Neither Peace nor Honor: The Nixon Administration's Vietnam War Politics, 1972-1973

Abstract

Neither Peace nor Honor: The Nixon Administration’s Vietnam War Policies, 1972-1973 John Tresidder O n January 23, 1973, President Nixon in a televised speech to the nation announced his administration had concluded a peace agreement, which would “end the war and bring peace with honor in Vietnam.” 1 This peace agreement was a culmination of a secret shift in the Nixon administration’s Vietnam War policies, which originated in 1971 and pursued throughout 1972 and January of 1973. Publicly, President Nixon and his National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger continued to state the administration’s policy that any peace agreement must maintain the South Vietnamese government of President Nguyen Van Thieu and South Vietnam as an independent nation. However, they secretly decided they would be satisfied if the peace agreement would ensure that the Thieu government and South Vietnam only last for a sufficient time, i.e. a decent interval before being forcibly taken over by North Vietnam. If there was such a decent interval before this forcible takeover, the United States would not militarily intervene again. President Nixon and Kissinger knew that the South Vietnamese government was too weak to survive for the long term and that South Vietnam would be forcibly taken over by North Vietnam. Despite knowing this and moving to end the war earlier by accepting the replacement of the Thieu government with a coalition government, which would have been dominated by North Vietnam, President Nixon and Kissinger instead pursued their decent interval strategy. They did this because they believed that if South Vietnam could survive for this decent interval, this outcome would assure President Nixon’s reelection in 1972, allow them to conduct an effective foreign policy and avoid being seen as responsible for the North Vietnamese’s forcible takeover of South Vietnam by the American public, other nations, and ultimately history. Their brutal and misguided strategy had staggering costs. By prolonging the war by the pursuit of this strategy, thousands more Americans were killed as well as hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese. 2 Further, the peace agreement did not bring peace to Vietnam. Instead, North Vietnam and the South Vietnamese government violated the peace agreement and continued fighting. Many more thousands of Vietnamese were killed. 3 The fighting continued until South Vietnam was forcibly taken over by the North Vietnamese as President Nixon and Kissinger knew would happen. Since the ultimate forcible takeover of South Vietnam could not have been prevented, this enormous loss of life could have been avoided if President Nixon and Kissinger had not pursued their decent interval strategy and ended the war sooner. The Nixon administration’s war policies of 1972-1973 with its decent interval strategy needs to be studied carefully as it has been proposed by some as a model for the United States to use to end conflicts in the world in which there is an active American combat presence. For example in 2011, Gideon Rose, the editor of the influential journal Foreign Affairs recommended President Richard Nixon, “Address to the Nation Announcing an Agreement on Ending the War in Vietnam” (University of Virginia: Miller Center American Presidential Speech Archive), 2014. http://millercenter.org/president/nixon/speeches/speech-3884 George C. Herring, America’s Longest War: The United States in Vietnam, 1950-1975, th 5 ed. (Boston: McGraw-Hill Education, 2014) 330-331. Marilyn B. Young, The Vietnam Wars, 1945-1990 (New York: HarperPerennial, 1991)