Vietnam War, recalculated

Another summer read was Ken Hughes' Fatal Politics, a UVa Press book, written by a man who spent years transcribing Nixon tapes at the Miller Center. I had long believed that the Nixon-Kissinger war strategy was driven more by domestic politics than military considerations, and I thought it was probably true that the duo was willing to accept a South Vietnamese defeat, so long as it occurred "a decent interval" after US withdrawal and could be blamed on Saigon's failings, not America's.

Hughes uses tape transcripts to document Nixon-Kissinger statements using the term or close synonyms on numerous occasions. As early as April 1971, the men expected Vietnamization to fail but wanted to be sure that event occurred only after the 1972 elections. They even told the Chinese and Russians that the US could accept the eventual defeat of Saigon.

What's also infuriating is how Nixon and Kissinger used the POW issue to maintain public support for continuing the war mainly to forestall war ending amendments in Congress.

Hughes shows that Hanoi made key concessions in the weeks before the election but that South Vietnamese President Theiu refused to agree. Nevertheless, Kissinger made his famous "peace is at hand" announcement a week before the election.

The much-touted Linebacker II bombing raids in December were not to force concessions from Hanoi but to fulfill a plan devised just before the elections. Thieu's final agreement on the peace plan came two weeks later because Kissinger had secretly persuaded hawkish Senators Goldwater and Stennis to threaten a cutoff in US aid.

Hughes also proves to my satisfaction that Nixon planned all along to blame Congress and the Democrats for the expected eventual fall of Saigon. He made comments about the stab in the back argument at various points, and then, in June 1973, a day after successfully vetoing a bill to forbid operations in Cambodia, accepted an amendment to end all US bombing on August 15. This meant that Congress would have to vote affirmatively for renewed war if he ever had to carry out his promise to help Saigon if it were threatened.  When that happened, of course, Nixon and others did blame the antiwar Congress for the defeat.