]President Nixon: The South Vietnamese are not going to be knocked over by the North Vietnamese—not easily.
Kissinger was watching the president’s speech on television with his deputy, and Nixon’s favorite general, Alexander Haig. Kissinger was the first national security adviser to have a corner office in the West Wing. The chandelier, federal-style wooden furniture, and ceiling-to-floor windows and drapes made his office look like one of the capital’s many distinguished products of the early 1800s. It was, in fact, a feat of architectural backdating. Before Nixon, the room had been a bullpen for White House reporters, sectioned into cubicles and florescent-lit.
Nothing in the speech would surprise Kissinger, who had worked on it, substance and wording; he had even served with Haldeman as a two-man preview audience for the staged ad lib conclusion. But the president would spend the rest of the evening on the phone conducting a postspeech review (that is, hearing his own praises sung by a succession of soloists), so Kissinger had to be prepared with credibility-enhancing details.
The biggest challenge of this speech, apart from killing a withdrawal deadline, was making the recent ground offensive by the South Vietnamese army in Laos sound like a success. The president was competing with an indelible picture, seen around the world, of South Vietnamese soldiers clinging to the skids of helicopters, hoping to be carried away from battle. It inspired little confidence and considerable foreboding. Nixon warmed up his audience by recalling the American ground offensive in Cambodia a year earlier: “Let me review now two decisions I have made which have contributed to the achievements of our goals in Vietnam that you have seen on this chart. The first was the destruction of enemy bases in Cambodia.”1 Nixon had sent American troops into Cambodia to put out a fire he had started by accident. Shortly after he took office, the president secretly decided to start bombing along Cambodia’s border with Vietnam. Hanoi used the border areas of both Laos and Cambodia to infiltrate supplies and soldiers into South Vietnam. This was the Ho Chi Minh Trail, named for the Communist revolutionary who had overthrown the French colonial government that had turned the nations of Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia into a dominion it called French Indochina. The secret bombing of Cambodia, like all attempts to disrupt the Ho Chi Minh Trail, slowed the North Vietnamese down but didn’t stop them. Worse, the secret bombing touched off a series of catastrophes that, one year later, threatened to speed the day when the North Vietnamese government in Hanoi would overthrow the South Vietnamese government in Saigon. In short, to avoid getting hit by American B-52s, the North Vietnamese moved deeper into Cambodia, which led to clashes with Cambodian villagers, which destabilized Cambodia’s neutralist government, which precipitated a right-wing coup in the capital of Phnom Penh, which posed a threat to Hanoi’s infiltration routes, which prompted Hanoi to send troops even deeper into Cambodia, which threatened the new rightist Cambodian government with overthrow, which raised the possibility that North Vietnam would install a pro-Hanoi regime in Phnom Penh, which would have let it turn the Ho Chi Minh Trail into a superhighway, and which just might have made it possible for Hanoi to topple Saigon sooner instead of later. This was the mess Nixon ordered American troops into Cambodia to clean up. (The bombing of Cambodia and the damage it did remained top secret; it was one reason that Nixon dreaded leaks.)
“You will recall that at the time of that decision,” Nixon continued, “many expressed fears that we had widened the war, that our casualties would increase, that our troop withdrawal program would be delayed. Now, I don’t question the sincerity of those who expressed these fears. But we can see now they were wrong. American troops were out of Cambodia in 60 days, just as I pledged they would be. American casualties did not rise; they were cut in half.”2 American casualties had spiked during the invasion of Cambodia but fell afterward as a result of ongoing American troop withdrawals and the shifting of combat operations to the South Vietnamese.
“Now let me turn to the Laotian operation.” It was clever of Nixon to talk about Cambodia before Laos. Public opinion had been divided on the Cambodian invasion at first, but polls taken a few months after showed that, in retrospect, most voters considered it a success.3 Maybe they would change their minds about the Laotian one as well. “As you know,” Nixon said, “this was undertaken by South Vietnamese ground forces with American air support against North Vietnamese troops which had been using Laotian territory for 6 years to attack American forces and allied forces in South Vietnam.” After Cambodia, Congress prohibited the president from using American troops for ground offensives on the Ho Chi Minh Trail. American bombers and fighter jets could blast the trail, American helicopters could carry South Vietnamese soldiers into and out of Laos and Cambodia, but no American boots could touch the ground. “Since the completion of that operation, there has been a great deal of understandable speculation—just as there was after Cambodia—whether or not it was a success or a failure, a victory or a defeat. But, as in Cambodia, what is important is not the instant analysis of the moment, but what happens in the future.
“Did the Laotian operation contribute to the goals we sought? I have just completed my assessment of that operation and here are my conclusions:
“First, the South Vietnamese demonstrated that without American advisers they could fight effectively against the very best troops North Vietnam could put in the field.”
The question wasn’t so much whether the South could fight as whether they would. Early in the offensive, Nixon seemed to have hope. “The main thing I’m interested in is just to be sure the South Vietnamese fight well,” he told Kissinger on February 18, 1971. “They’re going to be battling here for years to come. I guess if they fight well, North Vietnam can never beat South Vietnam. Never. Because South Vietnam has more people and more—”
“And more equipment,” said Kissinger. Neither of them knew then that on February 12 South Vietnamese president Nguyen Van Thieu had ordered his army to stop the ground offensive once his casualties reached three thousand. It had only begun on February 8. Kissinger and Haig already had doubts about the accuracy of reports from the field. The national security adviser was waiting for the right moment to suggest that the president send Haig to Vietnam to check.4 It came the following week, after Kissinger learned that sensors had detected North Vietnamese trucks moving down a road he’d been told the South Vietnamese had already cut. Haig “could give you a fair assessment of what the hell is really going on,” said Kissinger.5 Nixon agreed.
