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In August 1945 Vietminh guerrillas seized the capital city of Hanoi. They fought for an independent Vietnam, with Ho Chi Minh as their president. During this uprising the French lost their colony and they wanted to regain their power. This started a long war in 1946. During this war, the former emperor of Vietnam, Bao Dai, was given help by the French to become the leader of the country. In July 1949 he set up the state of Vietnam (South Vietnam) with as new capital Saigon. America had already interfered with the war, but became more and more involved with it. In 1950 they wanted to help the south of Vietnam by sending over a military advisory group. This group was engaged in the training of South Vietnamese troops in the use of U.S. weapons. In the spring of 1954 the Vietminh won a big battle against the French at Ðien Biên Phu. Even with the help of America, France was unsuccessful, and they gave up the fight. Vietnam was partioned at the 17th parallel between North and South Vietnam. The north became a communist republic, while the south became a republic under the right wing dictator, Ngo Dinh Diem. On May 8, 1954 there was a peace conference in Geneva. The North and South Vietnamese delegates met with those of France, Britain, the Soviet Union, the United States, Communist China, Laos and Cambodia to discuss the future of Indochina. On this conference they decided that Vietnam was to be split up and that in 1956 3 elections should be held. The main intention was that Vietnam would after these elections once again become one country. However the Geneva truce crumbled. Diem decided not to hold free elections. This was to his benefit as his opposer, Ho Chi Minh would probably have won the elections. He in return started to train guerrillas to oppose the government forces in the south. These guerrillas, the Viet Cong (meaning: Vietnamese communist), began attacks on the U.S. military installations in 1957. The Americans still believed strongly in the domino theory. They were afraid that if Vietnam was to become communist, the countries and regions around Vietnam would also turn communist. Like when you push over a domino, it would trigger off a whole set of dominoes. The Americans felt it as their duty to prohibit this from happening. In April 1961 the U.S. signed a treaty of amity and economic relations with South Vietnam. In December of that year the first American troops arrived in Vietnam. A year later they had gone from 400 troops to 11.200 American troops in Vietnam. The Diem government was having substantial difficulty with coping with the unrest in South Vietnam. On November 1 1963, the Diem regime was overthrown in a military coup. Diem was executed in this coup and succeeded by an army general called Nguyen Thieu. He created, together with General Nguyen Cao Ky, a military council in 1965. During elections in 1967 Thieu became the president of South Vietnam. In 1963 Johnson became the new president of America. He believed strongly that communism planned to take control over the world. In the first week of August, 1964 there was a report of North Vietnamese torpedo boats attacking two U.S. destroyers in the Gulf of Tonkin. Johnson used this attack as an excuse to send a huge number of American servicemen and throw bombs in Vietnam. The U.S. senate passed the ‘Gulf Tonkin Resolution’ on August 7. This authorised the use of military power in Vietnam. With the approval of the Senate, Johnson ordered the bombing of the cities Hanoi and Haiphong. By the end of 1965 the American combat strength lay at 200.000 men. There were many attempts at negotiations, despite these, the war still went on, many bombings followed the two first. These fightings and bombings took along many deaths. The citizens of America started demonstrations. They saw the Vietnam war as a pointless war which was taking far too many lives. The American public had concluded that the war was unwinnable. More peace talks were held. In May 1968 there were peace-talks in Paris. North Vietnam, South Vietnam, America and the Viet Cong were included in the peace talks, however no progress was made. There were certain people who played an important role in the Vietnam War: Ngo Dinh Diem was born in 1901, he die in 1963, during the Vietnam War. He was the mandarin ruler of South Vietnam from 1957 till 1963. Diem was catholic, a nationalist, and anticommunist. Diem was hated in his country, that he lasted as long as he did was amazing. He had a very harsh regime, with which the people weren’t happy. When he started the forcing peasants off their land, alienation of the Buddhists, and government corruption, it became too much. Diem's generals murdered him in an armoured car, in November 1963. Thieu took over his place as leader of South Vietnam. Nguyen Thieu was born in 1923. As an infantry commander, Thieu fought in the French army against the Vietminh. He became the leader of South Vietnam in the period between 1965 and 1975. During the Vietnam War he got support from the U.S. in his battle to fight the North Vietnamese. There was a lot of corruption and incompetence in the Thieu government. His relative success depended on 2 factors: he prevented the military from mounting a coup, and