Reckless: Henry Kissinger and the Tragedy of Vietnam

by Robert K. Brigham

  That machinery would be a standstill cease-fire that granted control over territory held without granting any seats in a coalition government in Saigon. In other words, the Nixon administration was willing to concede PRG/NLF control only over territories it already controlled in South Vietnam. The president was not at all interested, however, in giving the Communists uncontested seats in the Saigon government. His administration used this concession to quiet its domestic critics, especially in Congress, but few took the bait. Most understood that Nixon’s plan would give the Saigon government preponderant power because it held the cities and the national government. The NLF’s control of South Vietnam was at an all-time low, and the ARVN’s pacification program had emptied the countryside. Under these conditions, Nixon was willing to concede territory under the NLF’s control because that territory was limited and did not threaten Saigon. Nguyen Van Thieu quickly supported Nixon’s plan, claiming that “sometimes you have to give up a leg to save the body.”106

  But Hanoi rejected Nixon’s overture outright. Party leaders understood that the Communists had suffered a series of military setbacks caused in part by Saigon’s deadly pacification program in the countryside, which was killing nearly twenty-five thousand NLF cadres per year. Communist losses translated into a rapid depopulation of the countryside. The intense use of firepower to achieve the pacification program’s goals made village life untenable. Vietnamese peasants flooded the cities to find safety and security, leaving the countryside a depopulated area in Saigon’s control. According to most reliable statistics, only 20 percent of the total population of South Vietnam lived in cities in 1960. That number swelled to 43 percent by 1971. Kissinger and Nixon’s plan was to take advantage of this forced urbanization by calling for a standstill cease-fire and territorial control. It was a thinly veiled attempt to grant Saigon control over previously held NLF territory by taking a snapshot of a temporary reality. The Communists rejected the move. Kissinger therefore turned his attention to Cambodia.

  On March 18, 1970, Colonels Lon Nol and Sirik Matak overthrew the long-standing leader of Cambodia, Prince Norodom Sihanouk. Since coming to power in 1954, Sihanouk had pledged Cambodian neutrality in the war in neighboring South Vietnam. Once Hanoi decided to try to oust Ngo Dinh Diem, Cambodia had been used as a staging and supply sanctuary for North Vietnamese troops, and even sometimes for southern Communist forces belonging to the PRG/NLF. Sihanouk had routinely claimed that Cambodia was a small country and was doing the best it could to remove foreign troops from its soil. Successive US administrations wondered just how devoted to neutrality Sihanouk actually was, often charging him with conspiracy.

  Although there is no documentary evidence linking Nixon or Kissinger directly to Sihanouk’s overthrow, both certainly welcomed the coup. Kissinger wrote Nixon that Lon Nol had sharp disagreements with Sihanouk over the presence of PAVN troops in Cambodia and that he would be a faithful ally. Lon Nol’s staunch opposition to Hanoi “will create serious problems for the VC/NVA,” Kissinger claimed, “which will have considerable reason to take a more hostile line toward Cambodia.”107 Nixon immediately approved substantial covert aid to the new Cambodian government to shore it up against an obvious hostile response to the coup from Hanoi. The White House also continued Operation Menu air attacks, and the president ordered that US military leaders plan for joint US-Saigon attacks on PAVN sanctuaries. Much to Kissinger’s delight, he also demanded that the administration “dust off the seven-day plan for attacks in North Vietnam.”108 Operation Duck Hook was back on the table as an escalation option.

  For the next month, Kissinger carefully coordinated the military offensives in Cambodia. He managed the B-52 strikes and Lon Nol’s attacks on the sanctuaries. He advised Nixon that the United States had to do more, however, if it was to save the Lon Nol government, fearing that Hanoi “cannot tolerate the loss of its Cambodian sanctuaries, and must do something to remove the Lon Nol government or force a change in Phnom Penh’s policies.”109 He urged the president to move quickly. “The United States could not stand by and watch the Cambodian collapse and ultimately the collapse of the US effort in Vietnam.”110 Toward the end of April, Nixon received an intelligence report suggesting that Hanoi “was moving to isolate Phnom Penh,” so as to “bring military pressure on it from all sides, and perhaps, ultimately, to bring Sihanouk back.”111 Kissinger backed up this reporting with some intelligence analysis of his own. If Cambodia fell to the Communists, he warned, it would lead to “a profound psychological shock in South Vietnam” and Hanoi’s victory would make it impossible for Saigon to “preserve itself against pressures from all sides without a very large continuing presence of US forces.” Most important, American credibility, something always at the top of the list of the national security adviser’s concerns, would be shattered because “in the rest of Asia, there would be a feeling that Communism was on the march and we were powerless to stop it.”112

