struck. With this vital concession, might a deal
have been made sooner saving many lives? It
was bitterly opposed by the president of South
Vietnam, General Nguyen Van Thieu. If the
Americans left, the South Vietnamese would have
to face the full weight of the Vietminh in the
South alone. There were hitches in the final nego-
tiations in Paris when the North Vietnamese
resisted amendments to the peace agreement.
To persuade them, Nixon ordered the horrific
Christmas bombing of Hanoi in December 1972.
The savage bombing causing indiscriminate civil-
ian casualties was also a departing present for the
South Vietnamese. On 27 January 1973 the com-
munist negotiators accepted a ceasefire and con-
cluded a comprehensive agreement to end the
Vietnam war; the South Vietnamese were left no
alternative but to join, since they were totally
dependent on US support. Kissinger and Le Duc
Tho received the Nobel Prize for ending a war
that did not end.
The last long-drawn-out stages from 1970 to
1973 of what had become the most unpopular
war in US history continued to be accompanied
by protests at home. Nixon’s own reactions
tended to polarise the conflict between ‘conserv-
atives’ and ‘liberals’. In May 1970 National
Guardsmen fired into a crowd of student demon-
strators at Kent State University; four students
were killed and several wounded, which shocked
even the conservatives. Protest swept American
university campuses. The war was still not over in
November 1972 when Nixon again presented
himself to the electors.
That Nixon won the presidential election by a
landslide, with more than 60 per cent of the
popular vote, reveals the change in public feeling.
Nixon personally, shy, aloof and not entirely
trusted, was not popular; ‘Would you buy a
second-hand car from him?’ it was asked. But he
also appeared moderate and competent at home.
He and Kissinger capitalised on the conservative
backlash that was demanding law and order and
a return to health of the American economy, and
was disillusioned with the costly Great Society
and the exaggerated aspirations of the Johnson
years. The boys were coming home from Vietnam
and few now remained. Kissinger’s skilful han-
dling of foreign affairs, the evidence of relaxation
of tension with the Soviet Union, the Nuclear
Non-Proliferation Treaty and the arms-limitation
talks with Russia all helped to enhance the admin-
istration’s image. The greatest Nixon–Kissinger
coup and the most surprising was the establish-
ment of friendly relations with Mao’s China.
Their secret diplomacy began to show results
when the Chinese in April 1971 invited an
American table-tennis team to China. This was
followed by Kissinger’s own secret trip to Beijing
to prepare the way for Nixon’s spectacular visit in
February 1972. The reorientation of US policy
strengthened the hand of US diplomacy the
world over. In May 1972 Nixon was in Moscow
signing an arms-limitation agreement; detente
was in full swing.
That Nixon’s posture as a successful world
statesman restoring US prestige after the frustra-
tions of Vietnam helped him to win a second term
in the presidency there can be no doubt. But his
electoral victory was also aided by the weakness
of a divided opposition. The Democratic candi-
date, Senator George McGovern, did not prove a
strong vote-winner. Edward Kennedy, the last of
the Kennedy brothers, might have done, but his
chances of selection had disappeared three years
earlier in the shallow waters at Chappaquiddick,
where, in an accident when the car he was driving
plunged off a bridge, his lady companion was
drowned. The senator had not immediately raised
the alarm after the accident which led to contro-
versy blighting his presidential ambitions.
Within the space of less than two years Nixon
fell from triumph to disgrace. But the world did
not entirely revolve around Watergate. The
‘Agreement to end the Vietnam war’ in January
1973 and the accompanying international decla-
ration of support for it signed by twelve nations
in the presence of the secretary-general of the
United Nations was, despite its solemn promises,
bound to fail in its main purpose: the achievement
of peace. It left the opposing communist and anti-
communist forces in control of their own areas
and regions of South Vietnam. The advantage lay
with the North Vietnamese forces, which did not
have to withdraw north of the 17th parallel. Nor
1
THE UNITED STATES 791
