________________________________________________________________________
H-DIPLO ROUNDTABLE REVIEW:

Jeffrey P. Kimball, _Nixon's Vietnam War_ (Modern War Studies)  Ingram -
Roseburg (1998), 528 pages, cloth, $39.95

Reviewers:
Lloyd Gardner (roundtable editor)
David Kaiser, Edwin Moise, and Qiang Zhai
_________________________________________________________________________

Response by Jeffrey Kimball <kimbaljp@muohio.edu>
Miami University, Ohio


    I want to thank Lloyd Gardner, David Kaiser, Edwin Moise, and Qiang
Zhai for both their positive and critical comments regarding _Nixon's
Vietnam War_, which -- along with suggestions and corrections they have
previously made in other venues -- have assisted my continuing research
and writing on this and related topics.  I will respond first to their
specific criticisms and then offer my own reflections on the general
design of the book.

RESPONSES TO SPECIFIC CRITICISMS AND COMMENTS

    *Zhai: "Lack of access to Vietnamese archives ... handicapped
Kimball's efforts to solve the mystery of policymaking in Hanoi...."

    *Response: I agree: lack of access to archives in Hanoi was a
handicap.  Within this limitation, I nonetheless tried my best to
reconstruct Hanoi's policy and strategy on the basis of captured COSVN
documents, a classified Foreign Ministry summary of the negotiations,
interviews with Vietnamese decision-makers, citizens, soldiers, and
historians, U.S. intelligence estimates, and printed Vietnamese memoirs,
letters, and public statements, as well as histories by scholars of
Indochina.  For the negotiations, I had U.S. transcripts of what both
sides said in many of the meetings.

    *Zhai: "Some of Kimball's statements about Hanoi's policy are open to
question.  For instance, he writes that Hanoi 'did not immediately embrace
Sihanouk after the coup and continued for a time to press for a diplomatic
compromise with Lon Nol....' But new [Chinese] documents obtained by the
Cold War International History Project indicate that the Hanoi leadership
had no illusions about negotiations with Lon Nol."

    *Response: My source for the statement quoted by Zhai was an interview
Seymour Hersh conducted with Nguyen Co Thach.  The CWIHP collection to
which Qiang refers was published in May 1998, by which time my manuscript
was at the publisher and past the copyediting stage. In any case, the
document he cites is not altogether unambiguous on the matter, and as the
editors of the CWIHP Working Paper 22 conceded, "the authenticity,
accuracy, and completeness" of this and other Chinese documents in the
collection "cannot be fully verified at this stage" (p. 6).  Further, it
is one thing to say that Hanoi had "no illusions" (they rarely had
illusions) and another to say that they were initially tentative in their
diplo-military response to both Sihanouk and Lon Nol---in fact, there is
some indirect evidence of this in the document Qiang cited.  Nonetheless,
Zhai's point is a good one, reminding all researchers that, lacking
smoking-gun evidence, we need to be skeptical and open-minded.

    *Zhai: "Kimball does not elaborate on the so-called 'policy divisions
within China'....  No Chinese document has surfaced to confirm the
hypothesis that Lin Biao opposed improving relations with the United
States."

    *Response: Zhai is correct in saying that I relied on Kissinger for my
passing comment on this particular matter of division within China, since
at the time of my writing there was, to my knowledge, no other evidence.
That there is no document confirming Kissinger's claim is no proof against
it, but I yield on this point until more evidence surfaces one way or the
other about Lin Biao's opposition or anyone else's opposition in China to
the sea change in its approach to the U.S.

    *Moise: "Kimball is under the impression (p. 137) that Nixon did not,
in the early months of his presidency, expand the ground war in South
Vietnam....  In fact, ground combat intensified during these months to
noticeably above the level of the period before Tet.  The fact of such
heavy combat would certainly seem consistent with Kimball's portrait of a
president determined to seem tough [in line with the madman theory]...."

