VIETNAM: THE IMPOSSIBLE WAR

Finally, The End

	Richard Nixon assumed office in 1969 committed not only to restoring stability at home 
but to creating a new and more stable order in the world.  Central to Nixon's hopes for
international stability was a resolution of the Vietnam conflict.  Yet the new president felt
no freer than his predecessor to abandon the American commitment there.  He realized that the 
endless war was undermining both the nation's domestic stability and its position in the
world.  But he feared that a precipitous retreat would destroy American honor and "credibility."
	During his 1968 campaign, Nixon claimed to have formulated a plan to bring "peace with
honor" in Vietnam.  He had refused to disclose its details.  Once in office, however, he soon 
made clear that the plan consisted of little more than a vague set of general principles, 
not of any concrete measures to extricate the United States from the quagmire.  American 
involvement in Indochina continued for four more years, during which the war expanded 
both in its geographic scope and its bloodiness.  And when a settlement finally emerged 
early in 1973, it produced neither peace nor honor.  It succeeded only in removing the United 
States from the wreckage.  
	
	Despite Nixon's own passionate interest in international affairs, he brought with him
into government a man who ultimately seemed to overshadow him in the conduct of diplomacy:
Henry Kissinger, a Harvard professor whom the president appointed as his special assistant for
national security affairs.  Kissinger quickly established dominance over both secretary of state,
William Rogers, and the secretary of defense, Melvin Laird, who were both more experienced in 
public life.  That was in part a result of Nixon's passion for concentrating decisions in the 
White House.  But Kissinger's keen intelligence, his bureaucratic skills, and his success in 
handling the press were at least equally important.  Together, Nixon and Kissinger set out to 
find an acceptable solution to the stalemate in Vietnam.
	This new Vietnam policy moved along several fronts.  One was an effort to limit domestic
opposition to the war so as to permit the administration more political space in which to
maneuver.  Aware that the military draft was one of the most visible targets of dissent, 
the administration devised a new "lottery" system, through which only a limited group--those
nineteen-year-olds with low lottery numbers--would be subject to conscription.  Later, the 
president urged the creation of an all-volunteer army.  
	More important in stifling dissent, however, was the new policy of "Vietnamization"
of the war--the training and equipping of the South Vietnamese military to assume the burden of 
combat in place of American forces.  In the fall of 1969, Nixon announced the withdrawal of 
60000 American ground troops from Vietnam, the first reduction in U.S. troop strength since the
beginning of the war.  The withdrawal continued steadily for more than three years, so that by 
the fall of 1972 relatively few American soldiers remained in Indochina.  From a peak of more 
than 540000 in 1969, the number had dwindled to about 60000.  
	Vietnamization did help quiet domestic oposition to the war.  But it did nothing
to break the stalemate.  The new administration quickly determined that new military pressures
would be necessary to do that.  

	By the end of their first year in office, Nixon and Kissinger had concluded the most
effective way to tip military balance in America's favor was to destroy the bases in Cambodia
from which the American military believed the North Vietnamese were launching many of their
attacks.  Very early in his presidency, Nixon ordered the air force to begin bombing 
Cambodian territory.  He kept the raids secret from Congress and the public.  In the spring of
1970, possibly with U.S. encouragement and support, conservative military leaders overthrew 
the neutral government of Cambodia and established a new, pro-American regime under General
Lon Nol.  Lon Nol quickly gave his approval to American incursions into his territory; and
on April 30, Nixon went on television to announce that he was ordering American troops across 
the border in Cambodia to "clean out" the bases that the enemy had been using for its "increased
military aggression."
	Literally overnight, the Cambodian invasion restored the dwindling antiwar movement
to vigorous life.  The first days of May saw the most widespread and vocal antiwar demonstrations
ever.  Hundreds of thousands of protestors gathered in Washington to denounce the president's 
policies.  Millions, perhaps, participated in countless smaller demonstrations.  Antiwar frenzy
was reaching so high a level that it was possible briefly for some Americans to believe that a 
genuine revolution was imminent.  The mood of crisis intensified greatly on May 4, when four 
college students were killed when the National Guard opened fire on antiwar demonstrators at
Kent State University.     
	The clamor against the war quickly spread into government and the press.  Congress 
angrily repealed the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, stripping the president of what had long
served as the legal basis for the war.  Nixon ignored the action.  Then, in June 1971, 
the New York Times and later other newspapers began publishing excerpts from a secret study
of the war prepared by the Defense of Department during the Johnson administration.  The 
so-called Pentagon Papers, leaked to the press by former Defense official Daniel Ellsberg,
provided confirmation of what many had long believed: that the government had been dishonest,
both in reporting the military progress of the war and in explaining its own motives for
American involvement.  The administration went to court to suppress the documents, but the
Supreme Court finally ruled that the press had the right to publish them.  
	Particularly troubling, both to the public and to the government, were signs of decay
within the American military.  Morale and discipline among U.S. troops in Vietnam, who had been
fighting a savage and inconclusive war for more than five years, was rapidly deteriorating.  The 
trial and conviction in 1971 of Lieutenant William Cally, who was charged with overseeing a 
massacre of more than 100 unarmed South Vietnamese civilians, attracted wide public attention 
to the dehumanizing impact of the war on those who fought it--and to the terrible consequences.
	The continuing carnage, the increasing savagery, and the social distress at home had 
largely destroyed public support for the war.  By 1971, nearly two-thirds of those interviewed in
public opinion polls were urging American withdrawal from Vietnam.  But from Richard Nixon there
came no sign of retreat.  Furthermore, with the approval of the White House , both the FBI and 
the CIA intensified their surveillance and infiltration of antiwar and radical groups, often
resorting to blatant illegalities.  Administration officials sought to discredit prominent 
critics of the war by leaking damaging personal information about them.  At one point, White 
House agents broke into the office of a psychiatrist in an unsuccessful effort to steal files
on Daniel Ellsberg, the former Defense Department official who had leaked the Pentagon Papers.
	Meanwhile, the fighting in Indochina raged on.  In February 1971, the president ordered 
the Air Force to assist the South Vietnamese army in an invasion of Laos--a test, as he saw it,
of his Vietnamization programs.  Within weeks, the South Vietnamese scrambled back across the
border in defeat.  American bombing increased, despite its apparent ineffectiveness.  In March
1972, the North Vietnamese mounted their biggest offensive since 1968.  American and South 
Vietnamese forces managed to halt the communist advance, but it was clear that without American
support the offensive would have succeeded.  
	
