The crucial problem of modernizing the South Vietnamese Armed forces was not considered by American leaders, who instead looked to “wash their hands” by effectuating a single political solution with North Vietnam. Knowledgeable opinion said that if the RVNAF were suitably modernized, the South Vietnamese leaders could handle the war by themselves and the war would intensify to an extent beyond the control of the United States. Then, there would be no more peace talks nor would Nixon’s policy of Peace with Honor be realized. American leaders would probably perceive any issues of Vietnam at that time, from Hanoi leaders’ political and military aims for the South and Saigon leaders’ aspiration to defend their regime, but they would just solve the superficial problems and let the imperative ones to be naturally ignored and buried in silence. Otherwise, Washington would see only the issue to immediately use its military powers to force Hanoi to accept its will at the Paris peace talks. Kissinger was the author and director of this dramatic but dynamic war-game involving American actors.
President Nixon reacted in retaliation to the communist Summer Offensive Campaign by ordering the massive Linebacker I bombing offensive against North Vietnam. Unlike the Rolling Thunder air campaign under Johnson’s presidency, this air campaign was a no-limited-targets offensive. Almost every strategic and tactical objective in the North, including the Hanoi Capital and Hai-Phong Harbor, was targeted. At the time, North Vietnam’s air-defense network was extremely strong, composed of more than 2,000 surface-to-air SAM-7 Sparrow missiles, 4,000-plus heavy anti-aircraft batteries, and more than two hundred Soviet MIG fighters. U.S. strategic B-52 bombers and tactical fighter crews that flew over North Vietnam faced a higher threat from the air-defenses than they could imagine.
The U.S. Navy received orders from the White House to mine North Vietnam’s Hai-Phong Harbor. The mining operation, “Pocket Money,” began at 08:30 A.M. on May 8, 1972. From the decks of aircraft carrier U.S.S. Coral Sea, U.S. Navy and Marine mine-laying aircraft carried and laid three dozen one-ton anti-shipping magnetic-acoustic sea mines into the channel that links the port of Hai-Phong to the Gulf of Tonkin. Protected by two cruisers, the U.S.S. Chicago and U.S.S. Long Beach, these U.S. Navy and Marine mine-laying aircraft completed the mining in only a few minutes. Four North Vietnamese MIGs tried to intercept and one was shot down by surface-to-air missiles from the U.S.S. Chicago.
The blockade of Hai-Phong Harbor was supposed to have been achieved many years earlier. As a poor country lacking any industrial or economic means of production, North Vietnam could not make war without the communist bloc’s continuous and abundant economic and military aid. Concerning military aid, a U.S. intelligence estimate disclosed that of all war equipment and materials supplied to North Vietnam, 65 percent came from the Soviet Union, 25 percent from China, and the other 10 percent from other Eastern European communist countries. When conflicts occurred between the Soviet Union and China, the Soviets cut back their land shipment of war goods through Chinese railroads and shifted to sea transport into North Vietnam.
The Soviet Union assured the war goods would arrive in North Vietnam through two naval transport fleets. The first fleet, comprised of 125 vessels, ran consecutively 7,500 miles from Odessa to Hai-Phong Harbor. The second fleet of 25 vessels ran from Vladivostok to the same North Vietnamese seaport. Hai-Phong Harbor, day after day, became the artery port for all Soviet warships pouring war equipment and materiel into North Vietnam, including MiG-17 and MiG-21 combat aircraft; SAM-7 anti-aircraft missiles; 130mm heavy artillery guns; T-54, PT-76, and BTR-85 tanks; and all kinds of small guns and ammunition. Had Hai-Phong been neutralized in 1965, as proposed by U.S. Navy Admiral Thomas Moorer, commander-in-chief of Pacific Command, the ability of the communists of North Vietnam to wage war would have faded even before the 1968 Tet Offensive and the 1972 Summer Offensive campaigns in South Vietnam; the United States would not have lost a great number of its air force and navy warplanes and air crews in North Vietnam during the Rolling Thunder and the Linebacker I air campaigns; and the war would have ended earlier.
Perhaps the prime reasons the previous administrations of the United States delayed blockading Hai-Phong Harbor were that such an American military measure might lead to a widened war with China, a reconciliation between China and the Soviet Union, and more political conflict between the United States and the Soviet Union, especially if a Soviet cargo ship were hit by American sea mines. Now, under the magical wand of Kissinger, two weeks after mining this important North Vietnamese seaport, on May 22, 1972, President Nixon visited Moscow. The next day, many of the largest newspapers in the world carried photos of the president of the United States shaking hands with the prime minister of the Soviet Union. Several agreements between the United States and the Soviet Union, including the strategic arms agreement, followed. China, also, kept its secret silence about this new American military measure against North Vietnam. The long-feared violent Soviet and Chinese reactions to the mining never happened.