    *Response: I did note that the PAVN-PLAF attacks that began in
February 1969, and which Nixon used to justify the bombing of Cambodia,
"followed on the heels of over a dozen American ground operations begun
soon after Nixon's inauguration.  Many were carried out by battalion- and
brigade-sized units, but at least two were division-sized
search-and-destroy sweeps..." (p. 128).  I also commented that these
operations, two of which I named, were part of the "continuing U.S. effort
since Tet 1968 to maintain pressure on the other side."  Between pp. 128
and 137, I probably did not emphasize enough that during these first three
or four months of Nixon's presidency U.S.-initiated fighting was heavy,
but it was fighting that commenced before two strategic components of
Nixon's 1969 plan---de-Americanization and Vietnamization---began to be
implemented circa April-June (pp. 137-139 passim).  In this section of the
book I was trying to describe and document the initial implementations of
Nixon's plan, COSVN's strategy and its anticipations of Nixon's strategy,
and the motives behind the secret bombings of Cambodia, which were
launched in March.  In any event, it was this 1969 plan of Nixon's that I
was reexamining on p. 137.  I agree with Moise that Nixon did not want to
be a wimp on the ground.  An expansion of the ground war, however, was
definitely not part of his plan to demonstrate his manly mettle and madman
toughness (with the qualified exceptions of the Cambodian and Laotian
invasions of 1970 and 1971).

    *Moise: "... I did not notice in Kimball's book any reference either
to 'Hamburger Hill' [May 1969] and the uproar it caused, or to Nixon's
order to hold down U.S. casualties."

    *Response: Moise is correct about my making no reference to this
battle.  I should have mentioned it for various reasons.  However, the
battle of Hamburger Hill (Dong Ap Bia, Hill 937) was not the cause of
Nixon wanting to hold down U.S. casualties or change ground strategy. The
battle and the uproar it caused was for him a public relations problem to
be overcome and a confirmation of the political need to change ground
strategy and tactics, which was a course he had decided upon at least as
early as the presidential campaign of 1968.  It is important to understand
that all of the military and diplomatic aspects of Nixon's 1969 plan to
"win the peace" (as well as subsequent plans) were designed to compensate
for the loss of leverage on the ground that would result from withdrawals.

    *Moise: "[Re Linebacker II] what is missing is [an] analysis of the
relationship between the reality of the bombing and the outrage it
inspired.  I think Kimball was probably aware that the outrage was to a
large extent based on a misunderstanding....  Kimball does not say that
many people had an exaggerated idea of the ruthlessness of Linebacker
II....  Nixon allowed them to get this exaggerated idea....  It is hard to
escape the conclusion that they [i.e., Nixon et al] wanted Linebacker II
to be exaggerated....."

    *Response: Moise, I think, misunderstands what the outrage at the time
was about.  His claim that Nixon purposefully allowed people to have an
allegedly exaggerated idea of Linebacker's ruthlessness is incorrect.
For reasons I explained in the book, he did not personally want to defend
Linebacker II publicly (see, e.g., p. 362), but on his behalf aides did
deny that the raids were the equivalent of World War II "carpet bombing."
Regarding Moise's point about the "reality" that Linebacker was less
"ruthless" than World War II and Korean War bombings, I think he is
comparing apples and oranges.  I cannot deal with all of the complicated
implications of Moise's points here, and so I refer readers to what I said
in my text and notes about these and other matters relating to Linebacker
II and Nixon's spin on it (approx. pp. 358-371 and passim).

    *Kaiser: "Kimball does not spend much time on another important motive
of Nixon's.  The president ... had concluded by 1970 that the
demonstrations ... were an asset, since they angered the older Silent
Majority."

    *Response: I think I gave this motive of Nixon's the attention it
deserves on pp. 174-176 and elsewhere.  But also note that while Nixon
tried to parlay negative public reactions against the demonstrations into
support for his own presidency and policies, the demonstrations and other
forms of antiwar activity significantly influenced Nixon, Kissinger,
Laird, Rogers, and others in the administration to end the war sooner
rather than later.  That, it seems to me, is the main point. Moreover,
Nixon's attempts to counterattack, as, for example, in his response to
Ellsberg's release of the Pentagon Papers---which eventually led by hook
and by crook to the Watergate break-in---contributed significantly to his
eventual fall from power.

    *Kaiser: "It is not altogether clear from Kimball's text (pp. 333-335)
exactly how this [September 15 & 26, 1972] agreement [regarding PRG-RVN
political equality] was reached, much less how Nixon, who I do not think
ever acknowledged this critical aspect of what Kissinger had negotiated ,
came to accept it."

