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RICHARD NIXON WAS NOT FREE to act as commander in chief as he thought best.
By the time he became president, it was too late to escalate in Southeast Asia into
a general air, sea, and ground war. He wanted to do so, was tempted to do so, had
said from 1963 to March 1968 that he would do so if he became president. But his
secretaries of state and defense, his national security adviser, people he consulted
with, and the common political wisdom all told him that he could not do so.
The kind of actions that students of the war have suggested as possible routes to
American victory—the occupation of Hanoi and of the Ho Chi Minh Trail in Laos and
Cambodia—were beyond the capability of the American armed forces in Indochina after
March 1968, when President Lyndon Johnson rejected the option of reinforcing those
forces. In the aftermath of the Tet offensive, Nixon accepted that decision.
Unlike Franklin D. Roosevelt, Nixon could not demand an unconditional surrender.
Unlike Harry Truman and Dwight Eisenhower in Korea, he could not dig a trench across
the border dividing North and South Viet Nam and force the communists to stay on
their own side, not so long as the Ho Chi Minh Trail remained open, providing free
access to the South for the North Vietnamese Army (NVA). American mobilization was
not sufficient to expand the war, and the American political situation would not
allow further escalation.
But Nixon believed strongly that he could not just
walk away. To do that would be cowardly, a betrayal of the people and government
of South Viet Nam, America's allies for fifteen years, and would weaken American
credibility and influence in the world. Yet how could he ensure the survival of the
government of Viet Nam (GVN) when he could only fight the tip of the enemy's spear,
not the spear-thrower, much less the spear-maker?
Nixon's answer was Vietnamization.
During the 1968 campaign he had said that he had a policy to end the war, presumably
with a victory. As commander in chief, he adopted a plan to end American involvement
in the war. He said that he would bring about "peace with honor," which,
in practice, "American withdrawal with honor."
It was Richard Nixon's
fate to preside over the retreat of American power. He hated it. Every instinct in
him rebelled against it. For twenty years, in every crisis, at every turning point,
his advice had been to take the offensive against the communists. Attack, with more
firepower, now—that was his policy. Yet in 1969, when he finally came to power,
he had to retreat. He knew it, he accepted the fact, and he did it. The process began
at his first news conference, January 27, 1969, in answering, as president, his first
questions on foreign policy. With regard to Viet Nam, he said he would propose to
the other side "mutual withdrawal, guaranteed withdrawal, of forces." During
the political campaign just completed, Nixon had never mentioned the possibility
of American withdrawal.
But withdrawal did not mean surrender. When Nixon
came to power, he realized that the great American air offensive, February 1965 to
March 31, 1968, code named ROLLING THUNDER, had failed to break the will of the North
Vietnamese, while adding greatly to the numbers in the antiwar movement at home.
He knew further that the great American ground offensive, from the summer of 1966
to the Tet offensive of 1968, had failed to destroy the NVA. So he wanted to try
a third option, an offensive against the Ho Chi Minh Trail in Cambodia. By interdicting
these supply lines, he hoped he could sever the enemy forces in the South from North
Viet Nam, making it possible for him to withdraw the American troops from South Viet
Nam while simultaneously reinforcing his "madman" image as the man who
might do anything, thereby encouraging the enemy to agree to armistice.
In
March 1969 Nixon ordered the secret bombing of the Ho Chi Minh Trail. Secretary of
State William Rogers was opposed, because of public opinion. Secretary of Defense
Melvin Laird was ready to go ahead but favored "going public right away,"
as he thought the bombing could not be kept secret. Nixon rejected their advice,
thus beginning what would become a pattern in his decision-making as commander in
chief—acting alone, against advice.
...Nixon decided to announce the beginning
of the withdrawal of Americans from Viet Nam as well as a program to train and equip
South Viet Nam's armed forces. He made the announcement from Midway Island, in June,
after a meeting with the GVN President Nguyen van Thieu. Nixon called the policy
"Vietnamization."
Thieu was opposed; General Creighton W. Abrams
was opposed; [Henry] Kissinger was opposed; Johnson had resisted such a move; and
Nixon hated doing it, but the American political system imposed it on the president.
He could not escalate on the ground and stalemate was unacceptable; withdrawal was
the only choice.
Having decided to retreat, Nixon might have gone about it
with dispatch. Instead, he went about it with agonizing slowness. At Midway, he announced
that he was pulling out 25,000 men and that at "regular intervals" thereafter
he would pull out more. The pace of withdrawal would depend on three factors: progress
in the Vietnamization program to train and equip ARVN; progress in the Paris peace
talks; the level of enemy activity.
He had obtained no concessions from Hanoi
for his action. In his memoirs, he was brutally honest in stating that he had begun
"an irreversible process, the conclusion of which would be the departure of
all Americans from Viet Nam." He had made it impossible for the United States
to extract concessions in negotiations from the North Vietnamese. He had made it
difficult, if not impossible, for the American military commanders in Viet Nam to
maintain morale among their fighting men.
The phased, slow-motion retreat
was the worst mistake of his presidency. Because the war went on, tension and division
filled the land, and the Nixon haters went into a frenzy. It was the continuation
of the Viet Nam War that prepared the ground and provided the nourishment for the
Watergate seed, which without the Viet Nam War would never have sprouted.
Excerpts taken from Commanders in Chief: Presidential Leadership in Modern Wars (1993), edited by Professor Joseph G. Dawson III
Note: By the end of 1968, there were 31,000 U.S. casualties in the Viet Nam War. There would be 27,000 more U.S. casualties during the Nixon administration, thus bringing the total to 58,000.
