In 1954, when the French pulled out of Vietnam, Nixon was Eisenhower’s Vice President and the first senior elected politician to speak in favor of sending American troops the Indochina. Nixon praised himself as the politician having visited Southeast Asia more often than any other. His approach, however, was determined by the Domino Theory, which he strongly believed in. After the Fall of China the U.S. could not afford another setback in Asia.
Nixon did not understand the students’ protests against his Vietnam War. He saw himself as a man wanting to end the war, so to him there was nothing to disagree about. Nixon indeed conducted all his Vietnam politics in order the end the war, but in order to end the war once the United States were in a position to end it “honorably”. In other words, to end the war, he carried it further and intensified it. This was, of course, due to the general problem that the war was not definitely decided. North Vietnam as well as the United States did not want to back down, they only got into talks on a peace plan because they wanted to win the war that way. Kissinger said of the North Vietnamese, they regarded the talks as political warfare. But the same can be said of the United States. Both parties wanted to end the war on the one hand, and on the other were willing to accept great losses if the other side would not accept the conditions they proposed. Only in 1972 Nixon declared that he no longer saw a mutual withdrawal as proposition having to be accepted before seriously negotiating. By doing so he cleared the path to an agreement. Richard C. Thornton stresses that Nixon wanted to re-establish a status quo ante in Indochina, while aiming at improving the situation towards a tripolar approach with China and the Soviet Union and strengthening triangular relations with Germany and Japan.
When Nixon became President, neither he nor Kissinger foresaw that it would be six more years till an agreement would be reached and the war ended. Until spring 1968 Nixon believed the U.S. would win the Vietnam War. Only when he heard of Johnson beginning to withdraw, he accepted that the war could not be won by the U.S.. That was even before the elections. Nevertheless, he sabotaged an agreement in 1968, because it would have meant a Democratic victory. When Johnson seriously talked about arranging with North as well as South Vietnam and in a great diplomatic success made them attend the Paris Talks, Nixon sent his messenger, Anna Chennault, to President Nguyen Van Thieu of South Vietnam, promising a better solution once he was President. Indeed Thieu came to believe that a Republican President and Cold Warrior as Nixon had proven to be, would be harder on the Communists than a Democratic. So Thieu refused to attend the Paris Talks Johnson had scheduled after having arranged a cease fire.
Those negotiations held by the Nixon staff were conducted secretly of course, but as the FBI wiretapped the South Vietnamese embassy in Washington and the CIA Thieu’s residence in Saigon, Johnson soon got the news and was furious. The evidence he had gathered showed that both Spiro Agnew and John Mitchell were involved, but it did not relate to Nixon himself. So Johnson did not go public with the information. And Nixon did, however, prevent a peace in order to become President and make the war last five more years.
As an agreement was at hand already in the last months of the Johnson administration, Nixon and Kissinger both believed in ending the war in six month or at least one year from taking office. Nixon followed a two track approach: North and South Vietnam had to decide on the political future of Vietnam, the U.S. would talk about military options with the South. So first the U.S. talked about an agreement on military issues. In an eight point plan from May 1969, Nixon proposed an American withdrawal six month after the North Vietnamese forces pulled out of the South. It also implied free elections for the South. But this plan, as many others, was rejected by the North.
Although Nixon knew, the war could not been won, he also knew the U.S. had the ability to severely damage North Vietnam and its army. So whenever he saw the need to “bomb” the North Vietnamese back to the table, he ordered bombing raids into Cambodia, Laos (which Johnson began) or even North Vietnam itself. Both Cambodia and Laos served the North as re-supply roots, as North and South Vietnam were divided by a Demilitarized Zone. So North Vietnam established what was called the Ho Chi Minh Trial into the South. When bombing Cambodia in the 1969 Operation Menu and 1970 Toan Thang 42 and Toan Thang 43 it was for that reason of interrupting the trial. Following the politics of Vietnamization, the 1971 Lam Son 719 was an all South Vietnamese incursion into Laos, which failed.
Nixon indeed withdrew American troops from Indochina. Mostly, whenever he declared that there was a new military operation, he also declared, the U.S. was to withdraw 45.000 to 150.000 troops. With half of the 30.000 deaths since 1961, the election year of 1968 had been the bloodiest year since. But as it turned out, in 1969 the U.S. would have to suffer even 18.000 losses. So in the U.S. there was hardly a topic besides Vietnam and protests intensified. Nixon did not bother much, although after the protest in May 1970 and the Kent State Killings, he followed the Cooper-Church Amendment and pulled American forces out of Cambodia by June 30th, 1970.
The strongest military operations, however, were still to come. After the North had not only rejected a new American peace proposal and Tho flew back to Hanoi, speculating that tensions between Washington and Saigon might grow, the United States conducted the Christmas Bombing air raids, dropping more bombs than in all the years since 1961 together.
The strategy behind the U.S. bombing raids was what was called the madman theory. It is not exactly clear, where the name came from, but the concept is clearly Nixon’s: Under no circumstances the other side should be sure what Nixon was to do next. It should not be impossible for them to think, Nixon would be willing to use the strongest possible forces to intervene and bomb. In that Nixon wanted to be considered irrational and unconceivable. “Call me the mad bomber,” he said before the Christmas Bombings of 1972. When telling Kissinger to deliver the madman theory to the Soviet Union and North Vietnam, he played the “good cop – bad cop” game in order to threaten the other side even more and increase Kissinger’s credibility at the same time. It is that concept that led Nixon through his efforts to end the war. It didn not work out, as the North Vietnamese themselves were willing to accept great more losses than the Americans or South Vietnamese, with up to 3 Million dead during the war. The North Vietnamese, Kissinger stated, were much more interested in fighting than winning, with the U.S. it was the other way round.
But Nixon was willing to deploy even nuclear weapons. He was wiling to do so as early as 1954, when the Joints Chief of Staff Admiral Radford proposed Operation Vulture. It included an option on nuclear strikes to help the French. It turned out from recently published White House Tapes that Nixon in 1972 proposed the use of nuclear weapons to Kissinger, who was not pleased and argued, it might be a little too big a weapon.
By 1971 Nixon issued his doctrine, which allowed him to pull out of Vietnam. It said, the U.S. was to give money and military aid to friendly countries, so that they were able to defend themselves. American troops would not be send. The so called Vietnamization was one part of his strategy. As the operations of 1972 showed, this concept did not work out in the case of South Vietnam, which even fell to the North in 1975, not being able to defend itself.