“So we are achieving an objective that isn’t exactly the one we started out with, but I think it will be important,” Kissinger told Nixon on February 27. At least they were bleeding Hanoi’s supply lines. If “they hold on into April, then the North Vietnamese are in bad shape,” said Kissinger.6 But the South withdrew from Laos before the end of March.
“However Laos comes out, we have got to claim that it was a success,” Nixon told Haldeman on March 9. “Those goddamn leaders of theirs, so they get the hell kicked out of them and have to get out—claim a victory. Armies always do that. They claim victories when they lose.”7
As did he in his April 7 speech: “Second, the South Vietnamese suffered heavy casualties, but by every conservative estimate the casualties suffered by the enemy were far heavier.” The North Vietnamese did suffer higher casualties, most of them inflicted by American artillery fire and airpower—not by the South Vietnamese army. The president didn’t mention that.
“Third, and most important, the disruption of enemy supply lines, the consumption of ammunition and arms in the battle, has been even more damaging to the capability of the North Vietnamese to sustain major offensives in South Vietnam than were the operations in Cambodia 10 months ago.”8 It would take Hanoi a few months to replace lost supplies.
“Consequently, tonight I can report that Vietnamization has succeeded.”9 Vietnamization was the name Nixon gave his program of training and equipping South Vietnam to defend itself without American troops. The name was Laird’s idea, but the policy fulfilled a campaign promise made by both the Republican and Democratic nominees in 1968.10 In speech after speech, Nixon stressed that Vietnamization would allow him to bring all American troops home; Saigon’s troops would become strong enough to replace America’s. Here’s how he put it in 1969: “We have adopted a plan which we have worked out in cooperation with the South Vietnamese for the complete withdrawal of all U.S. combat ground forces, and their replacement by South Vietnamese forces on an orderly scheduled timetable.”11 And in 1970: “Just as soon as the South Vietnamese are able to defend the country without our assistance, we will be gone.”12
Before announcing the Vietnamization program, Nixon had asked his top military, diplomatic, and intelligence officials how soon South Vietnam would be able to survive without American troops. The answer was unanimous: not for the foreseeable future. Agreed on this point were the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Nixon’s secretaries of defense and state, the US embassy in Saigon, the CIA, and the commander of American armed forces in Vietnam, Gen. Creighton Abrams. There was no dissent: “All agencies agree that RVNAF [Republic of (South) Vietnam Armed Forces] could not, either now or even when fully modernized, handle both the VC [Vietcong, i.e., Communist guerrillas in the South] and a sizable level of NVA [North Vietnamese Army] forces without U.S. combat support in the form of air, helicopters, artillery, logistics and major ground forces.”13 There was considerable disagreement among agencies responding to Nixon’s first National Security Study Memorandum (NSSM-1), issued on January 21, 1969, on other aspects of the war, but on the question of whether America could strengthen South Vietnam enough for it to survive on its own without American soldiers, there was no dissent. The consensus was no. Nixon knew this before he first announced that “the primary mission of our troops is to enable the South Vietnamese forces to assume the full responsibility for the security of South Vietnam.”
Nixon did not treat Vietnamization as a serious strategy.14 Instead, he used it to justify the actions he deemed politically expedient. When he wanted to keep American troops in Vietnam as long as he needed them there, he could say that Vietnamization required more time to work. When it was politically safe or advantageous to bring the troops home, he could say Vietnamization had worked. If he had actually believed in Vietnamization, he wouldn’t have felt the need to keep American troops in Vietnam long enough to prevent the Communists from winning before Election Day 1972.
The next sentence of the speech gave journalists their headline: “Because of the increased strength of the South Vietnamese, because of the success of the Cambodian operation, because of the achievements of the South Vietnamese operation in Laos, I am announcing an increase in the rate of American withdrawals. Between May 1 and December 1 of this year, 100,000 more American troops will be brought home from South Vietnam.” (“The troop announcement itself is the best proof that Laos was successful,” Nixon told Kissinger on March 19.)
“This will bring the total number of American troops withdrawn from South Vietnam to 365,000. Now that is over two-thirds of the number who were there when I came into office.”15 This would also leave 184,000 American soldiers in Vietnam, more than enough to prevent a preelection collapse of Saigon, while still giving Nixon the opportunity to announce several more troop withdrawals during the campaign.
“The issue very simply is this: Shall we leave Vietnam in a way that—by our own actions—consciously turns the country over to the Communists? Or shall we leave in a way that gives the South Vietnamese a reasonable chance to survive as a free people? My plan will end American involvement in a way that would provide that chance. And the other plan would end it precipitately and give victory to the Communists.”16
Nixon was getting out of Vietnam around election time, whether the South could survive or not. “They’re going to take some raps, but we’ve got to get the hell out of there,” Nixon had told Kissinger a month before the speech. “That’s for sure.”
“No question,” said Kissinger.
“I’m not going to allow their weakness and their fear of the North Vietnamese to—to—to delay us,” said the president.17 He still hoped for a settlement, but with or without one, American troops would be gone. He saw what was coming, little as he liked to say the words.
[]President Nixon: The South Vietnamese are not going to be knocked over by the North Vietnamese—not easily.
Kissinger: Not easily. [speaking over President Nixon] And that’s all we could bring about.
President Nixon: And that’s all we can do.18