maintained the confidence of the U.S., upon whose money and support Thieu depended. In 1973 he signed the Paris Peace Accord, but Thieu later opposed it, claiming the U.S. had abandoned Vietnam. Nixon was born in 1913 and died in 1994. He was the thirty-seventh president of the United States. Nixon had served two terms as vice president under Dwight Eisenhower before he himself ran for president in 1960, however, he was defeated by John F. Kennedy. He gave it a second try in 1968, during the Vietnam War. During the election campaigns he claimed that he had a secret plan which would make an end to the Vietnam War. The public believed that he was the man who could make an end to the war, and elected him. His secret plan was the "Vietnamization" policy which was supposed to reduce the U.S. combat role in Vietnam. He played a great role in the Vietnam War and the U.S. military involvement in the war. Nixon was elected for a second term as president, but he didn’t complete his second term due to the ‘Watergate scandal’. He resigned from presidency when he was faced with almost certain impeachment for covering up his administration's involvement in the break-in at the Democratic Party headquarters in the Watergate during the 1972 election campaign. While he was president, Nixon accomplished 2 significant things, firstly a peace accord between North Vietnam, South Vietnam and America. Secondly, he was able to reduce tensions with China and the Soviet Union. Henry Alfred Kissinger was born in 1923 in Fürth in Germany. In 1938 he was brought to the United States. In America he graduated from Harvard University. From 1943 to 1946 Kissinger served as an enlisted man in the U.S. Army. In 1957 he wrote his first book ‘Nuclear Weapons and Foreign Policy’. In this book he supported flexibility in U.S. foreign military activities; this book became very important in American foreign policy. He wrote the book during the time that he teached in the department of government at Harvard. In the 1950s and 1960s he served as an occasional foreign-policy adviser to Presidents Dwight D. Eisenhower, John F. Kennedy, and Lyndon B. Johnson; he also conducted studies for several government agencies. In 1969 Kissinger became the assistant of President Nixon for national security affairs. He became very important to president Nixon, acting as his military advisor during the Vietnam War. In January 1973 Kissinger's efforts finally resulted in an agreement establishing a cease-fire in the Vietnam War. For this achievement he shared the 1973 Nobel Peace Prize with the North Vietnamese diplomat Le Duc Tho. In August 1973 President Nixon appointed Kissinger secretary of state, he kept this position under President Ford. Ho Chi Minh was born in 1890, he died in 1969. He was the leader of North Vietnam and ‘guiding light’ in Vietnam’s struggle for independence and unification. He was more of a nationalist than a communist, Ho Chi Minh fought against 3 successive foreigners occupying his country: Japan, France, and the U.S.. He once predicted that the Vietnamese would lose many more men in the struggle, but that in the end it would make no difference: Vietnam would be free. He died before the war ended. The real name of ‘Le Duc Tho’ is Phan Dinh Khai. He was born in 1911 and died in 1990 in northern Vietnam. Le Duc Tho was a Vietnamese Communist leader. When the French were still fighting in Vietnam, he was twice imprisoned for his nationalist activities, this was in 1930-1936 and 1939-1944. He later rose to the top rank of the party leaders in North Vietnam. From 1968 to 1973 Le Duc Tho was the chief negotiator for North Vietnam at the Paris peace talks aimed at ending the Vietnam War. His role in these peace talks was good for the 1973 Nobel Peace Prize. Le Duc Tho, however, rejected the prize, stating that "peace has not really been established." When Nixon became president on the 20th of January 1969, it was to be his duty to make an end to the war in Vietnam. His goals were as follows: 1. Build up the South Vietnamese armed forces 3. Help the South Vietnamese extend their control over the countryside 4. Reduce the invasion threat by destroying enemy sanctuaries and supply lines in Cambodia and Laos 5. Withdraw half a million American troops from Vietnam in a way that would not bring about a collapse in the south. 6. Negotiate a cease-fire and a peace treaty, with as main goal to end the war honourably. 7. Demonstrate our willingness and determination to stand by our ally if the peace agreement was violated in Hanoi, and assure South Vietnam that it would continue to receive our military aid as Hanoi did from its allies, the Soviet Union and to a lesser extent China. The citizens of American saw Nixon as the "peaceful-president", they thought Nixon would be the one who would put an end to the war in Southeast Asia and bring American troops home. At the time Henry A. Kissinger was his most trusted foreign policy adviser. What Nixon and Kissinger did was redefine the American role in the world, suggesting limits to U.S. resources and commitments. Therefore, Nixon and Kissinger set out to end the war "honourably", whereby this meant that total withdrawal from Vietnam could not, in Nixon's eyes, be an immediate option. Nixon felt that