The signing of the Paris Agreement in 1973 ended not only America's Vietnam War but also Richard Nixon's best laid plans. After years of secret negotiations, threats of massive bombing and secret diplomacy designed to shatter strained Communist alliances, the president had to settle for a peace that fell far short of his original aims.

In Richard Nixon and the Vietnam War, accomplished foreign relations historian David F. Shmitz provides students of US history and the Vietnam era with an up-to-date analysis of Nixon’s Vietnam policy in a brief and accessible book that addresses the main controversies of the Nixon years. President Richard Nixon’s first presidential term oversaw the definitive crucible of the Vietnam War. Nixon came into office seeking the kind of decisive victory that had eluded President Johnson, and went about expanding the war, overtly and covertly, in order to uphold a policy of “containment,” protect America’s credibility, and defy the left’s antiwar movement at home. Tactically, politically, Nixon’s moves made sense. However, by 1971 the president was forced to significantly de-escalate the American presence and seek a negotiated end to the war, which is now accepted as an American defeat, and a resounding failure of American foreign relations. Schmitz addresses the main controversies of Nixon’s Vietnam strategy, and in so doing manages to trace back the ways in which this most calculating and perceptive politician wound up resigning from office a fraud and failure. Finally, the book seeks to place the impact of Nixon’s policies and decisions in the larger context of post-World War II American society, and analyzes the full costs of the Vietnam War that the nation feels to this day.

“He is just about the only American leader who ever did anything right in Vietnam.…Nixon makes a strong case.” —Chicago Tribune In his bestselling No More Vietnams, Richard Nixon analyzes America’s military involvement in Southeast Asia—including his own role as commander-in-chief from 1969 to 1974—and presciently calls for a new American approach to conflicts in the Third World.

"In writing No More Vietnams, Richard Nixon-with the unique perspective of the man who served us America's commander-in-chief during the war's most difficult stage-has set out to dispel the myths of Vietnam, to show why we failed in Vietnam, and to contribute to the development of policies that will help avoid such failures in the future. In doing so, President Nixon analyzes the role that four presidents, the military, the Congress, the media, and the antiwar movement played in the Vietnam debacle." -- Front jacket flap

In their initial effort to end the Vietnam War, Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger attempted to lever concessions from Hanoi at the negotiating table with military force and coercive diplomacy. They were not seeking military victory, which they did not believe was feasible. Instead, they backed up their diplomacy toward North Vietnam and the Soviet Union with the Madman Theory of threatening excessive force, which included the specter of nuclear force. They began with verbal threats then bombed North Vietnamese and Viet Cong base areas in Cambodia, signaling that there was more to come. As the bombing expanded, they launched a previously unknown mining ruse against Haiphong, stepped-up their warnings to Hanoi and Moscow, and initiated planning for a massive shock-and-awe military operation referred to within the White House inner circle as DUCK HOOK. Beyond the mining of North Vietnamese ports and selective bombing in and around Hanoi, the initial DUCK HOOK concept included proposals for “tactical” nuclear strikes against logistics targets and U.S. and South Vietnamese ground incursions into the North. In early October 1969, however, Nixon aborted planning for the long-contemplated operation. He had been influenced by Hanoi's defiance in the face of his dire threats and concerned about U.S. public reaction, antiwar protests, and internal administration dissent. In place of DUCK HOOK, Nixon and Kissinger launched a secret global nuclear alert in hopes that it would lend credibility to their prior warnings and perhaps even persuade Moscow to put pressure on Hanoi. It was to be a “special reminder” of how far President Nixon might go. The risky gambit failed to move the Soviets, but it marked a turning point in the administration's strategy for exiting Vietnam. Nixon and Kissinger became increasingly resigned to a “long-route” policy of providing Saigon with a “decent chance” of survival for a “decent interval” after a negotiated settlement and U.S. forces left Indochina. Burr and Kimball draw upon extensive research in participant interviews and declassified documents to unravel this intricate story of the October 1969 nuclear alert. They place it in the context of nuclear threat making and coercive diplomacy since 1945, the culture of the Bomb, intra-governmental dissent, domestic political pressures, the international “nuclear taboo,” and Vietnamese and Soviet actions and policies. It is a history that holds important lessons for the present and future about the risks and uncertainties of nuclear threat making.

In this shocking exposé on the betrayal of South Vietnam, premier historian Larry Berman uses never-before-seen North Vietnamese documents to create a sweeping indictment against President Nixon and Henry Kissinger. On April 30, 1975, when U.S. helicopters pulled the last soldiers out of Saigon, the question lingered: Had American and Vietnamese lives been lost in vain? When the city fell shortly thereafter, the answer was clearly yes. The Agreement on Ending the War and Restoring Peace in Vietnam—signed by Henry Kissinger in 1973, and hailed as "peace with honor" by President Nixon—was a travesty. In No Peace, No Honor, Larry Berman reveals the long-hidden truth in secret documents concerning U.S. negotiations that Kissinger had sealed—negotiations that led to his sharing the Nobel Peace Prize. Based on newly declassified information and a complete North Vietnamese transcription of the talks, Berman offers the real story for the first time, proving that there is only one word for Nixon and Kissinger's actions toward the United States' former ally, and the tens of thousands of soldiers who fought and died: betrayal.