1
SIGNING THE PARIS PEACE ACCORDS
The signing of the Paris Peace Accords on 27 January 1973 did not bring the respite from war so desperately desired by millions of Vietnamese and Americans. The great hope that the agreement would forge a lasting peace within Indochina was swiftly shattered by those in the North Vietnamese Politburo who advocated conquering the South by force. Perhaps ending the conflict was beyond negotiation: too much blood, too much hatred, too many long years of terrible war. Conceivably, a vigorous American military response to violations of the Paris Accords might have restrained Hanoi, but it might also have floundered like so many previous U.S. efforts to end the fighting. What is certain, however, is that the Paris Accords would be dead within four months of their signing, but only Hanoi would know it.
For the South Vietnamese government, the accords brought more fear than relief. President Nguyen Van Thieu viewed the draft accords as deeply flawed and a dangerous threat to his country’s survival. In October 1972, Thieu balked at signing the agreement when presented with the final version by National Security Advisor Henry A. Kissinger. Thieu requested dozens of changes, but in his mind, three issues were crucial. They were the removal of North Vietnamese soldiers from South Vietnam, recognition of the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) as the national boundary between the two countries, and guarantees that the formation of the National Council of National Reconciliation and Concord (NCNRC), a post-ceasefire body designed to oversee elections for a new government in South Vietnam, would not lead to a coalition government with the Communists. Since the agreement contained none of these, bitter wrangling quickly arose between the two allies. To appease Thieu, President Richard M. Nixon sent Kissinger back to Paris to amend the accords. Nixon also sought in a series of highly classified letters to allay Thieu’s fears, particularly regarding the all-important presence of North Vietnamese troops on South Vietnamese soil. Nixon promised to “react vigorously” to any ceasefire violations, which the Americans and the South Vietnamese understood to mean that U.S. aircraft would bomb the Communists if they violated the ceasefire agreement. Nixon also promised to continue large-scale military and economic aid to ensure the survival of the South Vietnamese government.
Unfortunately, for Thieu and Nixon, with no acceptable military option to force Hanoi to withdraw its troops, negotiating their removal was impossible. Le Duc Tho, a Politburo member and Hanoi’s chief negotiator in Paris, would not permit the U.S. to obtain at the negotiating table what it had been unable to achieve on the battlefield. Hanoi’s most fundamental principle was that its troops would remain, while America’s must leave. After increasingly acrimonious negotiations between Kissinger and Tho, in mid-December the North Vietnamese rebuffed any further substantive changes, and the talks broke down. To force Hanoi back to the negotiating table, on 18 December 1972 Nixon sent waves of bombers to pound the North Vietnamese capital. The so-called “Christmas bombing” generated worldwide outrage, with many demands from Congress, the U.S. media, and foreign governments to cease the attacks immediately. Yet Nixon held firm, and by the end of December, North Vietnam had agreed to resume negotiations. By mid-January, the Politburo was prepared to sign the new accords, but its bedrock strategy—refusal to remove its forces from South Vietnam—remained unchanged.
After Nixon repeatedly threatened to cut off all U.S. aid if Thieu did not sign, Thieu also finally agreed to ratify the agreement. Thieu told his senior officials that while he had failed to get the agreement modified in the key areas of North Vietnamese troops and the DMZ as a national boundary, the NCNRC would not become a coalition government. Moreover, he had firm commitments from Nixon on several major points. Economic and military aid would continue, the accords did not legally permit North Vietnamese troops to stay on South Vietnamese soil, and the Americans would “react vigorously” in case of ceasefire violations.
Nixon immediately sent another letter to Thieu, thanking him for signing but emphasizing that public unity between the two governments was now essential to ensure that Congress would continue to grant aid to South Vietnam. He also informed Thieu of the contents of the speech he planned to give announcing the signing of the Paris Peace Accords. Thieu, mindful of his own domestic audience, asked that Nixon include the statement that the accords also met Saigon’s goals.
Nixon announced the accords to America on the night of 23 January. “The United States,” the president said, “will continue to recognize the Government of the Republic of Vietnam as the sole legitimate government of South Vietnam. We shall continue to aid South Vietnam within the terms of the agreement and we shall support efforts by the people of South Vietnam to settle their problems peacefully among themselves.”1 On the matter of the U.S. response to violations, his tone was muted: “We shall do everything the agreement requires of us and we shall expect the other parties to do everything it requires of them.” Dangling the carrot to Hanoi, he offered the prospect of aid to the war-ravaged Communists: “To the leaders of North Vietnam: As we have ended the war through negotiations, let us now build a peace of reconciliation. For our part, we are prepared to make a major effort to help achieve that goal. But just as reciprocity was needed to end the war, so too will it be needed to build . . . the peace.”