this would be a total abandonment of the South Vietnamese who had "counted" on American aid in defending the South. Also Nixon and Kissinger had their eyes on Moscow and China. Whatever happened, if the U.S. troops were to be cleared form the war, it should be done in a manner that would maintain U.S. credibility with friends and enemy. In the first year of his presidency, Nixon was indeed the president he promised to be. He tried to scale down America’s involvement in the war by ordering soldiers home. The nation was happy with how things were going. He had done several attempts to make an end to the war. One attempt was by sending a secret letter to Ho Chin Minh in July 1969, urging him to settle the war, at the same time he threatened him that he would resume bombing if peace talks remained stalled, as they had remained since 1968. In August, Hanoi responded to this letter by repeating earlier demands for the Viet Cong participation of coalition in the government of South Vietnam. As these attempts lead to nothing, Nixon decided it was time for his ‘secret plan’. On November 3, 1969 Nixon initiated Johnson's previous policy of "Vietnamization" . The belief was that if the U.S. backed South Vietnam through economic aid as well as militarily (in this case meaning the training of South Vietnamese soldiers), the Saigon government in time would be able to resist a Communist take-over from the North. Nixon sent the message to the American public that this would ultimately reduce American casualties and help the South Vietnamese government establish a self-sustained military. By the end of 1969, the fighting strength in Vietnam had been reduced with 115,000 men, to 359,400 men. It was Nixon’s intention to boost the South Vietnamese army to over 500,000 men, so they could take over the fighting from the Americans. A civil war started in Cambodia, when on March 18 1970 the former prince had been deposed by General Lon Nol. To regain power, the prince aligned with Cambodian communists, known as the Khymer Rouge. Two days later, Cambodian troops, under General Lon Nol attacked Khymer Rouge and North Vietnamese forces inside Cambodia. When the White House took notice of this, they planed to help Lon Nol to resist the communists and the North Vietnamese. On April 30 Nixon announced U.S. and South Vietnamese incursion into Cambodia. This came just 10 days after Nixon announced that an additional 150,000 troops were going home. What Nixon did was what Johnson had been probably already planned of doing, expand the war into Cambodia. His own motivation might have been to buy time for Vietnamization in South Vietnam but at a time when the United States was trying to scale down it's role in Vietnam it was using precious resources and troops to fight in Cambodia. Nixon however told the public: ‘it is not for the purpose of expanding the war into Cambodia, but for the purpose of ending the war in Vietnam and winning the just peace we desire. He also told the public that such an action was needed to rout out Communist sanctuaries and supply routes, and help Cambodia in its fight against communism. The bombing in Cambodia evidently did nothing in the overall Vietnam War but devastate a neutral country. His attempt to buy time failed. Now that he had escalated the war, public opinion of President Nixon began to decline. Though he had ordered the withdrawal of a number of U.S. forces from Vietnam, his peace-talks were going nowhere, the public was becoming furious of the time allotment. When he became president he had promised to put an end to the war, but he had done nothing but worsen the situation. Yet Nixon kept saying that Vietnam was an area which the U.S. had an important role in, namely keeping Communism out of South Vietnam. Nixon and Kissinger both knew that America was stronger than North Vietnam, however North Vietnam still hadn’t fallen. Nixon and Kissinger believed it was only a matter of time, give them some more pressure and they’ll break. Kissinger expressed his stand as: "I refuse to believe that a little fourth-rate power like North Vietnam does not have a breaking point" He and Nixon were determined to keep South Vietnam from being defeated. Due to his invasion in Cambodia, those who had hoped that Nixon was to be the ‘peace president’, now saw him as a madman. There came many demonstrations, which lead to horrible incidents in America. During one of the demonstrations poorly trained National Guardsmen killed four students at Kent State University, on May 4. This made the protests much worse than anyone in Washington could have expected. There came a wave of demonstrations on hundreds of college campuses, which hindered America's higher-education system. The so-called ‘Kent State tragedy’ started a nation-wide campus disaster. Between May 4 and May 8, campuses experienced an average of 100 demonstrations a day, 350 campus strikes, 536 colleges shut down, and 73 colleges reported significant violence in their protests. On that weekend, 100,000 people gathered to protest in Washington. By May 12, over 150 colleges were on strike. As the Nixon administration tried to piece together in the weeks after the crisis, a dramatic decline in anti-war demonstrations occurred once the colleges closed. While things