The Eastertide offensive could not have come at a worse time for the Nixon administration. On April 2, Ambassador Ellsworth Bunker cabled Kissinger and Nixon that “ARVN forces are on the verge of collapse in I Corps.” Back in his more naive days of 1969, Kissinger had told several of his aides, “I can’t believe that a fourth-rate power like North Vietnam doesn’t have a breaking point.” Now a military offensive led by North Vietnam threatened to derail everything. If the Eastertide offensive succeeded, even partially, Kissinger would lose bargaining power with Le Duc Tho. Massive bombings, which Nixon had already indicated his willingness to pursue, now looked to be the only way out of disaster.
Kissinger had scheduled a summit meeting for May between the president and the Soviet leadership. If the United States launched a full-scale bombing campaign over North Vietnam, the Soviet Union might cancel the summit and destroy Kissinger’s hopes for détente and the signing of a treaty limiting nuclear arms. Yet in the absence of American bombs, the Eastertide offensive would overrun South Vietnam, inflict a military defeat on ARVN, and compromise the strategic position of the United States throughout the world. Kissinger was walking a very narrow path.
Nixon and Kissinger decided to unleash the B-52s. On April 6, 1972, they met in the White House with General John W. Vogt, new commander of the Seventh Air Force. Nixon told Vogt “to get down there and use whatever air you need to turn this thing around. . . . Stop this offensive.” Code-named Operation Linebacker, the bombing began later that day, the first sustained raids over North Vietnam since 1969. The president confined the attacks to targets within sixty miles of the Demilitarized Zone, but on April 10 he extended the radius and by midmonth B-52s were attacking targets within a few miles of Hanoi and Haiphong. The raids elated the joint chiefs. Admiral Thomas Moorer, who had replaced Earle Wheeler as chairman of the joint chiefs in 1970, remarked, “Finally we will be able to win the war.”
On May 2 Kissinger met once again at the house on the Rue Darthe in Paris with Le Duc Tho. Kissinger tried to achieve some movement in the negotiations. But Le Duc Tho would not budge. Quang Tri City had fallen to NVA troops, Hue was threatened, Loc Ninh was taken, An Loc was under siege, and Saigon was bracing for an attack; and in the Central Highlands the NVA troops were preparing for a breakthrough that would carry them to the South China Sea. Le Duc Tho had one message for Kissinger on May 2, 1970: “What difference is all this talk going to make? The end is in sight.” Kissinger was upset, his anger no doubt deepened by what seemed Le Duc Tho’s arrogance. That night, when he got back to Washington, he met with Nixon. His restraint was gone. “It’s time,” he told Nixon, “to send them an undeniable message, to deliver a shock, to let them know that things might get out of hand if the offensive doesn’t stop.” Nixon was ready, too. “The bastards have never been bombed like they’re going to be bombed this time.” Two days later, on May 4, Nixon suspended the Paris peace talks after their 149th session.
On May 8 Nixon announced that Operation Linebacker would continue indefinitely and the navy would mine the North Vietnamese ports of Haiphong, Cam Pha, Hon Gai, and Thanh Hoa and impose a naval blockade of the entire coast—all to cut the flow of supplies to North Vietnamese troops fighting in the South and to protect the lives of American forces still in Vietnam. Nixon hoped the raids would pressure North Vietnam into taking the Paris negotiations seriously. Privately, he wanted the B-52s to do what ARVN could not: stop the Eastertide offensive. Kissinger’s concern was that the raids not disrupt the upcoming Moscow summit.
