Rapprochement with the United States } 289
The Declining American Threat
At the end of January 1968, Hanoi launched its Tet Offensive. While the mil-
itary consequences of that giant effort were much as Mao had warned (dev-
astating and demoralizing losses and failure to take cities), the power of the
assault profoundly shook the confidence of President Johnson. On March
31, two months into the offensive, Johnson announced a series of moves that
together amounted to a major shift away from quest for military victory to
search for a compromise negotiated settlement with Hanoi. Johnson declared
a desire for a negotiated settlement. US bombing was halted, partially in
March and completely in October. Cessation of bombing was Hanoi’s precon-
dition for such talks. In effect, Washington accepted Hanoi’s terms, confer-
ring very substantial military advantages on Hanoi in the process. A request
from the US commander in Vietnam, William Westmoreland, for 206,000
additional troops was turned down, and then Westmoreland was relieved
and replaced by Creighton Abrams, a US general who embraced a strategy
of Vietnamization of combat effort paralleled by gradual withdrawal of US
forces. Finally, Johnson bowed out of the 1968 presidential contest, devoting
himself, he said, to the quest for a negotiated peace in Vietnam. The Nixon
administration that took office in January 1969 continued these policies, al-
though it began heavy bombing in March 1969 of North Vietnamese sanctu-
aries in eastern Cambodia.
From Mao’s perspective, seconded by Zhou Enlai, the 1968 shifts in US pol-
icy meant that the United States was on its way out of Indochina. Washington
had given up the quest to create an anticommunist, anti-China bastion in
South Vietnam and was looking desperately for a face-saving exit from its
positions on China’s southern borders. At the same time, as noted in an ear-
lier chapter, Hanoi was moving steadily closer to the Soviet Union in terms
of military strategy. The heavy losses suffered by NLF forces during the Tet
Offensive made it probable that in the future Hanoi would rely even more on
regular PAVN forces outfitted by the Soviet Union.
While China’s security environment was deteriorating because of Soviet
moves in Czechoslovakia, in Vietnam and on China’s own borders, new possi-
bilities in the United States appeared in the form of proposals being broached
by Nixon. Part of Nixon’s effort to position himself for the 1968 presidential
campaign was the publication in October 1967 in the journal Foreign Affairs
of an article about US Asian policy after the Vietnam War. The American
people were deeply divided over the war, and Nixon was positioning himself
as the peace candidate. One section of the article dealt with China and hinted
at a willingness to consider a new approach to China. It said:
Taking the long view, we simply cannot afford to leave China forever
outside the family of nations, there to nurture its fantasies, cherish its