at home were just starting to get better, Nixon began to plan a new and even more vigorous offensive against the North Vietnamese. From January 30 till April 6, 1971, with American aid, 17,000 South Vietnamese soldiers attacked 22,000 North Vietnamese soldiers in Laos. By the end of the battle, South Vietnamese troops were down to 8000, they suffered from 7682 casualties. The North Vietnamese pursued the South Vietnamese back across the border. Their losses amounted to 20,000, their high casualty number resulted from American bombardments. However by the end of the offensive, they had 40,000 troops left due to massive reinforcements. Although the North Vietnamese won the offensive, Nixon declared after the battle; ‘Vietnamization has succeeded’. Nixon was concerned about the coming elections. He was afraid that he wouldn’t be re-elected now that there had been so many demonstrations against his actions. To get the public back on his side on January 25 1972, Nixon proposed an eight point peace plan for Vietnam, he also announced that Henry Kissinger had had a secret meeting in Paris with the North Vietnamese. But added that Hanoi still rejected Nixon’s overture. From March till September 1972, North Vietnamese attempt one last successful offensive to attack and conquer South Vietnam, known as the Eastertide offensive. The North Vietnamese had several reasons for planning this attack at this specific time: - They hoped that the offensive would harm Nixon during his presidential election year in America. - They hoped to stand a fair chance of winning as a result to the American troop withdrawal. - They hoped the strength of the anti-war movement in America would prevent a U.S. retaliatory response. - The poor performance of the South Vietnamese army in 1971, gave them the idea that they had more chance of winning. As a response to their first attack, Nixon authorised air strikes and naval gunfire to target North Vietnamese troops involved with the offensive. The North Vietnamese continued their attack, their strategy was to capture Quang Tri City, in the northern part of, Kontum in the midsection and An Loc in the southern part of South Vietnam. By capturing these cities, they hoped to be able to split South Vietnam, widening their territory. The consequence of the attacks was that the Americans started bombarding the cities of Hanoi and Haiphong. The reaction of the American public was as expected by the North Vietnamese, new protests erupted against the bombings. On May 1, the North Vietnamese took over Quang Tri City. In response to the ongoing offensive, Nixon initiated operation ‘Linebacker I’, the intensified bombings of harbours, roads, bridges and oil factories in North Vietnam. The powers of the North Vietnamese weakened. When they tried to capture Kontum, they were thwarted by the South. After this ‘small’ victory, the South Vietnamese troops tried to recapture Quang Tri city, which they eventually succeed in, in September, 4 months later. Whilst the Americans aided the South Vietnamese by means of bombardments, they were still withdrawing American troops. On August 23, the last combat troops finally departed from Vietnam. The South Vietnamese troops continued the fighting on land, while America fought from the air. The Eastertide offensive failed. It was the heaviest fighting in the entire war. For the North there were 100,000 military casualties, for the South, 40,000. Nixon realised how harmful the events were concerning the public opinion. He and Kissinger therefore desperately wanted the peace talks in Paris to lead to an agreement before Nixon’s trial as president ended. Throughout the Eastertide offensive, Henri Kissinger had peace talk meetings with Le Duc Tho. When, with a lot of concessions, an end was finally in sight, Le Duc Tho, decided not to go along with their plans. Those plans involved that the U.S. would allow North Vietnamese troops in South Vietnam to remain there, while North Vietnam dropped its demand for the removal of the South Vietnamese President, Thieu, and the dissolution of his government. In 1972 it was time to elect a new president. Nixon’s ‘anti-war campaign’ had without a doubt helped Richard Nixon win his first election. When Nixon became president people were convinced that he was the man who would put an end to the war in Vietnam. However in his term as president, the opposite happened. During his presidency the number of casualties increased as the bombings of Northern Vietnam continued once again. Instead of taking the peaceful road, he tried to make North Vietnam surrender to yet another rage of terror. Nixon now feared that the public would demand a much quicker withdrawal from Vietnam than he had planned. With this in mind, Henry Kissinger, asked the public to give Nixon six months, He said ‘If the war is not over then, you can come back and tear down the White House.’ Even though Nixon had broken his first promise, the public now still believed him when he said that he would make a swift end to the war. In the elections he was re-elected for his second term as president. After Nixon’s re-election, the peace talks in Paris resumed. However the talks once again lead to nothing. Nixon and Kissinger, aware of their promise made to the public, issued an ultimatum to North Vietnam that serious negotiations had to resume within 72 hours. When Hanoi did not respond, Nixon ordered operation ‘Linebacker II’, eleven days and nights of maximum force bombing against military targets in Hanoi. On December 18 the operation began. The so-called ‘Christmas bombings’ were widely denounced by American politicians, the public, the media, and various world leaders including the pope. On the eighth day of the bombings, North Vietnam agreed to resume the peace talks 5 days after the bombings had stopped. This operation was the most intense bombing campaign of the whole war. Over 100,000 bombs were dropped over Hanoi and Haiphong. The operation was quite successful, although it had cost 1318 civilian lives, the peace negotiations resumed, and on the second day of negotiating all the differences between Kissinger and Le Duc Tho had been resolved. Thieu was against the proposal that the U.S. would allow North Vietnamese, already in South Vietnam, to remain there. But when he was threatened by America that there would be a total cut-off of all American aid if he wouldn’t agree, he unwillingly accepted the agreement. In January 1973 the Paris Peace Accords were signed by the U.S., North Vietnam, South Vietnam and the Vietcong. Under the terms, the U.S. agreed to immediately halt all military activities and withdraw all remaining military personnel (there were only advisors for the South Vietnamese army left) within 60 days. The North Vietnamese agreed to an immediate cease-fire and releases all American POW’s (prisoners of war) within 60 days. An estimated 150,000 North Vietnamese soldiers at that moment in South Vietnam, were allowed to remain there. Vietnam was still divided. Vietnam was considered to be one country with two governments, one lead by President Thieu, the other lead by the Vietcong, pending future reconciliation. After the Paris Peace Accords were singed, the war still wasn’t over. Nixon himself was having troubles at home. Nixon got into trouble due to the ‘Watergate scandal’. As a result of this scandal he resigned his presidency. His successor was Gerald R. Ford. North Vietnam then tested his resolve by attacking Phuoc Long Province in South Vietnam in November 1974. Thereby violating the Paris Peace Accords. President Ford responded with diplomatic protest, but no military force. He decided not to use any military action in accordance with the Congressional ban on all U.S. military activity in the Southeast. But by not giving any military aid, America herself was violating the Paris Peace Accords, they had promised South Vietnam ‘severe retaliatory action’ in the event of North Vietnam violating the Peace Accords. During a press conference, president Ford stated that the U.S. was unwilling to re-enter the war. Without American aid, the South Vietnam was defenceless against an attack from the North. City after city was captured by the North Vietnamese. Under pressure of the North Vietnamese Thieu resigned and exhiled to Taiwan, condemning the Paris Peace Accords and the United States, for not keeping their promise. Duong Van Minh became the new president of South Vietnam. President Ford continued to deny military aid, but when the Saigon was encircled by the North Vietnamese, he ordered helicopters to evacuate South Vietnamese and American marines from the city. On April 30 1975 the last American marines were evacuated. The North Vietnamese took over the city. President Minh broadcasted a message of unconditional surrender. The war was over Many people argue over the question ‘Why did America loose the war in Vietnam?’ Many blame former president Nixon for this outcome. Nixon had his own idea of the war. He acted upon his own opinion, regardless to what the public thought of his actions. He stated this as follows: "I would rather be a one-term President and do what I believe is right than to be a two-term President at the cost of seeing America become a second-rate power and see this nation accept the first defeat in its proud, 190-year history," If Nixon were to have acted upon what the public thought right, it would have placed real constraints on what forms his policy could take. The people were already tired from the war by the time Nixon took the oath of office in 1969. The fact that people wanted a quick end to the war, wasn’t in conformity with Nixon’s idea of a ‘honourable peace’. ‘He had to cope with dwindling support for an intensified effort, and incessant demands for a negotiated settlement. Somehow Nixon had to bring public opinion, the news media, Congress, and the bureaucracy along as he walked a tightrope between a negotiated settlement and unilateral withdrawal.’ Nixon's task was made even more difficult by his use of the seemingly contradictory methods of troop reduction and applications of intense firepower to force the North Vietnamese to accept what he considered honourable peace terms Although Nixon hardly paid attention to what the public thought of his actions, during the war, he still tried his best at getting the public opinion on his side. By means of speeches and polling results he tried to convince the citizens of America that what he was doing was right. On November 3, 1969 Nixon addressed the American public with a television appearance to outline his Vietnamization plan. This was scheduled between two anti-war moratoriums. There had been many marches in America, the public pleaded for an end to the war. In his speech he asked the ‘silent majority’ not to listen to this ‘vocal majority’. He said ‘the more divided we are at home, the less likely the enemy is to negotiate in Paris…North Vietnam can not defeat or humiliate the United States. Only Americans can do that.’ After his television appearance there had been a lot of criticism from people who didn’t believe in Vietnamization. Fifteen days after his speech, the White house gave David Derge, who was the administration’s private pollster, the instruction to include the following text in his next poll: ‘There has been considerable discussion surrounding President’s Nixon’s speech on Vietnam Monday night. Criticisms have been made by some commentators who disagree with the President in his views. 63 Percent of respondents agreed with the president's views on Vietnam, while only 15 percent concurred with the commentators’. They published this in order to convince the public that what Nixon’s policy was good, and in order to withstand any further criticism. Nixon claimed that ‘the public hears the poll results and that makes an impact on them’ At first Nixon was quite popular with the public. He promised both troop withdrawals and an ‘honourable peace’. However he did not follow this plan at all in the months and years to follow. After January 1970 his plans already started to deteriorate. The reason for this being that Nixon only wanted to withdraw troops under 3 criteria: -Success in the training of South Vietnamese armed forces However in January 1970 there were worsening conditions in Cambodia and Laos. The enemy activity increased, nevertheless, on April 20 1970 he announced that he would be sending 150,000 military personnel home in the next 12 months. But just 10 days after this announcement he had sent U.S. and South Vietnamese troops into Cambodia. The circumstances at that time didn’t meet up to all 3 of his criteria. Reason enough for Nixon to forget his promise and get the troops more involved in the war than getting them out. There were in that time many polls that looked at the public’s opinion concerning the activities of the president. The internal polls of the White House came forth with mostly positive results, in favour of the president. A June 1970 poll stated that 58% of the Americans agreed with Nixon’s move in sending the troops into Cambodia. However many other polls stated that there was a widespread questioning of the operation. It was however not due to forgery of the results, that the White House poll results differed so much from other results, but it was the wording of the questions which gave such high results in favour of the president. The White House polls would for instance ask interviewees ‘Do you support the president’s action to end the war in Vietnam, to avoid getting into war with Cambodia, to protect U.S. troops?’ Most answers would be ‘yes’ even though these people didn’t support the idea of the U.S. not sending troops home. In this way the White House seemingly got more support form the public. In reality the general public opinion was becoming worse for Nixon because of his prolonging of the war. He was loosing face, and when the new elections were coming up, he needed the publics support back. To achieve this he continued with the withdrawals of troops, offered new peace terms and exposed the fact that Henry Kissinger had been conducting secret negotiations with North Vietnam in Paris. The withdrawal of troops made the remaining U.S. and South Vietnamese troops vulnerable to attack. Nixon stood for a difficult choice, either withdraw all American troops and let the South Vietnamese defence crumble, or authorise a massive attack. His second option however might cause public of America to loose all trust in him. Nixon decided to go for the last option. He went through with the bombing of Hanoi and the mining of the Port of Haiphong. Polls with the American public, against all expectations, came out positive. The reason for this might have been that during these bombings, Nixon was continuing with withdrawing troops. The bombardments were from the air, so there was little chance of American soldiers getting injured. In 1972 Nixon was re-elected. It was very clear though that public patience on Vietnam was running out. They desperately wanted an end to the war. In February 1973 the Paris Accords were signed. Through the Paris Peace Accords, Nixon wanted to achieve peace with honour. Polling influenced the White House and its decisions in two ways. The White House used symbolic polling to maximise its freedom of manoeuvre in trying to achieve peace with honour. And at the same time, however, its public opinion intelligence capacity kept the administration fully aware of the limits imposed by the public's war weariness. Nixon was certainly not the type to do exactly what the public demanded, but whenever he took aggressive actions, public opinion constrained him to take those actions even further. Nixon succeeded in the battle to buy time, but failed to build sufficient political support at home so he could fulfil his initial