The Vietnam War Revisited – Part XXII – Nixon’s Policy in Action

Barbara Tuchman’s analysis of the Vietnam War in her book The March of Folly: From Troy to Vietnam is the inspiration behind this series of posts. All of the previous posts in the series can be found at the bottom of this post.

Nixon radically reversed LBJ’s strategy with his Vietnamization program soon after taking office in 1969. He intended to defuse domestic protests by ending the draft and bringing home our combat troops. Unilateral action not requiring negotiations with Hanoi would indicate his sincere effort to wind down a war dividing the country. It would indicate he would seek “peace with honor.” It would indicate he’d keep his campaign promises.

His speech did not announce, however, that the phased troop withdrawals would be offset by intensifying the air war and including targets LBJ kept off-limits. Cambodian enemy sanctuary targets were secretly bombed after only two months in office. The classified air raids continued with the inclusion of Ho Chi Minh trail targets inside Laos in the coming months. The secret was well-kept, the covert missions not leaked for months. This action caught the VC and North Vietnam off guard, denying them safe havens to regroup and limited their capability to conduct offensive guerilla attacks into South Vietnam.

• The plan’s KEY POINTS– Doubling the number of ARVN and vastly increasing their training, arming and aid.
• The AIM- The surge would enable South Vietnam to take over “their war.”
• The THEORY- Surpluses of military support and intensive training would create a motivated fighting force to preserve a viable non-Communist state, at least for enough time to allow America to get out of SE Asia.

In other words, the plan would accomplish what prior administrations failed to accomplish over the past 25 years. It seemed late in the day for that strategy. So how did that plan work out?

Nixon hoped the unilateral withdrawal of our ground troops would signal to North Vietnam our serious intentions to seek a diplomatic solution. If not, he planned to increase the punitive level of bombing until they were forced to negotiate a settlement. Kissinger refused to believe Hanoi did not have a breaking point. Plans for a decisive blow remained on the drawing boards, including mining waterways, blockading Haiphong Harbor, bombing dikes, and carpet-bombing Hanoi. CIA and military advisors advised postponing the plan fearing it would provoke Chinese involvement and be met with more North Vietnamese resolve.

Noted historian Barbara Tuchman makes a good point- Nixon and Kissinger miscalculated under the illusion that they could withdraw ground troops without weakening South Vietnam’s faltering morale and without re-affirming North Vietnam’s determination. As time passed, it seemed to confirm the validity of her observation. That particular administrative assumption proved an illusion, a major flaw in policy planning.

In response to the Nixon Doctrine, the protests subsided for a while, as the “boys started coming home,” but resumed as the year wore on into late 1970. In the middle of anarchy including violence and race riots it was difficult to govern.

Liberal political moralistic objections above and beyond the unbearable wartime casualty numbers fanned the anti-war outcry. Other complicated aspects involving the cultural revolution and media misreporting the news magnified the domestic problems. Nixon had his hands full experiencing the societal unrest that plagued LBJ and it was escalating.

Naturally, it became difficult to preside over the government and conduct a war 9000 miles away in the midst of chaos. The uproar got worse.

The anti-war movement became more organized with huge crowds of over 100,000 marching in major cities. The second Vietnam Moratorium Day demonstration in Washington, D.C. in November ’70 numbered a quarter of a million demonstrators, prompting Attorney General John Mitchell to comment, “It looked like the Russian Revolution.”

Congress got involved in the ruckus when Senator Ted Kennedy called for withdrawal from Vietnam within a year. Addressing a Boston Common protest crowd over 100,000, he added fuel to the fire.

Nixon maintained support of the ‘silent majority’ and Hawks, but felt the pressure. Nevertheless, he stayed the course. He planned a drawdown of 150,000 by the end of 1970. But with a tendency to paranoia, Nixon started viewing the anti-war movement not as rightful dissent against policy, but as a subversion threatening the government. He labeled the protesters as blatantly unpatriotic. Because the dissent was supported by the press and liberals, Nixon perceived the disruptions as a conspiracy and started keeping an “enemy list.” This foreshadowed his fatal flaw and became his nemesis.

Meanwhile in South Vietnam, the AVRN gained a stronger military superiority over the Viet Cong (NLF), but partly because the VC had never recovered from their massive losses of over 50,000 KIA during the 1968 Tet offensive. It proved to be temporary.

Tuchman commented, “It looked like a race between Vietnamization and withdrawals.” From my independent research including reading declassified CIA Intelligence Estimates, it certainly was a race to disengage from Vietnam with some appearance of preserving America’s prestige. Not so much to win the war, but not to lose it.

