Posted on 05/26/2006 5:48:12 PM PDT by neverdem
Canadian Press
WASHINGTON (AP) - Former U.S. secretary of state Henry Kissinger quietly acknowledged to China in 1972 that Washington could accept a communist takeover of South Vietnam if that evolved after a withdrawal of U.S. troops - even as the war to drive back the Communists dragged on with mounting deaths.
The late U.S. president Richard Nixon's envoy told Chinese Premier Zhou Enlai: "If we can live with a communist government in China, we ought to be able to accept it in Indochina."
Kissinger's blunt remarks surfaced in a collection of papers from his years of diplomacy released Friday by George Washington University's National Security Archive. The collection was gathered from documents available at the U.S. government's National Archives and obtained through the research group's declassification requests.
Kissinger's comments appear to lend credence to the "decent interval" theory posed by some historians who said the United States was prepared to see Communists take over Saigon, as long as that happened long enough after a U.S. troop departure to save face.
But Kissinger cautioned in an interview Friday against reaching easy conclusions from his words of more than three decades ago.
"One of my objectives had to be to get Chinese acquiescence in our policy," he said.
"We succeeded in it and then when we had achieved our goal, our domestic situation made it impossible to sustain it," he said, explaining he meant Watergate and its consequences.
The papers consist of some 2,100 memoranda of Kissinger's secret conversations with senior officials abroad and at home from 1969 to 1977 while he served under presidents Nixon and Gerald Ford as national security adviser, secretary or state and both. The collection contains more than 28,000 pages.
The meeting with Zhou took place in Beijing on June 22, 1972, during stepped-up U.S. bombing and the mining of harbours meant to stall a North Vietnam offensive that began in the spring. China, Vietnam's ally, objected to the U.S. course but was engaged in an historic thaw of relations with Washington.
Kissinger told Zhou the United States respected its Hanoi enemy as a "permanent factor" and probably the "strongest entity" in the region.
"And we have had no interest in destroying it or even defeating it," he insisted.
He complained Hanoi had made one demand in negotiations he could never accept - that the United States force out the Saigon government.
"This isn't because of any particular personal liking for any of the individuals concerned," he said.
"It is because a country cannot be asked to engage in major acts of betrayal as a basis of its foreign policy."
However, Kissinger sketched out scenarios under which Communists might come to power.
While the United States could not make that happen, he said: "If, as a result of historical evolution it should happen over a period of time, if we can live with a communist government in China, we ought to be able to accept it in Indochina."
Pressed by Zhou, Kissinger further acknowledged a communist takeover by force might be tolerated if it happened long enough after a U.S. withdrawal.
He said if civil war broke out a month after a peace deal led to U.S. withdrawal and an exchange of prisoners, Washington would probably consider that a trick and have to step back in.
"If the North Vietnamese, on the other hand, engage in serious negotiation with the South Vietnamese and if after a longer period it starts again after we were all disengaged, my personal judgment is that it is much less likely that we will go back again, much less likely."
The envoy foresaw saw the possibility of friendly relations with adversaries after a war that, by June 1972, had killed more than 45,000 Americans.
"What has Hanoi done to us that would make it impossible to, say in 10 years, establish a new relationship?"
Almost 2,000 more Americans would be killed in action before the last U.S. combat death in January 1973, the month the Paris Peace Accords officially halted U.S. action, left North Vietnamese in the South and preserved the Saigon government until it fell in April 1975.
Whether by design or circumstance, the United States achieved an interval between its pullout and the loss of South Vietnam but not enough of one to avoid history's judgment that it had suffered defeat.
Kissinger said in the interview he was consistent in trying to separate the military and political outcomes in Vietnam - indeed, a point he made at the time.
"If they agreed to a democratic outcome, we would let it evolve according to its own processes," he said Friday, adding to tolerate a communist rise to power was not to wish for it.
William Burr, senior analyst at the National Security Archive, said the papers are the most extensive published record of Kissinger's work, in many cases offering insight into matters that the diplomat only touched on in his prolific memoirs.
For example, he said Kissinger devoted scant space in one book to his expansive meetings with Zhou on that visit to Beijing, during which the Chinese official said he wished Kissinger could run for president himself.
At the time, Chinese-Soviet tensions were sharp and the United States was playing one communist state against the other, while seeking detente with its main rival, Moscow. Kissinger hinted to Zhou the United States would consider a nuclear response if the Soviets were to overrun Asia with conventional forces.
But when the Japanese separately recognized communist China with what Kissinger called "indecent haste," he branded them "treacherous."
© The Canadian Press
Nixon was elected in 1968 on a promise to end the Vietnam War with honor after the dems led us into that quagmire.