requirements for peace with honour in Vietnam. In the end, Nixon’s requirements for an honourable peace had to change in order to come to a quick agreement with North Vietnam. This proves just how important the public is in warfare. Even president Nixon, who had many polling results in his favour, had to change his ideals and demands for peace, just so he could please the public. After making this project I have come to the conclusion that Nixon did indeed play a very important role in the Vietnam War. A very important factor in which type of role Nixon had, lies in the influence from the public. Due to a lack of public support Nixon could not handle the war the way he initially wanted to. Nixon didn’t see how important it was to get the public on your side. He attempted to use poles to show people that many others did indeed believe that what he was doing was right. With this method he was able to suppress major uprisings of criticism for some time, but not for the entire war. It could be argued that if Nixon would have listened to the public, the war might have had a different outcome. If this outcome would be better for America can still be questioned. In the end America lost the war against Vietnam. At that time, it wasn’t Nixon who was president of America, it was Ford. He was very much against the use of military force whatsoever. When North Vietnam violated the Paris Peace Accords, South Vietnam actually counted on the help which America had promised to give when they signed the Accord. Ford denied them of this help and thereby gave North Vietnam an easy victory. The difference between the two presidents was that Ford believed in what the public thought, whereas Nixon didn’t. Ford did what Nixon didn’t do, listen to the public. This however proved not to be very effective. During Nixon’s presidency, a Peace Accord had been signed. Nixon achieved this by using force, force which the public was against. When he started with the use of force, the public became angry, it wasn’t only Nixon who made them angry, but warweariness. Even though Nixon wasn’t the type of president to listen to what the public had to say, when the end of the war stayed out, it was impossible for him to ignore the public’s demands entirely. During his second term as president he had for the second time promised a quick end to the war, this time he was determined to keep his promise. It was time for concessions, there came peace, but not with honour. If he hadn’t made these concessions and went on with fighting till the end, the war might have taken a lot longer, but eventually America had to be able to hit North Vietnam’s ‘breaking point’. Nixon however never got a chance to get that far. Nixon used the military in a way that not many other presidents would dare. Was it better to use force than settle things peacefully? The problem is, North Vietnam wouldn’t allow the war to be settled peacefully in any other way than under their terms. This would be unexceptable for any president. Nixon was almost forced to use the military against Vietnam. He had high aims, he thought it very important to achieve peace with honour. This would not only make an end to the war, but also maintain U.S. credibility with friend and foul. He knew that there was no way to achieve peace with honour by handling things in a peaceful manner. The public saw the war as pointless, politically the war was important. Politicians were afraid of the spreading of communism. They saw America as the only country who could prohibit this from happening, and therefor saw it as their duty to do so. Nixon should have gotten some space to actually succeed in doing this. I think that Nixon handled the war very well. It isn’t good if a president uses the public as his advisor. A president should take a political stand, as Nixon did. The public was angry, the war has taken too long, too many lives and was in their eyes pointless. What they said or thought had much to do with their feelings. When they were angry they would easily disapprove of any action of a president that might in some way prolong the war or increase America’s involvement. If America didn’t want to help South Vietnam with the use of military, they shouldn’t have gotten involved with the war in the first place. Nixon didn’t get America involved in the war, Kennedy did. When Nixon became president the war had been going on for some time, he had to finish what Kennedy started. Only if he would go along with all the terms demanded by the North Vietnamese, just to suit the public, the whole war would have been a total waste. Nixon was provided with all the political motivations to use military force against North Vietnam. I think it is therefor a pity that in the end he listened to the public and made concessions. If he hadn’t done this, North Vietnam might have ‘broken’ and America might then have won the war. Bibliography: Book list Nixon A Study in Extremes of Fortune By: Lord Longford ISBN: 0 297 77708 4 The hidden history of the Vietnam war By: John Prados ISBN: 1 56663 079 7 The origins of The Vietnam War By: Anthony Short ISBN: 0 582 49080 4 The Modern World 1914 to 1980 By: Philip Sauvain ISBN: 0 7487 0049 8 Internet www.encarta.com Word Count: 6353
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