thieu that if he continued to resist supporting the agreement, the United States would cut off all further assistance, yet he assured Thieu that he was more than willing to sign the treaty alone if necessary.129 Thieu stalled for several days, but eventually acknowledged that he could not stop the United States from making peace in his name with his sworn enemy. “I have done all that I can for my country,” Thieu told his government.130 Kissinger and Tho scheduled a signing ceremony in Paris on January 27, 1973.
Before meeting at avenue Kléber for the signing ceremony, however, Kis
singer launched a full public relations campaign to make it clear that he was responsible for bringing the war to end. He gave dozens of interviews to the press where he championed his negotiating skills but did not go into the specifics of the faulty agreement. When one reporter pressed him by asking whether, if the agreement broke down, the United States would send troops again to South Vietnam to fight the North Vietnamese troops allowed to stay there, Kissinger flippantly replied, “I don’t want to speculate on hypothetical situations that we don’t expect to arise.”131
In the End, Whose Victory?
But this was not a hypothetical situation. Within days of initialing the cease-fire agreement in Paris, North Vietnamese forces attacked more than four hundred villages in South Vietnam. In fact, over three thousand violations of the cease-fire occurred during the first three weeks of the agreement. Ambassador Bunker later concluded that the cease-fire did not end the fighting in Vietnam; instead, it initiated a new war that was more intense and brutal than the last.132 By the end of January, the North Vietnamese and ARVN were engaged in some of the heaviest fighting of their long war in the Mekong Delta and in Kontum and Pleiku Provinces. Over 6,600 South Vietnamese soldiers were killed and more than 200,000 South Vietnamese refugees had to flee their homes while Kissinger was declaring victory in the press.133
The national security adviser continued his victory lap before the US House of Representatives and the US Senate. He told both groups that as a result of the agreement, all foreign forces had to be removed from South Vietnam, but then covered his tracks by skillfully stating that “whatever forces may be in South Vietnam from outside South Vietnam—specifically North Vietnamese forces—cannot receive reinforcement, replacement, or any other form of augmentation by any means whatsoever.”134 It was a forceful statement that meant nothing and hid the reality of what was already happening inside South Vietnam. From Nixon’s perspective, he did not care that Kissinger was glossing over the details, only that Kissinger was taking all the credit for ending the war.
Nixon wanted to announce the peace agreement before his second inauguration, scheduled for January 20, 1972, and before Kissinger went to Congress. Kissinger warned him not to use such phrases as “lasting peace,” or “guaranteed peace,” because he was sure that “this thing is almost certain to blow up sooner or later.”135 Nixon was done with listening to Kissinger about Vietnam. The president felt that his national security adviser had taken all the glory for ending the war in Vietnam, and he wanted a little recognition of his own. Nixon complained that Kissinger had barely mentioned the president’s name before Congress when explaining the details of the agreement.
Haldeman wrote in his diary that Nixon was angry that Kissinger “didn’t make the point regarding the character of the man, how he toughed it through. We should quit worrying about defending the agreement,” he recorded that Nixon said; “it either works or it doesn’t, and it doesn’t matter.” Haldeman documented that Nixon wondered why Kissinger did not tell Congress or the press that what really mattered was “that without the P’s [president’s] courage we couldn’t have had this”; that Nixon thought the attention on Kissinger was all wrong. “The basic line here is the character, the lonely man in the White House, with little support from government, active opposition from media and opinion leaders… the P alone held on and pulled it out.” In the most telling comment of all, Nixon told Haldeman that Kissinger was “very popular,” but he “did not make our points… the missing link is the Profile in Courage.”136 That was Nixon’s courage, not Kissinger’s. When Harry Reasoner of CBS nominated Kissinger for the Nobel Peace Prize, Nixon was outraged.
To settle the score, Nixon decided to take some of the credit for the peace agreement himself. In a January 23, 1973, address to the nation announcing the peace agreement, he claimed that the treaty will “ensure stable peace in Vietnam… and contribute… to lasting peace in Indochina and Southeast Asia.” He underscored the fact he was the leader of the negotiations and that “all the conditions that I laid down then have been met.” He then took considerable liberties, saying that “we have been in the closest consultation with President Thieu,” and that this settlement meets “the goals and has the full support” of the South Vietnamese government. Nixon concluded his speech with the usual hyperbole, “Now that we have achieved an honorable agreement, let us be proud that America did not settle for a peace that would have betrayed our allies…”137
Kissinger must have cringed, hearing those words. He understood that a new war—the War of the Flags—was already under way in South Vietnam because the peace agreement he had negotiated was so terribly flawed. Despite his considerable intellect and talent, Kissinger was never able to secure a peace agreement that settled the major question of the war: the political future of South Vietnam. He allowed over 150,000 North Vietnamese troops to remain in South Vietnam as the result of the peace agreement, and all he got in exchange was the chance for South Vietnam to fight Hanoi on its own. His critics claim that he could have achieved that eventuality at any time in the war without the continued sacrifice and suffering on all sides. It’s a fair point. An additional 100,000 PAVN troops were permitted to remain in Cambodia and Laos, and there was no restriction in the agreement about their resupply or movement. China and the Soviet Union continued to support Hanoi, while America’s aid to South Vietnam was drying up. Kissinger had concluded that if the United States could not remove North Vietnamese troops from South Vietnam with 500,000 US troops and massive bombardment, then it was a goal that had to be sacrificed.