Although the accords mandated a halt to warfare in the South and an end to further infiltration, and committed Hanoi to withdraw from Laos and Cambodia and account for Americans still missing in action, none of these occurred. Hanoi instead responded to Nixon’s olive branch with stepped-up infiltration of men and equipment into South Vietnam, along with numerous attacks attempting to grab land and population. Counterattacking swiftly and effectively, the South Vietnamese drove the Communists out of the hamlets they had occupied.
With North Vietnam already committing serious violation, Kissinger traveled to Hanoi in mid-February 1973 to discuss the agreement. Kissinger’s main goals for the trip were to determine if Hanoi intended to keep its written pledges, and to see if a more positive relationship between the United States and North Vietnam could develop. What the principal architect of the accords wanted to learn was whether Hanoi would be “content to rest on the frenzied exertions of a lifetime of struggle and begin meeting the needs of its people? That was what Le Duc Tho had been saying. . . . Could Hanoi adjust its values to give building its economy a higher priority than it had in previous periods in its history?”2
Kissinger found the Politburo keen to discuss aid. The North Vietnamese leaders wanted American reconstruction money to rebuild the damages inflicted by the long aerial and naval campaign against their country, but they wanted the money without any strings attached. War reparations were always an integral part of Hanoi’s conditions for a peace agreement, and the Politburo viewed Nixon’s promise of post-war aid as a fig-leaf to cover its demand. Its interest was piqued by a 1 February 1973 letter from Nixon to Pham Van Dong, a Politburo member and the premier of North Vietnam. The letter outlined an aid program of $3.5 billion after the formation of a Joint Economic Commission to review the particular needs of each country in the region. Nixon, however, saw aid not as reparations, but as a “powerful incentive for Hanoi to keep the peace.”3 He would provide aid only if Hanoi fully abided by the accords. There was, Nixon told Kissinger, an unavoidable link between aid and Hanoi’s performance on the accords.
In North Vietnam, Kissinger met with both Pham Van Dong and Le Duc Tho. Although the Politburo was a collective leadership in theory, in reality most policy was driven by three men. After the death of Ho Chi Minh in 1969, first among “equals” in the Politburo was Le Duan, the Party’s general secretary. Number two was Truong Chinh, the Party’s leading theoretician and a doctrinaire fanatic, even by Communist standards. Third was Pham Van Dong, the most urbane—although Kissinger found him dour—of the senior North Vietnamese leaders. Dong had been the foreign minister of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam (DRV) and the head of its delegation at the 1954 Geneva talks, and in September 1955, he had become prime minister. Although Dong was usually characterized as a moderate, he was not. He had worked with Ho Chi Minh since the 1920s as a dedicated revolutionary.
Meeting with Kissinger, Dong claimed that North Vietnam wanted to establish a long-term relationship with the United States, was serious about implementing the agreement, and desired to receive American aid. Following Nixon’s instructions, Kissinger refused to discuss aid until the two sides finalized a timetable for the withdrawal of North Vietnamese troops from Laos and Cambodia. When aid was finally discussed, Kissinger spent considerable time outlining the congressional process for granting aid. He noted that it was often difficult to obtain money for America’s friends, let alone a country the U.S. had just recently fought. His legislative lessons fell on unsympathetic ears, as Dong was extremely suspicious of Kissinger’s explanation regarding the intricacies of obtaining aid from a recalcitrant U.S. Congress.
Regarding Laos and Cambodia, while Dong agreed to a ceasefire in Laos and a specific timetable for withdrawal of North Vietnamese forces, on Cambodia he was far less amenable. In Laos, Dong explained, the North Vietnamese could fulfill their obligations, but in Cambodia, they could not persuade the Khmer Rouge, the fanatical Communist faction in that beleaguered land, to agree to a ceasefire or a coalition government. How much Hanoi pressed the Khmer Rouge is open to debate, as Hanoi did not want to withdraw PAVN forces from their strategic locations in Cambodia alongside the South Vietnamese border. Consequently, no agreement on Cambodia was reached.
Nor was Dong forthcoming on eighty missing American military personnel who were believed captured, but for whom no information had been provided. Kissinger was further disappointed when Dong denied any ceasefire violations, blamed Saigon for all breaches, and demanded that U.S. assistance be unconditional. More menacingly, Kissinger recalled later, “less than two weeks after . . . the Paris Accords, [Dong] dropped an ominous hint of renewed warfare. If a new relationship did not develop . . . the just signed Paris accords would be ‘only a temporary stabilization of the situation, only a respite.’”4 Kissinger left Hanoi determined to make the Politburo choose between renewed warfare and honoring the accords.
