NORTH VIETNAMESE OPINION IN PARIS

NEGOTIATIONS - VIETNAM WAR PEACE TALKS

Le Duc Tho and Henry Kissinger shake after their 1972 peace agreement.
Like most prolonged conflicts, the Vietnam War produced several peace proposals
and several rounds of peace talks. These attempts to forge a working peace were
initiated by the United States, North Vietnam and by other nations acting as
mediators. Proposals for ceasefires and peace deals flowed back and forth
regularly, even when fighting was at its worst. Some of this negotiation was
conducted publicly, some in secret through diplomatic communications or through
‘back channels’. The period 1964 to 1972 saw at least five different peace
proposals of any significance, along with numerous third-party offers that were
either disregarded or rebuffed. The significant number of peace proposals and their
eventual – and some may say inevitable failure – reveals much about the nature of
the Vietnam conflict and its chief combatants.

One significant problem was that the United States and North Vietnam approached
peace talks with different objectives. For the Americans, the peace process was a
way of extricating themselves from Vietnam, while avoiding the humiliation of
defeat. For the North Vietnamese, whose ultimate goal was national reunification,
peace talks were another military tactic, a device to obtain breathing space while
denying and frustrating the enemy. Both Hanoi and Washington claimed to be
receptive to peace talks and a negotiated peace deal. There was method in this too:
if peace negotiations failed or broke down, this could be attributed to the
belligerence or pigheadedness of the other side. In late 1966 Ho Chi Minh declared
that North Vietnam was willing to “make war for 20 years” – but Ho added that if
the Americans “want to make peace, we shall make peace and invite them to
afternoon tea”. US president Lyndon Johnson’s public statements also expressed a
willingness to negotiate with Hanoi. On two occasions Johnson even issued peace
proposals to “old Ho” through the press.
The first major proposal came from North Vietnamese premier Pham Van Dong in
April 1965. Pham’s four-point plan called for a return to the provisions of
the Geneva Accords of 1954, along with the withdrawal of US military personnel:
“1. Recognition of the basic national rights of the Vietnamese people – peace,
independence, sovereignty, unity, and territorial integrity… The U.S. government
must withdraw from South Vietnam U.S. troops, military personnel, and weapons of
all kinds, dismantle all U.S. military bases there, and cancel its military alliance with
South Vietnam. It must end its policy of intervention and aggression in South
Vietnam…

2. Pending the peaceful reunification of Vietnam, while Vietnam is still temporarily

divided into two zones, the military provisions of the 1954 Geneva agreements on
Vietnam must be strictly respected…

3. The internal affairs of South Vietnam must be settled by the South Vietnamese
people themselves, in accordance with the program of the NLF, without any foreign
interference.

4. The peaceful reunification of Vietnam is to be settled by the Vietnamese people in

both zones, without any foreign interference.”
US Secretary of State Dean Rusk, responding to Pham’s proposals, declared that
he could live with points one, two and four – but he interpreted point three as a
demand for Viet Cong control of South Vietnam, a condition the United States
could not accept. Rusk claimed that he could find no member of the North
Vietnamese government willing to “give up their aggressive ambitions or to come
to a conference table”, so he would place his trust in “our own men in uniform”.
Other peace proposals and planned ceasefires were floated during 1966 and 1967,
though none were taken seriously.

An American news report on the Paris peace talks, December 1968

The first significant attempt at peace talks came in May 1968 with an informal
meeting between US and North Vietnamese envoys in Paris. Each made demands
of the other before any serious peace negotiations were to commence: Hanoi
wanted a halt to all US bombing runs over their country, while the Americans
insisted on a de-escalation of Viet Cong activities in South Vietnam. Five months
later Lyndon Johnson agreed to suspend all bombing sorties over North
Vietnamese territory, paving the way for formal peace negotiations. In January
1969, five days after Richard Nixon was sworn in as US president, negotiators
from Washington flew to Paris for peace meetings with representatives of North
and South Vietnam and the NLF.