    *Response: Progress was made at the September 15 and 26 meetings, but
no agreement on this political point was reached until October 8 and
afterward.  Then it was sabotaged by Thieu at the end of October, which
led Nixon to back away from the "October agreement" and send Kissinger to
Paris in November with retrograde demands designed to appease Thieu and
provide public-relations cover for having refused to sign on schedule a
settlement to which he had previously agreed.  My extended discussion of
the negotiations could perhaps have been clearer.  (The negotiations are
difficult to follow even under the best of circumstances.  I provide new
information and a summary of the key points of the negotiations and the
motives of the principals in "Debunking Nixon's Myths of Vietnam," _The
New England Journal of History_ 56 [Winter 1999-Spring 2000]: 31-46.)
Regarding the negotiations in general and the September meeting in
particular, I think my account in _Nixon's Vietnam War_ , however, is
reasonably clear.  For Nixon's complex thinking, as well as Hanoi's
(insofar as I could document it), from August to December 1972, see my
summaries on pp. 326-329, 335-337, 343-344, 346-349, and 360-364.
Moreover, I provide a great deal of explanation throughout the book about
what Nixon knew, when he knew it, and of what he approved or disapproved.
The bottom line is that he knew everything about what Kissinger was doing;
moreover, Kissinger was doing it in Nixon's behalf and by his
instructions.

    *Kaiser: "Nor is there any explanation here of when, and how, the
United States agreed to the first and most striking provision of the Paris
accords---our [i.e., U.S.] acceptance of the 'unity, sovereignty, and
territorial integrity' of Vietnam as a whole."

    *Response: This may have been a striking provision, but it was not the
most important for at least two reasons: (1) the most important provisions
were those having to do with (a) the unilateral withdrawal of U.S. forces
and (b) the political provisions regarding, first, the territories
controlled by either side and, second, the National Council of National
Reconciliation and Concord; (2) the "Geneva provision" regarding unity,
sovereignty, and territorial integrity was conditioned by reason (1) above
and by other provisions that had long been debated by the parties, for
example, the DMZ provision.  In other words, each side was prepared to
interpret the Geneva principle in its own way depending on other
provisions, and that is why the Nixon administration could "agree" to it
from at least May 1971 on, as I indicated on pp. 265 and 268.  It may be
instructive to remember that this "Geneva provision" was in the 1954
Geneva Accords, and we all know what happened after 1954, or at least what
the U.S. did after 1954.  Perhaps I should have been more emphatic in the
book.  As for the "how" and "why" of these negotiations, provisions, and
compromises, well, I spent a lot of time trying to explain those as I went
along.  For January to October 1972, see chapter 12, and especially a
summary statement regarding the early autumn period of 1972 on p. 327.

    *Kaiser: "Personally I feel that Kissinger .... deserves some credit
for negotiating the settlement on a modified version of Hanoi's terms and
leaving Nixon in a position where he really had no choice ... but to
accept them."

    *Response: Kissinger did play a key role in the negotiations, as I
argue in the book, but, as I also argue and document, Nixon was in charge.
The relationship between Nixon and Kissinger was complex, with irrational
elements, and that is why I gave it so much attention.  At the risk of
gross oversimplification, I will briefly summarize that relationship here
by saying Nixon was the prime policymaker and strategist, whereas
Kissinger was the prime tactician and implementer. Kissinger did influence
Nixon in critical ways at crucial moments regarding strategy; for example,
he, along with Haldeman and Haig, supported Nixon's madman approach,
whereas some other advisers, such as Rogers and Laird, did not; on the
other hand, Kissinger helped to keep Nixon on a negotiating track at those
moments when Nixon wanted to "bomb and bug out" (see, e.g., pp. 239-241,
286-290).  Nonetheless, it is a myth that Kissinger pulled the wool over
Nixon's eyes regarding the negotiations.  Nixon was on top of things at
every step---although of divided mind sometimes.  The deals struck in
October and January were Nixon's deals.  Other agreements made along the
way were Nixon's agreements.  Nixon accepted the Paris Agreement because
he decided for himself that he had to.  Kaiser has his personal opinion
about Kissinger's role, but I documented another scenario in my book:
Kissinger was the indispensable courtier and servant.

    *Kaiser: "The extent of Nixon and Kissinger's [psychological] denial
[of the obstacles] could be better documented ... by a more extended
treatment of what was happening politically and militarily within South
Vietnam during these years....  We shouldn't allow them [i.e., Nixon and
Kissinger] to define the parameters of the histories that can be written
now, even if we treat them critically."