THE FIRST TEST
While Nixon intended to defend South Vietnam if it was mortally threatened, he felt the Vietnamese needed to sort out their own political future with minimal American involvement. The strategy was simple: end the military conflict, continue to support the Saigon government, but let the Vietnamese resolve the political issues themselves. Supporting South Vietnam was important, Kissinger said, because the “impact on international stability and on America’s readiness to defend free peoples would be catastrophic if a solemn agreement were treated as an unconditional surrender.”5 Both Nixon and Kissinger continually cited this potential blow to American credibility as a major factor in their resolve to enforce the agreement. In February 1973 Nixon told several senior Cabinet officials exactly that: “Vietnam was important not for itself but because of what it demonstrated in terms of support for our friends and allies and in terms of showing our will to our enemies. I could have ‘bugged out’ free in Vietnam after the 1968 elections, but we had to see it through.”6
Still, there were competing forces shaping Nixon’s Vietnam policy. While Nixon long claimed he achieved “peace with honor,” there is no doubt he wanted to remove the conflict as a focal point of U.S. affairs. He was “acutely aware of all the things we had postponed or put off because of the war.”7 Nixon’s second-term policy goals for America were ambitious: to reunite America after the angry discord over the war, and to refocus U.S. diplomacy on more pressing issues. In his second term, Nixon sought a “New American Revolution” in line with conservative values. He wanted to reduce the deficit and reform the massive federal bureaucracy. He could accomplish none of these objectives while consumed by Vietnam. Consequently, he bludgeoned Thieu into signing the accords, using a combination of threats and promises of the continuation of aid and the introduction of airpower to punish ceasefire violations. Yet the second crucial promise never materialized. Why?
Kissinger believed that a test of America’s resolve to enforce the agreements was inevitable, given Hanoi’s determination to unify the country under the Communist banner. The test soon came, with a major infiltration of men and equipment down the Ho Chi Minh Trail. Truck columns over two hundred vehicles long, impossible when the U.S. Air Force patrolled the skies, now brazenly drove the trail in daylight. Kissinger and Nixon were well aware of the ongoing infiltration. When the Politburo failed to respond to American warnings transmitted by letter via the North Vietnamese delegation in Paris, both Nixon and Kissinger instantly recognized the growing threat. Kissinger recommended bombing, the sole measure he believed Hanoi respected. Nixon, however, despite his earlier promises to Thieu, was suddenly reluctant to act. Kissinger notes that Nixon ordered a bombing attack against the trail on 6 March, but canceled it the next day. On 14 March, Kissinger again recommended bombing the infiltration columns, a threat which Nixon alluded to in a 15 March speech. Nixon stated that he hoped the problems of Indochina could be “solved at the conference table,” but “we have warned Hanoi, privately and publicly, that we will not tolerate violations of the Agreement.”8
The main reason Nixon refrained was bombing was that the growing Watergate affair was now absorbing most of his attention. In mid-April, Kissinger told his staff that, “In these circumstances, it would be reckless to urge Nixon to put his diminishing prestige behind a bombing campaign . . . that he was clearly reluctant to undertake. I therefore suggested . . . that we wait for an unambiguous direct challenge. . . . Up to then our strategy had been to prevent a major challenge rather than wait for it to occur. The decision meant we were postponing a preemptive strike indefinitely. Thus, sooner or later, South Vietnam would have to cope with the full fury of the unimpeded North Vietnamese buildup.”9
Given Nixon’s demonstrated ability to take harsh military measures, Kissinger’s plan to “prevent a major challenge” rather than reacting to one was a sound policy, but the Watergate scandal and the anti-war mood in Congress destroyed that policy. The growing political crisis and congressional constraints, however, were not the only restraining factors. Nixon was also well aware that American public opinion had soured on South Vietnam. The “Christmas bombing” had spent what little political capital Nixon had left to prosecute the war militarily. Bombing North Vietnam to bring the Communists back to the conference table, a decision he called the “loneliest of his presidency,” had worked, but it had emptied his hand for when he needed military force to enforce the accords.
