Reckless: Henry Kissinger and the Tragedy of Vietnam

by Robert K. Brigham

  Nixon agreed. He told Kissinger “it was about time to rip them up, finish them off.”68 At a December 23 meeting at the White House, where Nixon finally informed Laird of the plan to invade Laos, the president blamed the Johnson administration for not taking this “bold action three years ago.”69 Laird was incensed that Kissinger had once again tried to cut him out of military planning in Vietnam, and would visit Kissinger at the White House on February 18, a week into the operation in Laos, to complain about his treatment. Recalling the visit in a phone conversation with Nixon later that day, Kissinger relayed that “Laird is a little bit jumpy,” but that he would be all right. “He’s calmed down a little?” Nixon asked. “Yes,” Kissinger assured the president, adding that Laird “is a funny guy” who “maneuvers like a maniac.” Nixon concluded that Laird was a “rascal,” but “by golly he’s our rascal.”70 Eventually, Laird supported the invasion plan, telling Nixon, “Let’s take a crack at it.”71

  Despite the Kissinger-Laird feud, planning for the Laos attack moved forward in January 1971. For the next month, Abrams provided the administration with the details of the complex operation. The administration hit a sticking point in deliberations in early February 1971, when Kissinger and Laird disagreed again, this time over the length of the operation. Laird suggested that the administration stick to the six- to eight-week time frame that had been planned all along, but Kissinger now insisted that there should be no fixed termination date: if all went well, he argued, the ARVN could stay in Laos indefinitely. Eventually, Laird relented. He understood that the president was committed to the attack plan as Kissinger presented it, and that there was little he could do to alter its time frame. He told Nixon, however, that if Hanoi reinforced its troops in Laos, the United States should remain flexible and maybe consider shortening the operation.72 His comments were prescient.

  For its part, the Saigon government was supportive of the Laos operation as well. General Coa Van Vien, chairman of the South Vietnamese Joint General Staff (JGS), had been proposing a similar plan since 1965, and Thieu himself initially backed the idea enthusiastically. When General Abrams presented the plan to Thieu and his top generals, they were optimistic, arguing that if the ARVN offensive did not take place in early 1971, it would be too late and it might not take place at all.73 Thieu told Abrams that “military movement into the Laos panhandle would shorten the war” and prove that Saigon could launch offensive military operations.74 South Vietnam’s ambassador to the United States, Bui Diem, later recalled that Thieu and his generals were fully supportive of the invasion, saying that “their enthusiasm came as no surprise,” since the ARVN had made strong military gains in 1970 and were full of confidence following the 1970 raids on Cambodia.75 Because of the Cooper-Church Amendment, recently modified and passed by both houses of Congress in January 1971, the United States would be able to offer only tactical air support. This would be the first major test of Vietnamization, requiring South Vietnamese troops alone to conduct primary operations as boots on the ground. To further incentivize the ARVN, all combat troops were given 100 South Vietnamese dong extra pay for each day they fought in Laos. Extra food allowances were also given to the families of all South Vietnamese troops engaged in the offensive, now called Operation Lam Son 719, named after the birthplace of Emperor Le Loi, who had defeated an invading Chinese army in the fifteenth century.76

  It is surprising that Kissinger pushed so hard to attack Laos when he knew it rested on the back of the ARVN. He had repeatedly stated that he was skeptical of the ARVN’s military capabilities and had complained relentlessly that Vietnamization had weakened the American position in Vietnam. He also had recent intelligence estimates suggesting Hanoi’s strength in the area was nearly twenty-five thousand troops and that two more North Vietnamese divisions were likely to arrive soon. Hanoi ordered that southern Laos be held at all costs, and the buildup there was evident to the NSC. There was also significant reason to believe that Hanoi could reinforce its divisions rapidly. Still, Kissinger pushed on, supporting the Laos invasion in key meetings with the president and NSC. Rogers was openly hostile to the plan, and Laird was cautiously optimistic at best. This meant that Kissinger was alone among Nixon’s civilian national security advisers in fully supporting the Lam Son operation. He even overrode the objections of several senior US military leaders in Washington, including army chief of staff General William Westmoreland, who had served as MACV commander for years. Westmoreland told Kissinger that the operation was too complex, required too much close air coordination and communication, for the ARVN to be successful.77

