Nixon and Kissenger wound up adopting willy-nilly a multipronged approach toward ending the war. Their first and most important priority was reducing the total number of troops—from 536,000 when Nixon took office to 475,000 by the end of 1969, to 334,000 in 1970, to 156,000 in 1971, to 24,000 in 1972, and eventually, in 1973, to zero.
