Abbreviations
Acknowledgments
Introduction
1 The Necessity of the War in Vietnam
2 The Middle Road to the White House
3 Nixon Takes Over
4 Expansion and Crisis
5 The End of the American Century
6 Denouement
Conclusions
Bibliographic Essay
Index
About the Author
David F. Schmitz, the Robert Allen Skotheim Chair of History at Whitman College in Walla Walla, Washington, is a renowned expert and author of 9 books on U.S. foreign relations.
Drawing on recently declassified documents and recordings from
Nixon administration, historian Schmitz provides a revealing
analysis of the 37th President’s handling of the Vietnam War.
Schmitz’s findings illustrate that victory was imperative for
Nixon, who didn’t wish to become the only president to lose a war.
With the objectives of containing communism, and preserving
American credibility among the nations of the world, Nixon was
willing to do anything to insure South Vietnam ended the war as an
independent democracy, including carrying out covert missions and
bombings, deceiving the American people, and even feigning
insanity. Direct quotations from speeches, publications, and
behind-closed-doors conversations are juxtaposed with the events
that occurred at the time, providing a startling contrast that
emphasizes just how often Nixon said one thing and did another.
Schmitz concisely lays out Nixon’s war strategy while pinpointing
the controversial twists in the foreign policy from the years 1971
to 1973, and draws finely tuned conclusions about the larger impact
on years to come. This strong, scholarly study will find its
readership among both academics and American history buffs.
*Publishers Weekly*
Schmitz has written extensively on US foreign relations,
e.g. The United States and Right-Wing Dictatorships,
1965-1989 . His most recent book focuses on Richard
Nixon’s foreign policy with respect to the Vietnam War, especially
Nixon’s first three years in office (1969–71), noting that this
period has received little attention in the historiography of the
conflict. The author argues that during his first two years in
office, Nixon attempted to achieve a conventional military victory
on the battlefield to preserve US credibility and
power. Contrary to what Nixon and National Security Adviser
Henry Kissinger argued, the administration never seriously
attempted to extricate US forces from Vietnam and pursue détente
until 1971, after it became apparent that military victory was
unattainable. Schmitz chastises Nixon’s militarily aggressive
policy during the first part of his administration, since it
needlessly prolonged the war and led to the deaths of tens of
thousands of Americans and Vietnamese. Relying on a wealth of
primary sources and newly declassified documents, he challenges the
view of Nixon as a shrewd practitioner of international relations
and argues that there never was any 'grand design for détente that
guided all of his decisions.' Summing Up: Recommended. All
levels/libraries.
*CHOICE*
Citing declassified documents to bolster his premise, Schmitz
presents Richard Nixon as fighting not one but two failed Vietnam
wars during his presidency. From 1969 to 1971, Nixon sought a
military victory and a permanent noncommunist government in South
Vietnam. From 1971 to 1973, he fought an increasingly desperate
second war to achieve an honorable peace and to preserve his
presidential reputation. He did so by means of bombings in Cambodia
that were designed to scare North Vietnam into a treaty and by
'Vietnamization' of the war to buy time before his reelection. He
and Henry Kissinger also cooked up the 'Madman Theory,' aiming to
make Nixon seem unstable to North Vietnam and its allies so that
they wouldn’t provoke him. The communist government waited to sign
a treaty until after Nixon’s troop reductions meant the U.S.
presence could no longer support South Vietnam’s unpopular Thieu
government or its forces. Schmitz concludes that ultimately Nixon’s
war left a bitter legacy: a demoralized and divided United States,
a long economic recession, and the collapse of the 'American
Century.' VERDICT This concise overview of Nixon’s Vietnam
diplomacy draws on and updates Jeffrey Kimball’s The Vietnam War
Files. It is a good choice for graduate courses and will interest
informed readers and Vietnam-era scholars.
