472 ChaPter^9
Nixon and his top advisor, Henry Kissinger, began to reduce the number of
American soldiers in Vietnam but built up the war dramatically at the same
time. The U.S. increased the size of the southern army to one million soldiers
by 1970, and provided it with a million M-16 rifles, 12,000 M-60 machine
guns, 40,000 M-79 grenade launchers, and 2,000 heavy mortars and howitzers.
Nixon also began Operation Phoenix, which would “neutralize”–arrest or assas-
sinate –suspected VC supporters in the South. Though arming the southerners
and “neutralizing” the enemy were important, the keystone of the “Nixon
Doctrine” became the incredible use of American technology, especially air
power, against not only the VC, but all of Indochina. Vietnamization, suppos-
edly a way to end the war, was a means to expand it, particularly into the
“sideshows” of Laos and Cambodia, two countries where, like in Vietnam,
Communist groups [the Pathet Lao and the Khmer Rouge] were trying to
overthrow the U.S.- sponsored governments.
The U.S. had been involved in both countries well before the Nixon years,
but they became central battlegrounds after 1969. In Laos, America had
fueled a “secret war” against the Pathet Lao from the mid-1950s onward,
even using CIA aircraft—the infamous Air America, to ship heroin out of the
region. In Cambodia, the United States helped overthrow the neutral govern-
ment of Prince Norodom Sihanouk, invaded the country, unleashed a torrent
of B-52 bombings, and helped facilitate the emergence of the bloody Khmer
Rouge regime. Between 1964 and 1969, the Johnson administration began fly-
ing missions over Laos with B-52s, long-range bombers which carried 84
bombs of 500-pounds each, and 24 of 750 pounds. One bombing run could
saturate an area of 2 square miles per sortie. In 5 years, American B-52 pilots
dropped nearly 150,000 tons of bombs over the Plain of Jars in northeastern
Laos. Such destruction notwithstanding, Nixon took even more drastic action
and ordered an invasion of Laos in February 1971. The operation was a disas-
ter. The southern Vietnamese were supposed to attack the VC’s supply routes
on the Ho Chi Minh Trail; strike the Communists’ troop encampments and
supply depots; and disrupt the enemy’s offensive plans. But RVN President
Thieu had given his commanders orders not to sustain too many casualties,
and southern Vietnamese intelligence was terrible, so about 40,000 northern
troops ambushed the southern army, inflicting casualty rates of over 50 per-
cent and destroying or damaging 543 of 659 U.S. helicopters flying support
missions.