From the GVN, successful Vietnamization will depend on avoiding excessive political harassment of the population; on socioeconomic policies benefiting the masses, especially the military and their dependents; and on a military strategy that will keep the balance of forces against the Communists favorable without seeking excessively ambitious goals, which the American people may not wish to support.
The report was a product of the RAND Corporation from to that represented the principal publication documenting and transmitting RAND's major research findings and final research.
Permission is given to duplicate this electronic document for personal use only, as long as it is unaltered and complete.
Copies may not be duplicated for commercial purposes. The RAND Corporation is a nonprofit institution that helps improve policy and decisionmaking through research and analysis. The Vietnamization plan provided for a gradual, phased withdrawal of American combat forces, combined with an expanded effort to train and equip South Vietnam to take over military responsibility for its own defense. The president announced his Vietnamization strategy to the American people in a nationally televised speech on November 3, In this administration, we are Vietnamizing the search for peace.
In addition to U. He offered U. At the same time that the Vietnamization plan was put in place, however, the Nixon administration also escalated U. In April , for example, the president secretly authorized bombing campaigns and a ground invasion of Cambodia, a neutral country. When his expansion of the war came to public attention, Nixon asserted that the incursion into Cambodia was necessary to keep pressure on the enemy until the Vietnamization strategy took root.
Nixon gradually reduced the number of U. The March Easter Offensive, for instance, highlighted the poor performance of the South Vietnamese army and its heavy reliance on U.
In January , the Nixon administration negotiated a peace agreement with North Vietnamese leaders. Under the terms of the settlement, the U. But if you see something that doesn't look right, click here to contact us! Subscribe for fascinating stories connecting the past to the present. The Vietnam War was a long, costly and divisive conflict that pitted the communist government of North Vietnam against South Vietnam and its principal ally, the United States.
The Vietnam War started in the s, according to most historians, though the conflict in Southeast Asia had its roots in the French colonial period of the s. With these copies in his possession, Ellsberg turned to members of Congress such as Senator J. Despite his pleas, all four declined. But Senator McGovern suggested that he provide his copies to the press. Sheehan and the Times understood how big of a story they had.
It was, the Times announced, part one of a series. Nixon and Kissinger both assumed, mistakenly, that the release of the study was timed to affect an upcoming vote on the McGovern-Hatfield Amendment, which would require the withdrawal of US forces from Vietnam. In response to the leak of the Pentagon Papers, the president met in the Oval Office on June 17, , with his closest aides.
Republicans charged that Johnson had stopped the bombing to bolster the presidential campaign of Hubert H. The declassified record shows otherwise. He told them to implement the Huston Plan, which called for using illegal break-ins, wiretaps, and mail-opening against domestic terrorists. But instead of terrorists, Nixon wanted to use the plan against former Johnson administration officials who the president mistakenly believed had a secret file on the bombing halt in a classified safe at Brookings.
Nixon responded by implementing some of the plans he had considered in He mined Haiphong Harbor and used Bs to bomb the North. The combined power of the American and South Vietnamese military ultimately stopped the offensive, though not before the Communists had more territory under their control. The North Vietnamese were eager to reach a settlement before the American presidential election, after which Nixon would no longer have to face the electorate at the ballot box.
Hanoi made a breakthrough proposal in October and reached agreement with Kissinger rapidly. The South Vietnamese government balked, however, chiefly because the agreement preserved North Vietnamese control of all the territory Hanoi currently held. To turn up the political pressure on Nixon, the North Vietnamese began broadcasting provisions of the agreement.
After Nixon's re-election, he told South Vietnamese president Thieu that if he did not agree to the settlement, Congress would cut off aid to his government—and that conservatives who had supported South Vietnam would lead the way.
He promised that the United States would retaliate militarily if the North violated the agreement. To coax Saigon into signing the agreement, and to bring Hanoi back to the conference table, Nixon launched the "Christmas Bombings" of Both parties responded as Nixon desired, and peace seemed imminent.
Negotiations resumed in January to resolve the few outstanding issues that remained. In this recorded conversation from January 23, , Nixon laments the news coverage of him finally ending this unpopular war.
Four days later, the Paris Peace Accords went into effect, bringing an end to the American war in Vietnam. The South Vietnamese people today, in my view, are fully capable of providing for their own in-country security against the North Vietnamese. That statement would prove incorrect within two years.
America's ally South Vietnam had lost the war. By Ken Hughes [excerpted from an article originally published on Salon. Richard Nixon had been elected in on a law-and-order platform, and he was talking about demonstrators coming to protest him and the Vietnam War, but he privately welcomed the violence.
It was more unpopular than the war, so Nixon could use it to his political advantage — for example, to tar peaceful antiwar protestors with the crimes of the violent. Read the full article. Miller Center scholar Marc Selverstone explains the political climate in America at the time of the shooting of unarmed protestors at Kent State University on May 4, In Nixon's eyes, the publication of the Pentagon Papers confirmed that there existed, throughout the government and media, a radical, left-wing conspiracy whose purpose it was to topple his administration and undermine his authority.
Six days after the Watergate break-in, Nixon's chief of staff, H. After getting some details on the operation, Nixon agrees to the plan, taking the fateful step in the Watergate cover-up that will ultimately cost him the presidency. Grant Rutherford B. Hayes James A.
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