North Vietnamese delegates in Paris, January 1969

The Paris peace talks would last more than four years. They were plagued with
setbacks and breakdowns from the outset. The first meetings were marred by
disputes over procedure, mainly because delegates from Hanoi and the National
Liberation Front (NLF) refused to recognise the legitimacy of the South
Vietnamese government. There was even bickering over the types of furniture to
be used. The North Vietnamese demanded the withdrawal of US troops, the
dissolution of the South Vietnamese government and a return to the principles of
the Geneva Accords. The US insisted that Hanoi recognise the sovereignty of
South Vietnam. The two sets of demands were so irreconcilable that compromise
or agreement seemed impossible. By the autumn of 1969 the Paris talks had fallen
into a monotonous and unproductive routine, where all sides restated their position
but refused to concede ground.

“Kissinger knew that the United States could not simply declare it a mistake and
withdraw. Other US commitments in the world would then be brought into serious
question. The US needed to get out of Vietnam with its credibility intact,
something Nixon called ‘peace with honour’. The Paris peace talks, Kissinger was
certain, would never achieve that goal. They were too public, too exposed to media
scrutiny, and too politicised.”
James S. Olson, historian
The lack of progress in Paris saw the White House seek other avenues for peace.
Nixon instructed National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger to begin separate
talks with the North Vietnamese – without involving or informing either South
Vietnam or America’s military allies in Vietnam. In August 1969 Kissinger began
meetings with Le Duc Tho. For three years these secret negotiations also failed to
produce any significant result. This changed in October 1972, in the wake of
Hanoi’s failed Easter Offensive. A more compliant Le Duc Tho suggested to
Kissinger that North Vietnam was willing to consider an agreement recognising the
government of South Vietnam, so long as it included processes for free elections
and political reform. The pair drafted a treaty, which was completed in late
October 1972 and unveiled by Kissinger, with much fanfare, at a White House
press conference.
Henry Kissinger, who played a pivotal role in the 1973 peace deal
Kissinger and Le Duc Tho’s treaty was enthusiastically received around the world.
After almost five years of impasse, it appeared as if a workable peace for Vietnam
was in sight. But the South Vietnamese president, Nguyen Van Thieu, was
outraged by the draft treaty, believing it placed his country at the mercy of the Viet
Cong. Thieu’s refusal to accept the treaty almost caused the North Vietnamese to
withdraw; only another massive US aerial bombardment of North Vietnam,
ordered by Nixon, kept them at the negotiating table. Thieu eventually agreed to
the treaty under pressure from Washington, which pledged to back him if Hanoi
broke the terms of the agreement. In mid-January 1973, Nixon ordered a
suspension of US bombing of North Vietnam, as final negotiations commenced.
The Paris Peace Accords were formally signed 12 days later (January 27th 1973)
by representatives of the United States, North and South Vietnam and the NLF.
Kissinger and Le Duc Tho were both hailed as heroes for securing a peace
agreement – though not in all quarters. In September 1973 Nixon elevated
Kissinger into his cabinet, appointing him Secretary of State. Three months later
Kissinger and Le Duc Tho were awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. This created a
storm of controversy, given the role both men had played in perpetuating and
escalating the war. The New York Times dubbed it the “Nobel War Award”, while
American anti-war figure George Ball quipped that “the Norwegians must have a
sense of humour”. Le Duc Tho subsequently declined his Nobel Prize; he
described it as a “bourgeois sentimentality” and refused to accept it while his
country was still divided and at war. Kissinger accepted his award but fearing a
massive protest by anti-war demonstrators, chose not to attend the presentation
ceremony. Kissinger later donated the award’s cash component ($US1.3 million)
to charity and returned his gold medal to the Nobel Prize committee.