Both Nixon and Kissinger got their wishes. Nixon shifted more than 100 B-52s from the Strategic Air Command and assigned them to tactical strikes over South Vietnam and strategic air raids over North Vietnam. The size of the Seventh Fleet nearly doubled, including the addition of four aircraft carriers and hundreds of fighter-bombers. By the end of May the United States was flying more than 2,200 sorties a month, up from only 700 in March, and most of the raids were concentrated on Quang Tri, Kontum, Dak To, An Loc, and Loc Ninh, and over selected strategic targets in North Vietnam. At An Loc and Quang Tri the B-52s struck every forty-five minutes, twenty-four hours a day, for weeks on end, pounding the North Vietnamese. They took a fearsome toll. On June 18 the NVA troops began pulling out of An Loc; the fighting petered out near Kontum, which ended North Vietnam’s hopes of driving to the South China Sea; and up north, the ARVN Airborne Division, 1st Division, and marines began a counterattack that lasted throughout the summer and eventually recaptured Quang Tri City. Eastertide was over. And to Kissinger’s pleasure, the Soviet leaders acted with restraint. They offered only the most tepid protest against the bombing and mining campaigns, decided not to challenge the naval blockade, and did not withdraw their invitation for Nixon to come to Moscow. The Chinese were equally circumspect, issuing a mild protest but also calling for a negotiated settlement. Pham Van Dong felt betrayed: He condemned both Moscow and the Chinese for abandoning the “world revolutionary movement and acquiescing in the brutal violence of the American imperialists.” Later in the month Nixon went to Moscow, drank champagne with a smiling Leonid Brezhnev, and signed the coveted Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty.
In Hanoi the Eastertide fiasco was a humiliating defeat for Vo Nguyen Giap. He had also fallen victim to Hodgkin’s disease, a cancer of the lymphatic system, which prevented him from taking an active role in the government. Pham Van Dong began looking to General Van Tien Dung as his military chief. Dung, born in Tonkin in 1917 to a peasant family, had joined the revolutionary movement in 1936 and fought against the French and then the Japanese. Shrewd and fearless, he exuded confidence, but his perpetually smiling countenance hid an allconsuming passion for Vietnamese independence. In the early 1950s Dung performed brilliantly as a Vietminh battalion commander, and Giap trained him in logistics and maneuvers. In 1953 Giap named him chief of staff, gave him command of the 320th Division, and charged him with logistical planning at Dienbienphu. For the next eighteen years Dung was Giap’s closest associate.
When Dung assumed control of the North Vietnamese army, he faced a complicated military situation. On August 23, 1972, the last American combat battalion—3rd Battalion of the 21st Infantry—left South Vietnam. ARVN troop strength had reached nearly 1.1 million troops, the highest since the beginning of the war, and with military equipment transfers from the United States, South Vietnam had a state-of-the-art fighting force. It had the fourth largest army in the world, its navy was the world’s fifth largest, possessing nearly 1,500 ships, and at more than 2,000 craft, Saigon had the fourth largest air force. Because during Eastertide Giap had persisted in making repeated frontal assaults into fortified ARVN bunkers protected by massive American air support, fully half of the NVA combat divisions were devastated. More than 100,000 of North Vietnam’s best troops were dead, and Dung estimated it could take three years to restore the army to fighting strength. It was obvious to Dung that North Vietnam would not be able to contemplate a major offensive against South Vietnam anytime soon.
The political situation in the United States did not bode well either. Pham Van Dong and Le Duc Tho had been hoping ever since the Cambodian invasion in 1970 that the antiwar movement would sweep Richard Nixon from office and bring a Democrat to power who would be anxious to complete the American disengagement. They took heart when the Democrats nominated Senator George McGovern of South Dakota as their presidential candidate. A leading political figure in the antiwar movement since 1965, McGovern campaigned for an immediate, unilateral American withdrawal. For their purposes the North Vietnamese could not imagine a better American president. But the McGovern campaign self-destructed. When the press found out that Senator Thomas Eagleton of Missouri, McGovern’s vice-presidential running mate, had once been hospitalized for mental illness and treated by electric shock therapy, the Democrats dumped him from the ticket and replaced him with Sargent Shriver. That, though, made the party look incompetent. And the Republicans were able to portray McGovern as representative of the radical cultu
ral forces that Americans had come to associate with the antiwar movement. At some point, surely, Pham Van Dong and Le Duc Tho came to know that Richard Nixon would be reelected in November.
The military situation in South Vietnam and the political climate in the United States left North Vietnam with only one option: Negotiate a settlement to the war. Van Tien Dung had a central role in convincing the Politburo to return to the talks. Pham Van Dong and Le Duc Tho were more stubborn. Operation Linebacker, like the earlier Rolling Thunder bombing campaigns, fed on their resentment toward the United States. They did not want to give in to what they considered technological terrorism. But Dung saw no point in digging in. He could not launch an invasion of South Vietnam anyway, and no dramatic change appeared in American politics. Why not reopen the talks, secure an end to the Linebacker attacks, rebuild the logistical network, and prepare for the final assault on South Vietnam?
