0 - The Black Vault

THE BDM CORPORATION
unilaterally witndrawing its troops immediately, that is until no more than
100,000 or so men remained, As one advocate of unilateral withdrawal put
it,
At least we have se,.arated the goal of te~lucirg th-. American
prasence from factors we cannot ourselves control, namely,
the level of combat in South Vietnam initiated by North
Vietnam and Hanoi's intransigence in the Paris taik',.99/
Nearly everyone in the Nixon Adr, ,istration
saw Vietnamization
is the most feasible way to facilitate secret negotiatons with
the URV--negotiations aimed at mutual troop withdrawels that would not
involve loss of face for Hanoi and would ultimately pressure the GVN into
reaching a political settiement with the NLF/PRG.
While Vietnanization and US withdrawals proved to be
responsive to the needs of the RVNAF as well as to US
the costs of the war,
domestic cr'ticism of
they ultimately proved counterproductive to what the
UZS *.,s seek'ng from the negotiations. The more the US would draw down the
numbers of troops in Vietnam without making progress in negotiations, the
less inLc.tive the DRV had to reach any agreement at all. Just as the US
had given up a Dargaining "blue chip" by halting the bombing of the DRV
when it did, 4t gave up another by withdriwing its troops without gaining
concessions from the enemy. 100/
2) Getting Support: Invelving the Soviets and
Buyir' Time at Home.:
In May 1969, President Nixon delivered a major speech
on Vietnam in which he oroposed a mutual withdrawal and cessation of hos-
4 tilities and announced the withdrawal of 25,000 US troops. Mr. Kissinger
showed an advance copy of the text to the Soviet Ambassauor to the US,
Anatoli Dobrynin, and explained that if the Russians didn't help produce a
settlement the US
would "escalate the war."ll/ The President was seeking
to pull-off a public relations "coup" at home--trying to weaken the ertemy
tc the maximum extent possible, speed up the strengthening of the RVNAF and
begin withdrawals--while reinforcing a perception held by Soviet leadership
that he was a dangerous, hardline adersary. l02/
7 43