vietnam president richard nixon and the war 15 april 2015
TRANSCRIPT
President Richard Nixon and
the Vietnam War 1969 - 74N C Gardner MA PGCE
Key Events: Nixon Administration and
the Vietnam War
• January 20th 1969: Richard Nixon takes office as
President of the United States.
• Nixon seeks ‘Peace with Honour’ in Vietnam.
• Vietnamization: a smaller role for the United States in
Vietnam; a larger role for South Vietnamese armed
forces.
Key Events: Nixon Administration and
the Vietnam War
• Hanoi’s strategy: to hold on and wait for the United
States to give up and leave Vietnam.
• The Anti-Vietnam War movement in the United States
evenly divided the nation by 1969 when Nixon took
office. In a democracy, public opinion matters.
• South Vietnam: no match on its own for North Vietnam
President Richard M. Nixon 1969 - 1974
Tet Offensive: significance
• The Communist Party of North Vietnam regarded the Tet Offensive of January 1968 as the turning point of the Vietnam War and as a decisive triumph, and thought at the time that its consequences would eventually result in final victory, which indeed it did in April 1975.
• By 1968 the Vietnam War had become much more difficult to analyse, for the very process of protracted war had made it not only a military struggle but one in which the political, economic, and ideological and human domains became increasingly crucial.
Tet Offensive: consequences
• Factors involved in Vietnam by 1968 and onwards:
• 1 Politics – Washington; the domestic political scene in
the United States – Johnson had become an unpopular
president because of the war – he had had to withdraw
from the Presidential race in March 1968.
• In November 1964 after his landslide victory, Johnson
was fully confident of a second term as President from
1969 to 1973, but it didn’t happen because of the
quagmire of Vietnam and the consequences of Tet.
Other factors involved in the Vietnam War from 1968
• 2 Economics – the sheer cost of the war for the United States
treasury and economy.
• 3 Ideology and Human Resources – “1-2-3-4 What are we
fighting for? Don’t ask me, I don’t give a damn, next stop is
Vietnam.”
• By 1967 – 68 at least half of the American public questioned the war,
the purpose of the war, the legitimacy of the war. Young Americans
were dying in their thousands in the jungles of Vietnam, but Tet
showed that the enemy was far from being defeated.
• Anti-war protests in cities and university campuses across America
had become part of the political landscape and no politician running
for public office was immune from this. In a democracy public
opinion and support matters.
The Tet Offensive: consequences
• For America, Tet was a long-postponed confrontation
with reality; the United States had been hypnotized
until then by its own illusions as a superpower, its own
desires, and needs.
• The belated realization that it had military tactics and
technology but no viable military strategy for winning the
war made Tet the turning point in the Johnson
Administration’s calculations.
Tet: the American media became more sceptical
• Tet caused the American media to become more
sceptical of official reports on the war from the
Johnson Administration and the Pentagon.
• But the media never became critical of the imperialist
politics that had led to the intervention in Vietnam in the
first place.
Tet: the American political and economic system
itself was now in danger
• Before Tet, the weight of opinion was for the war in
order to attain quite rational objectives: the hegemony
of American power over social trends in the Third
World.
• America did not want Third World nations to become
socialist and independent of the American-dominated
capitalist world economy.
• However, after Tet the costs of the war to the
American system of politics and economics were
measurable. The limits of American power were
exposed by Tet.
Tet: the consequences
• For America to have pursued the scale of
escalation to an even higher level after Tet
would have wreaked an untold amount of
damage on the United States economic
position at home and abroad, on its military
power elsewhere, and on its political life – a
price scarcely any serious person proposed to
pay.
Tet: the Vietnamese Revolution gained a decisive
advantage
• The Tet Offensive gained a decisive advantage for the
Vietnamese Revolution in its overall struggle for national
unity.
• Tet impacted on Washington’s comprehension of the
centrality of the Republic of Vietnam (South Vietnam) in
the war effort.
• The will and capability of South Vietnam and its armed
forces remained the key to the eventual outcome of the
war.
The origins of Vietnamization
• The American consciousness was deeply effected by Tet in terms of the realization that the war could not be won unless South Vietnam assumed a far greater burden militarily.