  But Kissinger found others who shared his enthusiasm for the Laos attacks, even if they were somewhat skeptical that the ARVN could handle the complex operations. He partnered with Admiral Thomas Moorer, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Abrams, and General Haig, all enthusiastically backing Lam Son 719, though the military men always concluded that success rested upon “all-out US military support of ARVN.”78 Even at this late stage of Vietnamization, the top American military leaders worried about the military effectiveness of the armed forces of South Vietnam.

  Eager to show that the ARVN was indeed ready to engage in offensive military operations against the North Vietnamese, Thieu announced to the press on February 8, 1971, that the ARVN had launched an attack inside Laos. Within a few days, however, the operation stalled. ARVN units found it difficult to move along Route 9, a road not designed for heavy armed personnel carriers and tanks. Abrams’s plan had called for the swift movement of ARVN troops toward Tchepone, but Thieu ordered his commander, General Hoang Xuan Lam, to stop his forces at the town of Ban Dong, barely 11 miles inside Laos. The ARVN First Armored Division failed to advance, even though paratroopers and South Vietnamese marines had landed north of Ban Dong to secure the ARVN flank in its attack on Tchepone. Thieu also ordered General Lam to cancel the operation altogether if he incurred three thousand casualties.79 There is some speculation that Thieu, who flew to Laos to inspect the problem personally, was apparently worried that high ARVN casualty figures in Laos would have a negative impact on the upcoming South Vietnamese elections, scheduled for that fall.80 Thieu, like his predecessor in the presidential palace in Saigon, also used the Airborne Division as coup protection, and therefore did not want it to fully engage in the operation against the North Vietnamese in Laos. Such was the intrigue in Saigon.

  By February 22, it was clear that something had gone terribly wrong. The PAVN had attacked key South Vietnamese positions along its northern flank, and virtually every South Vietnamese unit was engaged in heavy fighting against the enemy. Poor weather conditions and skilled PAVN antihelicopter artillery made a bad situation worse. Dozens of helicopters were lost and hundreds were hit with artillery fire. The American media reported that the operation had bogged down and that the ARVN were severely outnumbered. Laird held a press conference on February 24, assuring the press and the public that Lam Son 719 was not focused on any specific piece of ground or territory but, rather, was intended to “slow up, to disrupt, the logistics supplies, to cut off and to downgrade the capability of the North Vietnamese to wage any type of warfare in South Vietnam.”81

  Kissinger was conspicuously silent. Eventually, he sent a report to Speaker of the House Carl Albert (D-OK), claiming that the Laos attacks had been a success because Hanoi would now have fewer options against South Vietnam. Kissinger wrote, “The combination of enemy manpower and logistics setbacks resulting from the Lam Son operation make it unlikely that the enemy will mount major offensive activities in South Vietnam or Cambodia, despite evidence that the enemy planned to mount such offensives.”82 Behind the scenes, however, he worried that the ARVN was now in static defensive military positions and would not be able to take Tchepone, a goal that he had set as imperative to success. He confronted Moorer, who assured him that once the ARVN secured its bases, he would see swift action. Kissinger warned the admiral that the ARVN had better turn the battle around, because “if we get our
pants beaten off here I tell you we have had it in Vietnam for psychological reasons.”83

  Sensing that he was not getting a straight story from Moorer, Kissinger asked Westmoreland to assess the Laos operation. The general’s response: that Tchepone was too “ambitious a goal for the number of ARVN soldiers committed to the operation” and that many of the South Vietnamese commanders were “no fighters.”84 On February 26, Kissinger briefed Nixon on Laos, writing, “The North Vietnamese not only have moved substantial forces into the area, but they also seem to have [s]helved the cautious, economical style of fighting that has been the hallmark of Communist forces for most of the past two years.”85

