No More Vietnams (21 page)

Our staged troop-withdrawal program had sustained support for the war effort in Congress and among the American people for three years. By January 1, 1972, we had withdrawn over 400,000 troops from Vietnam. None of the 133,200 troops who remained were involved in the ground fighting, and most were
to be withdrawn within six months. I doubt that we could have continued fighting the war if we had not been gradually withdrawing our troops. Since 1969, we had been faced with the danger of Congress legislating an end to our involvement. Antiwar senators and congressmen had been introducing resolutions to force us to trade a total withdrawal of our troops for the return of our POWs. By 1972, the Senate was regularly passing these measures, and the votes in the House were getting close. We were able to prevent the passage of these bills only because our withdrawal announcements provided those whose support for the war was wavering with tangible evidence that our involvement was winding down.

During this period we were making every possible effort to reach a negotiated settlement. With phenomenal stamina, tenacity, and patience, Henry Kissinger tried again and again to break the logjam in sessions of our secret negotiations in Paris. North Vietnam rejected all of our proposals categorically. In October 1971, Kissinger made our final peace offer: a standstill cease-fire followed within six months by a total American withdrawal, a mutual exchange of POWs, and an internationally supervised election in South Vietnam in which the Communists could participate. Our proposal stretched the limits of our generosity. If the North Vietnamese were sincerely interested in peace, they would have been interested in our offer. But Hanoi again refused to negotiate seriously.

For three years the North Vietnamese had ruthlessly exploited our secret negotiations in order to divide Americans on the home front. On the one hand, they had stalemated the peace talks. Hanoi persistently demanded that we withdraw our forces unilaterally and that we overthrow President Thieu's government as we left. These conditions were unacceptable. We had not fought for ten years and lost over 50,000 lives so that we could install a Communist government in Saigon as we withdrew in disgrace. On the other hand, the North Vietnamese planted stories in the press and circulated rumors among antiwar activists to the effect that the United States was blocking progress in the talks. This took a toll on
public support of the war. We found ourselves being criticized for failing to make certain concessions that in fact we had already made in the private talks. But we could refute these criticisms only by disclosing the secret negotiations, which we feared might destroy any chance for them to succeed.

Finally I concluded that Hanoi's refusal to respond to our October offer, coupled with reports of a huge North Vietnamese buildup, probably meant that it had opted for a test of arms on the battlefield. I therefore decided that the time had come to make clear to the American people just who was obstructing the talks. Only in this way could we muster support for whatever actions might become necessary when North Vietnam launched its offensive. On January 25, 1972, in a nationally televised address, I revealed the record of the twelve sessions of Kissinger's secret talks and reiterated the terms of our final proposal. In conclusion I said, “The only thing this plan does not do is to join our enemy to overthrow our ally, which the United States of America will never do. If the enemy wants peace, it will have to recognize the important difference between settlement and surrender.”

• • •

On March 30, 1972, the North Vietnamese launched a massive invasion of South Vietnam. Striking at our ally's weakest point, three full divisions, along with 200 Soviet T-54 tanks and scores of 130mm guns, trampled across the internationally recognized neutral territory of the demilitarized zone. More forces swept in from Laos along Route 9 toward Hue. Other units were poised to strike into the central highlands toward Kontum and Pleiku and to invade southern South Vietnam from Cambodia. It was as blatant as North Korea's invasion of South Korea in 1950.

I considered North Vietnam's attack a sign of desperation. Hanoi clearly believed Vietnamization was working. If it were not, the North Vietnamese could have waited and let it fail after almost all of our troops were gone. They also had to be concerned about the fact that we were developing a new relationship with their allies in Moscow and Peking. They knew
that time was not on their side. I gave no consideration whatsoever to the suggestion of some of my aides that, particularly with an election coming up, we should let South Vietnam fend for itself. I believed that it would be not only immoral but stupid to stand by quietly while North Vietnam bludgeoned our South Vietnamese allies. Hanoi had refused to settle the war at the conference table. Now, after the North Vietnamese had chosen to fight the kind of war we fought best, we were in a position to force them to settle on our terms.