• “Vietnamizing” the Vietnam War became the last pillar of American strategy, leaving its position wholly dependent on its own dependents.
Vietnamization guaranteed eventual victory
for North Vietnam
• Nearly all who were closely connected with the
war greatly doubted in private that the
Republic of Vietnam (RVN) – South Vietnam
– could grasp the military victory that had
eluded over half a million GIs.
• In this sense North Vietnam attained the main
strategic objectives of the Tet Offensive,
compelling the United States to leave the realm
of desire and confront that of necessity.
The Nixon Administration’s Confrontation with
Vietnam
• The Nixon Administration came to power in
January 1969 carrying with it the full weight
of the past – the inherited legacies of earlier
assumptions regarding the nature of American
power and the world, the overweening desires
and ambitions, and the same goals and tools
for attaining them.
• Consensus, vested interests and the conventional
wisdom are the hallmarks for incoming American
administrations rather than innovation and new
ideas.
Nixon’s policies on Vietnam
• American policy on Vietnam during the first Nixon Administration (1969 – 73) was often tentative and contradictory, reacting both to the changing balance of forces in Vietnam and to the largely unpredictable events of Western capitalism.
• Like the Johnson Administration, Nixon could scarcely admit to defeat in Vietnam. Nixon shared all of the ideological and cultural commitments of Johnson regarding credibility, dominoes, and the dilemma of American military power.
Nixon’s views on Vietnam
• Like most of Washington, Nixon at the end of 1967 saw the war
as stalemated. During the Tet Offensive he, along with Johnson,
became committed to the notion of buying time to allow South
Vietnam to take over the main burden of fighting so that the
direct American role could be reduced.
• By 1968 Nixon ceased to believe that the war could be
won exclusively by force of arms. Nixon’s originality lay
in his groping for a parallel diplomatic solution to the war
which involved the Soviet Union and China.
• Nixon intended to link global U.S.-Soviet relations in
the world to progress in reaching a satisfactory
Vietnam settlement.
Nixon’s “Madman Theory”
• Part of Nixon’s Vietnam strategy was the application of
his “madman theory.” He stated: “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 constrain 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.”
Enter Henry Kissinger
• Henry Kissinger was the ambitious National Security Adviser in the Nixon Administration and his originality lay in grossly oversimplifying the nature of the international process and world power relations in a way which reinforced the President’s own inclination to make diplomacy central to his Vietnam strategy.
• Kissinger sincerely believed that great-power diplomacy could produce a mutually satisfying, enforceable consensus that could subsume local problems.
Henry Kissinger with President Nixon, 1973
Henry Kissinger, National Security Adviser 1969 - 73
• By reinforcing the President’s deeply felt assumptions
and convoluted strategy with his own, Kissinger was
to help the administration embark later on an illusory
diplomacy which would make possible a final U.S.
troop withdrawal and a precondition for North
Vietnam’s triumph.
• Harvard professor Henry Kissinger was no more
perceptive than any of his predecessors.
Kissinger’s rationale for the war
• Kissinger had to confect a rationale of “credibility” for
punitive action in an already devastated Vietnamese
theatre, and he had to second his president’s wish to form
part of a “wall” between the Nixon White House and the
Department of State.
The crisis of American military power
• Having failed to win the war at a cost of $30 billion
annually, the United States could not conceivably
expect to succeed by spending less.
• The White House was also convinced that its “credibility”
and diplomatic strategy required it periodically to escalate
the war for relatively short durations, even as it was
seeking to proceed with troop reductions, cut costs, and
deflect the opposition to the war.
The Crisis of American Military Power
• The Nixon Administration reduced the numbers of U.S.
troops and instead relied much more on air power and
artillery – in a word, on firepower. Well over half the
tonnage of the entire war was used during Nixon’s first
four years (1969 – 1973).
• Kissinger’s assumption was that it was necessary to
reduce North Vietnam’s supplies and strength for as long
as possible to gain time for his other options.
Tonnage dropped by the United States on Vietnam
• In 1969 the United States used 2.8 million tons of air and ground
munitions, a shade below the 1968 peak.