  When Laird found out that his nemesis had once again gone behind his back and over Abrams’s head, he was furious. He reportedly claimed that Kissinger was as “jumpy as a cat” about the course of operations in Laos.86 Nixon was once again dragged into the dispute between his top national security officials just as the Lam Son operation was at its lowest point. He complained that all the infighting in Washington and Saigon was not helping the ARVN: “If the South Vietnamese could just win one cheap one, take a stinking hill… bring back a prisoner or two,” he grumbled.87 Kissinger blamed MACV for not pushing the ARVN hard enough. He instructed Ambassador Bunker to tell Thieu that he had to keep up the fighting in Laos until the end of April, or risk that Lam Son 719 would be the “last chance that the ARVN will have to receive any substantial US support on the scale now provided.”88

  Eventually, the ARVN did enter Tchepone, but only stayed long enough, in the words of President Thieu, “to take a piss.”89 With the help of massive US air strikes, the ARVN inflicted heavy losses on North Vietnamese troops, causing nearly thirteen thousand causalities. But the ARVN lost momentum and withdrew under heavy PAVN pressure. Later North Vietnamese claims to have killed more than 20,000 RVNAF troops were grossly exaggerated, but the truth was still hard to bear for Kissinger.90 Westmoreland confirmed that the United States lost about 150 helicopters and nearly 100 tanks and armed personnel carriers.91 Other sources suggested that South Vietnamese losses were much higher than reported, possibly as many as 7,500 casualties in the ARVN First Corps alone.92 “Our materiel losses are shocking,” Westmoreland warned Kissinger.93 When press crews captured photographs of the hasty ARVN retreat, giving lasting evidence of problems with Vietnamization, Nixon and Kissinger complained bitterly about the media coverage, agreeing that it was turning an ARVN military victory into a psychological defeat.94 Even though the ARVN incursion had accomplished some of its goals, and South Vietnamese forces had fared well against enormous odds, there was still a great deal of dissatisfaction in Washington.

  Nixon, however, was quick to declare a victory for the Laos operation. On April 7, he gave a television address to the nation, announcing, “Tonight I can report that Vietnamization has succeeded.” He continued, “Because of the increased strength of the South Vietnamese… and because of the achievements of the South Vietnamese operations in Laos I am announcing an increase in the rate of the American withdrawals.”95 He oversold the Laos operation because that is what he needed to do to sustain Vietnamization.

  The Finger-Pointing Begins

  Behind the scenes, however, the president and Kissinger blamed Abrams for overselling the ARVN’s capabilities and for the failures in Laos. The postmortem on Lam Son 719 suggested that General Lam only used about half of the combat troops available to him in the operation. Indeed, Nixon blamed Abrams for the entire debacle. He told Haldeman that he wanted to fire Abrams, but would not because it did not matter who the MACV commander was, in the face of US troop withdrawals.96 There are reports that Nixon even sent General Haig to Saigon to replace Abrams as head of MACV, but that the president changed his mind a few days later and Haig returned home.97 For Kissinger’s part, he declared that he “wouldn’t believe a word Abrams says anymore.”98 He also blamed the South Vietnamese armed forces for what he considered a debacle in Laos. In his memoirs, Kissinger writes, “It was a splendid project on paper,” but that it eventually failed because “South Vietnamese divisions had never conducted major offensive operations against a determined enemy outside Vietnam and only rarely inside.”99 Furthermore, in an effort to absolve himself of any responsibility for the problems in Laos, he argues that the Cooper-Church Amendment hindered the advisory role of the United States precisely when South Vietnam needed it most.