1. There were several attempts at peace talks and peace agreements during the
Vietnam War, initiated by the major combatants as well as third parties.
2. The different objectives and attitudes of the United States, South Vietnam, North
Vietnam and Viet Cong made reaching compromises very difficult.
3. The most significant peace talks were held in Paris and commenced in 1968.
These stalled almost immediately, due to disputes over legitimacy and procedure.
4. In August 1969 Nixon’s National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger began
secret peace talks with Hanoi’s Le Duc Tho. These also achieved little until
Hanoi’s failed Easter Offensive.
5. The Paris Peace Accords were eventually signed in January 1973. Kissinger and
Le Duc Tho were controversially awarded the Noble Peace Prize for their role in
facilitating peace.

https://alphahistory.com/vietnamwar/vietnam-war-peace-talks/

Stuck in Endless
Preliminaries:
Vietnam and the
Battle of the Paris
Peace Table,
November 1968-
January 1969
DR JEFFREY MICHAELS

In the anti-war film Go Tell the Spartans, set in Vietnam in 1964, the conflict is
described as ‘going nowhere, just around and around in circles’. Perhaps a slightly
more accurate representation can be found in the work of Franz Kafka, such as Der
Prozeß, in which his protagonist seems to make progress but the process itself is
endless with the goal sought remaining as futile and elusive as ever. For the United
States, diplomatic efforts to reach a peaceful conclusion to the Vietnam War
reflected this – lots of discussions that merely led to more discussions, as well as
discussions about having further discussions – whilst the war continued in the
background, and was eventually lost.

With the American escalation of the war in 1965, numerous diplomatic efforts to
achieve conflict resolution existed alongside the military campaign. However, despite
the veneer of seeking peace, the dominant interest of the key parties was to
postpone substantive peace talks until there was a major breakthrough in the military
situation. In July 1965, President Lyndon Johnson told reporters ‘We are ready now,
as we have always been, to move from the battlefield to the conference table’. He
also noted, ‘Fifteen efforts have been made to start these discussions with the help
of 40 nations throughout the world, but there has been no answer’. These efforts
included peace feelers by intermediaries but they did not include conveying any
substantive negotiating position other than to propose the prospect of talks. United
Nations Secretary General U Thant also attempted to get Hanoi to negotiate.
However, US officials rejected a North Vietnamese suggestion for negotiations in
Rangoon. Johnson also tried to combine bombing halts with offering peace feelers,
but the North Vietnamese were unwilling to negotiate under these conditions. In
some cases the US offered to negotiate but had these overtures rejected. In other
cases, the North Vietnamese offered to negotiate, but the Americans then rejected
these proposals as well. Despite many such efforts which occurred over the course
of 1964-1968, neither side was willing to come to the bargaining table.

The changing military situation was the most important factor that led to progress in
starting the process of formal negotiations. After the Tet Offensive was launched in
January 1968, the US and South Vietnam had been militarily successful in the weeks
thereafter both at blunting a Communist uprising in the South as well as inflicting
massive losses on the National Liberation Front (better known as the Viet Cong, and
officially rebranded in 1969 as the Provisional Revolutionary Government or PRG).
Nevertheless, the domestic political repercussions in the US were so grave that
Johnson supported more active efforts at disengagement and negotiations to end the
war. Meanwhile, the North Vietnamese and NLF leadership recognized that no
immediate military victory or popular uprising in the South was imminent. It was set
against this backdrop that these adversaries came to Paris in 1968 to begin formal
negotiations. Yet the decision to pursue a diplomatic track to end the war should not
be confused with a sense of urgency to bring the conflict to an end.

