No Wider War by Sergio Miller

Author:Sergio Miller
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781472838506
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing

The swollen belly of the Cambodian panhandle had always been the great strategic irritant, placed tantalizingly out of reach by the 1954 Geneva Accords that guaranteed Phnom Penh’s neutral status. Since the early 1960s, this neutrality had been methodically disregarded and violated by Hanoi. In turn, Washington had responded with a small-scale and covert special force campaign. This had been supported by a very modest air campaign: from 1965 to 1968, just 2,565 sorties were launched over Cambodia, and 214 tons of bombs dropped. The clear winner in this war, publicly denied by both sides, was Hanoi.

The bitter truth was that for five years MACV had presided over an undeclared, frustrating, and ultimately phony war in Cambodia, or exactly the sort of war Nixon was unprepared to contemplate. The Joint Chiefs were even more deeply dissatisfied with the status quo and wasted no time in making their arguments to the new president. Just ten days after the presidential inauguration, General Wheeler suggested to a receptive administration that Viet Cong sanctuaries in Cambodia be added to the target lists. This proposal was supported by Abrams, one week later, specifically identifying the “Fishhook” area as the choice target. Both these commanders were making their appeals to a very receptive listener. Even before assuming the presidency, Nixon had advised Kissinger on January 8 that changing the bombing policy towards “neutral” Cambodia would be one of the “first orders of business.”43

The opportunity to unleash the bombers arose early, precipitated by communist bad faith during the February Tet Offensive. Nixon at the time was traveling to a NATO conference in Brussels when he was informed of indiscriminate rocket attacks in Saigon. This, in Nixon’s eyes, was unforgivable. Washington had unilaterally held to its bombing pause since the previous November. Even during the bombing phases, Hanoi had always been spared. Such casual contempt infuriated the President, who instructed Kissinger to initiate the planning for retaliatory raids (an irate Nixon in fact demanded immediate bombing and had to be dissuaded by a panicked Kissinger – Rogers, in all this, was kept out of the loop, and Laird was only informed when Al Haig, Kissinger’s aide, returned to Washington).

As the bombing suspension over the North was still in place, satisfying Nixon’s call for retaliation meant planning raids on the Cambodian sanctuaries in secret. The sticking point was not world opinion, which could be deflected by denial, but Congress, which could not.

Three weeks later, on March 15, the Viet Cong again launched rocket attacks against Saigon. By now, Nixon’s patience had evaporated. With an impetuosity that betrayed his dislike for argumentation, Nixon informed a nonplussed Kissinger, late in the afternoon, that he had just issued an “unappealable” order to the Air Force to bomb the Cambodian sanctuaries. A stunned Kissinger insisted that a meeting was necessary, if only to confirm the President’s decision.44 The following day, a Sunday, Nixon attended church service then chaired the necessary meeting in the Oval Office. As the previous secret meetings had been held

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