How Henry Kissinger abandoned South Vietnam
Stephen Young
This Friday is the fiftieth anniversary of Henry Kissinger’s Paris Peace Agreement. That agreement supposedly ended the Vietnam War by affirming the right of the Vietnamese nationalists to have a free and independent country in South Vietnam.
Unfortunately, Kissinger’s agreement was not for peace but only for a truce, during which time the Communists in North Vietnam agreed that they would pause their war of conquest. Only in December 1972 did President Richard Nixon finally realize what Kissinger failed to accomplish in his secret negotiations with Hanoi. On Dec. 14, a frustrated Kissinger let the truth slip from his mouth, telling Nixon that the terms of the proposed settlement as of that date were “close to a sell-out.”
A few minutes later, Nixon observed that Hanoi was “using these negotiations solely for the purpose … not of ending the war, but of continuing the war in a different form….”
Kissinger replied: “So, we have come to the reluctant conclusion that — you have expressed it very well right now, Mr. President — that this wasn’t a peace document. This was a document for perpetual warfare, in which they create….”
Nixon: “Perpetual warfare in South Vietnam….”
Kissinger affirmed him: “That’s right.”
Nixon continued: “and peace in North Vietnam. That’s the way to put it.”
Kissinger: “That’s right…”
Nixon then focused on Kissinger’s abandonment of South Vietnam: “Peace in North Vietnam and perpetual warfare in South Vietnam, with the United States — and the United States cooperating with them in … imposing a Communist government on the people of South Vietnam against their will.”
Nixon then reflects on what he really wanted: “We are the party that wants peace in Vietnam, for both sides. And let the future of this poor, suffering country be determined by the people of South Vietnam and not on the battlefield. That’s what our proposal is. We call on the South and we call on the North to agree to this kind of thing. Call on them both to agree.”
What had gone wrong?
Without authorization from his president and without afterwards reporting to Nixon, on Jan. 9, 1971, Kissinger had floated with Soviet Ambassador Anatoly Dobrynin a plan to let Hanoi leave its army inside South Vietnam after signing a peace agreement and then later, without objection from the U.S., resume its war of conquest. Recounting his conversation with Kissinger, Dobrynin also reported to his Ministry in Moscow that “Kissinger made a rather curious remark that ultimately it will no longer be their, the Americans’, concern, but that of the Vietnamese themselves if sometime after the U.S. troop withdrawal they start fighting with each other again.”
Kissinger’s parallel report to President Nixon of that Jan. 9, 1971 meeting with Dobrynin did not mention what he had proposed about the future of South Vietnam. Nixon’s public position in 1971 was reciprocal withdrawals of U.S. and North Vietnamese forces from South Vietnam, leaving the South Vietnamese in peace.
In late January, the Soviet ambassador in Hanoi passed on to North Vietnam’s prime minister the substance of Dobrynin’s report to Moscow. The Vietnamese Communists were told: “If the U.S. undertakes to withdraw all its forces by a certain time limit and possibly does not demand a simultaneous withdrawal of DRVN forces from SVN … the North Vietnamese should undertake to respect a ceasefire during the U.S. withdrawal plus a certain period of time, not too long, after the U.S.withdrawal. … If thereafter war breaks out again between North and South Vietnam, that conflict will no longer be an American affair.”
Thus was Kissinger’s commitment that Washington would wash its hands of all concern for the Vietnamese nationalists communicated to their enemy behind their backs.
Hanoi used a former French colonial official, Jean Sainteny, to inform Kissinger during a lunch on May 25, 1971, that it had accepted Kissinger’s proposal. Kissinger told Nixon that he had met with Sainteny but did not elaborate on their conversation. On May 31, 1971, in his secret meeting with North Vietnamese diplomats in Paris, Kissinger tabled a proposal that Hanoi need not withdraw its troops from South Vietnam. Kissinger ended his remarks by saying, “When U.S. forces are finally withdrawn, the political future of South Vietnam will have to be left to the Vietnamese.” This comment was not reported to Nixon.
On July 9 and 10, 1971, Kissinger was in Beijing meeting with Chinese Communist Premier Zhou Enlai to arrange for President Nixon’s historic trip to Beijing to meet with Mao Zedong. In passing, Kissinger told Premier Zhou of the proposal first put before Soviet Ambassador Dobrynin. Page five of Kissinger’s briefing paper prepared for his meeting with Zhou reads, “On behalf of President Nixon I want to assure the Prime Minister solemnly that the United States is prepared to make a settlement that will truly leave the political evolution of Vietnam to the Vietnamese alone. We are ready to withdraw all our forces by a fixed date and let objective realities shape the political future.”
Kissinger did not tell his president that he had made this commitment to the Chinese Communists. In the left margin of that page, Kissinger wrote, “We want a decent interval.”
The South Vietnamese and Nixon did not fully learn of Kissinger’s intended end game for South Vietnam until October 1972, when he reached an agreement with Hanoi on the text of a peace agreement and presented the proposed agreement to Presidents Thieu and Nixon. By that point, Nixon could not withdraw Kissinger’s concession that Hanoi could leave its army inside South Vietnam, given the fierce opposition to the war from the Democrats in Congress.
But in November and December 1972, with the assistance of Alexander Haig, Nixon tried desperately to modify Kissinger’s draft peace agreement in a way that would increase South Vietnam’s odds of survival, permit a peace agreement to be signed, and leave the Congressional Democrats willing to approve new appropriations for military assistance to South Vietnam.
His efforts were too little too late. America was steadily on course to lose its first war.
CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER
Stephen B. Young, former dean of the Hamline University School of Law, is the author of Kissinger’s Betrayal: How America Lost the Vietnam War, to be published in April by Real Clear Publishing.