The location for the proposed talks proved to be the first hurdle. From the end of
March until early May 1968 there was a drawn-out exchange between the US and
North Vietnamese on this topic. Unlike during the Korean War, where negotiations
had originally started behind Communist lines at Kaesong (the North Koreans and
Chinese had rejected the US proposed alternative of a Danish hospital ship) and
later moved to nearby Panmunjom, there does not seem to have been much interest
in holding the talks anywhere in Vietnam. Although Johnson had stated that US
officials would meet with the North Vietnamese ‘anywhere, anytime’, this was not
entirely a factual statement. At first, the Americans proposed Geneva, where the
1954 talks had been held that resulted in the division of Vietnam into North and
South. Hanoi rejected this on the grounds that it had ‘unhappy memories’. It then
suggested Phnom Penh. This was rejected by Washington. Instead, the US offered 5
other capitals in Southeast and South Asia, including New Delhi, which was favoured
by Saigon. Hanoi rejected these options and proposed Warsaw, which the US also
rejected. The US then countered by proposing 9 capitals all of which were again
rejected. Ultimately, after weeks of bargaining, Paris was chosen as the site to hold
preliminary talks (officially referred to as ‘official conversations’ to avoid being
confused with ‘negotiations’). The French Government assisted by providing a
location for talks, the Centre for International Conferences – formerly the Hotel
Majestic, which also served as a German military headquarters during the
Occupation.

Having cleared this hurdle, another emerged. The question of ‘who’ would be invited
to the talks also proved problematic. One option was for a bilateral meeting between
the representatives of the US and North Vietnam, thereby excluding both the South
Vietnamese and the NLF. However, as the US purpose in Vietnam was to bolster the
independence of South Vietnam, it could not be seen negotiating on its behalf (rather
embarrassingly the US delegation at the Korean armistice talks outnumbered the
South Koreans present, whereas the North Korean delegation outnumbered the
Chinese). For the Americans, equal participation by the South Vietnamese was
essential for the official talks, though they were content to deal bilaterally with the
North Vietnamese at the ‘secret talks’ that were later held. Hanoi and the NLF denied
recognizing the Saigon government, but they nevertheless agreed to their
participation. Meanwhile, the North Vietnamese insisted that the NLF participate –
again at the official talks but not the secret talks — since they were being held up as
an indigenous and independent Southern insurgency supported by the North, rather
than being a mere pawn of Hanoi as the South Vietnamese and Americans claimed
they were. This proved highly controversial. As Henry Kissinger later observed, ‘In
every revolutionary conflict, the acceptance of the guerrillas as a negotiating partner
has proved to be the single most important obstacle to negotiations, for it obliges the
government to recognize the legal status of the enemy determined to overthrow it’.
Had the conference been referred to as ‘four party talks’, then this would have
legitimized the NLF as being equal to the South Vietnamese. Eventually it was
decided to include all four parties and simply to label them as ‘our side’ and ‘your
side’, thereby avoiding the contentious issue of legitimacy. Four parties would still be
involved, thus the Communists would be satisfied. On the other hand, officially the
talks were two-sided, as the US and South Vietnamese emphasized publicly.

