The Road to War: Presidential Commitments Honored and Betrayed by Marvin Kalb

Author:Marvin Kalb
Language: eng
Format: mobi, azw3, epub
Tags: Non-Fiction, Military History, United States, Political Science, Politics, War, History
ISBN: 9780815724438
Publisher: Brookings Institution Press
Published: 2013-03-01T00:00:00+00:00

The president's enjoyment was mixed with worry about intelligence reports about another North Vietnamese offensive. It finally got under way on March 30. “They have launched multidivision offensives across the DMZ, across the Cambodian border toward Saigon and across the Laotian Border into the Highlands,” Kissinger told Nixon. It's “Hanoi's last throw of the dice,” according to Kissinger.13

Supported by more than 200 new Soviet T-54 tanks and many 130-mm recoilless artillery, three North Vietnamese divisions, numbering 30,000 troops, smashed through rickety South Vietnamese and American defenses along the DMZ and moved into Quang Tri Province. Forty thousand South Korean troops, usually ferocious fighters, were based in the province, but most refused to put their lives on the line. Why should they fight when most of the Americans had already been withdrawn? Further south, other North Vietnamese divisions broke out of their Cambodian sanctuaries, crossed the South Vietnamese border, and headed toward Saigon. Laos was also the victim of renewed warfare, as thousands of North Vietnamese troops left their home bases and moved south along the Ho Chi-minh trails. Their destination appeared to be the Central Highlands, always regarded as the most vulnerable part of South Vietnam, because, if seized and held, the country could effectively be cut in two.

Although the United States and South Vietnam were both aware of an imminent attack, when it finally occurred, they seemed for a moment like two deer caught in blinding headlights—they froze. For a time, it looked as if the North Vietnamese could simply sweep through the entire country. The press, covering this blitzkrieg attack, spoke alarmingly of a “rout,” of “disarray,” of the ARVN suffering a “crushing” blow in this “first real baptism under fire for Vietnamization.”

“If this offensive succeeds,” Nixon told congressional leaders, “you will have a more dangerous world…. If the US fails at this…no president can go to Moscow, except crawling.” He imagined his détente policy going up in smoke. Kissinger painted an even bleaker picture. “If we [are] run out of Vietnam,” he warned, “our entire foreign policy would be in jeopardy.”

Later, in the Oval Office, Kissinger asked what would happen if the ARVN collapsed. Nixon snapped, “A lot of things will collapse around here…. We're playing a Russian game, a Chinese game, and an election game.” At which point Kissinger, sounding more like a general than a national security adviser, said: “That's why we've got to blast the living bejeezus out of North Vietnam.”14 Nixon wasted little time: He ordered a massive air attack against communist troops and installations in South and North Vietnam. “The bastards have never been bombed the way they are going to be bombed this time,” he told Haldeman. He was determined to beat back the North Vietnamese offensive, to deny them a military victory, even if the cost was a Soviet decision to cancel the upcoming Moscow summit. In his diary, Nixon noted: “No negotiation in Moscow is possible unless we come out all right in Vietnam.” “All right” was the subject of many interpretations; Nixon's was that the United States did not lose on his shift.

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