With the bombing option withering fast, Kissinger hoped to leverage economic aid and a gradual normalization process to restrain the Politburo’s adventurism. Kissinger’s carrot soon became useless, however, when Congress, upon learning that American POWs had been brutally tortured, passed an amendment in early April 1973 barring any aid to North Vietnam. With military action and economic aid both out of the question, whatever influence the U.S. government had possessed disappeared. Since all of Hanoi’s post-war writings have cleaved to the Party line that it was Saigon’s and Washington’s “massive violations” of the ceasefire that caused North Vietnam to resume the offensive, it is impossible at this point to ascertain whether either option would have worked. Still, given the Politburo’s nervous watching of American military moves, an obsession that went well beyond a prudent respect, the suspicion remains that a forceful and early bombing of the infiltration columns would have prompted a more serious effort to adhere to the ceasefire.
THE SOUTH VIETNAMESE STAND ALONE
The last American troops left Vietnam on 29 March 1973. The next day, Thieu flew to the United States to meet Nixon at the Western White House in San Clemente, California. The visit was the fulfillment of another promise made by Nixon as an enticement to sign the accords. While Thieu remained deeply dependent on U.S. largesse, namely aid and firepower, and despite the looming threats from the ongoing infiltration, in the spring of 1973, he was at the pinnacle of his power. His base was the army, the police, and the Catholic minority; his mandate was that he was the man the all-powerful Americans wanted in power.
Nguyen Van Thieu was born on 5 April 1923 in a small hamlet near Phan Rang, a city on Vietnam’s coast northeast of Saigon. He had a hardscrabble childhood, but he attended a French high school in Saigon. In the late 1940s, after a year-long fling with the Viet Minh, he came to abhor Communist doctrine. Like many Nationalists—as the non-Communist South Vietnamese called themselves—he disliked the French, but he hated Communism. To him it was a choice of the lesser of two evils.
In December 1948, he joined an officer training class of the fledging Vietnamese National Army. His record was excellent, and over time, he held a variety of military positions. By 1963, he commanded the 5th Division near Saigon, which he used to participate in the overthrow of President Ngo Dinh Diem. Witnessing the bloody corpses of Diem and his brother, Ngo Dinh Nhu, instilled in him a permanent fear of a coup. After Vietnam had endured a series of inept military governments, in 1967 he was elected president. Air Force General Nguyen Cao Ky was his running-mate. In 1971, he ran without Ky and won in a controversial and uncontested election.
For most Americans, Thieu remains the archetypal tyrant—dictatorial, corrupt, and incompetent. That is a caricature. He was an extraordinarily complicated man, nothing like the one-dimensional despot portrayed by his implacable critics. The charge that he was dictatorial stems from his retention of all decision-making authority, although few realized that by historical precedent and constitutional authority the Executive Branch wielded vastly greater power than any other arm of the South Vietnamese government. The accusation of incompetence came from Thieu’s penchant for moving glacially. Before committing himself, he subjected problems to long, slow study. He rarely let people other than his closest aides know his position on various issues. The Vietnamese people called him “the old fox” (cao gia), indicating a willingness to wait and watch, a sense of keeping one’s counsel while others moved prematurely. Yet Thieu was cognizant that his deliberate pace and retention of power enabled a sluggish bureaucracy that was generally unresponsive to the people’s needs. On 10 July 1973, he announced on TV and radio an “Administrative Revolution” designed to shake up the stubborn civil service. The goal was to provide more efficient and streamlined services to the mostly rural population. According to his second cousin and close adviser Hoang Duc Nha, Thieu hoped to foster an American-style management philosophy within his administration. This meant moving away from the French-era mentality of shifting the responsibility by forcing civil servants to assume more responsibility.10
Thieu’s Vietnamese detractors criticized him for cronyism, tolerance of corruption, and over-reliance on the Americans. They also decried his “old fox” nature as overly suspicious and abnormally cautious. Thieu’s closest military aide for six years was Captain Nguyen Xuan Tam. He describes Thieu’s suspicious disposition as part character, part calculation. According to Tam, “Thieu listened carefully to proposals to see if people were trying to manipulate him or take advantage of a policy for their own benefit. He would examine a problem for a long time to ensure someone’s true motivations were for the good of the country, and not themselves.”11 It was Thieu’s chief survival mechanism in the internecine warfare that characterized South Vietnamese politics.
