The Crosswinds of Freedom by James MacGregor Burns

Author:James MacGregor Burns [Burns, James]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-1-4532-4520-0
Publisher: Open Road Media
Published: 2012-04-15T00:00:00+00:00

Peace Without Peace

On the evening of November 7, 1972, Richard M. Nixon stood at the pinnacle of world prestige and domestic power. Even the scattered first returns showed that he was winning a sweeping victory over George McGovern. With Eisenhower, he was only the second Republican in the century to win two presidential elections. Both his mixed batch of liberal-conservative domestic policies and his bomb-and-pull-out Vietnam tactics appeared to be handsomely vindicated in the election returns. He was concluding a year of achievement—the summits in Peking and Moscow, the SALT agreement, the apparent winding down of American involvement in Indochina. Only a week or so earlier Henry Kissinger had told the press, “We believe that peace is at hand.”

But the President did not appear triumphant, or even happy, that night. He had a spell of melancholy, perhaps foreboding. Was it due to some revelations about campaign excesses that had come to light, and the possibility of far more serious disclosures? Or his failure to carry in a Republican Congress? Or the empty feeling that this would be his last campaign, that the conflict and crisis on which he thrived appeared to be over? Or merely the pain of having the cap on a top front tooth snap off while he was listening to the early returns? The next morning, looking cold and remote, he strode into a specially summoned meeting of the White House staff, thanked them perfunctorily, and turned the meeting over to Haldeman, who without ado ordered all staff members to submit their resignations immediately.

The most likely explanation for Nixon’s malaise was Vietnam. Following North Vietnam’s massive “Eastertide” attack across the DMZ in March and Washington’s retaliatory bombing and blockade, Hanoi had continued its heavy offensive for weeks. The President had sporadically taken personal command of the air war, chafing when the weather was poor. “Let’s get that weather cleared up,” he exclaimed to Haldeman and John Mitchell one afternoon in April. “The bastards have never been bombed like they’re going to be bombed this time.” It wasn’t just the weather. “The Air Force isn’t worth a—I mean, they won’t fly.” In May the bombing reached its highest level of the war; the next month American planes dropped over 100,000 tons of bombs on North Vietnam. Even so the war was grinding down to a stalemate again. Thieu remained in power; the South Vietnamese Army was still largely intact; Hanoi had lost 100,000 men in the attack, perhaps four times Saigon’s losses. On the other hand, tens of thousands of North Vietnamese troops were now ensconced in defensive positions well below the DMZ.

It was this last fact that now produced the single most crucial development in the latter stages of the Vietnam War—a development so carefully concealed from the American public, so muffled in diplomatic bargaining, so obscured in double-talk, that its full nature and import would not be clear for years. This was the signaling by Nixon and Kissinger to Hanoi through Moscow and other channels that

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