Paris Peace Talks
<div style="font-size: small; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">1Nixon Sabotages The Paris Peace Talks</font></div><div style="font-size: small; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="font-size: small; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">We top out our list with a callous political move that condemned thousands of American soldiers to death. By 1968 the Vietnam War had been in full swing for four years. In March, President Lyndon Johnson ordered a limit to US bombing of North Vietnam in order to open up peace talks. Nixon, who promised he had a secret plan to win the war, knew that any peace agreement concluded before the election would devastate his chances of winning the presidency. So Nixon decided to relay a secret message to the President of South Vietnam, Nguyen Van Thieu, claiming that he would secure a better deal for South Vietnam if he won the election. Thieu—who figured he had little to lose, since he could pursue a deal regardless of who won the election—backed out of the peace talks at the last minute.President Johnson became aware of Nixon’s machinations when NSA wiretaps of South Vietnam’s US ambassador revealed the plot. Johnson was furious at what he considered Nixon’s traitorous actions but he was prevented from publicizing it for fear of alerting the South Vietnamese that their ambassador’s communications were being monitored. That doesn’t mean that Johnson just sat idly by—he used every backroom channel available to thwart Nixon. Johnson ordered the FBI to place Nixon’s campaign under surveillance and relayed the details of the plot to Democratic nominee Hubert Humphrey, so that his campaign could publicize Nixon’s treachery. However, Humphrey’s aides believed he would handily win the election, and the campaign saw no need to make the shocking accusation that a presidential candidate had engaged in treason. Meanwhile, the Nixon campaign continued to berate the Democrats for failing to make any progress in resolving the Vietnam War. Nixon even had the gall to offer to travel to South Vietnam to get Thieu back to the negotiating table (we can only imagine how productive that meeting would have been). Nixon ultimately went on to win the election by less than one percent, at which point it turned out that his secret plan for peace in Vietnam was to intensify the US bombing campaign and to expand the war into neighboring Cambodia and Laos. In 1973, the US would reach a peace deal with North Vietnam under much of the same terms as those discussed in 1968. Over 22,000 American soldiers died in those five years, along with countless more Vietnamese, Cambodians, and Laotians—proof that sometimes dirty tricks can have a death toll attached to them.</font></div><div style="font-size: small; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div style="font-size: small; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><p style="font-size: medium;"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">
</font></p><p style="font-size: medium;"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><a href="https://www.alternet.org/kissinger-it-again">https://www.alternet.org/kissinger-it-again</a></font></p><p style="font-size: medium; margin: 0px 0px 22px; line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Kissinger spoke at Senator John McCain’s funeral. He said that McCain was one of those rare public servants who understood duty and honor. He believed that McCain embraced America’s power and its ideals, holding each dearly to his chest. This, for Kissinger, is the mark of a true leader.</font></p><p style="font-size: medium; margin: 0px 0px 22px; line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Of course, Kissinger was really talking about himself. The 95-year-old Kissinger, former National Security Advisor and Secretary of State in the Nixon and Ford administrations, also recalled that he had met McCain in Vietnam in 1973 when the naval pilot was released by Hanoi after more than five years as a prisoner of war. “I had been in Hanoi that day and they had offered to let me take him on my plane back to the United States and I refused on the grounds that nobody should get special treatment,” Kissinger remembered. This simple act, Kissinger claimed, saved McCain’s honor. It may well have been the one thing that Kissinger got right during his lengthy negotiations with the Vietnamese. </font></p><p style="font-size: medium; margin: 0px 0px 22px; line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>Despite his enormous reputation as a statesman, Kissinger’s lasting legacy is the failed Vietnam peace negotiations that earned him a Noble Peace Prize.