Thieu had few close friends, and his personal circle was small. Despite charges that he remained aloof from his political opposition, he did not isolate himself. He often met with foreigners and Vietnamese outside his circle to gain perspective. As president, he demanded complete loyalty from his ministers and generals, and he moved patiently over time to neutralize those officers and politicians who threatened his position. Although the military remained the key arbiter of power, by 1973 he had successfully clipped the military’s wings when it came to overt involvement in political affairs. While Thieu remained fearful of a coup, by careful balancing of military assignments and patient deal-making, he virtually eliminated most plotting. He also succumbed to the Vietnamese predilection for astrology and superstition. It was widely rumored by both American and Vietnamese intimates that Thieu timed major decisions to coincide with favorable heavenly signs.12
Thieu’s supreme talent was political maneuvering in a culture of endless intrigue and innumerable factions. He had little choice; he sat at the head of a fractious country held together by the sheer force of his will and the careful balancing of religious groups, political factions, business interests, and the ever-present national-security demands. That few outsiders understood the inner workings of his administration was not only deliberate policy, but typical Vietnamese clandestinism. Unfortunately, the lack of transparency resulted in numerous theories and large-scale gossip, which only fed the dictatorial image.
Initially his style was the antithesis of the jovial, back-slapping Western politician, but during his years in power he acquired a few barnstorming skills, which he employed in his travels around the country. By 1973, Thieu’s standing among the vast majority of pro-government South Vietnamese ranged from barely tolerated to fairly well-regarded. He was generally accepted by the peasants in the countryside, who benefited from his program of transferring title from wealthy landowners to farmers. Among the Saigon intelligentsia, he was despised, a reflection of their own desire for power and their fury at his refusal to consult them on any issue. The truest test was that the Communists continually clamored for his removal. They clearly recognized that he was the glue holding together the South Vietnamese government and, by extension, the country.
American views of him ranged from supportive to disdainful. Kissinger, reflecting the prevailing opinion of the Nixon administration, described Thieu as “unquestionably the most formidable of the military leaders of South Vietnam [and] probably the ablest of the political personalities.”13 Arnold Isaacs, an American journalist with extensive experience in Southeast Asia, recounts a more widespread perception among those outside the administration: “Thieu’s talents as a leader were manipulative, not inspirational. . . . The war served as Thieu’s ally in stifling most normal political activity. His non-Communist opponents were paralyzed by the risk that in challenging him, they might also undermine the war. Many South Vietnamese disliked the inefficiency, corruption, and authoritarianism of their regime but feared a Viet Cong victory even more. Never in his years in power did he seek associates with a different perspective from his own, who might have given his regime and the nation a stronger sense of purpose.”14
The odd reality is that both perceptions are correct, but unfortunately for South Vietnam the world’s view of Thieu as a repressive dictator precluded political support or economic assistance after the ceasefire from all but a few countries. Much of this animosity coalesced from the one-man presidential campaign in 1971. After Thieu had blatantly suppressed his opposition, the election seemed farcical.
Thieu’s stature in the world took another sharp fall when, during the darkest days of the 1972 offensive, he imposed martial law and declared the power to rule by decree. His opponents were outraged, but Thieu claimed this was the only way to deal with a murderous enemy bent on military conquest. His worst move was promulgating regulations restraining the freewheeling South Vietnamese media. Western journalists decried this as a curtailment of free speech, one of the bedrocks of democracy. Press reports in Europe and America quickly reflected their antipathy; yet in Thieu’s mind, the newspapers recklessly printed every unsavory rumor picked up in Saigon’s streets. He wanted them to show support instead of castigating him for every military or political setback, thereby lowering morale and playing into the enemy’s hands.
In late December 1972, he further inflamed his opponents by curtailing the number of political parties. By forcing them to demonstrate a certain level of support in a majority of provinces, the law appeared designed to protect Thieu’s political dominance, since few parties other than his Democracy Party could meet the law’s requirement. Thieu quickly followed the decree with a formidable build-up of the Democracy Party, staffed mostly by military officers and government bureaucrats. While the criticism was partially accurate, his main intention was to force the twenty-some fragile, mostly regionally based political or religious parties to unite instead of remaining fractured. He hoped to create a strong base to compete with the Communists, whose organizational techniques included dealing with serious opposition by killing it. Corruption was the other issue, and while his enemies were on firmer ground here, corruption, black marketing, and pilfering were just as rampant in North Vietnam.15 This was an inconvenient fact that many of Thieu’s critics blithely ignored.
Another major accusation was that the government jailed thousands for simple political opposition. The reality was that South Vietnamese jails held mostly common criminals, along with some Communist cadre. The Left in the U.S., parroting a Hanoi accusation, claimed there were 200,000 political prisoners, an absurd figure given South Vietnam’s prison capacity of roughly 35,000. Equally ridiculous was the U.S. Embassy’s declaration that it could find no political prisoners in Saigon’s dungeons. The actual number depended on the definition, and on this, the two sides could not agree. Still, the political-prisoner issue would burn brightly as long as Thieu was in power, and it was undoubtedly the most damning indictment used by American anti-war groups against his government. Yet despite these claims of jails filled with tortured souls, by 1 May 1973, Thieu had released 27,000 healthy North Vietnamese POWs. The Hanoi authorities promptly sent these men for re-education and then used them as replacement troops. The Communists released fewer than 5,000 prisoners, a mere fraction of the South Vietnamese missing. All those who returned were in poor physical condition.
