Sargent Shriver Dies; Kennedy Brother-in-Law Saw Nixon's Vietnam Settlement as 'Surrender'

Sargent Shriver's life is being celebrated for his civil rights record, his founding leadership of the Peace Corps, and even for his family's work on Alzheimer's, but I doubt that a single obituary or appreciation will mention stand he took in the final days of his fated 1972 vice presidential campaign. It was bold, lonely (not even shared by his presidential nominee) and right.
The Nixon White House caused an international sensation less than two weeks before Election Day when National Security Adviser Henry A. Kissinger announced before the television cameras that "peace is at hand" in Vietnam. Nixon and Kissinger had, in fact, reached a settlement with the Communist government of North Vietnam, but it was not peace, as they all realized. South Vietnamese President Nguyen Van Thieu, whose government more than 50,000 American soldiers had died defending, realized that Nixon's settlement terms would destroy the South. Privately, as Nixon's White House tapes have since revealed, the President and the national security adviser acknowledged it, too. (Listen to Nixon and Kissinger discuss the matter here.)
The first national security study Nixon ordered on taking office in 1969 was a complete review of Vietnam. The results, compiled in a classified document known as National Security Study Memorandum 1, revealed that all of the defense, diplomatic and intelligence agencies that took part in the study believed that South Vietnam would never be able to survive without major U.S. ground forces--even *after* Nixon completed his ambitious "Vietnamization" program of expanding, training and modernizing the South's military. Nixon's choice: keep U.S. soldiers fighting and dying in Vietnam for the foreseeable future, or withdraw and let the Communist North take over the entire country. Neither choice was politically acceptable, so Nixon publicly pretended the dilemma didn't exist.
He told America that he would withdraw U.S. forces only when the South was capable of surviving without them, but he realized that day would never come. Periodically during his first term he would go on television and announce that Vietnamization was working well enough for him to bring some troops home, but not all, not yet. In fact, he had privately decided that he would bring the last American soldiers home around the next presidential election. By early 1971, he had decided that it could be a little bit before or after Election Day, as long as he could avoid a pre-election Communist victory.
During the first four years of Nixon's term more than 20,000 American soldiers (and countless more Vietnamese, North and South) died while the President awaited the politically correct time to pull out.
During that time, Sen. George S. McGovern, D-South Dakota, led an unsuccessful fight in Congress to force the President to withdraw faster than suited his political convenience. Nixon beat back attempts to set an "end date" in 1970 and 1971 by saying McGovern's legislation would lead to Communist victory, and denying that his own strategy would do the same, only with many more casualties.
At the same time, Nixon had Kissinger negotiate a "decent interval" exit strategy with the Communists. At his first secret meeting with Chinese Premier Zhou En-lai, Kissinger told North Vietnam's second largest supplier of aid that if the South waited a while after Nixon withdraw the last American troops before it took over the South, Nixon would not intervene. (Check out the documentation here & here.)
In other words, North Vietnam accepted Nixon's settlement before Election Day 1972 because it realized, like Nixon and Kissinger, that the settlement would lead to a Communist victory. For the same reason, South Vietnam rejected the deal.
On paper, the settlement called for a reconciliation commission with Communist and anti-Communist members to work on setting up elections in South Vietnam, but the commission was designed to deadlock. Nixon realized that the two sides would ultimately fight it out, but hoped that the South would last long enough so its final defeat was its fault, not his. In the most recent released batch of Nixon tapes, you can hear Nixon and Kissinger discuss the best time--in terms of American politics--for the South to fall (after the 1974 midterm elections in the spring of 1975--exactly when it did.)
On the Democratic ticket, only Sargent Shriver, the vice presidential candidate, criticized the deal for what it was. "If this is peace with honor," Shriver said on Oct. 31, 1972, "I'd like to know what surrender is. . . . I don't see the difference between what [Nixon and Kissinger] got and what we used to call surrender."
At the top of the ticket, however, presidential nominee McGovern claimed that Nixon had "closed the door to peace once again" by refusing to sign the deal before Election Day. The deal was nothing like peace, so refusing to sign it didn't close any door to peace. It just gave Nixon more time to find a way to force President Thieu to accept the terms that would destroy South Vietnam.
McGovern, like so many liberals, overestimated Nixon. They thought he was really determined to prevent Communist victory in Vietnam. He was only determined to prevent Democratic victory in America.