    *Response: I did include a fair amount of analysis, comment, and
documentation on the political and military "realities" in South and North
Vietnam, but obviously not enough for some readers.  I had another focus
(see my comments below about the design of the book).  Let me add that as
I wrote about Nixon's and Kissinger's decisions, I usually if not always
reported what they knew or thought they knew or wanted to know about many
kinds of realities.  Further, it was less their psychological denial of
the real obstacles, as Kaiser put it, and more their commitment to
credibility and related policy and political goals (which I amply discuss
and which Gardner notes in his summary) that led Nixon and Kissinger to
pursue victory despite the obstacles---until in the end they were forced
to accept palpable realities in Vietnam, Paris, Congress, and the United
States.  In any case, it does not follow that my emphases "allow them to
define the parameters of the histories."  I think this is only true for
those who do not read my history carefully and with an open mind;
moreover, defenders of Nixon and Kissinger do not seem to think that I am
allowing them to set historiographic parameters.

    *Gardner: "Interestingly, ... (although Kimball does not mention
this), Nixon recommended that Washington stop criticizing its allies for
trading with Communist China.  Such a move should quiet European
criticism, and give the Chinese a stake in what he would later call the
'structure of peace.'"

    *Response: I was and am unaware of the source of Nixon's
recommendation regarding European trade with China, and so I welcome the
information.  Among other comments I made on Nixon's China policy in the
book, I quoted Nixon's public criticism of Reischauer's 1967 suggestion
that the U.S. remove its trade barriers against China (p. 38), which even
in his _Foreign Affairs_ article of the same year Nixon identified as a
"threat" to non-Communist Asian governments.  In any event, regarding
China, I was mainly interested in the book in delineating Nixon's
triangular policy vis-a-vis China and the USSR in relation to the
U.S.-Vietnam War.  Moreover, I challenged the conventional wisdom that
Nixon had envisioned rapprochement and triangulation as early as 1967.  I
postulated that the extant documentary evidence suggested that Nixon did
not know in the beginning---that is in 1967-1969---how and on what basis
he would try to reestablish relations with China.  After November 1969,
the failure of his Vietnam plans and the increasingly bitter rivalry
between China and the Soviet Union led him gradually to seek rapprochement
in order to play a China card against the Soviets and turn a China visit
into a much needed political success on the home front.  In 1972 he
retrospectively constructed the story of his farsightedness regarding
China.

SEEING THE FOREST FROM THE TREES

    In the interest of advancing the historiography of the Nixon phase of
the U.S.-Vietnam War, I would like to avail myself of the opportunity
afforded in this H-DIPLO venue to take a broader approach in my response
to Kaiser and Moise by reflecting on the general design of the book.

    One theme that runs through the comments of Kaiser and Moise in their
H-Diplo reviews is that _Nixon's Vietnam War_, in Kaiser's words, "does
not address many aspects---particularly military aspects---of the war from
1969 through 1972 in much depth."  I acknowledge that this statement about
my coverage of military aspects is mostly correct as a descriptive
statement, but I also note that it was my intent to be selective.  My
omissions were the result of having put the ground war in the background
in order that I might discuss only those military aspects that I thought
were directly relevant to Nixon's plan, which, it should be noted, did not
include an escalation of the American ground war.  No doubt my account of
the Nixon phase of the U.S.-Vietnam War would have been strengthened had
more space been given to a fuller narrative of the ground war---as well as
some other topics---and I think Moise is mostly correct in taking me to
task about having omitted mention of the battle of Hamburger Hill.

    That I did not give some topics more attention in this 525-page book
was the product of at least three considerations: (1) the publishing
house, it need hardly be said, set limits on length; (2) beyond that, and
concerning the purpose of the work, I wanted to address in depth several
other aspects of the history and historiography of Nixon's direction of
the war (which I note below); (3) given this purpose, and given as well
the inherent complexity of the topics and issues I did address, there
followed, as I saw the task at hand, a need for coherence and integrity,
that is, for a focus on the main storyline.