• Nixon and Kissinger decided on ‘hot pursuit’ of enemy
forces across the borders of Laos and Cambodia in 1969.
The raids were flown by B-52 bombers which fly at an
altitude too high to be observed from the ground and
carry immense tonnages of high explosive: they give no
warning of approach and are incapable of accuracy or
discrimination because of both their altitude and the mass
of their shells.
• Between March 1969 and May 1970, 3,630 such raids
were flown across the Cambodian border.
High civilian deaths from American bombing
• As a result of the expanded and intensified bombing campaigns ordered by Nixon and Kissinger from 1969, as many as 350,000 civilians in Laos, and 600,000 in Cambodia, lost their lives. (These are conservative estimates.)
• In addition, the widespread use of toxic chemical defoliants created a massive health crisis which fell most heavily on children, nursing mothers, and the aged, and which persists to this day.
April 1970: Cambodia invaded
• In April 1970, Nixon decided to invade Cambodia, despite reservations expressed by his own advisers. Nixon went before the American public to announce that 31,000 American troops had entered Cambodia to destroy the headquarters of the revolutionary forces. He pleaded for support.
• The invasion produced only modest military yields. The Americans killed 2,000 enemy troops and destroyed 8,000 bunkers. The attack on Cambodia had bought some time for additional Vietnamization.
April 1970: Cambodia invaded
• The invasion failed completely, however, in its larger goal
of reversing the military trend toward a victory for the
North. The South Vietnamese forces aiding the
Americans fought poorly, and their incompetence and
unwillingness to fight were abundantly evident on
evening news programmes.
• The U.S. and South Vietnamese forces also failed to find
the headquarters of the North Vietnamese operations.
April 1970: Cambodia invaded
• Worst of all, from Nixon’s point of view, the
Cambodian invasion provoked some of the most
furious anti-war demonstrations of the Vietnam War.
• The business community also became galvanized against
the war. Thomas Watson, chairman of IBM, testified
before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee about the
terrible toll the war had taken on the economy and morale
of business people.
May 1970: anti-Cambodia invasion protests,
Kent State University, four students shot dead
by Ohio National Guardsmen
May 1970: anti-Cambodia invasion protests, Kent
State University, Ohio
Public reaction against the Cambodian
invasion of April 1970
• Paul Harvey, a conservative radio commentator, told his huge following in small towns of the Midwest and South, “America’s 6% section of the planet’s mothers cannot bear enough boy babies to police Asia – and our nation can’t bleed to death trying.”
• The concern of such prominent, middle-of-the-road individuals heartened congressional opponents of U.S. involvement in the fighting.
• Senator J. William Fulbright (D., Ark.), chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, considered their support “essential if we are ever to change our policy in Southeast Asia.”
U.S. base and fleet system in East Asia
• At the war’s peak 250,000 Americans participated in the conflict from outside Vietnam, especially in the Navy. Naval bases in Thailand, Okinawa, Guam, the Philippines, the Seventh Fleet at sea, Taiwan, and Hawaii were directly involved in war-related activities.
• Air power remained a card Washington was ready to play and to which the Pentagon had no objection. The planes stationed outside Vietnam could be used as a threat to re-enter the war even if all U.S. forces were withdrawn from South Vietnam.
Demoralization in the U.S. armed forces
• During 1968 – 69 troop morale visibly to break down,
and from 1970 onward the human collapse of the
Americans in Vietnam ceased to be simply an
individual or psychological issue and became a highly
publicized major organizational question involving
discipline and, ultimately, the very capacity of the U.S.
armed forces to function.
• The difficulties began with drugs, the GI’s antidote to
terror and boredom. At the start of major U.S. troop
involvement in 1965, senior officers could not imagine
that the use of both hard and soft drugs would become so
widespread.
Use of heroin and marijuana; racial conflict
• Heroin and marijuana were cheap and readily obtainable by
1968, when their use began to rise sharply. The drug epidemic
was to some extent related to the sheer boredom among enlisted
men, as long days on bases replaced search-and-destroy missions.
• Racial conflict among troops grew out of inherited legacies
compounded by the distinctive experiences of blacks in Vietnam.
