No More Vietnams by Richard Nixon

Author:Richard Nixon
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Publisher: Simon & Schuster

HOW WE LOST THE PEACE

We won the war in Vietnam, but we lost the peace. All that we had achieved in twelve years of fighting was thrown away in a spasm of congressional irresponsibility.

When the Paris peace accords were signed in January 1973, a balance of power existed in Indochina. South Vietnam was secure within the cease-fire lines. North Vietnam’s leaders—who had not abandoned their plans for conquest—were deterred from renewing their aggression. Vietnamization had succeeded. But United States power was the linchpin holding the peace agreement together. Without a credible threat of renewed American bombing of North Vietnam, Hanoi would be sorely tempted to prepare to invade South Vietnam again. And without adequate American military and economic assistance, South Vietnam would lack the power to turn back yet another such invasion.

Congress proceeded to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. Once our troops were out of Vietnam, Congress initiated a total retreat from our commitments to the South Vietnamese people. First, it destroyed our ability to enforce the peace agreement, through legislation prohibiting the use of American military power in Indochina. Then it undercut South Vietnam’s ability to defend itself, by drastically reducing our military aid. Within two years the balance of power swung decisively in Hanoi’s favor. When the North Vietnamese Army was poised to launch its final offensive, South Vietnam’s army was in its weakest condition in over five years, reeling from the effects of congressional budget cuts that had strapped it with severe fuel and ammunition shortages.

On April 30, 1975, with Soviet-built tanks rolling through the streets of Saigon, South Vietnam surrendered. Communist Khmer Rouge guerrillas had conquered Cambodia thirteen days before. Hanoi-backed Pathet Lao forces took over Laos a few days later. All the dominoes in Indochina had fallen.

But the end of the war did not bring the beginning of peace for the peoples of Indochina. Those who had warned during the war that a bloodbath would follow a Communist victory found their worst fears confirmed. Communist forces now executed or imprisoned those who opposed them as they imposed their new rule. Thousands of Vietnamese were killed in Hanoi’s prison camps. Hundreds of thousands more drowned in the South China Sea as they fled in the pathetic flotillas of the “boat people.” And over 2 million Cambodians—a quarter of the country’s population—were killed in a brutal frenzy of Communist vengeance and destruction.

Nor did the war’s end produce a more peaceful world. Our defeat in Vietnam paralyzed America’s will to act in other Third World trouble spots and therefore encouraged aggression on the part of those who had made them trouble spots to begin with. Over the next five years, Soviet clients and proxy forces unleashed a geopolitical offensive that led to stunning reversals for the United States in virtually every region of the world.

• • •

The Agreement on Ending the War and Restoring the Peace in Vietnam was not perfect. But it was adequate to ensure the survival of South Vietnam—as long as the United States stood ready to enforce its terms.

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