  Nixon shared Kissinger’s concerns over Cambodia. “I think we need a bold move in Cambodia,” he wrote Kissinger on April 22, “to show that we stand with Lon Nol.”113 General Abrams agreed. For years, Abrams had been eager to attack North Vietnam’s sanctuaries inside Cambodia, and now that Sihanouk was gone, there was little fear about violating Cambodian neutrality. Instead, attacks inside Cambodia could now be justified on the grounds that the United States was helping a new government and easing the military threat against South Vietnam. Hitting North Vietnamese troops inside Cambodia might also save American lives. Nixon therefore quickly endorsed a Defense Department proposal that South Vietnamese troops attack a North Vietnamese sanctuary inside the Parrot’s Beak, a part of Cambodia that jutted out into South Vietnam only 30 miles from Saigon. The United States would provide cross-border artillery support and increased military aid to the Lon Nol government. The attacks would be swift, overwhelming, and were designed to end “the policy of minimalism and neutrality.”114 Laird supported the proposal because no American units or advisers would cross the border. If the operation demanded it, Laird could authorize US tactical air support, but only after consulting Abrams.

  Without Laird’s knowledge, however, Nixon revealed to Kissinger and General Wheeler that the attacks on the Parrot’s Beak were only the first phase of allied cross-border operations in Cambodia he was planning. Two days later, on April 24, the president met in secret with Kissinger and a handful of military leaders to discuss a second phase that included a combined US and ARVN operation against base area 352/353 and an area known as the “Fishhook” because of its geographic footprint. The mission’s purpose was to destroy Central Office South Vietnam (COSVN) headquarters and the complex of logistics facilities, ammunition depots, and POW camps in the area. Nixon was nearly obsessed with wiping out COSVN headquarters, which he often called the “Communists’ Pentagon.”115 Kissinger later falsely reported that his commitment to the invasion of Cambodia came hesitantly and belatedly, and only after he was convinced that Hanoi wanted to march on Lon Nol’s government. In fact, Kissinger was a key proponent of the Cambodian attacks. He played a far more active role in the decision to involve US troops than he allowed at the time or since. He told Nixon that he thought the attacks in the Fishhook should begin right after the ARVN launched its solo attack on the Parrot’s Beak.116 General Wheeler, chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, agreed. Wheeler had been in on the planning of the Cambodian invasion in private sessions with Nixon and Kissinger throughout April.

  On the afternoon of April 26, Nixon finally called Rogers and Laird into a meeting at the White House to inform them of the invasion plan. That morning, Kissinger reminded the president that “care should be exercised at today’s meeting not to surface the fact that General Wheeler has been conducting intensified planning to implement the attacks on base areas 352/353 without the full knowledge of the Secretary of Defense.”117 Rarely did Kissinger allow such a naked power grab to enter the public record, but there are few other ways to interpret his actions in the Cambodian planni
ng than to conclude that he was still desperately trying to diminish Laird’s influence in making Vietnam policy.118 At the same time, Nixon and Kissinger believed that attacks inside Cambodia would convince Hanoi “that we are still serious about our commitment in Vietnam.”119 The Cambodian incursion, therefore, met two of Kissinger’s policy criteria: it isolated Laird and conditioned the secret talks in Paris. That it did not lead to a better outcome in South Vietnam is a tragedy.