During the first weeks of the invasion, the news from Vietnam was discouraging. On April 2, just south of the demilitarized zone, North Vietnam's forces mauled South Vietnam's Third Division. Fourteen bases were abandoned as South Vietnamese resistance collapsed under the intense onslaught. Communist troops driving toward Hue threatened to isolate all of South Vietnam's northern units in a giant pincer movement. On April 5, three North Vietnamese divisions struck into Binh Long Province, about seventy-five miles north of Saigon. On April 13, in their push toward the South Vietnamese capital, they surrounded the town of Anloc; supplies could be dropped only by parachute. On April 23, North Vietnamese troops rolled into the central highlands toward Kontum. South Vietnam's Twenty-second Division fell apart under attack, but its Twenty-third Division held the line. On April 27, the North Vietnamese launched a new wave of attacks along the northern front, and four days later the provincial capital of Quang Tri fell to the Communists.

During their offensive, the Communists once again engaged in barbaric attacks on civilians. At both Anloc and Quang Tri, North Vietnamese troops indiscriminately fired artillery shells into crowds of refugees who were fleeing the fighting. Thousands were killed. In Communist-occupied areas of Binh Dinh Province, there were public executions of hundreds of individuals suspected of having ties to the Saigon government. In one hamlet, forty-seven local officials were buried alive. In Quang Ngai Province, Communist troops strung land mines around forty victims and then, as their wives and children
watched, detonated the mines, blowing the helpless captives to bits.

Our response to the offensive was quick in coming. Hanoi was now fighting a large-unit conventional war. Its infantry divisions, tank columns, and logistics system all made perfect targets for our air power. On April 1, I ordered the bombing of North Vietnamese territory within twenty-five miles of the demilitarized zone. Within two weeks, I authorized air strikes up to the twentieth parallel. I also ordered the Pentagon to assemble a massive sea and air attack force in Southeast Asia. Initially, to augment those forces already in Southeast Asia, I sent two cruisers and eight destroyers for sea bombardment, and twenty B-52 bombers and four squadrons of F-4 fighter-bombers for battlefield air strikes and a renewed bombing campaign against North Vietnam. More deployments followed later.

On May 2, Kissinger met with Hanoi's delegation for a secret negotiating session in Paris. Over the years he had always had to listen to a litany of verbal abuse from his interlocutors during these sessions. Now, confident of imminent military victory, Hanoi's representatives were even more insolent and unbearable. After putting up with insults and invective for three hours, Kissinger broke off the talks.

That was Hanoi's last chance. I decided that now it was essential to defeat North Vietnam's invasion. If the enemy had one Achilles' heel, it was his supply system. Intelligence reports estimated that to sustain their push into South Vietnam his forces needed several thousands of tons of ammunition and fuel every day. Our best chance of halting the invasion was to take decisive action to stop the shipment of these supplies.

It was a difficult decision. Only two months earlier I had gone to Peking and opened our new relationship with the People's Republic of China, and in only three weeks I was scheduled to go to Moscow for my first summit meeting with Brezhnev. I did not know what reaction to expect from China and the Soviet Union, who had strongly backed North Vietnam,
if I attacked their ally. But I believed that if we allowed North Vietnam to conquer South Vietnam, the hardheaded realists in the politburos in Peking and Moscow might think a United States that lacked the will to defend its interests was not worth talking to. Consequently, I ordered the mining of North Vietnam's ports, including Haiphong Harbor, and the bombing of prime military targets throughout North Vietnam, including those in Hanoi.

On May 8, I announced this decision in a nationally televised address. After describing the North Vietnamese invasion, I outlined our three options: an immediate withdrawal, a negotiated peace or a decisive military action to end the war. I said that I had rejected the first option because it would be immoral to abandon our South Vietnamese allies to Communist tyranny and because it would encourage aggression throughout the world. I explained that while I preferred the second option, “it takes two to negotiate” and the North Vietnamese had proven to be unwilling partners. Therefore, I said, the United States really had no choice at all: “There is only one way to stop the killing. That is to keep the weapons of war out of the hands of the international outlaws of North Vietnam.” In order to leave the door open for later negotiations, I concluded with a reiteration of our basic terms for a fair peace settlement.