*Library Journal*
David F. Schmitz's history of Richard M. Nixon's handling of the
Vietnam War offers a distinctive perspective on the president's
intentions regarding military victory. . . .Scmitz's rigorously
researched work richly adds to the scholarship on the Vietnam War.
He redefines understanding of Nixon's policy making and offers new
perspective on the internal dynamics of the Nixon White House. This
short book is essential reading for informed scholars and students
of the war and U.S. foreign policy making.
*Journal of American History*
David F. Schmitz, a Whitman College history professor and U.S.
foreign relations expert, bores into the first three years
(1969-72) of Richard Nixon’s presidency in Richard Nixon and the
Vietnam War: The End of the American Century, a concise examination
and analysis of how Nixon ran the Vietnam War. In this
well-written, well-researched, and well-argued book Schmitz makes a
convincing case that Nixon—contrary to his public assertions at the
time and after he resigned from the presidency—did not come to
office to end the war by withdrawing American troops, but instead
pursued what Schmitz terms 'escalation and victory.'
*The VVA Veteran*
Scholarly and well documented, this short volume reconfirms the
conventional wisdom that Nixon's stewardship of the final years of
the Vietnam War was a costly failure. Schmitz's detailed
examination of recently declassified government records from
National Security Council files, including minutes, decision
memoranda, oral histories, and memoirs of the key players, only
strengthens Nixon's unfavorable legacy as a wartime
commander-in-chief.... Richard Nixon and the Vietnam War merits
reading by students of foreign policy history.
*On Point: The Journal of Army History*
In this important new book, David Schmitz deftly describes how
Richard Nixon’s ‘victory strategy’
evolved during his first two years as president, and details why
that policy disintegrated in the wake of the failure to achieve a
military victory, the administration’s desire to focus on the wider
Cold War, and the president’s preoccupation with domestic political
considerations. Based on impressive research in recently
declassified documents and engagement with the vast secondary
literature, this is a concise, insightful, and thought-provoking
addition to the scholarship on Nixon and his role in the denouement
of the U.S. experience in Vietnam.
*Andrew L. Johns, Brigham Young University; author of Vietnam's
Second Front: Domestic Politics, the Republican Party, and the
War*
Given the vast literature on Richard Nixon’s handling of the
Vietnam War, it seems unimaginable there is more to be said. Yet
David Schmitz has much, much more to say. Indeed, in this
meticulously researched and provocative account he delivers a
devastating critique of Nixon’s decision to pursue a military
victory in Vietnam during his first two years in office. As Schmitz
so clearly demonstrates, the turning point in the war that began
with the 1968 Tet Offensive remained incomplete until the summer of
1970 when the ill-fated Cambodian invasion forced Nixon to finally
abandon his quest for military victory. Schmitz proves that a new
periodization of the war is called for, one that will undoubtedly
change the way we think about Nixon and the last chapter of the
Vietnam War saga.
*Kathryn C. Statler, University of San Diego*
David Schmitz is one of the most discerning historians of U.S.
foreign relations working today. Here he provides a concise and
penetrating assessment of the Nixon administration’s handling of
the Vietnam War, with particular attention on the crucial—and
comparatively understudied—1969-71 period. Schmitz argues
compellingly that this phase of the war should be seen as distinct
from what came before and what followed, and that Vietnam policy
must be situated within the context of the broader Cold War.
*Fredrik Logevall, Cornell University; author of Choosing War: The
Lost Chance for Peace and the Escalation of War in Vietnam*
Despite the shelves of books written on the Vietnam War, historians
have paid relatively little attention to Richard M. Nixon’s all out
efforts in his first two years as president to achieve a military
victory. Based on a careful reading of newly available sources,
David Schmitz’s important book sharpens our view of President
Nixon, the chronology of the war, and the persistent influence of
Cold War ideology. Schmitz shows how Nixon’s over-reaching helped
destroy the American Century.
*Frank Costigliola, Editor of The Kennan Diaries*
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