AMST 3100 The 1960s Vietnam 1968-1973

1. 1 AMST 3100 The 1960sVietnam 1968-1973 Powerpoint 13 Read the web links to Vietnam: Opposing Views; Lessons of Vietnam: Interview; Death in the Ia Drang Valley

2. 2 The War at Home The Tet Offensive of January 1968 weakened Johnson�s credibility and led the media to take a more skeptical view of LBJ�s characterizations. By the 1960s the mass media, especially TV, was a major force in shaping American public opinion. More than 60 million Americans watched the nightly TV news, and the television spin became somewhat critical of the war by 1968. After the Tet Offensive, about half of all Americans opposed the war. The Democratic Party especially was divided over war policies. Some wanted an immediate pull out, others wanted a gradual pull out, and others wanted the U.S. to remain committed to maintaining South Vietnam.

3. 3 Anti-War Candidates, 1968 In February, 1968, Senator Eugene McCarthy, a liberal anti-war Democrat, nearly won the New Hampshire presidential primary. The New Hampshire primary is significant because it is the first primary of the season. This near-victory secured media attention for McCarthy, and the talk was about the popularity of his anti-war platform. In March, after seeing McCarthy�s New Hampshire support, Robert Kennedy decided that he too would run for President on an anti-war platform, splitting the antiwar movement between the two. Robert Kennedy had been questioning U.S. policy in Vietnam as early as 1963.

4. 4 LBJ bows out in March, 1968 President Johnson was deeply affected by the Tet Offensive and his own staff had become polarized over the war. Clark Clifford, a member of his inner circle, had shifted against the war. Johnson could see that he had lost his popularity. On March 31, 1968, LBJ announced that he would seek a real peace in Vietnam through negotiation, he would suspend the bombing campaign, and he would not run for re-election. Johnson did not want to participate in the bloody combat of a polarized election campaign.

5. 5 MLK and Vietnam The rising momentum against the Vietnam war was spurred partly by Martin Luther King, Jr.�s declaration on April 4, 1967 that he opposed the Vietnam War. By 1967, King lent his considerable credentials in favor of the antiwar movement. He was also being pressured by black radicals, who strongly opposed the war as militant imperialism. While King was never a militant, he was becoming increasingly frustrated with LBJ�s priorities by this time. King would be assassinated exactly one year after publicly condemning Johnson�s war policies.

6. 6 RFK Robert Kennedy�s candidacy gained momentum and he won the crucial California primary on June 5, 1968. This meant he had a good chance of winning the Democratic nomination for President. At this point it was likely that Kennedy, an anti-war candidate, would win the nomination as well as the Presidency. However, Kennedy�s assassination by Sirhan Sirhan threw the Democratic party � and the anti-war movement � into a deep depression. The murders of both King and Kennedy in 1968 probably represented the last gasp for liberal reforms and perhaps the last chance for a quick end to the Vietnam conflict. The future of American politics would take a turn to the right with the Presidential election of Richard Nixon.

7. 7 Hubert Humphrey Humphrey, the Democratic nominee for President in 1968, was tainted by his association with the Johnson administration and its Vietnam policies. As the �status quo� candidate, he had difficulty explaining how he might change U.S. policy in Vietnam. He had been loyal to Johnson�s Vietnam War policies, which were now highly unpopular. Late in the campaign Humphrey said he would agree to a unilateral halt to the U.S. bombing campaign. While this was a popular move, it was not quite enough to overcome Nixon and he lost the election.

8. 8 Richard Nixon Nixon�s position on Vietnam was intentionally ambiguous. He stated that the war needed to end, but that it needed to end �with honor.� Nixon was in the favorable position of being the �candidate of change� with respect to Vietnam policy. Nixon may have started � and certainly allowed - a rumor that he had a �secret plan� to end the war, but he apparently didn�t. He also never explained what he would actually do in Vietnam, arguing that he did not want to ruin LBJ�s efforts to achieve a peace settlement or let the enemy know his own secrets for achieving a settlement. Privately, in 1968 Nixon did not want President Johnson to be successful with a peace settlement, so he secretly approached the leader of South Vietnam, President Thieu, and advised him not to cooperate with Lyndon Johnson�s peace efforts. He told Thieu, who was still seeking sovereignty for South Vietnam, that he would be better off under a Nixon administration. Thieu embraced Nixon�s advice and refused to participate in LBJ�s peace talks, thus discouraging an early settlement of the war. Later, when Nixon embraced a similar peace plan with North Vietnam in 1972, Thieu felt exploited and abandoned by Nixon.

