258 { China’s Quest
the war quickly and withdraw its military forces from Vietnam. Zhou also
indicated that China would not take sides in the continuing negotiations be-
tween Hanoi and the United States. Zhou also implied that China would not
intervene militarily in the conflict in Indochina.^53 Kissinger had a long dis-
cussion on Vietnam with deputy foreign minister Qiao Guanhua later the
same month in Vienna. Again Qiao affirmed China’s moral and material sup-
port for Hanoi, while disassociating China from VWP specific negotiating
positions. When the Nixon administration responded to Hanoi’s spring 1972
offensive by mining and bombing the DRV, China strongly denounced US
actions.
Ultimately, the DRV accepted the US proposal for separate military and
political settlements. The United States withdrew its military forces with the
government of Nguyen van Thieu still in place. The intention of the US ad-
ministration at that point was to continue providing the RVN with robust
military assistance and use US air power to enforce the provision of the peace
agreement prohibiting PAVN invasion of the South.^54 These plans were later
undone by congressional seizure of control over US Indochina policy. In June
1973, Congress cut off all spending for US military operations in Indochina.
After that, presidential ordering of further military action in Vietnam would
have been illegal. Congress also steeply cut US military assistance to the RVN.
Congress’s rebellion against the Nixon administration’s Vietnam policy was
tied to the Watergate scandal and to an underlying constitutional struggle
between the executive and legislative branches over war powers. Be that as it
may, when the VWP rolled the dice again in October 1974, Washington did
not respond. Hanoi threw all its strength into a final assault that carried it
to victory by April 1975. But all this could not be foreseen when the “peace
agreement” was signed in January 1973. After fighting a ten-year-long war
against the United States, the VWP was compelled to accept an agreement
not too dissimilar to the 1954 Geneva settlement, leaving a hostile govern-
ment in power in Saigon, and confronting it with yet another war. Again this
left a strong reservoir of VWP bitterness against Beijing.