“We Want a Decent Interval”

Merely delaying South Vietnam’s fall until after the election would not solve all of Nixon’s political problems. If the South fell in the first months of Nixon’s second term, it would still be obvious to voters that he had lost the war. It would have been too late for them to hold him accountable in the voting booth, but he would nevertheless go down in history books as the president who lost Vietnam. His approval ratings would plummet, his second-term agenda would suffer, and his hopes for realigning American politics, for replacing FDR’s New Deal coalition with a New Republican Majority, would be damaged. His critics, the ones who said he could not win the war, would be proven right. To avoid personal and political calamity, Nixon needed the South to survive a year or two after he brought the last American troops home. If it lasted eighteen months or so, Saigon’s fall might not look like it was Nixon’s fault. Kissinger had a special name for this face-saving period of time.

“We want a decent interval,” Kissinger scribbled in the margins of the massive briefing book for his July 9, 1971, secret trip to China. “You have our assurance.”1

Nixon and Kissinger needed the help of Moscow and Beijing to get a “decent interval.” Russia and China were the first and second biggest suppliers of military aid to North Vietnam. Hanoi had to listen to them; it didn’t have to obey them, but it had to listen to them. Through the Russians and Chinese, Nixon and Kissinger could offer Hanoi something valuable in return for a “decent interval”—a clear shot at taking over the South without fear of American intervention. Kissinger planned to raise the issue subtly in his historic first, secret meeting with the Chinese.

Just before entering the airspace of the People’s Republic of China, Winston Lord stood up and walked to the front of the plane so he could, technically, be the first American official in China since 1949.2 The thirty-three-year-old NSC aide’s self-conscious history making was nothing compared to his superiors’. The code name for Kissinger’s trip, Polo I, invoked Marco Polo’s Chinese travels. Polo I was meant to prepare the way for a thoroughly public trip by the president. This meant that Kissinger would see China, meet Zhou Enlai, make history first. Nixon had toyed with Kissinger when the invitation finally arrived, tossing out names of other men who could lead the secret trip, like New York governor Nelson Rockefeller.

“Well, he wouldn’t be disciplined enough,” said Kissinger.

UN Ambassador George H. W. Bush, perhaps.

“Absolutely not,” said Kissinger, “he is too soft and not sophisticated enough.”

“I thought of that myself,” said the president.

“Bush would be too weak.”

“I thought so, too, but I was trying to think of someone with a title,” said Nixon.

Kissinger had a title: assistant to the president for national security affairs.

“I’d send Haig,” said the president.

“Yeah,” said Kissinger. “That’s what I think.” The deputy assistant to the president for national security affairs.

“Somebody like that,” said Nixon. “I mean, real tough.” One more twist of the knife. “It wouldn’t have happened if you hadn’t stuck to your guns through this period,” the president said.

“Well, Mr. President, you made it possible.”3

The diplomatic opening to China was Nixon’s legitimate brainchild. The invitation that came in the spring of 1971 grew from years of careful cultivation, starting before his presidency. In 1967 Nixon wrote in Foreign Affairs that “we simply cannot afford to leave China forever outside the family of nations, there to nurture its fantasies, cherish its hates and threaten its neighbors.”4 Once in office, he’d seen the Soviet Union increase the number of divisions it kept along its Chinese border from twenty-four to thirty or more.5 The hostility building up between the Soviets and Chinese, the two great Communist powers, presented an opportunity for him. Polo I would give birth to triangular diplomacy. Nixon and Kissinger would play China against Russia, Russia against China, and both against North Vietnam.

As big as the geopolitical opportunity was the domestic political challenge. “People are against Communist China, period,” Nixon told one White House aide as ping-pong diplomacy took off. “They’re against Communists, period. So, this doesn’t help us with folks at all.”6

Americans had haunting memories of the last war. In 1950, Chinese premier Zhou Enlai (the man Kissinger was flying to China to meet) had publicly warned that he would indeed intervene militarily if UN forces under Gen. Douglas MacArthur’s command crossed the thirty-eighth parallel dividing North and South Korea. MacArthur had assured President Harry S. Truman that the Chinese would not carry out the threat—and would get “slaughtered” if they did. MacArthur crossed the line in October; in November, Zhou sent Chinese troops across the border in such great numbers that they quickly drove MacArthur’s forces back down across the thirty-eighth.7 China had an overwhelming numerical advantage and refused to tolerate the overthrow of a Communist government on its border—North Korea’s in the 1950s and North Vietnam’s in the 1960s and 1970s. This is why no American leader suggested sending the US Army across the seventeenth parallel to overthrow the government in Hanoi. No one wanted American soldiers to be buried in a human avalanche. It did not reflect the lack of a will to win, just the simple wish to avoid disaster on a spectacular scale.8

