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When Southeast Asia first became a trouble spot for America in 1954, the concern of Eisenhower's administration was that if communism were allowed to gain a foothold in Vietnam, the other nations of the region would inevitably succumb to communist tyranny. At the time, Nixon had advocated military intervention to counter that threat.
Remaining convinced that a policy of containment was vital to the security of the free world, Nixon supported the expansions of American military presence in Vietnam that occurred under Kennedy and Johnson. When the Vietnam War turned into a political powder keg during the election, Nixon asserted that his knowledge of world affairs and the expertise in foreign diplomacy that he had gained as Eisenhower's vice president would give him an advantage in dealing with the problem. This tactic had helped him win the election.
In 1968, negotiations had begun in Paris between the South Vietnamese Thieu government and the Vietcong supported by the North Vietnamese. Johnson's position was that all North Vietnamese forces should withdraw from South Vietnam and that the Thieu government should be recognized as the legitimate government of South Vietnam. The position of North Vietnam was that U.S. troops must withdraw and that a coalition government including Vietcong should replace the Thieu government. The talks progressed at an excruciatingly slow pace.
Before taking office in 1969, Nixon claimed he had a plan for ending America's involvement in the war. Many people simply wanted America to pull out of Vietnam immediately and completely. For several reasons, this plan was unacceptable to Nixon and his advisors. The first reason was that it would have been a virtual admission of defeat for America at a time when U.S. status as a superpower was seen as a critical deterrent to communist aggression around the world. Nixon's administration felt that to be beaten in tiny, internationally insignificant Vietnam would invite greater troubles elsewhere.
The United States also had a credibility issue that bordered on a moral dilemma. Neither the world nor the Vietnamese cared under whose administration America's involvement in the war was begun or escalated. They only remembered that America had promised to support the South Vietnamese government and that by sending troops to the country, it had turned Vietnam into a battleground of superpowers. After so much travail and suffering, for America to turn its back and leave South Vietnam to its fate at the hands of the vengeful Vietcong and North Vietnamese was wrong. In addition, from many Americans' point of view, to leave without a resolution to the war would be to nullify the sacrifice of those servicemen killed and wounded in South Vietnam's defense.
On the other hand, the American people had made their feelings clear that the death of so many young men overseas and the pain and sacrifice of so many families at home for a goal that remained nebulous had become an intolerable situation. The compulsory draft was especially resented and bitterly contested by many young people.
Nixon's compromise solution to withdraw U.S. troops gradually from Vietnam while simultaneously bolstering South Vietnamese forces with money, weapons, training, and advisors. The hope was that South Vietnam could eventually hold its own against the communist North Vietnamese and the Vietcong. This plan was called the Nixon Doctrine or Vietnamization of the war. Implicit in the doctrine was that Asians and others around the world would from then on have to fight their own wars without the support of large numbers of U.S. ground troops.
Unbeknownst to the public, the press, and even Nixon's own cabinet, Nixon's National Security Adviser, Henry Kissinger, began secret talks with North Vietnam in 1969. These talks proved extremely difficult. The North Vietnamese clearly felt that time was on their side, and they derided Nixon's Vietnamization plan. One North Vietnamese negotiator asked Kissinger how Nixon's plans for the South Vietnamese to conduct their own defense could succeed when America had not been able to prevail in the war with a half million of its own troops. The question foreshadowed the inevitable end to the conflict.
In March of 1969, Nixon ordered secret bombing of Cambodia, Laos, and North Vietnam for the purpose of cutting off communist supply lines to the south. The supply roads through the jungle, collectively called the Ho Chi Minh Trail, were not paved, and could be rerouted with relative ease, so the strategy was unsuccessful. Because the U.S. was not officially supposed to be active in Cambodia and Laos, these bombings were not revealed to the public until 1973.
Nixon was determined to withdraw American forces on as short a timetable as possible without surrendering altogether. In June of 1969, he announced the withdrawal of 25,000 troops from Vietnam and in September, another 35,000. To counter this loss of troop strength, the U.S. increased aerial bombing of North Vietnam and stepped up the arming and training of the South Vietnamese. So many planes were sent to South Vietnam that it had the fourth largest air force in the world. Yet money and materials alone were not enough. The South Vietnamese were exhausted and demoralized, while the North Vietnamese felt vindicated in their quarter-century fight to evict foreigners—first the French and then the Americans—from their land.
In spite of regular troop withdrawals, organized war protest demonstrations continued in America. In October of 1969, students staged an antiwar demonstration they called Vietnam Moratorium Day. Two million people participated in the protest. In another demonstration, 250,000 people marched by the White House.
