The March of Folly_ From Troy to Vietnam - Barbara Wertheim Tuchman [233]
While only the tip of the Watergate scandal so far showed, the explosion of combat in Vietnam brought results. Blockade combined with destruction of fuel and ammunition stores drastically reduced North Vietnam’s supplies. The Russians proved to be more concerned about detente with the United States than about Hanoi’s need. They welcomed Nixon in Moscow and advised their friends to come to terms. China too wanted to dampen the conflict. In the flush of re-opened relations recently brought off by Nixon and Kissinger, they were now interested in playing off the United States against Russia, which led Mao Tse-tung, during a visit by NLF leaders, to advise them to give up their insistence on the overthrow of Thieu, until now their sine qua non. “Do as I did,” he said. “I once made an accord with Chiang Kai-shek when it was necessary.” Persuaded that their day too would come, the NLF agreed.
The North too, suffering under the B-52s, was ready to yield the political condition. From the evidence of polls in the United States, where the Democratic candidate was floundering in the gaffes of an inept campaign, Hanoi realized that Nixon would be in command for the next four years and concluded that it could get better terms from him before the election. Negotiations were renewed, complicated compromises and intricate arrangements were hammered out to permit United States disengagement behind a facade of Thieu’s survival, and Kissinger was able to announce on 31 October, prematurely as it proved, that “Peace is at hand.”
Thieu refused absolutely to accept the draft treaty, which allowed 145,000 North Vietnamese troops to remain in the South and recognized the NLF as a participant in the future political solution under its newly assumed title of Provisional Revolutionary Government (PRG). Considering that to do otherwise would have been to acquiesce in his own demise, his position was not unnatural. At this juncture, Nixon was stunningly re-elected by the largest popular and electoral majority ever recorded, an extraordinary triumph for a President who not long afterward was driven to assure the American people that “I am not a crook.” The landslide was the result of many causes: the weakness and vacillations of his opponent, Senator McGovern, whose ill-chosen declaration that he would go “on his knees” to Hanoi and his proposal of a $1000 welfare give-away to every family repelled the voters; the success of the “dirty tricks,” which had destroyed a stronger candidate in the primaries; public relief in the expectation of peace at last; and perhaps in the background a reaction of middle America against the counterculture of long hair, hippies, drugs and radicals with all their implied threat to accepted values.
Invigorated by his mandate, Nixon exerted the strongest pressure on both sides, in Vietnam for a settlement. He assured Thieu in a letter that while his concern about the remaining presence of North Vietnamese forces in the South was understandable, “You have my absolute assurance that if Hanoi fails to abide by the, terms of this agreement, it is my intention to take swift and severe retaliatory action.” The intention was undoubtedly just that, for the Paris agreement had not undertaken to withdraw air power from carriers in nearby waters or from bases in Thailand and Taiwan. The Joint Chiefs were in fact directed to draw plans for possible retaliatory action, using air power from Thailand, and $1 billion worth of arms were ordered for delivery to Saigon. Thieu was also told that if he continued obdurate, the United States could make peace without him, which failed to move him. In re-opened secret negotiations with the North, Kissinger backed away from the agreed terms; he now asked for a token withdrawal of Northern troops from the South, lowered status for the NLF and other changes, accompanied by threats of renewed military coercion.
Re-confirmed in its belief in the perfidy of the United States, Hanoi refused to make the required adjustments. Freed of concern about public protest,