0 - The Black Vault

-~ow -r 4, ~vr~
THE BDM CORPORATION
INSIGHTS
Negotiations 0 During President Johnson's Admininstration, the
hope for ending the war depended on being successful
on the battlefield. Achieving a position of
military strength became the US prerequisite for
negotiations. This strategy suffered from two
disabilities: (a) the nature of guerrilla warfare;
and (b) the asymmetry in the definition of
what constituted acceptable losses. As a result,
American/FWMAF military successes could not be
translated into permanent political advantage.
0 President Nixon and Mr. Kissinger recognized that
a military solution for the war was not available;
therefore they set about to attain a stalemate on
the battlefield, to caLse the DRV to be isolated
from their communist benefactors and to arrive at
a political solutic" in the negotiations.
• As a venture in si~rategic persuasion, the early
bombing of North Vietnam did not work. Limited
and graduated air attacks met with little success.
The symbolic rationale for bombing halts backfired
and the DRV used negotiations as a means to get
the bombing stopped. Only when the president
decided to go with a heavy bombardment of Hanoi/
Haiphong in December 1972, did US airpower prove
its effectivenes; in getting the DRV to negotiate
in earnest.
* When negotiating a settlement on behalf of our
allies and ourselves as we did in Vietnam, the US
must not only be actively cognizant of their
established negotiating positions, but also of
their input at,, reactions to alternatives.
Early on, American leadership mistakenly believed
Vietnam to be vital not for itself, but for what
they thought its "loss" would mean internationally
and domesticaily. It also meant that US leaders
wanted a negotiated settlement without fully realizing
(though probably more than tneir critics)
that a civil war cannot be ended by political
compromise alone. The attainment of a stalemate
on the battlefield and the effective isolation of
the enemy from their suppliers were the keys to
bringing the negotiations to a conclusion. It was
unfortunate that US military strength had no
political corollary in RVN. The fact that the
agreement failed to stop the DRV and the PRG from
eventually pursuing their ultimate goal -- military
victory over the South -- reinforces this
insight.
EX-12