Fire and Rain: Nixon, Kissinger, and the Wars in Southeast Asia

by Carolyn Woods Eisenberg

Under such conditions there were few realistic options for the White House. Diplomacy remained their most promising approach, but this would require a more attractive negotiating package. By itself, Kissinger recognized that this was unlikely to produce a positive response. To tip the balance, he thought they would need an “influential and motivated” third party to play an “active role” in shaping Hanoi’s response.

United States was preparing a new “generous” peace proposal, but if this was rejected the administration would be forced “to go unilaterally.” Neither Saigon nor Hanoi had seen this draft proposal, but he willingly shared its main outlines with Gromyko. Among its features: complete withdrawal of US troops by a specific date, early elections following the peace agreement, an interim government to oversee preparation for elections, and full participation by the PRG in whatever mechanism was established for electoral purposes.

In the euphoria of the moment, it was possible to ignore the tens of thousands of North Vietnamese troops remaining in Laos, Cambodia, and just north of the DMZ, preparing for a possible spring offensive.

Beneath a blizzard of details, the remaining point of contention was the continuation of the Thieu government as part of a ceasefire.

For Kissinger this enemy stance seemed perverse. Surely the North Vietnamese ought to recognize that once the United States withdrew all its troops, there would be sufficient opportunity to change the regime.

Although not immediately known to the Americans, during Podgorny’s October visit to Hanoi, he had signed the largest military aid package his government had ever granted to North Vietnam, thus enabling another year of war. The Chinese had also promised the North Vietnamese an increase in weapons deliveries back in July, a fact that Kissinger had chosen to ignore.

they became more determined than ever to launch another large-scale offensive in the coming dry season.

Whether he won or lost, Hanoi should understand there would be no mercy.7 Do they realize “that they have to deal here with a man who if he wins the election will kick the shit out of them, and if he loses will do it even more?”

And he wouldn’t worry if there was “a little slop over” and they knocked out a few villages and hamlets.

But before the administration could “knock the shit” out of Vietnam, a new crisis exploded on their watch. In early December 1971, India and Pakistan went to war.

To Kennedy, this was too reminiscent of the tragedies he had observed in Vietnam: “Unfortunately, the face of America today in South Asia is not much different from its image over the past years in Southeast Asia. It is the image of an America that supports military repression and fuels military violence. It is the image of an America comfortably consorting with an authoritarian regime.”

Having underestimated for months the gravity of the situation in East Pakistan, Kissinger swung in the opposite direction: with Russian backing, the million-man Indian army was going to destroy all of Pakistan, he warned.14 With Nixon’s acquiescence, there ensued two frantic weeks of activity by the national security advisor based on exaggerated fears that the entire structure of his diplomacy might collapse, with a valued ally destroyed, the Soviet Union unleashed, and their new Chinese friends disillusioned by American weakness.

Syndicated columnist Jack Anderson began a series of articles, based on top secret government documents, which cast a harsh light on the administration’s decision-making. Anderson’s columns, which appeared in 700 newspapers, especially focused on Kissinger’s role in lying to the public, ignoring humanitarian concerns, and disrespecting his own government’s regional experts.

Of course, Nixon had no interest in reassessing his administration’s secrecy, only in protecting it against any further breaches. For him the operative question was, how had Jack Anderson obtained access to a cache of top secret documents? To find out who was responsible, he brought in the White House “plumbers.” Supervised by John Ehrlichman and including former CIA agent Howard Hunt and former FBI man Gordon Liddy, the Special Investigations Unit’s mission was to carry out politically sensitive investigations for the president.

Captain Rembrandt Robinson,

The unexplored question was what would motivate the Joint Chiefs of Staff to conduct such a massive and risky intrusion into White House affairs? A major factor was the extent to which Nixon and Kissinger had strayed from White House norms in their handling of high-level policy.

More than once during this period, Nixon wondered if he should get rid of Kissinger. But the national security assistant had made himself indispensable. Apart from his intellectual agility, Kissinger had demonstrated a willingness to break rules and to screen out sentimental worries about death and destruction that was as thoroughgoing as Nixon’s own. Like the president, Kissinger had the capacity for drowning out unpleasant truths in a torrent of words.

Moreover, the news from MACV was truly ominous. On January 20, General Abrams cabled the White House: “[T]he enemy is preparing and positioning his forces for a major offensive. It is apparent that the high-level decisions and planning for such an effort have already been made.”

In effecting this policy change, President Nixon had a serious domestic problem: an odd merger of a pro-Soviet left and a pro-Taiwan right, both “dedicated to preventing the President’s visit . . . or to contributing to its failure.”

As for Vietnam—as he had told Kissinger previously, the Nixon administration should draw a lesson from Charles DeGaulle’s actions in Algeria by withdrawing in one strike, “wholly and cleanly.”

Public opinion polls, which had shown the president trailing behind Democratic candidate Ed Muskie, revealed an immediate bump.

In the aftermath of his speech, Governor Rockefeller phoned Kissinger with a question: Why had they blown the secret channel?

In preparation for his heroic journey, the president was avidly reading up on the Chinese leadership. He was especially impressed by French writer André Malraux, whose Anti-Memoirs contained fascinating portraits of Mao and Zhao Enlai. As a young leftist in the 1920s, Malraux had met the two revolutionaries in China, and then decades later as Charles De Gaulle’s Minister of Culture he had returned there to interview Mao, whom he regarded as one of the towering figures of the twentieth century.