As these preliminary discussions about who would meet came to a conclusion, they
were then followed with additional talks about how a meeting might be held. These
discussions, which began in November 1968, were centred on questions about the
shape of the conference table, how many tables there should be, and how they
would be placed. These discussions became known as the ‘battle of the tables’ and
would last ten weeks until mid-January 1969 as fighting continued to rage and
Richard Nixon won the presidential election. From the start, it was recognized that a
triangular table (with the North Vietnamese/NLF combined but the US and South
Vietnamese separate) would be a non-starter as it would imply that the Communist
side was outnumbered two-to-one. North Vietnam wanted a square table in order to
provide further legitimacy to the NLF, and also suggested four tables arranged in
either a circular or a diamond pattern. The American preference was for a two-sided
table or two rectangular tables. The North Vietnamese countered by suggesting a
round table. Whereas the Americans supported the idea of a round table on the
basis that people sitting at the table wouldn’t have any position, Saigon then
protested that a round table meant that everyone was equal which would imply that
the NLF delegation were equal to the South Vietnamese government. As a result,
the US suggested six variants of a round table, including a round table bisected with
a strip of baize to provide a symbolic dividing line. Later the benefits and drawbacks
of an oval table were debated but the idea eventually was rejected, as were two
semi-circular tables, one round table cut in half, a ‘flattened ellipse’, a ‘broken
diamond’ and a parallelogram. The Danish mathematician and designer Piet Hein
proposed a super-elliptical table with golden section proportions – neither square nor
round but midway between the two that ‘would allot the two major parties 100 inches
to every 6.18 for the two minor parties all the while suggesting sovereignty with
alliance’ (technically speaking this table would have a perimeter that satisfied the
formula: x2.5+[y/a]2.5=1 where a=[.5][√5-1]). Regrettably there is little evidence to
suggest that this proposal from a concerned outsider was taken seriously by the
diplomats, much less that it was understood by the diplomats. South Vietnam
pushed for two separate rectangular tables and remained intransigent on this issue.
Eventually Johnson grew tired of Saigon’s obstruction and wrote to South
Vietnamese President Nguyen Van Thieu expressing his frustration. The deadlock
was finally broken by a Soviet diplomat. Anxious to get the negotiations moving
ahead, the Soviets pressured the North Vietnamese to compromise and accept a
round table (4.75 metres in diameter) with two rectangular tables (3 feet by 4.5 feet)
alongside for secretaries (no more and no less than 4.5 centimetres away). The table
would include no nameplates, flags or markings, but would only be covered in green
baize. Interestingly, the furniture used for the first meeting on January 18, 1969 –
later replaced – was the same unused conference table that had been built for the
aborted Nikita Khrushchev-Dwight D. Eisenhower talks in 1960. A separate dispute
about order of speakers was also resolved with the South Vietnamese speaking first
followed by the US, North Vietnamese and NLF. At the following meeting the order
would be reversed and would alternate accordingly thereafter.

By the time this ‘battle of the tables’ had been resolved, the inauguration of Nixon
was only one week away. Thus, any opportunity to negotiate a peace in 1968 was
undermined by the emphasis for more than 8 months on procedural matters – and
this merely to get the four parties to the first meeting to begin official talks. Once the
talks began, there was a return to procedure – agreeing an agenda, developing
ground rules for further talks and naming the talks (South Vietnam referred to a
‘Meeting on Vietnam’, North Vietnam and the NLF a ‘Paris Conference on Vietnam’,
and the US called them ‘Vietnam Peace Talks’ or the ‘Vietnam Conference’). For
four more years, these talks went nowhere. By contrast, the less formal ‘secret talks’
between the US and North Vietnam that began in February 1970, also in Paris,
would drag on for only 2.5 years without any progress. Only in the autumn 1972,
following the failure of North Vietnam’s ‘Easter Offensive’ and the reluctant adoption
of a new policy by the Hanoi Politburo to achieve a politicalvictory in the South, was
‘progress’ finally made. Along with American pressure on Saigon to accept a deal,
this led to the signing of the Paris Peace Accords in January 1973 and the US
military withdrawal two months later. However, despite all the time and effort
expended on formalities over the years, resolution of the underlying political disputes
driving the conflict was indefinitely postponed rather than seriously addressed.  As
fighting continued despite the Accords, this led to further talks in the summer 1973
that resulted in a slightly revised ceasefire agreement but no real changes in the
 behaviour of the antagonists. Meantime, a separate series of talks between the
South Vietnamese and PRG at La Celle-St. Cloud that were intended to settle the
future political composition of South Vietnam remained deadlocked on procedural
issues and rarely progressed beyond agreeing to an agenda. By the spring 1973, the
Hanoi Politburo chose to abandon its short-lived policy of achieving a political victory
in South Vietnam, choosing instead to revert back to a military solution as soon as its
depleted forces could be reconstituted. Despite the years of diplomatic effort, ‘peace’
in Vietnam was finally ‘imposed’ with the Communist conquest of the South in April
1975.

