No More Vietnams by Richard Nixon Page B

American ground forces. Our anti-Communist friends in Laos fought a valiant guerrilla war that exacted a high toll on North Vietnamese forces. But because of our sharp limits on aid, they never succeeded in denying Hanoi effective control of Laos.
    Our policy was a sad combination of wishful thinking and willful ignorance. In 1964, when I spoke with Ambassador Henry Cabot Lodge in Saigon, I sensed that he was uncomfortable as he tried to explain the reason for the administration’s opposition to sending forces into Laos and Cambodia in hot pursuit of Communist units and to cutting off the Ho Chi Minh Trail. The administration contended that this would violate the neutrality of these countries, undermine the Geneva agreement, and widen the war. But it was obvious that North Vietnam had already widened the war by taking over southernLaos and eastern Cambodia. By failing to defend Laos, the Kennedy and Johnson administrations made it easier for North Vietnam to wage their war against South Vietnam by sending tons of weapons and thousands of men down the Ho Chi Minh Trail.
    In conversations I had with President Diem and with the leaders of Thailand in 1956, they expressed deep distress at the lack of safeguards in the 1954 Geneva treaty and the ease with which North Vietnam flouted the treaty’s terms in Laos. They understood, as Eisenhower had, that Laos was vital to the security of all Indochina. Years later it would be fashionable in academia to deride the domino theory. But whatever academics would say about it, the dominoes certainly believed it.
    Our failure to prevent North Vietnam from establishing the Ho Chi Minh Trail had fatal consequences. Hanoi could not have waged the kind of a war it did in the South without a free run down the Laos panhandle. If the Communists had been unable to use Laos and Cambodia as staging grounds for their invasion, they would have had to strike across the forty-mile-long border of the demilitarized zone. On this narrow front, South Vietnam would have been able to defend itself without the assistance of American forces.
    Our acquiescence in Hanoi’s violations of the 1962 Geneva agreement lengthened the front that Saigon had to defend from 40 to 640 miles. Our unilateral restraint gave North Vietnam privileged sanctuaries from which to attack American and South Vietnamese forces.
    At first, when the Communists fought in small guerrilla units, they could pick and choose their targets, execute hit-and-run raids, and slip back across the border before reinforcements could arrive. Later, when they used division-size conventional units, they could concentrate overwhelmingly superior offensive power against overextended defensive forces. Our failure in Laos turned over the strategic and tactical initiative to Hanoi.
    Had the Geneva agreement turned Laos into a genuine neutral buffer state, our problems in Vietnam would have beenreduced to manageable proportions. It did not, but we acted as if it did. We treated the fate of Laos as if it were of secondary importance to that of South Vietnam. But the two were inextricably linked. Guerrilla attacks were breaking out across South Vietnam. North Vietnam was the driving force behind them, and its troops and armaments arrived via Laos.
    By allowing the Ho Chi Minh Trail to become a freeway for Hanoi’s invasion, we put Ho Chi Minh in the driver’s seat in the Vietnam War.
    â€¢Â â€¢Â â€¢
    We made our third critical mistake in South Vietnam in 1963. The Kennedy administration, increasingly frustrated with President Diem, encouraged and supported a military coup against his government. This shameful episode ended with Diem’s murder and began a period of political chaos in South Vietnam that forced us to send our own troops into the war.
    Being a ruler of a Third World country usually means making enemies. Diem was no exception. He was a bold decision-maker, initiating vast programs for the betterment of his country.