On the other hand, it was Zhou who was truly running the country.

There were also ample grounds for believing that his recent advice had been poor—both in handling Indira Gandhi and exaggerating Beijing’s willingness to intervene in Pakistan. Yet any thoughts of replacing him had dissipated as the China trip approached, for nobody but Kissinger seemed as awestruck by the prospect or as familiar with current Chinese thinking.

As Nixon headed west, Anthony Lewis of the New York Times was reflecting on the paradoxical nature of his trip.24 There were the “four million pounds of bombs still being dropped daily, the forests destroyed by chemical agents . . . the 100,000 casualties and refugees caused by American bombing every month,” all of which had been justified by the need “to contain China.” But with that objective disappearing, what rationale was there for the continued killing in Indochina?

Kissinger inquired if he could bring along his assistant, Winston Lord. “Won’t the Secretary (Rogers) be mad?” Zhou speculated. “We won’t tell him,” Kissinger replied.

They did not bring a translator or any member of Nixon’s security team. It scarcely mattered to the Americans that Mao was less impressive than advertised. He was clearly ailing and spoke with obvious difficulty.

“Those writings of mine aren’t anything,” Mao observed. “There is nothing instructive in what I wrote.” Nixon demurred. “The Chairman’s writing has moved a nation and has changed the world.”

But he had supported Nixon in the last election. “I like rightists,” he announced.

Latching on to this news, the president reflected that sometimes “politicians on the right could take steps that those on the left can only talk about.”

This inspired Kissinger to bring up a false notion he had been purveying for months—namely the alleged existence of a pro-Soviet left in the United States, w...

The one snafu was that Winston Lord had been included in the group shots, which would surely offend the Secretary of State.

But together, they must begin “the long march” toward “building a world structure of peace and justice” in which every nation, whether large or small, “has a right to determine its own form of government, free of outside interference or domination.”

He was also willing to share without reciprocity an update on American negotiations with the USSR and detailed information about the state of its military.

Zhou could surely understand that when Nixon returned to Washington, he must be able to say, “No secret deals have been made between the prime minister and myself on Taiwan.” Having clarified the matter, Nixon proceeded to make a secret offer.

More absurdly, there were Richard Nixon and his wife Pat at the ballet watching The Red Detachment of Women—a Cultural Revolution special produced by Mao’s wife Chiang Ch’ing, in which a despotic landlord beats a peasant woman, who runs off to join the communist revolution. Then, having won battle after battle, she returns with her comrades to slay the landlord. At the end everyone marches off “into the red sun with swords flashing, machine guns chattering, grenades exploding and, certainly blood all over.”

a nation like the United States, which so many countries around the world depended upon for their defense, were to abandon its allies, it “would cease to be a nation to have as a friend.”41 There was a certain irony in making this point when in Beijing—the capital of “Red China”—as he and Kissinger betrayed promises made to Taiwan decades earlier, offering concessions so controversial that their own State Department was being misled.

Only then was the Secretary of State provided with a complete draft. On first sight Rogers was noncommittal, but when he showed the text to his staff they were furious.

For Marshall Green, the most egregious mistake was a sentence confirming the American commitment to its treaties with Korea and Japan while not mentioning the Mutual Defense Treaty with Taiwan—a clear indication that the United States intended to bail on its obligation.

From the very beginning of the summit, Zhou seemed to assume his government held the upper hand, and he was not disappointed.

Nixon was genuinely captivated by the experience. Since taking office he had been eager for original statesmanlike acts, which the Vietnam War did not afford him. He had gone to China and met two of the most powerful revolutionaries of the twentieth century, with more people listening to their words than “in the history of the world.”

Chairman Mao had claimed to favor “rightists,” said he would have voted for Nixon, and even told him he found his book Six Crises compelling.

Kissinger contacted leading conservatives Senator Barry Goldwater and Governor Ronald Reagan. Senator Goldwater was skeptical: If the administration was still committed to Chiang Kai-Shek, then why not say so directly?49 By contrast, Reagan seemed willing to accept Kissinger’s assurances.50 “He was just bubbling” with appreciation, Kissinger reported. Even Nancy, “who’s got a hell of a lot more brains than he,” was impressed.

In the absence of the relevant information, Reagan trusted the White House. In fact, he thought of the visit as a great “television pilot,” which they should now “run as a television series.”

For Nixon and Kissinger, the China visit would become a psychological watershed—feeding their grandiose tendencies and self-deceptions, nurturing the conviction that anything they did was in the service of humanity and that nobody in Washington held a candle to their own brilliance.

While invoking confidentiality as to the substance of his conversation with Mao, Nixon waxed on about the Chairman’s directness, sense of humor, and ability to talk and think “big picture,” and about Zhou Enlai’s understanding and knowledge of world affairs, which surpassed that of many foreign leaders.

Still smarting from the week-long humiliation, Secretary Rogers quickly went off message. It was his impression that China “was a spiritless society, completely controlled by its leaders . . . everything was controlled—controlled TV, controlled radio, controlled summaries of world news.”

Here in a nutshell was an updated version of the old “credibility” argument—except that instead of fighting in Vietnam to deter the communist “superpowers” from acts of aggression, the new goal was to make a favorable impression on them and solidify a new friendship.

The dispersal of the North Vietnamese troops inside South Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia argued for intensified bombing of those areas rather than strikes inside North Vietnam itself, which would immediately ignite domestic criticism.