In response, Nixon reiterated the necessity of gradual withdrawal of troops, citing the U.S. responsibility to honor its international agreements and to protect the South Vietnamese from communist reprisals. Nixon claimed that a "silent majority" of Americans supported his initiative, and he rejected being influenced by a minority of people, no matter how vocal, and by the media, which was heavily biased against the war. Vice President Agnew was less restrained in his criticism of protesters. He characterized them in such terms as "effete snobs" and "rotten apples."
Late in 1969, a report surfaced of a massacre a year earlier of 350 Vietnamese civilians, including women and children, in the village of Mylai. U.S. Army Lieutenant William Calley was court martialed, convicted of murder, and sentenced to life in prison for these killings. In an appeal, Calley claimed to have followed a direct order, and his sentence was lowered to 10 years. Many Americans were outraged, and hundreds of thousands protested.
The Mylai massacre intensified discussion about the effects of war on individuals—the cruelties perpetrated on the innocent and the hardening of soldiers who in the name of duty found themselves called upon to act in ways that in times of peace would label them criminal. Many Americans were so repelled by the war that they treated returning soldiers with disrespect and aversion, which embittered veterans and their families and further fragmented a divided society.
One week after the Kent State protest, rioting at Jackson State, an all-black school in Mississippi, resulted in the state police opening fire. Two innocent bystanders died and twelve people were wounded. Following these outbreaks of violence, thousands of moderate students joined the radicals in student strikes and protests that closed hundreds of colleges. Perhaps disturbed by their own potential for violence, protesters became more subdued after this period.
In 1971, former defense analyst Daniel Ellsberg leaked government documents about the war effort during the Johnson administration to the New York Times. These classified documents, called the "Pentagon Papers," revealed that the government had misled Congress and the American people regarding its intentions in Vietnam during the mid-1960s. The papers stated that the primary reason for fighting was not to eliminate communism but to "avoid a humiliating defeat." The truth was also revealed that the Gulf of Tonkin incident, which had provoked Congress to give Johnson essentially a blank check to pursue the war, had occurred because the U.S. had been secretly supporting South Vietnamese activities against the North. The White House tried to block publication of the Pentagon Papers, but the Supreme Court overruled the action. The government's credibility received a heavy blow.
Despite billions spent for their training, the South Vietnamese proved over time that they were unable to counter and defeat the communist Vietcong or to defend South Vietnam from the North. In early 1972, American forces were withdrawn from Cambodia, but bombing was increased to compensate for their retreat. Shortly afterward, North Vietnamese equipped with foreign tanks burst through the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) that separated the two Vietnams. In retaliation, Nixon ordered massive bombing of North Vietnam and mining of its ports. Nixon's diplomatic initiatives with China and the USSR proved valuable as neither retaliated for the escalated hostilities. The North Vietnamese offensive slowed to a halt.
In October 1972, the Paris Peace Talks, which had been stalled, were reopened. North Vietnam dropped its demand that a coalition government replace Thieu, and the U.S. agreed to allow North Vietnamese troops to remain in South Vietnam. The draft agreement included a cease-fire, return of American POW's, and U.S. withdrawal from Vietnam.
With the election of 1972 approaching, Nixon wanted a settlement of the war. Unfortunately, the settlement fell apart when Thieu had misgivings about the communists being allowed to remain in South Vietnam and refused to sign the treaty. In order to force the North Vietnamese to rescind their demand that their troops remain in the south, Nixon ordered intense bombings of North Vietnam's major cities of Hanoi and Haiphong on December 18. These so-called Christmas Bombings were the most massive of the war and resulted in the loss of a number of America's strategic bombers.
In 1971, as a direct result of the war, the 26th Amendment to the Constitution was ratified, lowering the voting age from 21 to 18 years. One of the strongest student complaints had been that young men could be drafted and sent to fight and die at 18 even though America did not consider them mature enough to vote until they were 21. Skeptics warned that giving the vote to 18-year-olds would vastly skew elections because young people would vote on the basis of appearance and trendy issues. Statistical analysis has confirmed, however, that voting patterns have not changed with the addition of the younger voters who tend to vote like their parents, thus preserving the relative balance between the parties.
In 1973, Nixon abolished the draft and established an all-volunteer army. This move was popular and overdue, but many Americans had already come to distrust their government and to regard the Vietnam War as a low point in American history. The experience of Vietnam fueled racial tensions because minorities were disproportionately represented among draftees. It also alienated the younger from the older generation and opened deep schisms within the Democratic Party. Yet America learned valuable lessons from Vietnam, among them that there are limits to power and that a nation should choose carefully where and when to take a stand.
Copyright 2006 The Regents of the University of California and Monterey Institute for Technology and Education