Image: Paris peace talks Vietnam peace agreement signing, 27 January 1973, by
Robert L. Knudsen, via wikimedia.

https://defenceindepth.co/2017/05/19/stuck-in-endless-preliminaries-vietnam-and-the-battle-of-
the-paris-peace-table-november-1968-january-1969/

A Lost Chance for Peace in Vietnam

By Robert K. Brigham
 June 16, 2017

o
o
o
o
o
o 64
President Lyndon Johnson with Robert McNamara, right, and Dean Rusk in
1967.CreditHulton Archive/Getty Images
Image

President Lyndon Johnson with Robert McNamara, right, and Dean Rusk in
1967.CreditCreditHulton Archive/Getty Images
Perhaps no question hovers more ominously over the history of the Vietnam War in
1967 than this: If the United States and its Vietnamese adversaries had been able to
hammer out an acceptable peace deal before the major escalation of the 1968 Tet
offensive, hundreds of thousands of lives would have been saved. Was such a peace
possible?

For years, pundits and policy makers have speculated on this possibility. Many argue
that escalation was irreversible, that the adversaries’ collective fate, as it were, was
sealed. But recent scholarship has pointed in a different direction. The prospects of
peace were arguably brighter than we once thought. One approach came tantalizingly
close to success: the secret talks between Washington and Hanoi that began in June
1967, code-named Pennsylvania.

Pennsylvania began when two French scientists, Herbert Marcovitch and Raymond
Aubrac, approached Henry Kissinger, then a Harvard professor, to offer their
services as go-betweens to promote negotiations between the United States and
North Vietnam. Kissinger had worked as a consultant on the war for the Johnson
administration and was eager to do anything he could to ingratiate himself with the
president. Aubrac was an old friend of Ho Chi Minh and promised to deliver a
message to the aging leader if President Lyndon Johnson had anything new to say.
Kissinger referred the proposal to Secretary of State Dean Rusk, with a copy to
Defense Secretary Robert McNamara.

McNamara took the lead in diplomacy during Pennsylvania. Already committed to

finding a negotiated way out of Vietnam, he pushed Pennsylvania vigorously at a
Tuesday lunch meeting with President Johnson and his key advisers. Johnson was
skeptical about any negotiations with the Communists, however, dismissing the
French proposal as “just another of those blind alleys that lead nowhere.” But
McNamara persisted, and eventually the president relented, allowing his defense
secretary to establish contact through Marcovitch and Aubrac, with a view to future
peace negotiations — as long as he did nothing to embarrass the United States.

In early July, Marcovitch and Aubrac traveled to Hanoi and presented the Johnson
administration’s so-called Phase A/Phase B proposal to the Hanoi leadership. The
United States would stop its bombing campaign in return for confidential assurances
from Hanoi that it would halt its infiltration into key areas of South Vietnam. Once
North Vietnam acted, the United States would freeze its combat forces at existing
levels and peace talks could begin. This was a significant departure from Johnson’s
previous insistence on mutual de-escalation. The president took the gamble, hoping
to placate liberals in Congress and antiwar protesters, who were already planning a
huge rally in Washington for that October. Johnson could always resume the
bombing if nothing materialized from the contact.

The initial results of Pennsylvania appeared promising. Aubrac and Marcovitch

arrived in Hanoi on July 24, 1967, and met with Ho Chi Minh and Prime Minister
Pham Van Dong. Ho’s visit with the two scientists was largely ceremonial, but the
meeting with Dong was substantive and productive. Dong insisted that North
Vietnam could not negotiate while it was being bombed, but he also, surprisingly,
indicated that Hanoi would not require the United States to announce the bombing
pause publicly, saving Johnson from a potential political problem. If the bombing
stopped, Dong assured his guests, negotiations could begin immediately.
 You have 2 free articles remaining.
SUBSCRIBE TO THE TIMES

A wary Johnson decided to move ahead with a bombing pause, without consulting
his South Vietnamese allies or his military command, to get negotiations started. He
authorized Kissinger to have Aubrac and Marcovitch tell the North Vietnamese
leadership that there would be an additional bombing halt around Hanoi for a period
of 10 days beginning Aug. 24, the next scheduled visit of the two French scientists.
Hanoi agreed that this was a productive change in the United States’ position and a
positive outcome of the Pennsylvania contact.