Antiwar critics and the news media competed with each other in denouncing our action. One senator remarked that the decision was “reckless and wrong.” Another said that “the President must not have a free hand in Indochina any longer.” One newspaper called the decision a “desperate gamble” and urged that Congress should cut off funds for the war to “save the President from himself and the nation from disaster.” Another claimed that the President “has lost touch with the real world.” One legislator topped them all when he breathlessly intoned that the President “has thrown down the gauntlet of nuclear war to a billion people in the Soviet Union and China . . . Armageddon may be only hours away.” There was nearly unanimous agreement that, as one network reporter put
it, our action “practically kills prospects of a summit” with the Soviet leadership. Most of the members of Congress, my cabinet, and my staff shared the view that the summit would probably be off.

Hanoi claimed our actions were an “insolent challenge” and asked for increased support from its Communist allies. But Moscow and Peking did not man the battle stations. Both went through the motions of protesting our actions, but otherwise did nothing. China expressed its support for North Vietnam and criticized our actions in public and private, but the Chinese did not back up their words with any actions. In fact, Peking reprinted my May 8 speech, complete with my denunciations of North Vietnam's intransigence and aggression, in the official state newspaper.

Kissinger and I agreed there was a good chance the Soviets would cancel or postpone our summit meeting. But signals soon came in indicating that they wanted to go forward with it. Their public criticism was, by Communist standards, muted. Their private protests were limited to the damage caused by our bombing of their ships in port. Their arms-control and trade negotiators affected an attitude of business as usual. In spite of the dire predictions of our critics, our first Soviet-American summit came off on schedule on May 22.

Brezhnev went forward with the summit for two reasons. First, he wanted and needed better relations with the United States, particularly in view of our China initiative. Second, he knew we were worth talking to, because our actions in Vietnam had demonstrated that we had not only the power to defend our interests but also the will to use it. If we had not acted, we might have had to go to Moscow while Soviet-made tanks were rumbling through the streets of Hue and Saigon. We would have been in an intolerable position of weakness. Brezhnev would have assumed that if I could be pushed around in Vietnam, I could also be pushed around in Moscow.

Our diplomacy with Moscow and Peking had turned the tables on Hanoi. It had been an article of faith within the Kennedy and Johnson administrations that making a
decisive military move against North Vietnam risked the intervention of China and the Soviet Union. That now changed: Hanoi was fearful that its allies might use their leverage to intervene on the side of its enemy. A North Vietnamese official later complained in an interview, “Nixon is capitalizing on the disunity among the socialist countries in one way or another to be free to act. This affects our war and, thus, our fighting has become very difficult.”

During May, South Vietnam's army turned the tide in the ground war. By May 4, after times when it seemed all might be lost, the South Vietnamese had pulled themselves together and reestablished the northern front twenty-five miles north of Hue. Once the initial crisis passed, South Vietnam's army fought better than it had in any previous battle. The failure of the North Vietnamese to launch their three attacks simultaneously was skillfully exploited by the South Vietnamese, who shifted their airborne divisions from front to front, depending on where the fighting was heaviest. When South Vietnam's forces established a defensive perimeter, North Vietnam's troops had to assume fixed positions. This enabled us virtually to destroy them with B-52 strikes.

When I received the first proposals for bombing North Vietnam from the Pentagon during the first week of May, I hit the ceiling. Their proposals were a timid replay of the Johnson bombing campaign from 1965 through 1968. In a long memorandum to Kissinger, I wrote, “I cannot emphasize too strongly that I have determined that we should go for broke.” I went on to say that we were in danger of doing too little too late and that it was better to err on the side of doing too much while we had maximum public support. “I think we have had too much of a tendency to talk big and act little,” I wrote. “This was certainly the weakness of the Johnson administration. To an extent it may have been our weakness where we have warned the enemy time and time again and then have acted in a rather mild way when the enemy has tested us. He has now gone over the brink
and so have we
. We have the power to destroy his war-making capacity. The only question is
whether we have the
will
to use that power.” I made it clear that I had the will to take strong actions and was prepared to risk the consequences.