9. 9 Nixon Like Johnson and Kennedy before him, Nixon inherited an unstable situation in Vietnam. South Vietnam had been on the verge of collapse from the beginning, and there would never be a time when South Vietnam was strong enough to stand on its own. Johnson had escalated the war to dramatic levels, with over 500,000 troops stationed in Vietnam when Nixon came into office. American public opinion was deeply polarized over what to do there. Most Americans felt the war was a mistake, but they did not want to �turn tail and run.� Nixon had chosen Henry Kissinger as his primary foreign policy advisor. Like Nixon, Kissinger was a �tough� hawk on Vietnam. But they were also pragmatic and flexible in their foreign policy deliberations.

10. 10 Nixon Both Nixon and Kissinger privately felt that the Vietnam War was not winnable by 1969. But they also felt that a unilateral withdrawal would be too costly politically and in American world prestige. Nixon and Kissinger decided on a plan for slow withdrawal. As a political hawk Nixon could not admit any sense of defeat or �retreat� from Vietnam in public. Hence, Nixon was secretive and deceptive from the beginning in his war policies, and this would contribute to great hostility towards his administration by the counterculture.

11. 11 Nixon�s Vietnam Policy Nixon�s Vietnam policy had several aspects. The most salient was the planned withdrawal of U.S. troops under the policy called Vietnamization. Nixon was committed to reducing U.S. casualties in Vietnam. Vietnamization involved turning the war over to the ARVN. While they were not likely to win the war on their own, the increased reliance on the ARVN would buy time for Nixon to gradually withdraw American troops.

12. 12 Vietnamization By the late 60s, the ARVN had improved significantly as a fighting force, especially in the Catholic and southernmost regions of Vietnam. However there were several problems in relying upon the ARVN: the ARVN were mostly conscripts and their desertion rate was high. ARVN officers were generally appointed for political loyalties rather than professional competence. When called upon to perform solo operations, the ARVN did not perform well, as evidenced by the 1971 invasion of Laos in which the ARVN (without direct U.S. troop backing) were routed by the communists. Meanwhile Nixon set about trying to convince the American public that the ARVN were ready to defend South Vietnam on their own. Most serious observers understood the flaw in this argument, but what most Americans wanted by now was U.S. troop withdrawal, regardless of the fate of South Vietnam.

13. 13 Nixon�s Vietnam Policy Another aspect of Nixon�s Vietnam policy was the so-called �madman� strategy. Nixon allowed Henry Kissinger to informally reveal during secret negotiations with North Vietnam that President Nixon himself was unstable and liable to go to extreme lengths (escalating the war, new invasions and bombings, hinting at using nuclear weapons) if North Vietnam did not agree to peace talks. This approach was not very successful in a direct way, but Nixon and other hawks believed that his heavy bombing of the North � perhaps a form of this �madman� rage - ultimately drove the North Vietnamese to the peace talks.

14. 14 Nixon�s Vietnam Policy While Vietnamization and his madman strategy were not very effective, Nixon did have one foreign policy strategy that was highly successful � and which helped his Vietnam policy. This was the policy of triangulation: pursuing d�tente with both the Soviets and (Red) China. Nixon was approached privately by the Red Chinese soon after his election to see if he was interested in a U.S. - Chinese version of d�tente. The Soviets were already working on d�tente with the U.S. In d�tente, both sides work toward reducing Cold War tensions. They do this by establishing communication lines, securing nuclear arms limitation treaties, establishing trade, and emphasizing diplomacy over military posturing. With rising d�tente, Nixon could perhaps get the Chinese to help him secure a peace agreement with the North Vietnamese. Nixon visited China in 1972, signaling an end to the old-style Cold War era, and bringing Nixon his greatest foreign policy achievement.

15. 15 Moratorium March, 1969 In 1969 the Vietnam Moratorium Committee (MOBE), arranged for a massive antiwar protest across the country, highlighted by a Peace Moratorium march in Washington. On October 15th, between two and ten million protestors across the country marched. The March is generally considered a huge success in demonstrating massive public support for ending the war.

16. 16 Nixon�s Response to the Peace Moratorium Nixon and Agnew used the politics of polarization to turn mainstream Americans away from the peace movement. An angry Nixon labeled the protestors anti-American and engaged in a war of rhetoric against them. Vice President Spiro Agnew led the charge, labeling the protestors �nattering nabobs of negativism� and �professional anarchists.� Nixon and other hawks argued that the antiwar protestors were harming U.S. efforts in Vietnam, thus giving aid to the enemy. �Let us be united for peace. Let�us also be united against defeat�North Vietnam cannot defeat or humiliate the United States. Only Americans can do that.� At that time (late 1969) Americans were polarized over Vietnam, with roughly 40% seeking a complete withdrawal within 1 year, and another 40% seeking �peace with honor� regardless of how long it took. Only about 10% of Americans wanted to escalate the fighting.

