The American War in Vietnam: Crime or Commemoration? by John Marciano

Author:John Marciano
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: NYU Press
Published: 2016-09-15T00:00:00+00:00

5

President Nixon, “Vietnamization,” and the End of the War

The election of Richard Nixon in November 1968 brought no basic change to the war. He prolonged the violence with President Johnson’s “Vietnamization” program: withdrawing American ground troops and increasing the technical means of destruction while shifting combat responsibilities to the Thieu/Ky regime’s troops. It was “little more than a change of tactics—and a change that originated not with him but with President Johnson in the summer of 1968.… And it was the same strategy” that unfolded when the United States replaced the French in 1954.1

Nixon pursued this strategy to counter the rising antiwar movement, and pressured the Pentagon “to avoid costly ground engagements in order to reduce American casualty figures,” a strategy that some Washington officials called “firepower, not manpower.” He attempted to find a way to allow the United States to survive a long war without losing its Asian empire, while avoiding continued conflicts at home.2

In response to growing antiwar demonstrations, increased opposition inside the military, and a rapidly deteriorating political and military situation in South Vietnam, Nixon and his national security advisor, Henry Kissinger, chose to intensity the air war rather than press for a political settlement. The intensified air and technological war was used to prolong the conflict and support the hugely unpopular and repressive Thieu regime. They did this by politically manipulating two key issues in the war for their own and Washington’s benefit: the My Lai massacre and POW/MIAs.

Historians Michael Hunt and Steven Levine write about Nixon’s attempt to produce an orderly American disengagement that preserved the Thieu regime. This policy “had been essential to U.S. efforts in Vietnam since the 1954 Geneva Agreements were signed—through four presidential administrations.” It was key “to beef up the South Vietnamese regime’s armed forces.… A massive arms infusion made it one of the best-equipped armies in the world backed up by a substantial air force (the world’s fourth largest by 1973). This buildup provided the justification for a steady U.S. troop pullout.” Despite this massive infusion of arms and troops, the regime’s forces collapsed like a house of cards some years later.3

Another key Nixon strategy was to pacify the home front. This meant he needed to buy some time in order to strengthen the Thieu/Ky regime in the South and “maneuver Hanoi into an acceptable deal.… The institution of a draft lottery in 1970 helped deflate the antiwar movement, especially on college campuses.… To frustrate the more determined opponents of the war,” Nixon continued the Johnson policy of “waging a largely covert campaign against prominent critics,” using the FBI, NSA, CIA, IRS, and military intelligence that “spied on, provoked, harassed, audited, entrapped, and slandered opponents.” This long-term Nixon strategy through the January 1973 Peace Agreement led to the deaths of almost 500,000 NVA and NLF soldiers, as well as over 100,000 regime troops. “Americans had paid for four more years of fighting with the death of nearly 21,000 … and with the accentuation of already deep societal divisions and political bitterness.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.