Thieu’s main principle was strident anti-Communism, which made him seem fanatical rather than statesmanlike in an era of détente. His post-war policies remained the same uncompromising formula of the “Four No’s”: no political recognition of the Communists, no neutralization of South Vietnam, no coalition government, and no surrender of territory. These policies were a final refinement of the rigid anti-Communist stance he had held for years. Paramount for Thieu was no coalition government, as the presence of North Vietnamese troops on South Vietnamese soil would make any compromise tantamount to surrender. This was the crux of the issue. Many outsiders and some South Vietnamese had strongly advocated a coalition government—known as the “political solution”—as the only possible resolution to the long war.
Thieu knew better. The Vietnamese Communists had a long history of ruthless elimination of opponents. From the earliest days of the Communist movement, most Nationalists who tried to work with the Marxists were soon betrayed or assassinated. As China’s Mao Zedong once told a senior Laotian Communist leader, “The purpose of organizing a coalition government is to destroy the coalition government.”16 Hanoi felt no differently.
Thieu, however, was not the inflexible hard-liner often portrayed. In fact, he had stated at a press conference in September 1971 that he was not against the National Liberation Front participating in elections. The only stipulation was that it could not carry out Communist activities, which were banned by the Constitution. He also informed U.S. officials in late January 1973 that if elections were held, he expected the NLF to win a few seats. Despite his earlier disavowal of Kissinger’s agreement, he now told U.S. visitors that he strongly favored the political solution envisioned by the Paris Accords. He believed the accords worked in his favor, since in his opinion the Communists had little political support in the country. Ultimately, Thieu’s policies stemmed from his unyielding belief that the Communists would not negotiate on the political issues until they had concluded that a military victory was unachievable.
While his faults were well known—and often magnified—Thieu receives little credit for his positive attributes. Tough and hard-working, he molded grand ambition with intelligence, courage, and cunning to govern a fractious country facing an implacable foe. These were the qualities that, while not endearing him to most American officials, generally earned their support. He realized that the departure of U.S. troops offered high risks coupled with a chance to craft his country’s destiny, and he was appropriately sobered by the enormous tasks he faced in rebuilding a country that had been devastated by war. Facing abundant problems in the economic, diplomatic, and security arenas, he tossed aside his instinctive caution and set an aggressive agenda.
Thieu’s economic hopes for his country were high, and he displayed the flexibility to achieve his goal. On 20 May 1973, he announced an “Eight-Year Reconstruction and Development Plan” to resettle the remaining refugees from the 1972 fighting, increase rice production, and finance new development projects. His program dangled some of the most liberal investment incentives in the world to foreign investors. Moreover, he sought out new sources of aid, primarily from the French, West Germans, and Japanese. To demonstrate frugality in a time of contracting economic conditions, he ordered air-conditioners turned off in government buildings to conserve electricity.
As his jet crossed the broad Pacific for his meeting with Nixon, Thieu’s main goals were to gain massive economic aid until South Vietnam could achieve self-sufficiency, and to find a solution to the vexing problem of the steadily infiltrating enemy forces. He knew his government faced stern tests in the months ahead, as the Communist build-up could only portend a new offensive. He eagerly looked forward to meeting Nixon and discussing the realities in South Vietnam since the signing of the accords. Given the lack of a specific U.S. public declaration concerning renewed bombing, Thieu sought a forthright avowal of U.S. military intentions. He arrived in Los Angeles on 1 April for two days of talks.
Thieu brought a detailed proposal regarding aid. South Vietnam, he told Nixon, “faced pressing emergency problems,” including “resettling one million refugees, rebuilding large areas destroyed by war . . . [the need to] generate enough jobs . . . and to curb inflation. We have to solve these problems in order to ensure political and social stability. . . . On a longer term basis, our goal is to achieve self-sustained growth . . . in the shortest time [to reduce] the present excessive dependence . . . on external assistance.”17Presenting his eight-year plan, Thieu wanted over $1.5 billion in economic aid a year for the next three years, with reduced amounts in succeeding years. By creating an economic program for South Vietnam similar to what the Marshall Plan did for Europe, he hoped to achieve what one aide called “takeoff.” This meant that the vast infusion of aid would create a rapid expansion of the South Vietnamese economy, enabling it to grow faster than South Korea’s economy did after the Korean War.