In a sense, Kissinger was right. There was little he could do to change reality on the ground. There were indeed limits to what he could do in Washington, Paris, or Saigon to improve the weak hand he was dealt. He had clearly recognized these severe limitations when he went to the White House in 1969. From his first trip to Vietnam in 1965 until he became national security adviser, Kissinger dispassionately explored all that had gone wrong for the United States in Vietnam. In practice, however, he made many of the same mistakes. He confused coercive power with tangible diplomatic results. When he failed to move Hanoi to his point of view, he frequently supported fierce military escalation. In doing so, he often squandered the remaining public goodwill on Vietnam, thereby narrowing his future options.
Kissinger made several other important mistakes during the negotiations. Successful negotiations to end deadly conflict often require a full spectrum of talents and resources. He squandered most of these by isolating the Defense and State Departments. By cutting Rogers and Laird out of most important strategic decisions on the war, he lost the ability to build a coalition of supportive partners. His personal ambitions and temperament led him to sometimes put political rivalries above strategic concerns. Nixon was not the kind of president to challenge his national security adviser or any of his subordinates on these issues. Therefore, Kissinger was able to secure for his small shop a monopoly on diplomacy. Finally, Kissinger’s utter contempt for the South Vietnamese government meant that he never fully consulted Saigon about important matters. He was content to negotiate an end to the war on American terms, and then he coerced Saigon into accepting its fate. On April 30, 1975, Communist tanks rolled into Saigon without a US response.
The war in Vietnam was an American disaster. The loss of lives and treasure for all sides was immense. The United States suffered psychic damage from which it has never fully recovered. And yet Kissinger, despite his failures in Vietnam, has emerged as a symbol of American shrewdness in exercising power. But Kissinger was never able to strip away emotion, ego, and conventional wisdom from his handling of the Vietnam War. He therefore recklessly sought ends beyond his mean.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
IN WRITING THIS book, I have incurred many debts, both personal and intellectual. First on any list must be my research assistants, generously funded by Burt Flickinger. Sarah Mawhinney and Lauren Stauffer provided me with a steady stream of material. Tung Vu conducted research in the Vietnamese archi
ves in Ho Chi Minh City. Cameron Daddis and Michaela Coplen made several visits with me to the Nixon Presidential Library and Museum in Yorba Linda, California.
I owe thanks to my many wonderful students at Vassar College whose interest in the history US foreign policy is exemplary.
Special help in the form of valuable comments on draft chapters and ideas came from Pierre Asselin, Chris Appy, Larry Berman, Mai Elliott, David Elliott, Lloyd Gardner, James Hershberg, the late Luu Doan Huynh, Jeff Kimball, the late Jack Langguth, Mark Lawrence, Kyle Longley, Paul Miles, Ed Miller, David Milne, Charles Neu, John Prados, Andrew Preston, Quang Pham, Sandra Scanlon, Kathryn Statler, Heather Stur, John Prados, and James Wilson.
I owe special thanks to Colonel Greg Daddis, Colonel James Willbanks, Barbara Keys, Lien-Hang Nguyen, Fred Logevall, and the late Marilyn Young, for their friendship, support, and sound advice on this project.
For their willingness to help in various ways, large and small, I thank Richard Aldous, Joy Backer, Laura Belmonte, Tom Blanton, Jim Blight, Mark Bradley, Malcolm Byrne, Catherine Carey, Dominique Cleary, Susan Daddis, Anne Foster, Colonel Gian Gentile, Ann Heiss, Richard Immerman, Molly and Dan Katz, Liam Kennedy, James Ketterer, Janet Lang, Scott and Marion Morrison, Mel Leffler, Terry McCarthy, Aaron O’Connell, Don Pease, Debbie Sharnak, Jerome Sherman, Ted Smyth, Jeremi Suri, Comhnall Tuohy, Eric Uuksulainen, Hannah VanDeMark, David Welch, Jackie Whitt, and David Woolner. Erin Granville helped shape this book at its early stages, and for that I am eternally grateful.