The Light at the End of the Tunnel
By the end of 1967, it was clear that the Vietnam War was gruesomely stalemated. President Johnson repeatedly went before the nation, assuring television viewers that there was “light at the end of the tunnel.” But the increasing numbers of U.S. casualties created a credibility gap between what the administration claimed and what the public believed.
Tet Offensive
In this period of growing doubt, Hanoi staged a series of massive offensives, first along the border, with attacks against the U.S. base at Khe Sanh, then against South Vietnamese provincial capitals and principal cities beginning on January 30, 1968, a Vietnamese lunar holiday called Tet. The offensive, which included an assault on the U.S. embassy in Saigon, was costly to U.S. and ARVN forces, but even more costly to the Viet Cong. However, the three-week campaign was a devastating psychological victory for the communists and convinced many Americans, including politicians and policy makers, that the war was unwinnable.
With American casualties now topping 1,000 a month, it was hard to believe official military pronouncements that Tet was by no means a defeat. Tet hardened public opposition to the war and sharply divided legislators, with hawks (war supporters) on one side, and doves (peace advocates) on the other.
Resignation of Johnson
On March 31, President Johnson made two surprise television announcements. He declared that he would restrict bombing above the 20th parallel, thereby opening the door to a negotiated settlement of the war, and he announced that he would not seek another term as president. Johnson recognized that his advocacy of the war was tearing the nation apart.
Cease-fire negotiations began in May, only to stall over Hanoi’s demands for a complete bombing halt and NLF (National Liberation Front) representation at the peace table. Johnson resisted but in November agreed to these terms. Despite the boost this move gave the sagging presidential campaign of Democrat Hubert Humphrey, Richard M. Nixon (whom many had counted out of politics after he lost the race for California governor in 1962) emerged victorious in the presidential contest.
Nixon’s War
Richard Milhous Nixon (1913-94) was a man who believed in winning at any cost. To ensure victory in the 1968 election, he made repeated-though vague-promises to end the war. Yet, after he was elected, Nixon did not hesitate to expand the war into neighboring Laos and Cambodia. Nixon had evolved a grand strategy with his foreign policy advisor, Henry Kissinger (b. 1923). The strategy called for improving relations with the Soviets (through trade and an arms-limitation agreement) in order to disengage Moscow from Hanoi, and for normalizing relations with China. After the U.S.S.R. and China had cut the North Vietnamese loose, Nixon and Kissinger reasoned, the United States could negotiate a “peace with honor” in Vietnam. The strategy didn’t work. The Soviets announced their recognition of the Provisional Revolutionary Government (PRG) formed by the NLF in June 1969, and the peace talks foundered.
Paris, Cambodia, and Laos
As peace negotiations went round and round in Paris, the Nixon administration sought to accelerate the Vietnamization process by turning more and more of the responsibility for the war over to ARVN forces, which, however, continued to perform poorly. Despite the discouraging results, U.S. casualties did drop, and President Nixon was able to begin troop withdrawals.
With the failure of diplomacy, Nixon turned to force, striking at communist supply and staging areas in Cambodia. This incursion triggered angry protests at home, including a demonstration at Kent State University in Ohio on May 4, 1970. The event resulted in the killing of four unarmed students and the wounding of nine more when inexperienced National Guardsmen fired on them. Subsequently, 100,000 demonstrators marched on Washington, and Congress registered its own protest by rescinding the Tonkin Gulf Resolution. Nixon withdrew troops from Cambodia but stepped up bombing raids, and when communist infiltration continued unabated, the U.S. supplied air support for an ARVN invasion of Laos in February 1971.
By the end of 1971, withdrawals had reduced troop strength to 175,000 in Vietnam, somewhat calming protests at home but destroying front-line morale, as remaining troops saw themselves pawns in a lost cause. Drug and alcohol abuse assumed epidemic proportions among soldiers, who were openly rebellious; some transformed search-and-destroy missions into “search-and-avoid” operations, the object of which was to get home safely.
Death for Easter
In March 1972, the communists launched a new invasion, initially routing ARVN troops until President Nixon retaliated by redoubling air attacks, mining Haiphong harbor, and establishing a naval blockade of the North. Following the communist “Easter Offensive,” Henry Kissinger and North Vietnamese representative Le Duc Tho finally formulated an agreement. The terms were to withdraw U.S. troops, return POWs, and lay the foundation for a political settlement through establishment of a special council of reconciliation. South Vietnamese president Nguyen Van Thieu rejected the peace terms because they permitted Viet Cong forces to remain in place in the South.
Bombs for Christmas
The fact that Nixon’s negotiator, Kissinger, had been able to announce that “peace is at hand” assured the president reelection in 1972. Once in office, however, Nixon supported Thieu, repudiating the peace terms Kissinger had negotiated. Nixon then ordered massive B-52 bombing raids north of the 20th parallel, which forced the North Vietnamese back to the negotiating table.
The agreement reached after the bombing was not materially different from what Kissinger had originally concluded. This time, President Thieu was ignored.
Paris Accords and the Fall of Saigon
On January 31, 1973, the United States and North Vietnam signed the Paris Accords, which brought U.S. withdrawal and the return of the POWs, some of whom had been languishing in North Vietnamese prisons for nearly a decade. A four-party Joint Military Commission and an International Commission of Control and Supervision supervised the cease-fire. However, the Nixon administration continued to send massive amounts of aid to the Thieu government, and both the North and South freely violated the accords. To pressure the North into abiding by them, the United States resumed bombing Cambodia and menaced North Vietnam with reconnaissance overflights.
But a war-weary Congress had turned against the president, whose administration (as you shall see in the next chapter) was now wallowing and disintegrating in the Watergate Scandal. In November 1973, Congress passed the War Powers Act, which required the president to inform Congress within 48 hours of deployment of U.S. military forces abroad; the act also mandated the forces’ withdrawal within 60 days if Congress did not approve. In 1.974, U.S. aid to South Vietnam was reduced from $2.56 billion to $907 million, and to $700 million in 1975.
What hopes Thieu held out for support from the Nixon administration were dashed when the U.S. president, facing impeachment, resigned in August 1974. Beginning in early 1975, the dispirited South suffered one military defeat after another. After Congress rejected President Gerald Ford’s request for $300 million in supplemental aid to South Vietnam, Nguyen Van Thieu hurriedly resigned his office. He left the leadership of his nation to Duong Van Minh, whose single official act was unconditional surrender to the North on April 30, 1975. A dramatic, frenzied evacuation of Americans remaining in Vietnam followed. The spectacle of U.S. personnel being airlifted by helicopter from the roof of the U.S. embassy in Saigon was humiliating and heartbreaking. At the cost of over $150 billion and 58,000 Americans killed, the Vietnam War had ended in defeat for South Vietnam and (as many saw it) for the United States as well.