The Last Casualty? Richard Nixon and the End of the Vietnam War, 1969–75

2007 ◽  
pp. 229-259
Author(s):  
Lloyd Gardner
Keyword(s):  
Vietnam War ◽  
Richard Nixon ◽  
The Vietnam War

The Vietnam War, 1965–1973

2019 ◽  
pp. 17-63
Author(s):  
James H. Lebovic
Keyword(s):  
National Security ◽  
Vietnam War ◽  
Johnson Administration ◽  
Political Dimension ◽  
Henry Kissinger ◽  
Air War ◽  
Richard Nixon ◽  
The Us ◽  
The Vietnam War ◽  
North Vietnam

The Vietnam War followed a biased decisional pattern. The Johnson administration, with Robert McNamara as secretary of defense, committed early to a military solution. It extended the US mission to include a full-blown air war (Rolling Thunder) that was true to neither a political nor a military strategy, and the administration fought a full-blown ground war without concern for the war’s critical political dimension. Then, when reaching its limit, the administration sought mainly to manage the US mission’s costs, despite the apparent success of a pacification strategy. Finally, when victory proved elusive, Richard Nixon and his national security adviser, Henry Kissinger, escalated the war by invading Cambodia, supporting the invasion of Laos, and initiating the Linebacker bombing campaigns over North Vietnam. They nonetheless prioritized an exit from the conflict, as registered in the terms of the 1973 Paris Peace Accord.

Returns of War

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Long T. Bui
Keyword(s):  
Vietnam War ◽  
Military Policy ◽  
The South ◽  
American Military ◽  
Richard Nixon ◽  
South Vietnam ◽  
Political Environments ◽  
The Vietnam War ◽  
The Military ◽  
Social Landscapes

Returns of War: South Vietnam and the Price of Refugee Memory reassesses the legacy of the Vietnam War through the figure of South Vietnam. More specifically, it offers a reinterpretation of the military policy of Vietnamization. In 1969, Richard Nixon pledged to “Vietnamize” the regional armed conflict in Indochina, placing all responsibility for winning the war onto the South Vietnamese—a “transfer” of power that ended in the swift collapse of the south to northern communist forces in 1975. It recognizes that Vietnamization and the end of South Vietnam signals not just an example of flawed American military strategy but an allegory of power, providing subterfuge for U.S. imperial losses while denoting the inability of the Vietnamese and others to become free, modern liberal subjects on their own. The main thesis of this book is that the collapse of South Vietnam under Vietnamization complicates the already difficult memory of the Vietnam War, pushing more for a better critical understanding of South Vietnamese agency and self-determination beyond their status as the war’s ultimate “losers.” The denial of a viable independent future for South Vietnam produces a compensatory demand for increased South Vietnamese representation, knowledge production, and memory-making. Through a multi-method examination of different case studies, from refugees returning to the homeland to refugee anti-communist politics to refugee participation in the U.S. War on Terror, the book pushes scholars to consider not simply the ways refugees are Vietnamese but how they are Vietnamizing their social landscapes and political environments.

Fulbright's Circle

Worldview ◽  
1973 ◽  
Vol 16 (2) ◽  
pp. 7-12
Author(s):  
Daniel Yergin
Keyword(s):  
Vietnam War ◽  
Foreign Relations ◽  
Henry Kissinger ◽  
White House ◽  
Richard Nixon ◽  
Lyndon Johnson ◽  
The Vietnam War ◽  
Bay Of Pigs

Bill Fulbright has suffered for some time from a Cassandra complex," said a senatorial colleague of the Chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee. With reason enough, for Fulbright has spent more than a decade warning of the dangers that come from the arrogance of power. In 1961 he advised John Kennedy against the Bay of Pigs invasion. Throughout 1965 and 1966 he warned Lyndon Johnson not to escalate the Vietnam war— and was rewarded with whispered rumors about his mental balance.But on one occasion, although Fulbright's advice was good, his prophecy was wrong. One pleasant spring afternoon in 1969 he went to the White House for an amiable two-hour discussion with Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger.

The Loser

2019 ◽  
pp. 15-28
Author(s):  
Aram Goudsouzian
Keyword(s):  
Vietnam War ◽  
Republican Party ◽  
The Political ◽  
Right Wing ◽  
Grassroots Politics ◽  
Richard Nixon ◽  
The Vietnam War ◽  
Urban Disorder ◽  
At Home

Chapter Two charts the political odyssey of Richard Nixon through the primary season in the spring of 1968. It traces how he consciously tacks between the moderate wing of the Republican Party and right-wing grassroots politics. After getting labelled a political “loser,” he crafts a comeback over the course of the mid-1960s, positioning himself as the inevitable nominee in 1968. His campaign thrives as it plays on voter anxieties about urban disorder at home, and the Vietnam War abroad.

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