In the background, Nixon pursued backchannel negotiations between Kissinger and Le Duc Tho, Hanoi’s emissary. Kissinger stayed openly engaged in four-party talks in Paris. Both endeavors became no more successful than LBJ’s because each side insisted on incompatible preconditions.

The sticking points -The North demanded ouster of the Thieu-Ky government replaced by a coalition including the VC, aka the NLF. The U.S. insisted on withdrawal of all Northern forces from South Vietnam. No one would budge. Negotiation once more appeared a hopeless enterprise. Nixon faced the same obstacles as LBJ. Difficult decisions lay ahead.

The alternatives- Pound North Vietnam into submission by a degree of force most administration and military advisors to Nixon were unwilling to exert. Or, forego our rigid negotiation preconditions to protect the Saigon government and secure a separate POW agreement with Hanoi by establishing a deadline to leave South Vietnam to fend for itself.

This, of course, was contingent on the Vietnamization program being up and running efficiently. Would the ARVN be motivated? Could Nixon depend on that? What were the chances?  

Noteworthy, Nixon’s administration failed to calculate a significant factor into the withdrawal equation, a serious omission. Did it occur to our strategists that our ally, South Vietnam, our client in the war, would logically conclude they would be fighting and dying just to allow us to time to abandon them? The ARVN was not fighting an ideology, Communism. Instead they were fighting the VC and the NVR; concerned about not getting KIA, not the Domino Theory.

Abandonment of negotiation preconditions and Saigon’s government, would have brought a quick end to the war, and cut our losses. But Nixon’s sense of rationality and pragmatism prevailed. The plan was never implemented because abandoning an ally would damage America’s reputation. The war was no longer about America’s “security”, but its “image.’’ The stakes were high. How could any ally ever trust our word again? It was better to maintain our image than try to repair it after lost.

So… Nixon and Kissinger reverted back to ‘graduated force’ to make “continuation of the war less attractive to Hanoi than a settlement.”

Sound familiar? Bombing would intensify.

— — —-

If you have read the entire series, I’m sure you are getting the idea that not only was the Vietnam War complicated, but the geopolitical aspects were complex. It was an era dominated by a Cold War mindset. Mutual destruction in a nuclear war with Russia lurked in the background. China’s involvement in Vietnam, like Korea, remained a threat. The ‘60’s and ‘70’s were hallmarked by tension and dissention. The cultural revolution turned traditional mores upside down. Three Presidents had to deal with the problems from 1961 to 1975. Did they do a good job?

It was an interesting period to live through. I experienced both the war in South Vietnam and the Age of Aquarius in San Francisco when I returned. That’s why I write these blogs and wrote my historical narrative, RECALL. We definitely do not need to go through this turmoil again. History offers instructive lessons. We need to understand and abide by them.

I hope you read RECALL. It expounds on subjects in detail my blogs do not allow room to discuss.

Comments invited if civil and add to the discussion.

/RLawson

In case you missed any of the previous blogs, here they are:
The Vietnam War Revisited
The Vietnam War Revisited – Part II – It Did Not Have to Be That Way
The Vietnam War Revisited – Part III – Misgovernment
The Vietnam War Revisited – Part IV – Was It Worth It?
The Vietnam War Revisited – Part V – What If’s
The Vietnam War Revisited – Part VI – Ignoring Expert Advice
The Vietnam War Revisited – Part VII -A War of Attrition
The Vietnam War Revisited – Part VIII – Backing a Losing Horse?
The Vietnam War Revisited – Part IX – JFK’s Dilemma
The Vietnam War Revisited – Part X – No Easy Answers
The Vietnam War Revisited – Part XI – Two Earthshaking Events
The Vietnam War Revisited – Part XII – Why Revisit?
The Vietnam War Revisited – Part XIII – LBJ Becomes POTUS
The Vietnam War Revisited – Part XIV – It Starts Hitting the Fan
The Vietnam War Revisited – Part XV – No Way Out
The Vietnam War Revisited – Part XVI – Coming Apart at the Seams
The Vietnam War Revisited – Part XVII – LBJ Out, Nixon In
The Vietnam War Revisited – Part XVIII – More of the Same
The Vietnam War Revisited – Part XIX – Nixon’s Early Challenges
The Vietnam War Revisited – Part XX – Vietnamization
The Vietnam War Revisited – Part XXI – Vietnamization Speech Reactions
The Vietnam War Revisited – Part XXII – Nixon’s Policy in Action
The Vietnam War Revisited – Part XXIII – Widening the War
The Vietnam War Revisited- Part XXIV – Upping the Ante
The Vietnam War Revisited – Part XXV – Nixon Landslide
The Vietnam War Revisited – Part XXVI- It’s Not Over Yet