s taying the c ourse 267tried to put the best face possible on the shift, insisting no negotiations
could remove the NVA troops if they could not be expelled by force
and also claiming they did not represent a threat to the South’s survival.
Th ieu, who understood both the determination of his enemy and his
own army’s limits, knew the truth. Meanwhile, Th o refused to bend
on the question of Th ieu’s departure and a coalition government.
Each side sought new leverage, the Americans through opening dip-
lomatic relations with Beijing, the North Vietnamese by launching
their 1972 Easter Off ensive to win militarily or at least establish control
over some South Vietnamese territory. Nixon’s China card paid no div-
idends in the Vietnam negotiations, while Hanoi’s off ensive yielded
limited battlefi eld gains but failed to dislodge the Saigon government.
Finally, seeing that Nixon would be reelected, the North Vietnamese on
October 1972 dropped their demand that Th ieu be forced from offi ce as
an immediate condition of a settlement. Th ey separated cease-fi re terms
from political questions, as the United States had insisted all along. But
the concession meant little. Th e preliminary agreement called for a rec-
onciliation commission that would become a coalition government. Of
much greater importance, the deal left NVA forces in possession of the
territory they had gained earlier in the year, and it was clear to both
sides from the outcome of the Easter Off ensive that the ARVN could
prevail only when backstopped by substantial American air power.
While Kissinger negotiated with Th o in Paris, the Nixon adminis-
tration repeatedly misled President Th ieu about its diplomatic eff orts.
When he reluctantly went along with Vietnamization in June 1969, he
had also acquiesced in the idea of secret talks between the United States
and Hanoi. American offi cials had agreed to keep him informed about
the course of negotiations, but Kissinger failed to honor that com-
mitment. Political scientist Larry Berman, who has provided the fullest
account of the Nixon administration’s negotiations with the DRV, fi nds
that the reports to Th ieu by U.S. Ambassador Ellsworth Bunker after
the private Kissinger-Th o sessions “were invariably sanitized.” American
offi cials sometimes chose not to inform Th ieu of new proposals before
sharing them with communist negotiators, and his approval was not
sought. If anything, mistrust between Washington and Saigon worsened
over the course of time. Th ieu never accepted the idea of a coalition
government or the presence of NVA troops within South Vietnam, two