  Finally, Kissinger blames Nixon. He suggests that the president’s “reluctance to give orders to his subordinates” meant that he had forced Laird into accepting the invasion plan and supporting it in various NSC meetings. In that environment, Kissinger complains, no one was willing to stand up and question the efficacy of the Laos invasion.100 His penchant for reworking history is on full view with his rendition of Lam Son 719. Few supported the attacks with as much vigor as he did, but when things went wrong he cast blame far and wide. The record is clear, however, as General Bruce Palmer has explained, “The more immediate origins of the March 1971 incursion into Laos, namely the White House, illustrate how closely President Nixon and his NSC staff dominated the overall control and conduct of both the war and the closely interrelated negotiations to end the war.”101 Kissinger was at the center of Lam Son 719, and its limited successes meant that he now had to rely more heavily upon negotiations to secure a safe US withdrawal and Saigon’s future.

  But what Kissinger never fully appreciated, and what Laird had tried to impress upon him repeatedly, was that in a democracy military actions always have political consequences. He had hoped to slow the clock for Saigon by attacking Laos, but public pressure to end the war actually intensified as a result of the invasion. The same thing had happened following the Cambodian attacks the previous year. Each new military escalation brought a sharp public rebuke, and Kissinger never quite learned how to manage this reality. He had supported the tremendous gamble in Laos and now he had to rethink his strategy. His only recourse was to ask Hanoi for another meeting in Paris.

  Sensing that time was running out on the usefulness of such negotiations, Kissinger approached Nixon with a radical idea: that it was doubtful if the administration could keep up the pace in Vietnam without Congress “giving the farm away.”102 With each passing week, he told the president, Congress grew closer to passing an amendment to force the administration to bring the troops home all at once or to stop funding the Saigon government. (He had no idea, of course, that he played a major role in this scenario.) With one eye on Nixon’s desire for a supportive public, Kissinger proposed that the US should approach Hanoi once more with the most comprehensive peace offer yet. If Hanoi wanted to negotiate, the war could be over by Election Day. If Hanoi refused, there would be another military test in 1972 and the United States could launch air attacks against North Vietnam and PAVN sanctuaries to force Hanoi to bend the knee. Kissinger concluded that at the very least a new proposal would strengthen Nixon’s hand the year before the US presidential election at home and around the world.103

  On March 26, as events in Laos were coming into sharp focus, Nixon accepted Kissinger’s recommendation “to press for a settlement during the next secret meeting” in Paris.104 He understood that this might be his last, best chance for peace before the 1972 election, and he wanted no mistakes. He was also growing increasingly interested in the prospects of détente, the easing of strained Cold War relations with the USSR and China. He thought that his high-level trips to the Soviet Union and China would not only get the Vietnam War off the front pages of the newspapers, but might also lead to some diplomatic pressure on Hanoi from its powerful Communist allies. Kissinger and Nixon thought that Hanoi “must be concerned about any relaxation of tensions between the United States and its Communist allies,” thus making the spring proposal all that more attractive to the DRV.105 The president was squarely focused on his 1972 reelection campaign, and every decision on Vietnam mattered.

  Again, to Paris

  With Nixon’s full approval, Kissinger left for Paris
on May 31, carrying with him a new seven-point program that was “the most sweeping plan we had yet offered.”106 In exchange for the release of American POWs, Kissinger pledged to withdraw all US troops from South Vietnam. Although no specific deadline for their removal was included in his plan, he assured Hanoi that “when the Minister [Xuan Thuy] says that this fundamental proposal is acceptable… I will tell you the deadline for the troop withdrawal.”107 The other important aspects of the proposal included a cease-fire, international supervision of the agreement, and respect for the Geneva Accords of 1954 and 1962. Kissinger told Nixon that this seven-point plan would “clearly establish” whether Hanoi had “any interest at all in negotiations” or whether it would continue “to insist upon the overthrow of the Saigon government.”108

  But the most important aspect of the proposal was Kissinger’s offer to allow North Vietnamese troops to stay in South Vietnam following a cease-fire if Hanoi promised no more infiltration into South Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia.109 This was a major departure from the standstill cease-fire Kissinger offered privately in Paris on September 7, 1970, because there would be no formal mechanisms in place for monitoring troop movements once the United States withdrew. It was a smokescreen for a unilateral US troop withdrawal with no reciprocity from Hanoi. Kissinger thought that this was what Hanoi had been waiting for all along.