Regarding the military question, Thieu asked Nixon for a public pledge that the U.S. would “react vigorously” in case of grave violations by North Vietnam. Intelligence indicated that Hanoi had shipped south thousands of troops, hundreds of tanks and artillery pieces, and tons of supplies along the Ho Chi Minh Trail. Large construction projects had extended an oil and gas pipeline deep into South Vietnam, and upgraded numerous roads, including a major new artery of the Trail that ran inside South Vietnam. Thieu opined that, given the size of the ongoing infiltration, the Communists might launch a large attack in late April or May. One can only guess whether he believed his own warning. No doubt, he was sorely tempted to sound the trumpets in order to test Nixon’s promises.
In response, Nixon agreed to Thieu’s aid request, but only as a goal, not a commitment. Nixon said that his administration would continue, in conjunction with Congress, to supply South Vietnam, but he warned Thieu that the sums of money he was requesting were simply unrealistic. He did not want to present Congress and the American people with a large aid request “as Congress is presently bearish on foreign aid.”18 He recommended that Thieu stress to Congress that the GVN needed the aid to overcome the effects of the war, to achieve “takeoff,” and that America “will not be involved in a permanent aid program.” Nixon repeated the unity message again, stressing that cooperation was essential to the GVN’s survival, not only to gain congressional approval for aid but to convince Hanoi, Peking, and Moscow that they should adhere to the accords.
While downplaying the need for a public utterance on a military riposte to Hanoi’s breaches of the accords, Nixon privately left no doubts concerning his intentions. He assured Thieu that he would react harshly to violations. He then outlined for Thieu his strategic assessment of the situation: “We conditioned our better relations with the Chinese and Russians on the scale of their arms deliveries to North Vietnam. The Russians responded and promised that there would be no further military supplies to Hanoi. The price of what we were doing for them was military cooperation in Indochina. Before the January ceasefire . . . [Nixon had given] Thieu the firmest assurance of our desire to support him in the new conditions of peace. He wanted to repeat this assurance now and to make three points: 1) Thieu should do all he could to keep the Communists on the political defensive. 2) Our common enemies wanted Thieu to say that the U.S. would have to come back in. 3) In the event of a massive Communist offensive the American reaction would be sharp and tough.”19
While Thieu did not receive the public declaration of renewed American bombing that he had been promised since January, his aides claim he was happy with the results of the conference. Thieu then flew to Washington to meet congressional leaders, and to hold a press conference. Meeting with a group of journalists at the National Press Club, Thieu followed Nixon’s script. When asked, he said his government could defend itself against an attack, and that he would “never ask American military troops to come back to Vietnam.”20 In Thieu’s mind, if Communist forces in South Vietnam remained at their current levels, ARVN could handle them. If they launched a major offensive, then Thieu expected Nixon to keep his promises. The bombers, after all, were only as far away as Thailand.
Thieu returned to Saigon on 14 April, where he was greeted by a large throng of people. He gave a short speech, in which he announced that the U.S. would continue economic aid through 1973, after which time the U.S. Congress would then consider any future amounts. Notwithstanding Nixon’s warning, Thieu hinted that Nixon had guaranteed American military strikes if the ceasefire violations continued.
Despite the apparent success of Thieu’s trip, events soon moved against him. Negotiations between the two Vietnamese sides that had begun in Paris in early 1973—to set up the National Council specified in the Paris Accords to arrange for post-ceasefire elections—had quickly stalemated. Among many issues, the two sides could not agree over who would constitute the supposedly neutral “Third Force.” The Third Force consisted of the circle around retired General Duong Van Minh (Big Minh), various unaffiliated intellectuals, the An Quang Buddhists, several minor opposition parties, and some Vietnamese who lived in Paris. Many Western commentators pushed the Third Force as a viable alternative to Thieu’s government, but Thieu summarily dismissed them as Communist sympathizers. He was mostly correct; after the war, many in General Minh’s clique would be revealed as Communist agents. Minh was not the only one deceived. One U.S. journalist and aid worker who was sympathetic to the Provisional Revolutionary Government (PRG—the supposed Communist government in the South), and who remained in Vietnam after the fall of Saigon, revealed that infiltration. “Many foreign observers,” he wrote, “had portrayed the third force as a neutralist coalition leaning neither towards Communism nor the U.S. From my conversations, however, they merged [sic] as a radical nationalist grouping which had frequent contacts with the NLF, and was aware that many NLF cadres were active in third force movements.”21
Earlier the Communists had rebuffed a GVN proposal to hold national elections. On 25 April Thieu again publicly called for a national vote, and the Communists again refused. With political negotiations deadlocked, fighting soon flared in several regions, and the accords appeared close to collapse. To repair the deteriorating ceasefire, Kissinger and Le Duc Tho agreed to meet again in Paris in mid-May. Unfortunately for Kissinger—and in spite of the ceasefire’s obvious failure—Congress turned away from a president increasingly tainted by the Watergate scandal. As Kissinger left Washington in May to meet Tho in Paris, Congress approved a devastating amendment. No funds in the Defense Supplemental Appropriations Bill could be used to support combat operations by American forces in Indochina. Although Nixon vetoed it, revelations that the U.S. Air Force had been conducting secret bombing raids in Cambodia so angered Congress that it passed the Case-Church amendment banning American air attacks in Cambodia effective 15 August. The amendment also specifically prohibited Nixon from using combat forces in Indochina without the express consent of Congress. That legislation would snowball into the War Powers Resolution, a bill passed by Congress on 7 November 1973 prohibiting the president from declaring war without congressional consent. It was the culmination of steps many anti-war congressional leaders had been pressing for since 1970.