George Wallace's third party candidacy took enough votes from Humphrey that Nixon won.
This is a lousy story for Memorial Day Weekend, but it shouldn't be ignored. I wish someone else posted this story. If it's any consolation, I was there. My ETS was 23 Jun 72.
Oh, neverdem, do I even want to read this?
Kissenger needs to be keelhauled.
wow
Kissinger has always been a traitor:
Henry Kissinger played the key role in furthering Soviet aims. Israeli journalist Matti Golan reported that, during the first few days of the Yom Kippur War, while the Communist governments of Yugoslavia, Algeria, Libya, Iraq, and the Soviet Union were resupplying Egypt and Syria,4 Kissinger had delayed the emergency shipment of U.S. arms to Israel. Then, once Israel had regained its military balance and scored decisive victories, he went behind the Israelis’ backs and negotiated a ceasefire directly with the Soviets. Nor was this difficult for him; as Soviet ambassador Anatoliy Dobrynin later revealed, the Soviets had quietly appointed Kissinger as their representative at the same time that he was representing the United States.5 Kissinger then pressured Israel into accepting the ceasefire, which returned portions of the Sinai peninsula to Egypt.
http://www.attacreport.com/ar_archives/art_iswr1_shadow.htm
...and Nixon was NO conservative--GGG
I used to not like Kissinger for his droning, croaking, hypnotizing delivery. He has Ben Stein's deadpan delivery beaten by light-years. Now, I have a legitimate reason to dislike him.
Dr. Strangelove indeed.
In Vietnam, the Americans were never able to match the willpower of the North Vietnamese. That is because the North Vietnamese were willing to risk their existence as a people to win in South Vietnam. There was no way the American people would continue to support the effort to overcome such devotion. And the U.S. Senate was unwilling to sanction a stalemate, which COULD have been achieved with continued levels of military aid to South Vietnam. At this time, a stalemate was acceptable in Korea, in Germany and in the Middle East. Why was Vietnam different? Because the U.S. Senate had written off South Vietnam as an ally. That was a heavily Democrat-controlled Senate, by the way.
During his run for the presidency in 1976, Ronald Reagan alluded to Kissinger's remark to Admiral Elmo Zumwalt, made around 1971, that "the day of the Soviet Union has arrived," and that Washington should be satisfied with being "second place" behind Moscow. It seems like the Mid-Century Metternich was rather bearish on America at this time.
We did NOT lose Vietnam because either Ford, Nixon or Kissinger had given the North a "green light" to invade after we withdrew.
The liberal press will always pretend "we" "lost" Vietnam when in fact the liberals abandoned our ally.
My only criticism of Kissinger is it sounds like he was taking the Chicoms way too seriously and talking candidly with them. Let's also remember China fougt a war with Vietnam. The USSR was N Vietnam's real backer. Kissinger was not handing Southeast Asia over to the chicoms, and there was nothing wrong with what he said.
I tend to believe that it was Nixon who was hurt by the Wallace vote. After all, the Alabama governor took several states that had gone to Goldwater in 1964.
"If the North Vietnamese, on the other hand, engage in serious negotiation with the South Vietnamese and if after a longer period it starts again after we were all disengaged, my personal judgment is that it is much less likely that we will go back again, much less likely."
- - - - - -
This observation could be made by ANYONE (even the Chicoms) that was reading a newspaper at the time. The focus was on getting OUT, not going in. An American VICTORY was secondary. By the way, except for that "negotiation" part, K was right.
Was Kissinger speaking on his own?
Or was he simply being Nixon's button man?
We could also assume that NBC and others would like to make treason more commonplace, and thus more acceptable.
Kissinger ranks right up there with McNamara in my book.
We were ready to move north anytime the word came down....
But it never did.
I went back with my daughter in 2000. It's still a beautiful country with unlimited resources, particularly its people.
I believe they'll drop their vestiges of communism, and side with us if we win the War On Terror.
Otherwise we will have been defeated by islamism. America will matter less and less. And the world will become darker and darker.
Nixon probably didn't have too many of those descendants of the Dixiecrats. I read one piece that said Wallace hurt Nixon in the South, and he hurt Humphrey in the North, especially the votes of labor in the cities. My point was more that third parties and our system of an electoral college can have unpredictable results in close elections, since there is so much dissatisfaction with the current GOP.
Congress & Senate = CUT and RUN
Spineless ten, Spineless now
Place just slightly more hope in the Congress and the Senate than you would in the UN or the ACLU for they are cut from the same cloth.
TT
ten = then
The irony is that the ChiComs and Vietnamese Communists ended up fighting each other.
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