For the first time in years, it appeared that the two sides were serious about
negotiations. Chet Cooper, an aide to W. Averell Harriman, Johnson’s “peace
ambassador,” called Pennsylvania the last best chance for peace, knowing that the
war was likely to escalate otherwise.

On the day that Aubrac and Marcovitch were to leave Paris for Hanoi, United States
aircraft flew more than 200 sorties against North Vietnam, more than on any
previous day of the war. The official explanation for the poor timing of the bombing
missions was that the attacks had already been scheduled for earlier in the month but
had been delayed by bad weather. Once the weather broke on Aug. 20, the bombing
resumed according to protocol and lasted four days.
Editors’ Picks

What Does Misogyny Look Like?

 ‘Tell Your Husband to Leave Me Alone’

With Streaks of Gray Hair, Xi Jinping of China Breaks With Tradition

Hanoi publicized the new attacks, claiming that Johnson had used the proposed
bombing pause as a diversion while he actually escalated the war. Johnson
denounced these claims, but he could not hide the fact that he had indeed approved
an escalation to the bombing just two days before it began, on Aug. 18, and had used
the weather delay as a convenient cover for his actions.
Perhaps the president believed that the United States had to hit all available targets
before the pause in case it did not get another chance. Johnson even approved one
target on the grounds that if talks with Hanoi materialized, he would not want to
approve the site later. All along, Johnson had been skeptical about the Pennsylvania
contact. He claimed later that the United States should never have held back on the
bombing just because “two professors [were] meeting.” Johnson was absolutely
certain that the bombing was hurting the North Vietnamese and wanted to keep
“pouring the steel on.”

But Johnson never considered how increased bombing raids would play in Hanoi,
and that says much about how American leaders went to war in Vietnam. Even after
dozens of failed secret peace contacts before Pennsylvania, the Johnson
administration could not see that an apparent escalation in bombing on the eve of a
possible peace mission was not a formula for diplomatic success.

The bombing raids not only killed the secret peace talks but also played directly into
the hands of the hard-liners on the Military Commission of the Political Bureau in
Hanoi, who had consistently argued against negotiations of any kind. Rejecting the
views of some in the Foreign Ministry, Hanoi’s hawks now had all the evidence they
needed that the United States was not serious about negotiations. The top leadership
concluded that North Vietnam had no choice but to endure the bombing while
simultaneously trying to erode Washington’s ability to remain in South Vietnam.

North Vietnam increased its infiltration into South Vietnam in preparation for a
major escalation of the war in early 1968. Gen. William Westmoreland sensed this
buildup and asked Johnson to increase United States troop levels in Vietnam. The
number of Americans fighting in Vietnam rose to over 500,000 just a few months
after Pennsylvania’s failure.

The talks failed because political and military leaders in Washington and Hanoi were
afraid to take a chance on peace. Hard-liners in Hanoi won the day after
Pennsylvania’s collapse. They pushed for a quick military escalation in South
Vietnam, erroneously believing that the planned Tet offensive would lead to a general
uprising that would topple the Saigon government and force the United States to
withdraw all of its troops. Johnson, in contrast, was desperately trying to keep his
options open by escalating the bombing just before a pause, but in the end he
actually narrowed his choices.
Sign Up for Paul Krugman's Newsletter
Paul Krugman did explanatory journalism before it was cool, moving from a career as a
world-class economist to writing hard-hitting opinion columns.
SIGN UP

Trying to placate both antiwar members of Congress and his generals, who wanted a
wider war, Johnson tried to find a middle ground when there was none. He never
fully committed to negotiations and, believing that the war had to be fought with
costs and risks in mind, unsuccessfully juggled competing interests and ideas. Of
course, Johnson also never consulted his allies in Saigon about the secret peace talks,
which would have added a dimension of complexity to any agreement.
 Ironically, within nine months of Pennsylvania’s failure, the United States was
engaged in negotiations with North Vietnam and the National Liberation Front, also
known as the Viet Cong, that would eventually lead to a unilateral American military
withdrawal and a cease-fire in 1973 that allowed 10 infantry units of the North
Vietnamese Army to stay in South Vietnam. The failure of the last best chance for
peace shaped the war for years to come.