	As the 1972 presidential campaign approached, the administration stepped up its efforts
to produce a breakthrough in negotiations with the North Vietnamese.  In April 1972, the 
president dropped his longtime insistence on a removal of North Vietnamese troops from the 
south before any American withdrawal.  Meanwhile, Henry Kissinger was meeting privately in 
Paris with the North Vietnamese foreign secretary, Le Duc Tho, to work out terms for a cease-
fire.  On October 26, only days before the presidential election, Kissinger announced that 
"peace is at hand."
	Several weeks later, negotiations broke down once again.  Although both the American 
and the North Vietnamese governments were ready to accept the Kissinger-Tho plan for a cease-
fire, the Thieu regime baled, still insisting on a full withdrawal of North Vietnamese forces
from the south.  Kissinger tried to win additional concessions from the communists to meet
Thieu's objections, but on December 16 talks broke off. 
	The next day, American B-52s began the heaviest and most destructive air raids of the 
entire war on Hanoi, Haiphong, and other North Vietnamese targets.  Civilian casualties were high.
And fifteen B-52s were shot down; in the entire war to tha point, the U.S. had lost only one of
the giant bombers.  On December 30, Nixon terminated the "Christmas bombing."  The United States 
and the North Vietnamese returned to the conference table.  And on January 27, 1973, they 
signed an "agreement on ending the war and restoring peace in Vietnam."  Nixon claimed that the
Christmas bombing had forced the North Vietnamese to relent.  At least equally important,
however, was the enormous American pressure on Thieu to accept the cease-fire.  
	The terms of the Paris accords were little different from those Kissinger and Tho
had accepted a few months before.  There would be an immediate cease-fire.  The North Vietnamese
would release several hundred American prisoners of war, who fate had become an emotional 
issue of great importance within the United States.  After that the agreement descended into 
murky and plainly unworkable arrangements.  The Thieu regime would survive for the moment--the
principal North Vietnamese concession to the United States--but North Vietnamese forces already 
in the South would remain there.  An undefined committee would work out permanent settlement.  
	
	American forces were hardly out of Indochina before the Paris accords collapsed.   
During the first year after the cease-fire, the contending Vietnamese armies suffered 
greater battle losses than the Americans had absorbed during ten years of fighting.  Finally,
in March 1975, the North Vietnamese launched a full-scale offensive against the now greatly 
weakened forces of the south.  Thieu appealed to Washington for assistance; the president 
appealed to Congress for additional funding; Congress refused.  Late in April 1975, 
communist forces marched into Saigon, shortly after officials of the Thieu regime and the staff 
of the American embassy had fled the country in humiliating disarray.  Communist forces
quickly occupied the capital, renamed it Ho Chi Minh City, and began the process of
reuniting Vietnam under the harsh rule of Hanoi.  
	That was the dismal end of over a decade of direct American military involvement in 
Vietnam.  More than 1.2 million Vietnamese soldiers had died, along with countless
civilians.  A beautiful land had been ravaged, its agrarian economy left in ruins; for 
many years after, Vietnam remained one of the poorest and most politically oppressive nations 
in the world.  The United States had paid a heavy price as well.  The war had cost the nation
almost $150 billion in direct costs and much more indirectly.  It had resulted in the deaths of 
over 50000 young Americans and the injury of 300000 more.  And the nation had suffered a 
blow to its confidence and self-esteem from which it would not soon recover.