  During the meeting, Laird and Rogers raised strong objections to the plan. Laird objected to the use of American troops inside Cambodia, and Rogers thought that the attacks would threaten the public support Nixon had built up for his Vietnam policies following the Silent Majority speech. They both warned that Congress would not sit still for an invasion of Cambodia. Nixon expected strong criticism from Congress, he told his two aides, but he believed he could quiet his critics on Capitol Hill if “he can get it [the Vietnam War] wound up this year.” Nixon thought that such decisive action in Cambodia would allow him “to keep enough pressure on,” and if the United States did not “crumble at home,” the war could end on honorable terms.120 His meaning here is hard to gauge. He periodically alternated between believing that the war would end through Kissinger’s negotiations in Paris, or it would end in some decisive military action. His madman strategy reflected this duplicity. This vacillation no doubt added to Kissinger’s problems. But on Cambodia they agreed. The United States could condition the negotiations in Paris, strike a military blow against Hanoi, support the South Vietnamese government, and maybe save some American lives, all by attacking North Vietnamese sanctuaries and COSVN headquarters inside Cambodia’s border.

  The next day, Nixon met with his top national security advisers again to go over the final plans for the Cambodian attacks. During this April 27 meeting, Laird told him that repeated attacks on Cambodia would stretch an already thin Defense budget to its breaking point. He also warned the president that public outcry could play into Hanoi’s “waiting game.”121 If the American public reacted negatively to the Cambodian invasion, Laird said, Hanoi would simply wait until public opinion forced Nixon to speed up the US troop withdrawal. The entire plan was counter to US strategic goals, Laird concluded. (His fears proved prescient.) Nixon would have no part of Laird’s pessimism. Not only did the president approve the two Cambodian attacks on April 28, he reserved the right to order new attacks on a case-by-case basis.

  Kissinger’s role in the planning of the two Cambodian invasions has long been in doubt because both he and Nixon went to great lengths to conceal their secret plans. Nixon in fact asked Kissinger to step out of the April 28 meeting so that it did not appear to Rogers and Laird that he was conspiring with his national security adviser over Cambodia. Nixon provided even more cover for his secret plotting with Kissinger when he told Laird and Rogers that he was moving forward with the Fishhook invasion plan even though “Dr. Kissinger was leaning against it.”122 But the record is clear; Kissinger supported the two-phased attacks on Cambodia from the very beginning.

  For reasons only he could fathom, Nixon felt compelled to inform the American people of his plans for attacks on Cambodian soil. Against the advice of all of his advisers, he argued that such a bold and brazen act needed to be explained. Once again his political instincts betrayed him. He never anticipated the national outrage that his speech or actions would evoke. Nixon appeared on television on April 30, to explain that the United States would not act “like a pitiful, helpless giant” in the face of North Vietnamese efforts to undermine Lon Nol and use Cambodia as a staging area for further attacks against Americans in South Vietnam.123 Appearing nervous and sweaty, the president pointed to a map of Cambodia and explained that the goal was to “attack the headquarters of the entire communist military operation in South Vietnam.”124 He then uttered a bold-faced lie: “For five years,” he claimed, “neither the United States nor South Vietnam has moved against those enemy sanctuaries because we did not wish to violate the territory of a neutral nation.”125 He purposefully did not mention that Kissinger had been carefully planning and coordinating the secret Menu bombings of those sanctuaries for over a year. Kissinger did nothing to dissuade the public of this erroneous view. Indeed, he told the press the same lie later that evening.

  The fallout from the Cambodian invasion was swift. As journalist Walter Isaacson astutely noted, “The domestic calm that had been purchased by troop withdrawals was quickly shattered.”126 On May 4, at Kent State University near Cleveland, Ohio, young National Guardsmen fired into an unarmed crowd of students who were protesting the Cambodian invasion, killing four and wounding several others. Ten days later, police fired upon students at Jackson State in Mississippi who were protesting the war and racial injustice. Two students died and several more were wounded. Massive protests erupted on hundreds of college campuses. At several major universities, research buildings and ROTC offices were attacked as symbols of complicity with the widening war. Over 100,000 protestors marched on the White House on May 8, forcing the police to build a bus barricade to keep the crowd away from the president. Journalist Tom Wicker spoke for many when he wrote that the invasion of Cambodia confirmed that Nixon “does not have and never has had a plan to end the war.”127