Nixon and Kissinger maintain that these actions, “and not the legal terms of the agreement, ensured the collapse of Indochina.”22 Kissinger defends his and Nixon’s failure to inform Congress of their private promises to Thieu by stating that it was “inconceivable that the U.S. should fight for ten years and lose over 55,000 men and then stand by while the peace treaty . . . was flagrantly violated. It was not a position the U.S. has ever taken.”23 While theoretically correct, both Nixon and Kissinger were well aware of public and congressional disapproval of re-entering the war. One can understand their reluctance to inform Congress of their plans; they were damned either way. If they had publicly acknowledged that they were willing to resume bombing, they would have been attacked for prolonging the war. By not openly admitting their private promises to Thieu, they provided Congress an excuse to cut off military support altogether. Regardless, the congressional edict banning the use of military power was a regime-threatening blow to Thieu. The main impediment to Hanoi’s adventurism had now been swept away by Congress.
Thieu began to comprehend the effect Watergate was having on Nixon. In a speech on 29 May, Thieu publicly expressed his concern that the scandal was undermining U.S. policy toward South Vietnam. All that he had achieved during his visit—continued military and economic aid, plus Nixon’s promise to “react vigorously” in case of a Communist attack—was in danger. Thieu tried desperately to make Congress understand that the Communists had signed the agreement only in order to get U.S. troops out of South Vietnam. The best way to keep South Vietnam free, he said, was for her to remain strong militarily and economically until the Communists realized they could not win. That would require large amounts of aid over the next several years, and American bombing of the Communists when they violated the agreement.
Deprived of the stick of bombing and the carrot of economic aid, Kissinger attempted to salvage the situation with diplomatic pressure. On 12 May he returned to Washington after a brief trip to the USSR and publicly announced that the Soviet Union recognized its responsibility not to supply arms to Hanoi or encourage violations of the truce. Kissinger saw improved trade and better relations with the Soviets, in exchange for restricting military aid to the North and prodding Hanoi to accept a diplomatic solution, as an inferior substitute for military pressure. U.S. planes in February and April had bombed North Vietnamese troops operating in Laos, and had also continued bombing in Cambodia throughout the spring. With that option soon to be cut off, Kissinger essentially hoped to bluff Hanoi into ceasing, or at least slowing, the infiltration.
But the talks in Paris quickly stalemated. Charges were hurled back and forth, and the meetings dragged on into June. Despite the wrangling, Kissinger and Tho slowly reached an agreement. Then the same problem that had dogged the original Paris Accords resurfaced: gaining Thieu’s concurrence. Thieu wanted a definite timetable for national elections, and an acknowledgment that North Vietnamese troops remained in South Vietnam. As before, the U.S. side attempted to mollify Thieu, but eventually Nixon overrode Thieu’s objections, and Kissinger signed the second agreement on 13 June.
The new ceasefire quickly took hold, and military action dropped sharply and stayed quiet for the rest of the summer, except in parts of II and IV Corps. For South Vietnam, however, it would mark a quickening decline, signaled by a contracting economy, increased corruption, and sinking morale. Kissinger would later claim that, “After the events of the summer of 1973, Vietnam disappeared as a policy issue.”24 For Kissinger this was especially true. He privately told the South Vietnamese that he was finished negotiating on their behalf. He wanted the Vietnamese to solve their own problems, no longer wishing to interact with such implacable adversaries and obstinate allies. Unknown to Kissinger, however, his June effort was wasted. Secretly, the Communists had made the historic decision to launch another offensive.