Vietnam War

Vietnamization

Nixon was elected President and began his policy of slow disengagement from the war. The goal was to gradually build up the South Vietnamese Army so that it could fight the war on its own. This policy became the cornerstone of the so-called "Nixon Doctrine". As applied to Vietnam, the doctrine was called "Vietnamization". The stated goal of Vietnamization was to enable the South Vietnamese army to increasingly hold its own against the NLF and the North Vietnamese Army. The unstated goal of Vietnamization was that the primary burden of combat would be returned to ARVN troops and thereby lessen domestic opposition to the war in the U.S.

Related Topics:
Nixon - Nixon Doctrine

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During this period, the United States conducted a gradual troop withdrawal from Vietnam. Nixon continued to use air power to bomb the enemy, along with an American troop incursion in Cambodia. Ultimately more bombs were dropped under the Nixon Presidency than under Johnson's, while American troop deaths started to drop significantly. The Nixon administration was determined to remove American troops from the theater while not destabilizing the defensive efforts of South Vietnam.

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Many significant gains in the war were made under the Nixon administration, however. One particularly significant achievement was the weakening of support that the North Vietnamese army received from the Soviet Union and People's Republic of China. One of Nixon's main foreign policy goals had been the achievement of a "breakthrough" in U.S. relations with the two nations, in terms of creating a new spirit of cooperation. To a large extent this was achieved. China and the USSR had been the principal backers of the North Vietnamese army through large amounts of military and financial support. The eagerness of both nations to improve their own U.S. relations in the face of a widening breakdown of the inter-Communist alliance led to the reduction of their aid to North Vietnam.

Related Topics:
Soviet Union - People's Republic of China

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The morality of U.S. conduct of the war continued to be a political issue under the Nixon Presidency. In 1969, American investigative journalist Seymour Hersh exposed the My Lai massacre and its cover-up, for which he received the Pulitzer Prize for International Reporting. It came to light that Lt. William Calley, a platoon leader in Vietnam, had led a massacre of several hundred Vietnamese civilians, including women, babies, and the elderly, at My Lai a year before. The massacre was only stopped after two American soldiers in a helicopter spotted the carnage and intervened to prevent their fellow Americans from killing any more civilians. Calley was given a life sentence after his court-martial in 1970, but was later pardoned by President Nixon. Cover-ups may have happened in other cases, as contended in the Pulitzer Prize-winning article series about the Tiger Force by the Toledo Blade in 2003.

Related Topics:
1969 - Seymour Hersh - My Lai massacre - Pulitzer Prize for International Reporting - William Calley - My Lai - Court-martial - 1970 - Pulitzer Prize - Tiger Force - Toledo Blade - 2003

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In 1970, Prince Sihanouk was deposed by Lon Nol in Cambodia, who became the chief of state. The Khmer Rouge guerillas with North Vietnamese backing began to attack the new regime. Nixon ordered a military incursion into Cambodia in order to destroy NLF sanctuaries bordering on South Vietnam and protect the fragile Cambodian government. This action prompted even more protests on American college campuses. Several students were shot and killed by National Guard troops during demonstrations at Kent State.

Related Topics:
Khmer Rouge - Shot and killed by National Guard troops - Kent State

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One effect of the incursion was to push communist forces deeper into Cambodia, which destabilized the country and in turn may have encouraged the rise of the Khmer Rouge, who seized power in 1975. The goal of the attacks, however, was to bring the North Vietnamese negotiators back to the table with some flexibility in their demands that the South Vietnamese government be overthrown as part of the agreement. It was also alleged that American and South Vietnamese casualty rates were reduced by the destruction of military supplies the communists had been storing in Cambodia. All U.S. forces left Cambodia on June 30.

Related Topics:
Khmer Rouge - 1975 - June 30

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In an effort to help assuage opposition to the war, Nixon announced on October 12, 1970, that the United States would withdraw 40,000 more troops before Christmas. Later that month on October 30, the worst monsoon to hit Vietnam in six years caused large floods, killed 293, left 200,000 homeless and virtually halted the war.

Related Topics:
October 12 - 1970 - Christmas - October 30 - Monsoon - Flood

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Backed by American air and artillery support, South Vietnamese troops invaded Laos on 13 February 1971. On August 18 of that year, Australia and New Zealand decided to withdraw their troops from Vietnam. The total number of American troops in Vietnam dropped to 196,700 on 29 October 1971, the lowest level since January 1966. On November 12, 1971, Nixon set a 1 February 1972 deadline to remove another 45,000 American troops from Vietnam.

Related Topics:
Laos - 13 February - 1971 - August 18 - Australia - New Zealand - Vietnam - 29 October - 1966 - November 12 - 1 February - 1972

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By this time, facilitated by general instability in the region and the U.S.-backed ousting of Prince Sihanouk of Cambodia, the opium and heroin trade that had arisen in the infamous Golden Triangle region was also beginning to escalate. Significant amounts of heroin started to flow into Vietnam during 1970 and this was followed soon after by the first large-scale seizures of Asian heroin in the United States and Europe. Historian and drug trafficking expert Dr Alfred W. McCoy claims that there was significant covert American involvement in the drug trade which, he alleges, was the result of what he calls the CIA's policy of "radical pragmatism".

Related Topics:
Prince Sihanouk - Golden Triangle - Dr Alfred W. McCoy

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McCoy claims that this policy led to the creation of a new Asian-based heroin trade, organised as a collaboration between the Sicilian-American and Corsican-French Mafia, with assistance from elements of the CIA. Although McCoy's broader claims remain controversial, the indisputable fact was that by late 1970 heroin use was emerging as a major health issue among American servicemen, with some medics reporting that as more than 10% of GIs in some units were regular heroin users by the end of 1970. The penetration of drugs into American military in Vietnam also led to a rapid increase in drug importation into Australia, thanks in part to the the thriving Rest and Recreation circuit, with some US personnel sent to Sydney on R&R leave being used as drug "mules". Around this time, American journalists also began to report allegations that South Vietnamese politicians were using money from the drug trade to finance their election campaigns, and that senior intelligence personnel were directly involved in drug running operations.

Related Topics:
Mafia - Rest and Recreation

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In the 1972 election, the war was once again a major issue in the United States. An antiwar candidate, George McGovern, ran against President Nixon. Nixon's Secretary of State, Henry Kissinger, declared that "peace is at hand" shortly before election day, dealing a death blow to McGovern's campaign, which was already far behind in opinion surveys. However, the peace agreement was not signed until the next year, leading many to conclude that Kissinger's announcement was just a political ploy. Kissinger's defenders assert that the North Vietnamese negotiators had made use of Kissinger's pronouncement as an opportunity to embarrass the Nixon Administration to weaken it at the negotiation table. White House Press Secretary Ron Ziegler on 30 November 1972, told the press that there would be no more public announcements concerning American troop withdrawals from Vietnam due to the fact that troop levels were then down to 27,000. The U.S. halted heavy bombing of North Vietnam on December 30, 1972.

Related Topics:
1972 - George McGovern - Henry Kissinger - White House - Ron Ziegler - 30 November - December 30

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