The super-powers had played the biggest and most risky games. However, the losers of the games would be the Vietnamese people, both in the North and in the South. Even today, nobody knows the curious games of these giants. No one would fathom the secret agreements to shape the “world order” between the leaders of the United States, the Soviet Union, and China that would determine the fate of Vietnam. But everybody would come to know that South Vietnam was sacrificed during the course of these games.
In Vietnam, by mid–September 1972, the North Vietnamese communists were exhausted and had come to the end of their tether about continuing the war. Their invasions of the South by conventional attacks to capture Quang-Tri, Kontum, and An-Loc had failed with heavy losses of manpower and firepower. The remainders of their regular units were dispersed and speckled in forested and mountainous buffer zones and in the border areas. These units were unable to concentrate again for any frontal attacks on any ARVN positions but passively sheltered themselves to avoid U.S. bombings and ARVN counter-attacks. We might conclude that the North Vietnamese war potential had gradually been drained, not only by the continuous U.S. bombings, but also by the serious losses in Laos, on the Ho Chi Minh Trail, in Cambodia, and in South Vietnam. The U.S. blockade of Hai-Phong Harbor aggravated the shortage of their economic and military potential.
In particular, there was a manpower shortage. The Vietnamese Communist Party had to draft children aged 15 and 16 years for its People’s Army. Tens of thousands of these kids were sent to the battlefields in the South and thousands of them were killed during the 1972 Summer Offensive Campaign. Suffering from this disastrous offensive campaign and facing the Linebacker I bombing and the mining of Hai-Phong Harbor, the most vital need of the communists of North Vietnam was for a détente of at least two to four years, to reconstitute and replenish their People’s Army, both in the North and in the South, in order to continue their long-term military goals. Had Communist Party leaders been so foolish as to continue the war during this critical period, the People’s Army would doubtlessly have been destroyed and North Vietnam would have collapsed. This absolute necessity of “a time for détente” was the main reason that the VWP’s Politburo ordered Le Duc Tho, its member and chief negotiator, to request a meeting with Kissinger on October 1, 1972, at Paris, to continue the secret peace talks.
Le Duc Tho, this time, came to Paris as a negotiator in a bad position who “implored” rather than “imposed” merciful conditions. Ironically, Kissinger, the assistant professor of a notable university of the United States and a very honorable international politician, was less skillful in negotiations in Paris than Le Duc Tho, a graduate from a Vietnamese high school. The great magician of the modern civilized world was not equal to the dark and savage sorcerer of the wild jungles.
Le Duc Tho met with Kissinger in a secret meeting on October 8, 1972. He passed to Kissinger North Vietnam’s proposal for “Ending the War and Restoring Peace” in Vietnam. Some historians have named this proposal a “military settlement.” In reality, the proposal was North Vietnam’s complete package for peace, which included both military and political solutions for Vietnam. The “military settlement” portion consisted of articles concerning a cease-fire in-place in return for the complete withdrawal of all U.S. forces from South Vietnam, the stopping of all U.S. military activities in North Vietnam, including the clearing of all US sea mines from North Vietnam’s waters, and an exchange of war prisoners.
The “political settlement” was composed of articles concerning the establishment of a “National Council of Reconciliation” and a general election to settle a new political regime for South Vietnam. This political solution was a little different from that of Le Duc Tho in 1971. With the new proposal, Hanoi leaders took a step back in from their previous extreme demands for a “coalition government” in the South and the “removal” of President Thieu from power. Thieu would remain in his position and the official government of South Vietnam would continue until the new “National Council of Reconciliation” could organize and complete the general election for a new regime and leadership for the South.
The most important article of the North Vietnam peace package was the “cease-fire in place,” which would permit the North to leave an estimated of 150,000 NVA regular troops in-place in South Vietnam or on its borders. Although the U.S. forces were required to totally withdraw from South Vietnam, the NVA forces could stay as organic units of the South Liberation Government Army.
The other importance of this peace proposal was that the communists of North Vietnam bore no responsibility for the war in Indochina and implied that the United States was the source of all hostilities that devastated Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia. The U.S was an invader that had the obligation to compensate war-costs, to heal the wounds of the war, and to reconstruct North Vietnam and Indochina. In other words, the communists’ proposal implied that the United States was the loser. Le Duc Tho, himself, and Hanoi leaders, who had been in the verge of collapse in the previous months, must have jumped for joy and convulsed with laughter when every article of their proposed military and political settlement was completely accepted by Kissinger.