Allen J. Matusow, Historian of Insight

From Allen J. Matusow, Nixon's Economy: Booms, Busts, Dollars & Votes: 

The zigs and zags of policy gave the appearance of ideological confusion. Politics provided the coherence, and because politics was the point, Nixon cared more about the symbolism of his program--how it played in Peoria . . . 

Have truer words ever been written about Richard Nixon and his presidency? And they're just as true of Nixon's foreign policy. 

Nixon on the Politically Correct Time for Communist Victory in Vietnam

You can listen to President Richard Nixon and National Security Adviser Henry Kissinger mull over the best time--politically--for North Vietnam to conquer the South on a March 16, 1973, tape, one of the 265 hours of White House tapes released by the Nixon Library today. 

Just as Nixon timed his withdrawal of troops from Vietnam to the 1972 presidential election (because a pre-election collapse of the South would have mean the collapse of his hopes for a second term) he also hoped that his fraudulent peace accord with the North would hold together for a year or two after his final troop withdrawal. (Watch Fatal Politics to hear, in their own words, how they pulled it off.) 

The last American troops and POWs were still coming home from Vietnam in March 1973, when Nixon and Kissinger had this conversation. (It's number 881-2, 16 March 1973, 10:18 to 10:33 A.M., Oval Office, and you can download the whole thing here.) 

President Nixon: In the meantime, what you and I’ve got to do, Henry, is just to work on these big games, the big plays, and that’s what we’re gonna do, by golly. 

Kissinger: I agree.

President Nixon: And, essential to this is not to let them, if we possibly can, do us in on Vietnam this year. We can’t let that happen.

Kissinger: Mr. President--

President Nixon: And that’s why we’re gonna bomb the bejeezus out of them. 

Kissinger: --after the summer of ’74, that’s a different story. 

President Nixon: No, after the elections of ’74. 

Kissinger: After the election of ’74. In fact, if it’s got to happen, the spring of ’75 is better than the spring of ’76. 

President Nixon: That’s right.

Kissinger: But--

President Nixon: I don’t think it’s gonna happen. [Unclear] I’m just not all that--I’m just not all that--I don’t have all that lack of confidence in the South, I don’t have all that confidence in the North, Henry.

Kissinger: I don’t think it’s gonna happen, Mr. President, if we pull them up short a few times. 

(Before they made the deal with Hanoi, Nixon and Kissinger had both privately said it would lead to a Communist takeover.)

The Communist takeover of South Vietnam did ultimately take place at the time when Nixon and Kissinger deemed best politically--in the spring of 1975. 

New Nixon Tapes: Nixon on the Politics of a "Decent Interval"

"The country would care if South Vietnam became Communist in a matter of six months. They will not give a damn if it's two years."--President Richard M. Nixon, March 17, 1973 

First interesting find in the new batch of White House tapes released by the Nixon Library today. The quote above comes from a conversation (number 416-43 for those of you who want to listen) with Alexander M. Haig, the deputy national security adviser.
The quote once again underlies the domestic political imperative that shaped Nixon's "decent interval" exit strategy from Vietnam. As a longer, even more revealing conversation from August 1972 (which I transcribed and put in this educational video) indicates, Nixon feared that if South Vietnam collapsed too quickly after he withdrew the last American troops, he would be blamed for losing the war after prolonging it for four more years at the loss of 20,000 more American casualties. At that time National Security Adviser Henry A. Kissinger said, "We've got to find some formula that holds the thing together a year or two, after which--after a year, Mr. President, Vietnam will be a backwater. If we settle it, say, this October, by January '74 no one will give a damn." Nixon clearly agreed.

They were both wrong.

New Nixon Tapes Are Online Now; 265 Hours From February & March of 1973

The Nixon Library has released another 265 hours of White House tapes from February and March of 1973. Finding aids and sound files for February 1973 are here; March 1973, here. The library's release notes highlight topics discussed on the tapes, including Watergate, the Vietnam settlement and the release of POWs. The helpful staff has also put together a chronology of the period.

Nixon Library to Open 265 More Hours of Nixon Tapes

The National Archives will make 265 hours of Nixon tapes public today, and I will continue my new tradition (begun last year) of blogging anything interesting I find.

These tapes come from February and March of 1973, during the (shaky) cease-fire period when the last American troops and prisoners of war were coming home from Vietnam. Read the Nixon Library announcement.

Diplomatic History Article Now Online Free

The full text of my article in Diplomatic History, the journal of the Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations, is now available to non-subscribers free. "Fatal Politics: Nixon's Political Timetable for Withdrawing From Vietnam," outlines how Richard Nixon prolonged the Vietnam War and faked peace for political gain.