Dung’s logic was compelling, and in August, Kissinger resumed private talks with Le Duc Tho. Both sides wished for an accommodation. North Vietnam wanted an end to the Linebacker raids, and Nixon was looking ahead to the election, hoping to sign a peace treaty before November. In Paris at the end of September, Kissinger agreed to a complete withdrawal of American troops while allowing North Vietnamese soldiers to remain in place in South Vietnam, a major concession to Le Duc Tho. Kissinger had little choice. Ten years of war and the greatest expenditure of firepower in history had not dislodged the enemy. “We could not make it [NVA troop withdrawal] a condition for a final settlement. We had long since passed that threshold.” Le Duc Tho dropped the long-standing North Vietnamese demand that Nguyen Van Thieu resign and a coalition government be created. By the end of September the outlines of a peace treaty had emerged: a mutual cease-fire and an end to American bombing; complete withdrawal of American troops; exchanges of prisoners of war; agreement to allow Vietcong, North Vietnamese, and South Vietnamese troops to remain in place; recognition of the Provisional Revolutionary Government of South Vietnam and the government of Nguyen Van Thieu as legitimate political entities in South Vietnam; and creation of a “council of national reconciliation” to work out the remaining problems.
The settlement was the easy part. Kissinger encountered opposition from the State Department, typical bureaucratic intransigence that, in his opinion, so often foiled modern diplomacy. When several State Department and National Security Council staff officials argued that the United States had caved in to the North Vietnamese position, Kissinger reacted violently, shouting at them in a White House briefing session: “I want to meet their terms. I want to reach an agreement. I want to end this war before the election. It can be done and it will be done. What do you want us to do? Stay there forever?” In Saigon, President Nguyen Van Thieu too perceived a sellout. He was apoplectic in his opposition to the treaty. Leaving fourteen divisions of North Vietnamese troops in South Vietnam and extending political recognition to the Provisional Revolutionary Government were unthinkable. When Kissinger met with Thieu in Saigon in mid-October, the South Vietnamese flatly rejected the proposals, insisting on withdrawal of all North Vietnamese soldiers, recognition of the Demilitarized Zone as a sovereign international boundary, and a public American repudiation of the Provisional Revolutionary Government’s legitimacy. When Kissinger termed the demands “insane and absurd,” Thieu went mute with rage.
When Kissinger returned to Washington with the news that Thieu was going to sabotage the deal, Nixon flew into one of his own rages, ordering Kissinger to fly to Saigon and “tell that little son of a bitch to sign or else.” Kissinger demurred and Nixon reconsidered, hoping that there was some way of finessing Thieu into agreement. On October 22 the United States, which had staged more than 41,000 bombing sorties over North Vietnam since April 1, scaled back the Linebacker raids to targets south of the twentieth parallel. In a press conference on October 24 Thieu denounced the bombing halt and the draft treaty, calling on South Vietnam to “wipe out the Vietcong and North Vietnamese invaders quickly and mercilessly.” Nixon was also hesitating. With the election just two weeks away, he did not want the settlement to appear politically contrived, and he thought that Thieu’s demands might give the United States more bargaining power. Kissinger began another round of talks, which made Hanoi very suspicious. In a political dance inspired by the presidential election and fear of losing the settlement outright, Kissinger promised a group of journalists that “peace is at hand. We believe that an agreement is within sight.”
It was not, not quite yet. On November 7 Nixon won a landslide victory in the election. When Kissinger renewed negotiations with Le Duc Tho after the elections, he presented to the North Vietnamese sixty-nine proposed changes in the treaty, all of them demanded by Nguyen Van Thieu. The North Vietnamese found the proposals unacceptable, and later in the month they began introducing changes of their own. The agreement, which had seemed so close back in October, was disintegrating.