Hanoi leaders set the trap and baited Kissinger to walk into it by bestowing on the United States the great face-saving device of letting South Vietnamese President Thieu remain in power; and by regulating the “honorable withdrawal” of the American combat troops, which had been completed in August 1972, the “peace with honor” that would satisfy the American public could be gained. In addition, the timing of this peace proposal would help President Nixon gain maximum votes in his second term presidential candidacy in the November election.
Perhaps these reasons explain why Kissinger grabbed Le Duc Tho’s peace package and considered it his personal victory. Otherwise, explaining Kissinger’s conduct in acting like a loser is difficult. Although the American public had turned against the war, the Americans would not want to be the losers. President Nixon obviously needed “peace with honor” and a second term presidency, but he would not want to be a loser and he would not want to make any concessions to Hanoi leaders. Then, should Kissinger’s inclination for bestowing South Vietnam to the communists be interpreted as intentional? Or, did President Nixon himself, the greatest political designer of the time, perhaps plan the long-term foreign policy for the United States in Southeast Asia to include giving up South Vietnam to gain peace for the region? Nobody knows.
In ten lively days after the secret meeting between Tho and Kissinger on October 8, a complete peace treaty was drafted in detail by Washington and Hanoi. President Nixon and North Vietnamese prime minister Pham van Dong also exchanged letters concerning arms replacement after the cease-fire and the schedule for releasing the 566 American pilots held captive in North Vietnam.
The signing of the peace agreements was set for October 31, 1972. President Thieu and his delegation at the Paris conference were kept in the dark about the secret peace talks between Le Duc Tho and Kissinger and the peace agreement between the United States and North Vietnam until Kissinger came to inform Saigon of the results, suggesting that President Thieu accept the agreements and sign the peace treaty. On October 18, President Thieu received Kissinger in a cold and frigid manner, in the presence of U.S. Ambassador to Saigon, Ellsworth Bunker, and Kissinger’s military adviser, General Alexander Haig.
Doctor Kissinger might have thought that by keeping Thieu in power, Thieu would be content the peace agreements designed by Hanoi and Washington. Perhaps this intellectual immigrant from a European country to the United States underestimated Thieu’s patriotism. Later, Thieu was obliged to emigrate to the United States, but bearing the spirit of Asian culture, he never lost his love for his country. Perhaps the difference between Doctor Kissinger and President Thieu was related in this essential point: Kissinger miscalculated Thieu’s notion of “country, quality, and dignity.” There are many ambitious men who want the so-called “carrot,” but there are others who do not want it. This is the essential point that distinguishes honest men from small-minded ones.
Later, President Thieu recalled his confrontation with Kissinger: “They said I am an unreasonable man. I acted as a patriot, as a Vietnamese, and as a President who is responsible for the fate of our country.” And, he clarified:
I said that the life or death of South Vietnam relied on two points. One, the North Vietnamese troops had been allowed to stay forever; secondly, there’s a coalition government camouflaged under the form of a National Council. Mr. Kissinger had negotiated over our heads with the communists. At that point the Americans wanted to end the war as fast as possible to wash their hands, to quit Vietnam because of the domestic problem in the United States. It was not an error in politics. It was a deliberate wrong political choice.1
Both Ambassador Bunker and General Haig, who were present at the meeting, were sympathetic to President Thieu. However, these two wise American authorities were later ordered by Washington to persuade President Thieu to accept the peace agreements that Thieu had rejected on October 22. On the plane flying back to Washington, Kissinger told one of his aides that he would take a very brutal way to end the war and not let it continue for another four years under President Nixon’s second term.
On October 25, President Nixon asked Hanoi for a delay in the signing of the peace treaty, reflecting Saigon’s dissidence. The next day, Hanoi Radio made an announcement of the full terms of the peace treaty and the pre-agreed October 31 signing date. The same day, Kissinger responded by asserting that “peace is at hand.” In late October, President Nixon ordered a halt to the Linebacker I air campaign against North Vietnam. A week later, on November 7, President Nixon was reelected with 60.7 percent of the votes.
Two weeks later, on November 20, Kissinger flew back to Paris and continued secret peace talks with Le Duc Tho. This time, the United States introduced a list of sixty changes and clarifications on the terms of the peace treaty to comply with President Thieu’s requests. All of these proposed changes were minor except for the requirement of the withdrawal of North Vietnamese troops from South Vietnam. In the meantime, Washington promised a significant increase in military and economic aid for Saigon. President Nixon also sent messages through Ambassador Bunker to reassure the president of South Vietnam that the United States would not accede to a peace treaty with North Vietnam without the consent of Saigon. On the contrary, Nixon asked Thieu to comply with the United States’ peace policy and not widen the discord between Washington and Saigon while there was in the United States such tremendous pressure on the administration, from Congress and the public, to stop the war.