Robert K. Brigham is a professor of history and international relations at Vassar.

Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook and Twitter (@NYTopinion), and
sign up for the Opinion Today newsletter. 
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/16/opinion/a-lost-chance-for-peace-in-vietnam.html

Kissinger Reports Some Gains In

Paris Negotiations on Truce
MAY 22, 1973
Continue reading the main storyShare This Page

 Share
 Tweet
 Email
 More
 Save

About the Archive

This is a digitized version of an article from The Times’s print archive, before the
start of online publication in 1996. To preserve these articles as they originally
appeared, The Times does not alter, edit or update them.

Occasionally the digitization process introduces transcription errors or other

problems. Please send reports of such problems
to archive_feedback@nytimes.com.
VIEW PAGE IN TIMESMACHINE

May 22, 1973, Page 3The New York Times Archives

PARIS, May 21 (AP)—American and North Vietnamese negotiators have

made “some progress” in their talks on ways to enforce the shaky Vietnam
peace agreement, Henry A. Kissinger said today.

President Nixon's adviser on national security made the brief comment to

newsmen after meeting for five hours with Le Duc Tho, Hanoi's top
Vietnam negotiator. It was the fourth session in the series of meetings that
began Thursday.

Mr. Kissinger spoke after bidding Mr. Tho a cordial good‐by at his car
outside the Americanowned villa in suburban St.Nom‐la‐Breteche where
they conferred. He declined to elaborate on the talks, but the two
delegations said Mr. Kissinger would meet with Mr. Tho again tomorrow.
 The second‐ranking delegates, William H. Sullivan, Deputy Assistant
Secretary of State for East Asia and Pacific Affairs, and Nguyen Co Thach,
the North Vietnamese Deputy Foreign Minister, were to meet tonight to
discuss technical details, a spokesman said. They met for 12 hours
yesterday on details of the earlier discussions.

Apart from Mr. Kissinger's brief remark, both sides maintained their news
blackout. There was no indication whether Mr. Kissinger and Mr. Tho
were preparing an interpretive annex to the Jan. 27 cease‐fire agreement
in an effort to stop the violations each side has charged to the other.

Continue reading the main story

Mr. Kissinger and Mr. Tho conferred for a total of nearly 13 hours on the
first three days of the talks. Mr. Kissinger, who will celebrate his 50th
birthday Sunday, was expected to return to Washington before the end of
the week to report to President Nixon.

The current series of meetings has been marked by displays of cordiality

between the two delegations, contrasting with the tension and paralysis in
the peace‐keeping machinery in South Vietnam, and with the continued
accusations of ceasefire violations.

Mr. Kissinger and Mr. Tho as well as their aides, have gone out of their
way to shake hands and smile whenever they meet in sight of newsmen
and photographers.

Diplomatic informants said they were encouraged because Mr. Tho has
made no public issue of renewed Communist allegations that American
planes bombed. Vietcong‐controlled areas in South Vietnam and have
resumed reconnaissance flights over North Vietnam. Both are banned by
the peace agreement.

Mr. Tho threatened a week ago to walk out of the talks in the event of any
American bombing of the Vietcong.

A further indication of Mr. Tho's conciliatory attitude was the

disappearance of a plaque that the French Communist party fixed to its
villa in Gifsur‐Yvette in February. The villa serves as an alternate meeting
site.

The plaque, commemorating completion of the agreement text in the

building on Jan. 13, described the agreement as “victory of the Vietnamese
people over imperialism.” When the talks reopened, the plaque had been
removed.

A version of this archives appears in print on May 22, 1973, on Page 3 of the New York
edition with the headline: Kissinger Reports Some Gains In Paris Negotiations on
Truce. Order Reprints| Today's Paper|Subscribe
End