17. 17 My Lai Massacre News of the My Lai Massacre came out in 1969. This massacre occurred in March of 1968 when a �search and destroy� operation against the Viet Cong resulted in an entire South Vietnamese village (300-500 people) getting wiped out by frustrated American GI�s. Even the children were murdered. The army hushed it up, but the story eventually got out. Lt. William Calley and another officer were brought to military trial and Calley was convicted of the murder of civilians and sentenced. President Nixon intervened and reduced it to �house arrest.� He was paroled a few years later. The other officer was not convicted.

18. 18 Nixon Invades Cambodia, 1970 In April, 1970, Nixon went on national TV to tell Americans that he had widened the war to include Cambodia. His goal was to wipe out communist sanctuaries within Cambodia being used by the North Vietnamese to infiltrate the south. Nixon�s widening of the war provoked massive antiwar protests across the country and re-energized the antiwar movement. Four students were shot by the national guard at Kent State during a student protest, followed by 2 more killed by authorities at Jackson State in Mississippi. Then 450 colleges went on strike as the national guard had to be deployed to dozens of colleges across the country. Many colleges simply closed for the rest of the year.

19. 19 Laos Invasion, 1971 By the end of 1970 there were 335,000 troops in Vietnam, down from more than 500,000 in 1968. But the war was still going on, and Americans were still polarized over what to do about it. In February of 1971, Nixon publicly admitted he had widened the war to Laos for reasons similar to his Cambodian invasion. Most of this invasion consisted of the ARVN backed by American air support. This invasion went well in the beginning but was pushed back by a North Vietnamese counter-invasion, and the U.S. had to airlift out the remainder of ARVN. This invasion was an embarrassment. This incident revealed what most observers understood already. The ARVN were incapable of being a stabilizing force for South Vietnam.

20. 20 The Veterans Protest of April, 1971 While there were many antiwar protests this year, the most notable was when the Vietnam Veterans Against the War (VVAW) held a protest at the Capitol Building and the veterans threw their medals away in protest of Nixon�s war policies. The 2004 Democratic Presidential contender, John Kerry, was one of these angry veterans. Kerry had volunteered and served honorably in Vietnam and, like so many other GIs, had become disillusioned with U.S. war policy by the early 1970s. Meanwhile, Nixon continued to remove troops from Vietnam (as he increased the bombing). By the end of 1971 there would be 157,000 troops in Vietnam, and Nixon spared no effort to advertise this achievement.

21. 21 1972 By 1972, the monthly Vietnam casualty rate had fallen to only a few dozen people. In November, 1972 there were 27,000 troops stationed in Vietnam. During 1972, Nixon authorized bombing raids on strategic targets in North Vietnam, including parts of Hanoi. He also mined harbors in North Vietnam. His goal was to secure a peace agreement with the North Vietnamese. Ironically one of his problems was South Vietnam President Nguyen Van Thieu, who refused to sign any agreement with North Vietnam unless they recognized the sovereignty of South Vietnam.

22. 22 End of Vietnam War Immediately following his landslide victory in November of 1972, Nixon again sought to put pressure on the North Vietnamese to sign a peace treaty. This time he ordered a new bombing campaign against North Vietnam called Linebacker 1. It was otherwise known as the �Christmas bombing� campaign because he ordered the bombing to continue through the holidays with the only pause on the day of Christmas itself. Meanwhile, Nixon pressured Thieu to accept the terms of the draft treaty and Thieu � whose South Vietnam was entirely dependent upon the U.S. - had no choice. The draft treaty essentially allowed all North Vietnamese troops to remain in those areas of South Vietnam they controlled, which was nearly everywhere except the major cities in the South.

23. 23 End of Vietnam War On January 23, 1973 Nixon announced that he had reached an accord with the North Vietnamese. This agreement: 1. Set up a cease fire for Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia. 2. Stated that the U.S. would withdraw from Vietnam. 3. Stated that North Vietnam would release all American prisoners of war. 4. Recognized the Thieu government while also recognizing that North Vietnamese troops could stay in the South.

24. 24 End of Vietnam War The war was essentially over for the United States by 1973. However the U.S. would have a skeleton staff in Saigon until 1975, when the North Vietnamese troops entered the city. It took Richard Nixon exactly 4 years to secure the treaty of 1973. The cost over these four years totaled roughly 21,000 U.S. lives. This treaty did little for the U.S. other than secure American POWs. It was clear that the Americans lost in their goal of nation-building. There were lessons to consider for any future wars, including resorting to an all-volunteer army, media coverage of war, the war-making powers of the President, the popularity of war at home, war goals and strategies, American imperialism in a post-colonial world, and issues involving securing the hearts and minds of the indigenous population.

25. 25 AMST 3100