Nixon's War: Vietnamisation and Widening
Nixon’s Promise of ‘Peace with Honour’
Richard Nixon was inaugurated in January 1969. He had won the previous November on a pledge to extract the United States from Vietnam without an obvious defeat. The country was exhausted: over 30,000 US dead, deep public distrust after Tet and Cronkite, and a draft system pulling 19-year-olds into a war their parents no longer believed could be won. Nixon’s strategy had three parts: train and equip the South Vietnamese army to do its own fighting; widen the war into Cambodia and Laos to disrupt enemy sanctuaries; and open diplomatic channels with Hanoi’s Soviet and Chinese backers.
Vietnamisation
Vietnamisation, announced by Nixon in a speech of November 1969, meant phased withdrawal of US ground troops and a major build-up of the ARVN. Between 1969 and 1972 American troop numbers fell from 540,000 to under 50,000. The ARVN expanded to over a million men and was supplied with US helicopters, tanks and air-power coordination. The political logic was simple: bring American boys home while keeping the war going, and the anti-war movement would lose its central grievance.
Vietnamisation was Nixon’s policy of phased withdrawal: from a peak of 540,000 US troops in 1968 to under 50,000 by mid-1972. The ARVN was massively expanded and equipped to take over the ground war, while US air power continued.
Chemical Warfare
From 1962 to 1971 the United States sprayed roughly 80 million litres of Agent Orange over Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia under Operation Ranch Hand. The aim was to strip jungle cover from suspected Vietcong areas and destroy crops. Around three million hectares of forest were defoliated. The dioxin in Agent Orange caused cancers, birth defects and chronic health problems among the Vietnamese population and US veterans alike. Spraying was halted under Nixon in 1971 once the medical evidence became impossible to deny.
Cambodia, Kent State and the Limits of Escalation
From March 1969 Nixon authorised secret B-52 bombing of Cambodia — targeting Vietcong sanctuaries along the border. The campaign, called Operation Menu, was concealed from Congress and the American public. In April 1970 Nixon went further: US ground troops crossed the Cambodian border in the Cambodia incursion, an operation Nixon announced on television on 30 April 1970. Far from quietening protest, the announcement reignited the campus anti-war movement.
On 4 May 1970 Ohio National Guardsmen fired on protesters at Kent State University, killing four unarmed students. Photographs of the dead and of a teenage bystander, Mary Ann Vecchio, screaming over a body went around the world. A nationwide student strike followed; over four million students at 900 campuses walked out. Ten days later, on 14–15 May 1970, two more students were killed by police at Jackson State College in Mississippi — an event widely under-covered by comparison. The Cambodian incursion had transformed domestic politics overnight.
In spring 1972 North Vietnam launched the Easter Offensive, a conventional invasion of the South. Nixon responded with Linebacker II, the so-called ‘Christmas bombings’ of December 1972. For 11 days B-52s pounded Hanoi and the port of Haiphong — the heaviest bombing of the entire war. The aim was to push Hanoi back to the negotiating table, and within weeks the Paris talks resumed. By that point the bombing had also confirmed for many Americans the futility of continued escalation.
The Opening to China
Nixon’s most important diplomatic move had nothing to do with Vietnam directly. In July 1971 his National Security Adviser Henry Kissinger flew secretly to Beijing. The following February Nixon himself made a state visit and met Mao Zedong — the first ever US presidential visit to communist China. The opening exploited the deepening Sino-Soviet split; by improving relations with Beijing, Nixon hoped to pressure both Moscow and Hanoi simultaneously. North Vietnam, dependent on Chinese aid, suddenly had reason to fear that its main backer might prefer better relations with the United States.
Vietnam was the first ‘living-room war’ and Nixon was acutely aware of the medium. Kent State, the Pentagon Papers leaked in 1971 and the conviction of Lieutenant Calley over My Lai all played out on prime-time news. Then in June 1972, five men working for Nixon’s re-election committee were arrested breaking into the Democratic National Committee headquarters in the Watergate building. The slow unravelling of the cover-up over 1973–74 destroyed Nixon’s authority. By the time Hanoi’s next push came in 1975, the United States had no political capacity to act.
Nixon announced the Cambodian incursion on 30 April 1970. Four days later, on 4 May 1970, the Ohio National Guard shot four students dead at Kent State University. A nationwide student strike followed: over four million students at around 900 campuses walked out. Two further students were killed at Jackson State on 14–15 May.