Toward South Vietnam Nixon switched from stick to carrot, promising Thieu that if “North Vietnam violates the agreement and stages offensive operations against you, the United States will take swift and severe retaliatory action.” Thieu knew better than anyone that South Vietnamese survival depended on that retaliation. Only massive American bombing had stopped the Eastertide offensive. Without American air support and military assistance, South Vietnam would not survive another attack. Yet Thieu still would not budge. Pham Van Dong saw the feud between the United States and South Vietnam as an opportunity. If he could stall the talks, raise more procedural issues, and delay a final settlement, North Vietnam might be able to strengthen the air defenses around Hanoi and Haiphong, repair the rail lines to China, and adjust its supply routing to compensate for the American blockade. On December 13 Le Duc Tho suspended the negotiations and returned to Hanoi “for consultations.”
The next day Nixon gave Pham Van Dong an ultimatum: “Resume serious negotiations within seventy-two hours or suffer the consequences.” Nixon was reaching the end of his emotional rope. He wanted a signed peace treaty before the inauguration on January 20, 1973. He was even more blunt to Admiral Thomas Moorer, instructing him to develop immediate plans for massive bombing of North Vietnam: “I don’t want any more of this crap about the fact that we couldn’t hit this target or that one. This is your chance to use military power to win this war, and if you don’t, I’ll hold you responsible.” On December 18, 1972, Moorer followed orders and launched Operation Linebacker II, a final eleven-day bombing campaign that evolved into one of the heaviest aerial assaults of the war. B-52s, F-105s, F-4s, and F-111s flew nearly 2,000 sorties over North Vietnam, employing highly accurate laser-guided, television-targeted bombs—“Christmas bombs”—to strike rail yards, power plants, communications, air defense radar sites, bridges, highways, docks and shipping facilities, petroleum stores, ammunition supply depots, air bases, military installations, and means of transportation.
Early in January 1973 Le Duc Tho indicated a willingness to resume the negotiations. Van Tien Dung had been right all along. It was best to wait for a better opportunity to carry out the final offensive. The only roadblock to a settlement was Nguyen Van Thieu, but Richard Nixon was not about to let a peace treaty slip through his hands again. On January 5, 1973, he secretly communicated with Thieu, sending him a threat and a promise:
Gravest consequences would then ensue if [you] . . . reject the agreement. . . . It is imperative for our common objectives that your government take no further actions . . . that make more difficult the acceptance of the settlement by all parties. . . . Should you decide . . . to go with us, you have my assurance of continued assistance in the post-settlement period and that we will respond with full force should the settlement be violated by North Vietnam.
Thieu got the message. With or without him, Nixon was going to sign a treaty. Refusal to cooperate would mean an end to American military assistance and certain defeat. Stone-faced, his teeth tightly clenched, Thieu told Ambassador Ellsworth Bunker that he woul
d sign. On January 8 Kissinger met with Le Duc Tho in Paris; a week later Nixon halted all military operations against North Vietnam; and on January 27 all four parties—the United States, North Vietnam, South Vietnam, and the Provisional Revolutionary Government of South Vietnam—signed the treaty. The document provided for release of all American prisoners of war and withdrawal of all United States military personnel within sixty days; a cease-fire to be monitored by a four-nation International Commission of Control and Supervision; cessation of all foreign military activity in Laos and Cambodia; American provision of replacement military aid and unlimited economic assistance to South Vietnam; and formation of a Council of National Reconciliation and Concord, composed of representatives from the Saigon regime, the Provisional Revolutionary Government of South Vietnam, and a neutral body, to resolve outstanding political questions and organize elections in South Vietnam.
The settlement came none too soon. When Congress convened in January, the Democratic caucuses of both houses voted overwhelmingly to eliminate all funds for military operations in Indochina, and polls of the new Congress indicated huge majorities for the end of American involvement in the region. There were only 24,000 American troops still in South Vietnam. Political support for the war in the United States had completely evaporated. Nixon had no choice but to get the treaty signed and sealed. In a national television address, he announced that within sixty days all American troops would be out of South Vietnam and the prisoners of war would be home. “South Vietnam,” he said, “has gained the right to determine its own future. . . . Let us be proud that America did not settle for a peace that would have betrayed our ally.” The speech repelled Nguyen Cao Ky, “so nauseating was its hypocrisy and self-delusion. . . . This is an enormous step toward the total domination of Vietnam and there is no reason why they [the Communists] should stop now. . . . I give them a couple of years before they invade the South.”
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