</b> He has polished his image as a foreign policy expert since the end of the war by using his intelligence, charm, and wit to recast his time in office. Kissinger is almost consumed by his need to remain at the center of the foreign policy world. </font></p><div style="font-size: medium; margin-bottom: 20px;" /><p style="font-size: medium; margin: 0px 0px 22px; line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">One of Kissinger’s gifts is his ability to be self-effacing and self-critical enough of his own time as a public official to hide his actual record and accomplishments. Given Kissinger’s role in the failed peace agreement, it is surprising that the nation still turns to him for answers to its most intractable problems</span>. Instead of listening to Kissinger’s sage advice, we should remember that he is among those most responsible for the debacle in Vietnam. He prolonged the war unnecessarily and doomed the government of South Vietnam. Examining his record based on words and deeds should provide some insight into how not to succeed in a war and how best to mislead the public. With all the problems facing the United States today—from Iran to North Korea, China, Russia, and now Turkey, and a potential confrontation in the Artic, we should not listen to Henry Kissinger again. </font></p><p style="font-size: medium; margin: 0px 0px 22px; line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Here is why. When Kissinger entered the Nixon White House in 1969, he was full of confidence that he, and he alone, could figure out the Vietnam puzzle. Others had failed to properly balance military attacks with diplomacy, he argued. But he thought he had the magic formula, deduced from years of study if not practical experience. He possessed the arrogance and hubris of someone new to office.</font></p><p style="font-size: medium; margin: 0px 0px 22px; line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Once in power, Kissinger quickly convinced Nixon to send him secretly to Paris to meet with high-ranking Vietnamese Communist officials to end the war honorably. Peace with honor had to meet several essential conditions. There had to be a lasting cease-fire between North Vietnam and South Vietnam. Laos and Cambodia also had to be neutralized. North Vietnam had to recognize the Demilitarized Zone as an international boundary. All prisoners of war, including McCain, had to be released following the signing of a peace agreement. There would be a mutual troop withdrawal from South Vietnam. Finally, the Saigon government had to be left in full political control of South Vietnam. To achieve these goals, Kissinger promised to wage a war for peace.</font></p><p style="font-size: medium; margin: 0px 0px 22px; line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">But where has there ever been a successful war for peace? Only someone distantly removed from the fighting and dying would embrace such a flawed concept. And this is exactly what Kissinger did. He was the most outspoken advocate inside the administration for the bombing of Laos and Cambodia; he championed the renewed bombing of North Vietnam and the mining of Haiphong harbor. He thought he could use super power diplomacy to force Hanoi to make compromises in Paris. When Defense Secretary Melvin Laird called for US troop withdrawals, Kissinger complained. Kissinger never understood that his desperate actions, made alone and without consultation with the State and Defense Departments, actually reduced his future policy options because he squandered the administration’s remaining good will with Congress. With each new military escalation that he supported, Congress and the American public pushed back, speeding up the US troop withdrawals and shortening the time Saigon had to stand on its own. Ever conscious of wanting to deliver a peace agreement to Nixon before the 1972 US presidential election, Kissinger often supported policies that put America’s South Vietnamese allies in jeopardy. And he did all of this without consulting US allies in Saigon.</font></p><p style="font-size: medium; margin: 0px 0px 22px; line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">When the final peace agreement was concluded in January 1973, Kissinger had not accomplished any of his stated goals, despite prolonging the war. He failed to establish a lasting cease-fire between North and South Vietnam. He failed to neutralize Laos and Cambodia (both would fall to the Communists before Hanoi’s tanks rolled into Saigon in April 1975). He failed to make the Demilitarized Zone an international border. And most importantly, he failed to secure a mutual troop withdrawal from South Vietnam, sealing Saigon’s fate. Kissinger’s actions also led to greater domestic unrest as he failed to contain opposition to his policies. Through newly released documents at the Nixon Presidential Library, we can also finally see the many ways that Kissinger failed the president by overstating progress in Paris and the likelihood for success following the military strikes he supported.</font></p><p style="font-size: medium; margin: 0px 0px 22px; line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Kissinger’s Vietnam record makes clear that he has rested on unearned laurels for far too long. We should not let him use McCain’s funeral to insert himself once again into a national conversation on foreign policy.</font></p><p style="font-size: medium;"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"></font></p></div><div style="font-size: small; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div>