Overrepresented in combat or in menial tasks, and led by very few
black officers, blacks in Vietnam were much more under the
influence of radical and militant currents than their white
counterparts.
• Black pride was the rule. Malcolm X and Cassius Clay were their
most admired heroes. 20% of all black troops in South Vietnam
in 1970 declared they hated whites, and over one-third disliked
them but tried to get along with them.
Breakdown in army discipline; “fragging”
• 1 Enlisted men’s contempt for their officers.
• 2 Officers’ desire to squeeze more combat out of their
subordinates.
• 3 Drugs.
• 4 Racism.
• All of the above produced a profound breakdown in
discipline and the emergence of “fragging,” the attempted
murder of officers by soldiers, usually with grenades.
Fragging – the murder of officers by soldiers
• During the Vietnam War fraggings included attacks by black soldiers
against white officers for racial reasons as well as the efforts of drug
peddlers and users in the military to prevent discipline.
• Fraggings (attacks on officers) 1969 – 72: 788
confirmed attacks, resulting in 86 deaths.
• Other data suggest 1,016 attacks on officers 1969 – 72.
These levels were far higher than both world wars, which
involved many more men.
• When officers were strong leaders they “commanded
oftentimes at the risk of their lives due to the
possibility of grenade incidents.”
President Nixon with his advisers, Oval Office,
The White House, Washington D.C.
Nixon’s ability as a statesman
• President Richard Nixon had the ability to read
the minds of the Communist leaders of the
Soviet Union and of China, the two Great Power
sponsors of North Vietnam. He had studied
them for so long and was capable of thinking in
their terms.
• Nixon was realistic in identifying their national
interests – a philosophy of deal-making that the
Communists understood.
Peace sought in Vietnam
• The triumph of détente, of triangular
diplomacy with the Soviet Union and China
under the Nixon Administration meant that
Hanoi could no longer rely on their
unqualified support.
• Nixon had assumed the presidency in January
1969 with a clear mandate to end America’s
commitment in Vietnam.
Vietnamization
• Nixon opted for a strategy of withdrawing
American troops gradually while turning over
the conduct of the war to the South
Vietnamese.
• Twice Nixon widened the war at least
temporarily, in order, he believed, to hasten its
end.
April 1970: Cambodia
• In April 1970 Nixon ordered U.S. and South
Vietnamese troops into Cambodia in an effort to rout
enemy bases there and buy time for Vietnamization.
• One of the most controversial moves of his presidency,
the Cambodian incursion met passionate opposition,
especially on college campuses. Then in February 1971
he approved a major ground operation in Laos.
Kent State University, Ohio, May 4th, 1970: four
students are shot dead by the Ohio National Guard
whilst protesting against the invasion of
Cambodia
Kent State University: tear gas
Peace negotiations between the U.S. and
North Vietnam in an impasse when Nixon took
office in 1969
• South Vietnam’s President Thieu refused to
negotiate with the Communists in Hanoi; they in
turn insisted on the withdrawal of all U.S. forces
and the removal of the existing South Vietnamese
regime, to be replaced by a coalition government.
President Thieu with President Nixon, 1969
Henry Kissinger’s secret diplomacy, 1971
• To move forward, National Security Adviser Henry
Kissinger began secret negotiations with the North
Vietnamese in Paris in 1971.
• Seeking to end the war before presidential elections in
November 1972, Kissinger eventually made
extraordinary concessions.
• The United States agreed to withdraw completely from
Vietnam, accept the presence of several North
Vietnamese divisions in South Vietnam, and recognize
the legitimacy of the Provisional Revolutionary
Government (PRG), created in June 1969 to serve as a
Communist counterpart to the Saigon government.
Henry Kissinger, National Security Adviser, in
Paris negotiating with the North Vietnamese
Christmas Bombing, December 1972
• After Kissinger announced that “peace is at hand” on
October 26th, 1972, Nixon pursued his plan to achieve
total victory by the most savage aerial attack on North
Vietnam of the entire war, in an effort to force Hanoi to
surrender.
• Kissinger agreed to meet with Le Duc Tho, the North
Vietnamese negotiator, again on November 20th, after the
U.S. presidential election was over.