    I tried to explain the purpose, methodology, and limitations of the
book in the preface.  I described its scope, identified the foreign-policy
theories that informed my empirical research, and listed the
historiographic issues I hoped to address.  Regarding scope, I wrote, for
example, that "this book is not 'The Complete History of Nixon's Vietnam
War,' which would require fuller treatment of topics other than policy and
diplomacy"; it is "a broadly based 'diplomatic history.'"  Regarding this
supposed broad base---or the theories, perspectives, and topics
undergirding my treatment---I said that I had attempted to write a history
"that views ... [Nixon's] policy and diplomacy from the point of view of
their interrelationships with the environment in which he formulated and
carried them out---politics, personality, ideology, bureaucratic dynamics,
economic goals, military strategy, international relations, and aspects of
American and Vietnamese culture.... [as well as] the actions and
intentions of the Vietnamese, Soviets, and Chinese." (In addition, I
alluded to and employed theories about war termination in the body of the
text, as Gardner briefly noted.)  Regarding key historiographic questions,
I wrote: "Throughout, I have tried to fill gaps in existing knowledge of
what happened and to address as many as possible of the issues associated
with Nixon's policies and strategies that have puzzled historians and
other investigators.  These gaps and issues are too numerous to list here,
but some of the major questions include the following: Did Nixon have a
personality disorder that affected his policymaking? Did Nixon believe in
the 'madman theory,' and if so, did he apply it to his Vietnam strategy?
As he entered the presidency, was he seeking 'victory' in South Vietnam,
or was he seeking an 'honorable' exit that fell short of victory?  Did he
have a plan to end the war? Did he and Kissinger develop a 'decent
interval solution'?  What was the nature of the relationship between the
two men?  What was the influence of the antiwar movement on Nixon's
conduct of the war?  What role did Nixon's 'triangular' and 'linkage'
diplomacy vis-a-vis the Soviet Union and China play in shaping his Vietnam
strategies, or vice-versa?  What really happened in the secret
negotiations?  Did Kissinger strike out on his own?  Did Nixon win the
war, or as he put it, win the peace?"  I of course took on many other
issues and topics, including strategic ones; for example, the invasions
and bombings of Cambodia and Laos, the Linebacker operations, the
PAVN-PLAF offensive of 1969, the Spring Offensive, Vietnamization, and so
on.  But I did so with the purpose of describing Nixon's evolving plan,
along with the plans and actions of the other side in the war (as much as
available sources allowed me).

    Besides elucidating Nixon's role, I was primarily committed to
identifying and documenting U.S. and DRV policy goals and reconstructing
the history of the secret Paris negotiations, because (a) a great deal of
controversy and misunderstanding surrounded these topics; (b) I wanted to
fill a gap in diplomatic-international history, for at the time of my
writing, from the late spring of 1995 to November 1997, with minor
revisions in March 1998, there existed no substantial scholarly accounts
of the negotiations based on internal documents; and (c) I had new
archival information that I wanted to share, because I had collected a
considerable body of recently declassified U.S. documents, not only
Haldeman's diaries and his handwritten notes but also NSC files,
transcripts of the negotiations, memoranda of conversations, and
presidential memos, along with a smaller number of Vietnamese documents
(plus interviews), a smattering of Soviet and East German documents, and
miscellaneous other manuscripts, such as the Harriman and Lodge papers and
FOIAs on detente---along with the usual memoirs, histories, and printed
letters and documents, such as the Bunker papers and the Declassified
Documents Catalog.  (Bill Burr's _Kissinger Transcripts_ did not appear in
print until 1999; Bob Brigham's brief account of the NLF's diplomacy was
not published until 1999.)

    As Gardner noted in his review about the book's biographic content, I
not only covered Nixon's direction of the American war during his first
term but also his involvement since 1953 and through the election campaign
of 1968.  I suppose my basic approach could be described as
"biographic-diplomatic history," with elements from international, peace,
military, and social history.  The book is a focused "life and
times"---focused, that is, on Nixon's policymaking role in this phase of
the war.  Nixon, supported by Kissinger as well as Haldeman, set and
directed U.S. foreign and military policy after 1969.  Although he had to
contend with Laird, Rogers, and others in the bureaucracy---not to mention
Congress, the antiwar movement, Vietnamese on both sides, Soviets,
Chinese, and other international actors---American policymaking was more
concentrated in this administration than in Johnson's (insofar as I
understand the modus operandi of the Johnson administration).

    Incidently, I did not, as Kaiser suggested, "become so fascinated"
with my subject [viz, Nixon] that I began "to take every one of ...
[Nixon's] minor utterances too seriously"; most utterances I quoted were
not minor, and in any case, they were quoted to document a pattern
concerning Nixon's personality, gender, worldview, ideology, policies, and
strategy, as well as to allow Nixon to speak for himself, so to speak.
Moreover, at the end of the first chapter, half of which dealt with his
personality (a.k.a. psychology) and its relationship to policy, I
concluded that although Nixon's idiosyncracies "added an unpredictable,
chaotic element to the standard American formulas for war and diplomacy"
and influenced his tactical and strategic decisions, his "fundamental
policies were the product of large forces and broad contexts," which I
summarized in the last paragraph of this chapter and elaborated upon in
the next twelve chapters.

Jeffrey Kimball

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