The United States employed diversionary tactics to make the North Vietnamese think their homeland was under threat during the Laotian offensive, the aim being to scare Hanoi into keeping troops at home in defensive positions so it wouldn’t send them down the Ho Chi Minh Trail as reinforcements. The diversion worked well enough to prompt Hanoi to warn that “China will not remain with its arms folded and watch her neighbors being attacked by the United States.”9 The warning led Nixon and Kissinger to discuss the possibility of Chinese intervention on February 18, 1971. “If we went North, if we landed in Haiphong, or if we landed in Vinh or someplace like that, then it’s conceivable,” said Kissinger. “But I don’t think under present circumstances they’d come in.”10 Nevertheless, China looked askance when Nixon moved into its other neighbors, suspending covert contacts with the White House in response to his two ground offensives on the Ho Chi Minh Trail, the 1970 one with American troops in Cambodia and the 1971 one with South Vietnamese troops (and American air support) in Laos.11

While Nixon didn’t see a lot of votes in the opening to China, it yielded other political benefits. Ping-pong diplomacy could knock the war off the front page. “For every reason, we’ve got to have a diversion from Vietnam in this country for a while,” said Kissinger.

“That’s the point, isn’t it? Yeah,” said Nixon.

“And we need it for our game with the Soviets,” said Kissinger.12 They wanted two summits, with the second one in Moscow to feature the signing of a treaty limiting nuclear weapons—another historic first, if they could get it. The Soviets weren’t moving fast enough toward a deal in Kissinger’s secret negotiations with Ambassador Anatoly Dobrynin. The opening to China would give them a push.

It also confounded the Democrats. As Nixon was the first to point out, only Nixon could go to China. He made sure Kissinger told reporters. “Incidentally, I hope you’ve mentioned the fact no Democrat could have done it,” said Nixon.

“Oh, yes,” said Kissinger.

“I have done it because, frankly, the hawks trust me,” said Nixon.13

Once Nixon stopped needling Kissinger about the secret trip to China, he began lecturing him. If the national security adviser got to make first contact with Mao’s government, he would be going fully armed with presidential advice. Nixon revealed the secret of his own success in handling the Communists. Two words: cold steel. “I don’t fart around,” said the president. Kissinger needed to convince the Chinese “that we’re just tough as hell.”14 This was a frequent presidential theme.

[]President Nixon: I’m probably the toughest guy that’s been in this office since—probably since Theodore Roosevelt.

Kissinger: No question.15

In particular, Nixon wanted Kissinger to stress how tough he could be on Vietnam, to say he couldn’t visit Beijing if Vietnam was boiling over. In that case, he might choose to escalate the war.

[]President Nixon: I want you to put in that this is the man that did Cambodia, this is the man that did Laos, this is the man who will be—who will look to our interests and who will protect our interests without regard to political considerations.

Kissinger: Exactly.

President Nixon: Without regard to political considerations.16

But if he did escalate the war in Vietnam, he wanted Kissinger to make sure the Chinese knew it had nothing to do with them. Just as Laos had nothing to do with them. And neither did Cambodia.

Cold steel.

The national security adviser also needed to show some flexibility.

[]President Nixon: Don’t have it so that you’ve got to go by the book. If he moves in one direction, move quickly to another. In other words, be in the position to move very flexibly with him. So that you don’t say, “Well, now, we’ve got to take this, this, this, and this, and come back to this and this.” Keeping them off balance, hitting them with surprise, is a terribly important thing. So be very flexible and don’t worry about whether we’ve cleared it here. If you think there’s something outlandish or something to suggest, throw it in. The Communist thinks in very, very orderly terms and very predictable terms, as distinguished from the present American revolutionaries who don’t think at all. You know, they just go out and say, you know, four-letter words.17

Nixon instructed Kissinger to reveal select bits of American intelligence to the Chinese for effect. “Put in fear with regard to the Soviet [Union],” said the president. “We have noted that our intelligence shows that the Soviet [Union] has more divisions lined up against China than they have against Europe.”

“Well, they’re undoubtedly going to tape what I say, and I didn’t want them to play that to the Soviet ambassador,” said Kissinger.

This argument worked on the man who was secretly taping Kissinger at that very moment. “Well, I’d just put it in that there are reports in the press,” said Nixon. “Put it that way.”18