In Paris, no one would know the exact details of discussions between Henry Kissinger and Le Duc Tho behind closed doors. However, the Hanoi counter-demands were stiffened so that Kissinger cabled Ambassador Bunker on November 25 to suggest President Thieu deploy his armed forces to control South Vietnamese territory as much as possible to prepare for a cease-fire in place. Hanoi agreed to make a few minor changes in the terms of the peace conditions but would firmly retain its armed forces in place in South Vietnam. This life or death problem for the South was the one that President Thieu constantly struggled against during those days.
General Haig, between mid–November and mid–December 1972, was a lively shuttle between Washington and Saigon. Several times he persuaded President Thieu, in the worst case scenario, to accept the risks of the peace treaty rather than lose all U.S. military and economic aid. He also carried a little hope for President Thieu, which was an assurance letter written by President Nixon, dated November 15, 1972, and addressed to President Thieu. A portion of the letter read: “You have my absolute assurance that if Hanoi fails to abide the terms of this agreement, it is my intention to take swift and severe retaliatory reaction.”2
On November 26, President Thieu sent two special envoys to Washington to present to President Nixon a letter concerning the two points of the preliminary peace treaty to which the United States had agreed that would sink South Vietnam: (1) allowing the North Vietnamese Army to stay in the South; and (2) creating a National Council comprised of “three fragments.” President Thieu explained that the destiny of the South Vietnamese people and their chosen regime would depend on these military and political conditions that Hanoi had imposed to usurp the government of the South in the near future. Accepting such a peace treaty would mean admitting to the demolition of the South Vietnamese democracy.
President Thieu’s concerns sounded acceptable in the White House but not at the negotiating table in Paris. Indeed, Le Duc Tho, Hanoi’s chief negotiator, rejected all requests by the U.S. to reverse on these issues, which were at the core of their plan.
In the beginning of December 1972, an aide to Kissinger remarked that North Vietnamese negotiators were sliding away from an agreement. They were dragging their counter-demands as “stalling technicalities.” The United States had no choice but to break off the negotiations and the secret peace talks with North Vietnam. On December 13, the North Vietnamese delegates walked out of the Paris peace-talks. The talks came to a complete breakdown. This led to the “brutal way,” as Kissinger foretold. Five days later, the last act of Kissinger’s war game was performed by the U.S. Strategic Air Command (SAC) and Tactical Air Command (TAC) in the massive air campaign Linebacker II against North Vietnam.
During October and November, Hanoi leaders were using the suspension of the post–Linebacker I air campaign to rebuild the strength of their People’s Army, both in the North and in the South. In the North, they used up their last anti-aircraft guns and surface-to-air missiles to strengthen their air-defense networks, especially in Hanoi and Hai-Phong. In the South, NVA large units were replenished and strengthened by new recruits infiltrated from the North. These units regained their activities to widen their occupied zones and encroach on new areas, which were mostly in the buffer zones and mountainous and desert areas along the borders and the Mekong Delta in ARVN IV Corps & Region. By mid–December, the NVA strength reached 180,000 men, not including 90,000 from the local VC units. These NVA units in the future would become the seeds of misfortune for the South Vietnamese regime, but in December 1972, were the source of disagreement between the United States and both North Vietnam and South Vietnam.
Prior to the complete breakdown of the secret peace talks on December 13, 1972, Kissinger had warned Le Duc Tho that a breakdown in negotiations would result in a resumption of massive military means to solve the war. In the meantime, South Vietnamese president Nguyen van Thieu was also informed that there would be a total cut off of all American military and economic aid for South Vietnam if he did not consent to the military and political settlements for a “peace with honor.”
On December 15, President Thieu notified Ambassador Bunker that he would accept the North Vietnamese Army troops “staying in place” in the South and place his trust in the United States, particularly in President Nixon’s assurance.
The Linebacker II air campaign began in the afternoon of December 18. The Americans sought to show their tough and serious intentions in order to convince the communists of North Vietnam of the benefits of returning to the negotiating table. The campaign would also strangle the communist war effort and their ability to sustain a major offensive within South Vietnam. The Americans aimed to extinguish their war potential, by massively bombing pinpoint targets, such as the Hanoi Capital, Hai-Phong Harbor, railroad networks, arterial roads and bridges, power facilities, equipment and supplies storage facilities, troops installations, airfields, and surface-to-air missiles sites and facilities. In all, 59 strategic targets in North Vietnam were chosen by U.S. planners.