  The president did not handle the protests or criticism well. Telephone logs show that he spent much of his time phoning aides, especially Kissinger, whom he called eight times on the evening of May 8 alone. Transcripts from these calls reveal that Nixon was belligerent, defiant, and vengeful. He ordered Kissinger to fire “everyone of those son of bitches,” referring to the foreign-service officers who had signed a letter of protest against the Cambodian invasion.128 Nixon called the protestors “bums,” claiming that they were fortunate to be in college. When nearly forty university presidents signed a letter calling for an American withdrawal from Vietnam, Kissinger told Nixon that they were “a disgrace.”129 Still, Kissinger spent much of May meeting with college students and administrators, trying to calm nerves. He had little success.

  Kissinger’s trouble stretched from college campuses into his own office. During the deliberations over Cambodia, he had asked his staff to develop plans for the invasion. William Watts, a Kissinger staffer, told his boss that he objected to the policy and could not work on it. Kissinger told Watts that he was not surprised, since his views had always represented “the cowardice of the Eastern establishment.”130 Watts resigned.

  Despite the defections from his own staff, Kissinger’s biggest concern was the congressional response to Cambodia. He had long feared that Congress would simply cut funding for Vietnam or pass legislation demanding an immediate US withdrawal. He always saw his secret negotiations in Paris as a race against time. Time seemed to be running out when on May 1, Senator Frank Church (D-ID) declared that it was now time for the Nixon administration to “acknowledge the futility of our continued military intervention in Vietnam,” and admit “the impossibility of sustaining at any acceptable cost an anticommunist regime in Saigon, allied with, dependent on, and supported by the United States.” Vietnam was, Church concluded, “a war without end.” The time was right for “Congress to draw the line against an expanded American involvement in this widening war” and to begin “to put an end to it.”131 Senator John Sherman Cooper (R-KY) joined Church in introducing an amendment to demand the removal of all American troops from Cambodia by June 30 and requiring congressional approval before troops could be sent there again. The Cooper-Church Amendment was the first of many steps taken by Congress to claw foreign policy back from an imperious president. The next came from Senators George McGovern (D-SD) and Mark Hatfield (R-OR), who introduced their own amendment calling for the removal of all American troops from Vietnam by the end of 1970.

  Kissinger saw both efforts as an “unnecessary restriction” to Nixon’s role as commander in chief.132 Kissinger prepared Nixon for a May 4 meeting with members of Congress (the same day as the Kent State attacks), writing that the incursion into Cambod
ia was not a new war; rather, a response to the needs of the current war in Vietnam. “The action in Cambodia should not be viewed as an independent use of the US armed forces involved in the general question of the president’s responsibility to Congress under the power to declare war. It should be defended as a Presidential action under his Constitutional authority to take all reasonable action to protect our troops.” Kissinger concluded that the Cooper-Church Amendment was unconstitutional because “only the President is constitutionally empowered to deploy American forces in the field.”133

  Kissinger spent much of May lobbying Congress. He claimed that passage of Cooper-Church would signal to America’s allies that the United States could not be trusted to live up to its security guarantees. International credibility had always been important to him, but now it had taken on a sense of urgency. He told his aides that he feared Cooper-Church would pass and therefore undo all the progress that he had made in Paris.134 This was hyperbole, of course, because there had been no progress in Paris. Eventually, Kissinger did convince some Democrats to vote against the amendment, but the Nixon White House still feared its passage. The Hatfield-McGovern Amendment simply did not have the votes. Boxed into a corner by a bipartisan amendment, the president felt he had no choice but to slowly withdraw American troops from Cambodia. He announced that all US forces would be out of Cambodia by June 30, but he put a Nixon-like spin on it. US troops would be withdrawn, he explained, because the Cambodian invasion was “the most successful operation of this long and difficult war.” He explained that American and South Vietnamese forces had “captured and destroyed far more in war material than we anticipated; and American and allied casualties have been far lower than expected.” The invasion had done its job, he concluded; it had “eliminated an immediate danger to the security of the remaining Americans in Vietnam” and it had won “some precious time for the South Vietnamese.”135 Nixon made no mention of the protests or congressional opposition.