204 e lusive v ictories
American terms. On the home front, Nixon failed to see that the
gradual withdrawal of American forces triggered the political dynamic
we have seen as characteristic of postwar politics—other political insti-
tutions push back against presidential power, while the public loses
interest in what happens abroad. A president finds himself with
declining leverage to shape a postwar settlement. Nixon and his key
aide, Henry Kissinger, tried to parlay a weakening hand into an
acceptable peace agreement. South Vietnamese president Nguyen Van
Th ieu harbored no such illusions. He recognized the terms being nego-
tiated by his American benefactors as meaning ultimate defeat. Nixon
pledged privately to punish treaty violations by the North Vietnamese,
but his words proved hollow: neither the American people nor Congress
stood behind them, while Watergate left him too weak and distracted
to act. It remained only for the fi nal humiliating act to be played out in
Saigon in 1975 as the last Americans fl ed on their helicopters.
Beginnings
Th e Vietnam confl ict traced its origins to the close of the Second World
War, when Roosevelt had sought to prevent the French from reasserting
their control over Indochina but lacked the means to do so. Following
negotiations with the occupying British and Nationalist Chinese,
French offi cials and troops reentered the region in early 1946. In the
brief interlude before their return, a communist-dominated nationalist
coalition led by Ho Chi Minh declared Vietnam independent. Th e
French refused to recognize the new Democratic Republic of Vietnam
(DRV) government and in late 1946 drove it from Hanoi. Th is precip-
itated a war that continued until Ho’s forces, known as the Vietminh
and commanded by General Vo Nguyen Giap, triumphed over their
adversaries in the epic siege of Dien Bien Phu in May 1954. ^
Th at same month, a peace conference convened in Geneva to resolve
the political future of Indochina. Notwithstanding their military
success, the Vietnamese communists were pressured by the major com-
munist powers, the Soviet Union and the People’s Republic of China,
to accept a temporary partition of the country, with the Vietminh in
control of the DRV north of the 17th parallel. Th e Geneva accords
called for an election within two years to unify the country, and the