This huge Linebacker II air offensive “provided for continuous around-the-clock” attack, as a U.S. Air Force colonel described it, by using tactical air strikes by day and massive B-52 strategic bombing raids by night, to keep “constant” pressure on North Vietnam.
Phase 1 of the Linebacker II ran from December 18 to December 20. The first night more than 120 B-52s attacked Hanoi Capital in three separate waves. Communist air-defense units fired more than 270 SAMs at the U.S. strategic attacking bombers and shot down three. On December 19, and 20, they fired more than 380 SAMs and shot down seven others. Phase 2 of the U.S. air campaign began on December 21 and lasted until December 24. The communist anti-aircraft network at Hanoi and Hai-Phong fired fewer SAMs than the three previous days, only 110, and shot down two B-52s.
After the 36 hour Christmas stand-down, U.S. SAC and TAC reopened Phase 3 on December 26, the last phase of Linebacker II, with paramount destructive bombing by 120 B-52 bombers, in ten waves over all chosen targets in North Vietnam. This intensive bombing lasted for two more days, December 27 and 28. In this last phase of attack, only three B-52s were shot down and the communists fired only 70 SAMs. This showed the ruin of their war potential.
President Nixon warned Hanoi leaders that the bombing would not stop unless they agreed to come back to the negotiating table in Paris and accept the terms of the peace agreements previously discussed in October and November 1972. Finally, on December 28, North Vietnam asked for a return to the Paris peace conference and the resumption of the secret peace-talks between Le Duc Tho and Kissinger.
On December 29, President Nixon ordered a halt to the Linebacker II air-campaign against North Vietnam. This marked the last act of U.S. direct military involvement in Vietnam and Indochina. In the eleven days of the Linebacker II air campaign against North Vietnam, the United States lost 23 aircraft, including 15 B-52s, with thirty-three pilots killed and another thirty-three captured. However, North Vietnam was on the verge of collapse. In eleven days and nights of this air campaign of “terrifying destruction,” the United States dropped 100,000 bombs on Hanoi and Hai-Phong. This quantity is equivalent to five of the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima.
U.S. Air Force General William W. Momyer, the former Seventh Air Force commander, noted: “The 11-day [Linebacker II] campaign came to a close on the 29th of December 1972, when North Vietnamese responded to the potential threat of continued air attacks to the economic, political, social and military life of their country. It was apparent that air power was the decisive factor leading to the peace agreement of 27 January 1973.”3
There were several contradictory comments on the last air-campaign against North Vietnam, but the most notable one came from Winston Lord, one of Kissinger’s aides. Lord related the precise motives of the campaign: “The President felt that he had to demonstrate that he couldn’t be trifled with—and, frankly, to demonstrate our toughness to Thieu—this was the rationale for the bombing.”4 In this comment, Lord himself put a phrase in italics. According to Lord’s judgment of the “rationale,” the Linebacker II air campaign against North Vietnam was a military feint that smothered Washington’s intent to politically attack South Vietnam. And if the word “toughness” means Kissinger’s “brutal way,” or brutality, everybody would conclude that Washington’s act of seeding the military brutality in Hanoi was synonymous with the dissemination of political brutality in Saigon in order to collect a certain harvest, “peace with honor.”
Indeed, if Washington were able to draw the Hanoi leaders back to the Paris peace talks through this war game, the Saigon leaders would be forced to accept the peace treaty. However, the difference between the North and the South was that the North endured eleven days of forceful bombing and was compensated by the United States with every favorable condition for peace. The South, on the other hand, suffered from every oppressive condition of the peace treaty. Certainly both Nixon and Kissinger knew that. The only thing President Nixon could do for South Vietnam was make honorable promises to South Vietnamese President Nguyen van Thieu that in case North Vietnam violated the peace treaty, the United States would respond with military means. Meanwhile, Congress clearly reneged on America’s pledge to South Vietnam, which had been ensured in the South-East Asia Resolution of August 7, 1964.
On January 5, 1973, three days prior to the resumption of the Paris Peace Conference and Kissinger-Tho’s secret peace talks, following the suggestion of Ambassador Bunker, President Nixon wrote another letter to reassure President Thieu that the United States would strongly support South Vietnam before the signing of the Paris peace agreement, agreeing to rush one billion dollars of war equipment for the RVNAF and promising to react vigorously to any communist violation of the peace agreement.
On January 20, 1973, in the inaugural address of his second presidential term, President Nixon declared the change in United States’ foreign policy; he said: “We shall do our share in defending peace and freedom in the world, but we shall expect others to do their share. The time has passed when America will make every other nation’s conflict its own, or make every nation’s future our responsibility, or presume to tell other nations how to manage their own affairs.”5 Thus, the fate of South Vietnam was sealed.
On January 23, the final settlements for the peace of Vietnam were initiated in Paris by Henry Kissinger and Le Duc Tho. All proposed North Vietnamese conditions for the peace treaty were blindly agreed to by Kissinger. Many historians comment that Kissinger himself gave in but not President Nixon. Indeed, the president and the American people were taken in by this master politician. But there was not enough evidence to examine the case. Anyway, South Vietnam was sold out. The signing of the Paris Accords was scheduled on January 27, 1973. The accords would go into effect on the same day at 24:00 Greenwich Mean Time.
In these days, General Alexander Haig was present in Saigon. He submitted to President Thieu a letter from President Nixon, dated January 18, suggesting the South Vietnamese president sign the Paris Accords. Otherwise, any opposition by Thieu would result in a sudden and total cessation of all American military and economic aid for South Vietnam by the U.S. Congress. Facing the immediate “death sentence” of South Vietnam, President Thieu had to accept the Paris Accords. He had to believe in Nixon’s promises assuring him that the United States would “react very strongly and rapidly” and “with full force” if Hanoi seriously violated the truce. Later, in March 1975, when North Vietnam conducted its final campaign against South Vietnam, the two letters of President Nixon, dated November 14, 1972, and January 5, 1973, respectively, became waste papers.
For the Paris accords, the two “secret peace negotiators,” Le Duc Tho and Henry Kissinger, were jointly awarded the 1973 Nobel Peace Prize. The latter accepted the award; the former, who was more honest, declined, saying there was still no peace in Vietnam. Tho’s “modest manner” in refusing this honorable award, in reality, was a warning of further North Vietnamese offensives against South Vietnam and, at the same time, an expression of disdain toward the United States and the other nations that signed the Paris Peace Accords. Tho’s attitude was clearly foolish and eccentric. However, he was a dominant adversary to the honorable Professor Kissinger.
Indeed, what the communists of North Vietnam were unable to gain in the battlefield over the previous 18 years, since 1955—to oust the Americans from Vietnam and defeat the South Vietnamese by military means, and to establish a so-called coalition government in South Vietnam as the prime step of their goal “to liberate the South”—Le Duc Tho had won, in principle, by political and diplomatic means from Kissinger in Paris.
Actually, the Paris Peace Accords were seen by many military and political observers as a defeat for the United States. Retired U.S. Colonel Eugene H. Grayson had a clear view of the peace treaty after its implementation; he wrote: “The Paris Peace Accords, which ended U.S. involvement in Southeast Asia, were a year old, and there was no doubt in the eyes of the North [and anyone else with a reasonable degree of intelligence] that those agreements represented a major victory of Hanoi and a costly defeat for the United States.”6 A political observer, John Negroponte, one of Kissinger’s negotiators, stated: “The peace treaty did nothing for Saigon. We got our prisoners back; we were able to end our direct military involvement. But there were no ostensible benefits for Saigon to justify all of the enormous effort and bloodshed of the previous years.”7
The comments of these American military and political observers were precise, impartial, and accurate. The content of the treaty proved that the United States was a victim of the North Vietnamese communists’ foul play. The nine Chapters of 23 Articles of the so-called Agreement on Ending the War and Restoring Peace in Vietnam, or the Paris accords, was the kind of “unconditional surrender” proclamation of a vanquished nation. If there were conditions in the agreements, they were the ones imposed by the winners and enforced on the losers.
• Article 2, Chapter II, the most significant issue of the Paris Peace Accords, read: A cease-fire shall be observed throughout South Vietnam as of 24:00 hours G.M.T. on January 27, 1973.
At the same hour, the United States will stop all its military activities against the territory of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam by ground, air and naval forces, wherever they may be based, and end the mining of the territorial waters, ports, harbors, and waterways of North Vietnam as soon as this Agreement goes into effect.
The complete cessation of hostilities mentioned in this Article shall be durable and without limit of time.
This article may be read to imply that the United States was an “invader” that had attacked North Vietnam but now would have to stop all military activities—ground, air and naval—against this country.
Many other articles of the Paris Treaty may be elucidated in the same sense: the United States and its allied forces were “invaders” forced to withdraw not only from South Vietnam but also from Laos and Cambodia, dismantling their military bases under the control of international and local commissions. Other articles in the Paris Peace Accords read as follows:
• Article 3(a), Chapter II: “Within sixty days of the signing of this Agreement, there will be a total withdrawal from South Vietnam of troops, military advisers, and military personnel, including technical military personnel and military personnel associated with the pacification program, armaments, munitions, and war material of the United States and those of other foreign countries mentioned in Article 3(a). Advisers from the above-mentioned countries to all paramilitary organizations and the police force will also be withdrawn within the same period of time.”
• Article 6, Chapter II: “The dismantlement of all military bases in South Vietnam of the United States and of the other foreign countries mentioned in Article 3a shall be completed within sixty days of the signing of this Agreement.”
• Articles 16, 17, and 18 of Chapter VI prescribe the formation of joint military commissions of “two parties,” “four parties,” and an “international commission” to control and supervise the implementation of the Paris Peace Accords. In fact, the mission of these “commissions” was to survey and enforce the United States’ troop “withdrawal and military” dismantlement.
Meanwhile, the Republic of Vietnam (South Vietnam) was the real loser in the Paris Peace Talks Treaty, as revealed in its articles:
• Article 3(b), Chapter II: “The armed forces of two South Vietnamese parties shall remain in-place. The Two-Party Joint Commission described in Article 17 shall determine the areas controlled by each party and the modalities of stationing.” Based on this Article, the North Vietnamese Army, described as the Southern Provisional Revolutionary Government’s Army, would stay in several areas in South Vietnam (see Map 6). These NVA forces were the seeds of misfortune for the South Vietnam in the very near future.
• Article 12(a), Chapter IV, determines the establishment of a “National Council of National Reconciliation and Concord” of “three equal fragments” and Article 12(b) fixes its functions.
• Article 12(b): “The National Council of National Reconciliation and Concord shall have the task of promoting the two South Vietnamese parties’ implementation of this Agreement, achievement of national reconciliation and concord and endurance democrat-liberties. The National Council of Reconciliation and Concord will organize the free and democratic general elections provided for in Article 9(b) and decide the procedures and modalities of these general elections. The institutions for which the general elections are to be held will be agreed upon through consultations between the two South Vietnamese parties. The National Council of Reconciliation and Concord will also decide the procedures and modalities of such local elections as the two South Vietnamese parties agree upon.” This political solution was opposed by President Thieu, who had argued that the National Council of Reconciliation and Concord was a disguised “coalition government” in the South imposed by North Vietnam.
These articles not only illustrate the irony of the Peace Treaty, they also were to engender agony for South Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia. North Vietnam, the real invader of South Vietnam and the source of all hostilities in Laos and Cambodia, was not charged by the Paris treaty. On the contrary, this peace treaty offered the North Vietnamese leaders every fortunate condition to “liberate” South Vietnam and occupy Laos and Cambodia. Whatever articles of the treaty enforced restrictions against a foreign nation’s military activities in Laos and Cambodia were applicable only to the United States and not to North Vietnam.
For example, Article 20(a), Chapter II, sets forth that “all parties participating in the Paris Conference on Vietnam shall strictly respect the 1954 Geneva Accords on Cambodia and the 1962 Geneva Agreements on Laos”; Article 20(b) asserts that “foreign countries shall put an end to all military activities in Cambodia and Laos, totally withdraw from and refrain from reintroducing into these two countries troops, military advisers and military personnel, armaments, munitions and war materiel”; but North Vietnam did not stop developing the Ho Chi Minh Trail nor withdrawing its armed forces from Laos and Cambodia. On the contrary, again and again, NVA forces continued to violate the neutrality of these countries and used these territories as their accesses and advanced bases to invade South Vietnam.
For the communists of North Vietnam the terms “restriction” and “violation” were meaningless. They had violated the 1954 Geneva Accords on Indochina and the 1962 Geneva Agreements on Laos without any restriction; surely they would violate the Paris Peace Agreements to “liberate” South Vietnam and occupy Laos and Cambodia. The only question was when. An American historian observed: “Clearly, intelligent men such as Kissinger had to know that this [peace treaty] was a band-aid, knowing perfectly well it was a question of time, a relative short time, before that structure we were leaving behind would collapse.”8
Washington certainly knew that, because Kissinger had allowed the communists of North Vietnam to keep their armed forces in South Vietnam. In addition, Article 21, the second to last article, obligates the United States to “contribute to healing the wounds of the war and to postwar reconstruction of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam [North Vietnam].” After signing the Treaty, President Nixon sent a secret letter to North Vietnam prime minister Pham van Dong, promising $4.75 billion in postwar reconstruction aid “without any political conditions.”9 In addition, Kissinger and a group of aides went to Hanoi from February 11 to 13 to meet Le Duc Tho and Pham van Dong. After the trip he announced the formation of a United States–North Vietnam Joint Economic Commission. This was ironic. The conquerors were compensated and the defenders were punished.
All American concessions and recompenses to North Vietnam were the sole price for a “peace with honor” and a return of American prisoners of war (POWs), some 566 U.S. Air Force and Navy pilots. In the end, American politicians listened to the American people, and the American people decided that Vietnam was not a war they wanted to continue. The decision was one they had the right to make. Yes, the Americans were right to end the longest war in their history. The logic behind the decision was to stop their government from continuing a hopeless and bloody war. Unfortunately, their right desires were carried out by the wrong politicians who dumped them and American history by a one-sided treaty that resembled surrender. If these American politicians and diplomats had patiently performed at the Paris peace talks the duties entrusted to them by the American people, they would have won an honest peace treaty similar to the 1953 Korean Armistice Agreements. The Americans would not have been the losers and South Vietnam would be secured as South Korea.
The article that most seriously compromised South Vietnam in the Paris Peace Treaty—the cream of the advantageous edges that Henry Kissinger offered to North Vietnam—was Article 7 concerning the reception and replacement of war equipment, armaments, and munitions. This article forbade South Vietnam from receiving war equipment, armaments, and munitions from the outside except for the periodic replacement on a piece-for-piece basis of that destroyed, damaged, worn out or used up after the cease-fire. The provisions, however, did not interdict North Vietnam on the same matters. In other words, North Vietnam could obtain war materiel, equipment, armaments, and munitions of any kind and quantity desired from the Soviet Union, China, and the Eastern Europe’s communist countries. Imagine a fighter introduced into an ancient stadium with his hands tied in the back, struggling heroically, defending himself despairingly, and killed cruelly by another with unfettered use of weapons. This was the situation of South Vietnam when fighting against the North Vietnamese communists after the implementation of the Paris Treaty.
In sum, the Paris Peace Agreements were unequal, absurd, and illogical. Many American historians consider this peace treaty to be a “written act” of betrayal by the United States toward its long-standing ally, South Vietnam. All in all, the Paris Peace Treaty was a means for the Americans to wash their hands of South Vietnam, a “necessary détente” for the communists of North Vietnam to replenish, refresh and strengthen their armed forces both in the North and in the South for a further invasion of South Vietnam, and a “death sentence” for South Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia. The tragedy of Indochina was about to begin.
The Nixon administration secured peace for America with the Paris Peace Agreements, but not for Indochina. After undertaking long and hard military, political and diplomatic measures, the Nixon administration completed its new foreign policy in Southeast Asia. John Ehrlichman, domestic affairs adviser to President Nixon, commented about this peace and the new U.S. policy. He remarked that President Nixon had “won a prize in opening China and in forging some kind of alliance with China vs Russia—and if the price of that was a cynical peace in Vietnam, then historians are going to have to weigh the morality and the pragmatism and all these other things that historians like to weigh.”10 Ehrlichman’s conclusion would open new issues for the researches of the United States long-term policy toward Southeast Asia.
In my own opinion, what the United States leaders consider in Southeast Asia was communist China’s aggression in other countries of the region but not that of the communist North Vietnam; anyhow, Vietnam was a small country. To bring about diplomatic relations with China was a superficial measure to temporarily hold its ambition to make the region communist, but to use the whole of Vietnam as a permanent fortress to deter the southward aggression of the Chinese communists was the deep design of the Nixon administration.
With this undisclosed purpose, the United States would satisfy North Vietnamese communist leaders not only to give them South Vietnam in the first half of 1970s but also would give them more tangible importance so long as the expansionist Maoism exists in mainland China. And if this hypothesis is correct, Vietnamese nationalist political groups in America nowadays that try to persuade American leaders to subvert the communist regime in Vietnam will have little chance of succeeding.
Because the United States purposely abandoned South Vietnam for political reasons, the 1973 Paris Peace Treaty could not be a reproduction of the 1953 Armistice Agreements in Korea. Morality and pragmatism depend on a nation’s interests. In politics, “morality” is usually a superfluous word or a term of trifling importance. Vietnam in 1973 met the test of pragmatism but not of morality. But the American politicians of that time, particularly Kissinger, refused to hear the unpractical term “morality.”
Ironically, Thieu still believed in Nixon. Indeed, three months after the 1973 Paris Accords went into effect, in early April, he went to America to ask for American military support and economic aid. He was welcomed by President Nixon at San Clemente (but not in Washington) and was given a few more promises by the latter. Thieu should have known he should firmly demand from the Nixon administration everything he needed for South Vietnam in its standing fight against North Vietnam after the cease-fire, prior to the 1972 general election in the United States, which meant after the “1972 Red Summer.” Everything after that was too late, null, invalid, or deceptive. He had a blinded entourage that let him go to America begging for help. Why did he not go there in July or August of 1972?