No Peace, No Honor: Nixon, Kissinger, and Betrayal in Vietnam

This stunning, smart, scholarly and incisive book neatly unravels the clever pseudointellectual reconstruction that many neo-conservative authors have bought into regarding the conduct of the Vietnam War by the Nixon administration. While few of us would quarrel with the idea that Nixon accomplished much on the world scene, we still must protest the idea held by many that he was so severely hampered in his prosecution of the war by a combination of internal and external constraints that he was unable to execute the compassionate, intelligent, and objective policies toward southeast Asia that he and Henry Kissinger had so painstakingly devised. Rather, we learn here that his Vietnam policies were as full of the 'sturm und drang' contradictions seen elsewhere in his administration. For Nixon, prosecution of the Vietnam War was just another case of "politics as usual", another opportunity to pit conservative against liberal, hawk against dove, for personal aggrandizement and short-term political gain. Much of what he did and planned were based on domestic political considerations and the fear of being seen as weak on communism. he looked Le Duc Tho eye to eye, and Nixon blinked. For this he never forgave himself, and he was willing to do anything, lie to anyone, dissemble, connive, and betray the American people just to win in Vietnam. Far from flying with the angels, both Nixon and Kissinger bloodied their hands by instituting policies that resulted a dramatic increase in both American and Vietnamese casualties, instituting policies that continued the escalation of the war and its extension to new areas such as Laos and Cambodia. Using the conflict in Vietnam as a key element to engage both the Soviet Union and Communist China, Nixon seemed to lose sight of the need to deal with the specific factors propelling the war even as he became increasingly engaged with it, thinking he could simply "bomb" the North Vietnamese into capitulating regardless of the mounting evidence to the contrary. At times his conduct of the war was not only irrational and extremely counter-productive, but also criminal and unnecessary, as with the incursions into Cambodia in 1970, which spurred an avalanche of student protest and increasing political resistance at home. indeed, much of the documentary evidence related here shows his entire strategy of seeming withdrawal while simultaneously secretly escalating the air war tells volumes about the levels of deceit and cupidity the Nixon administration had toward the war in Vietnam.Nixon's presidency is a study in contrasts, a reflection of the internal contradictions propelling the President himself. Nixon is truly one of the most fascinating of our modern presidents, a remarkable amalgam of his genius, daring, and all-too human flaws, a man so haunted and tortured by his interior demons that he spent the balance of his post=presidency years attempting to reconstruct the truth about his conduct of the presidency and the war in

How can "A Peace With Honor" claimed by Henry Kissinger result from a divided nation with 58,000 casualties and an ally with over 2 million dead? The only honor is bestowed upon the men and women who fought for an honorable cause, one that aimed for a free and peaceful South Vietnam. Presidents Nixon and Thieu are dead and Le Duc Tho never accepted his Nobel Peace Prize. The only remaining key player from the 1973 Paris sell-out of South Vietnam is Henry Kissinger. But his true legacy will be locked up for many years in vaults. Thanks to Dr. Larry Berman for this insightful revelation into one of the darkest times in our political history. "Return the Nobel Without Honor" should have been the title for this book...a must read for all Americans.

Larry Berman is the perfect person to expose President Richard Nixon's duplicity regarding his Vietnam War policy, wherein Nixon sought to promote a peace agreement he and Henry Kissinger both knew would accomplish nothing in thwarting North Vietnam's design to achieve a unified Vietnamese Communist nation. In the typical Nixon fashion, design was preeminent over ultimate reality as he heralded the agreement ending U.S. participation in the nation's most controversial war with the glorious phrase, "Peace With Honor." "No Peace, No Honor" is the logical sequel to Larry Berman's earlier penetrating work, "Planning a Tragedy," which was a fascinating look inside the Johnson Administration and the mindset which brought about America's entry into the Vietnam conflict. Robert McNamara, despite his earlier assurances, proved to be a naive administrator, making mistake upon mistake in forcing America into an ever deepening hawkish posture. The wise counsel of State Department operative George Ball, who provided the beneficial hindsight input of French president Charles DeGaulle, whose country fought a war in Indo China between 1946 and 1954, was unfortunately spurned.With Johnson gone and the Nixon Administration taking over in January of 1969, the scene is set for Berman's latest work. Taking advantage of recently declassified government documents, Berman presents a chaotic scene in which Nixon and Kissinger seek to find a way out of the Vietnam morass without conveying the impression that the U.S. was running out on an ally and leaving it vulnerably exposed to a successful Communist insurgency. Despite ferocious bombing, Nixon was ultimately confronted with a situation wherein public support for the war in America had reached its lowest level while his anticipated strategy of helping build Vietnam's fighting forces into a team formidable enough to hold off the insurgency from the North had notably failed. As a result, Nixon sought to convince Americans that the agreement he was able to achieve embodied "Peace With Honor" when Communist troops remained in place in the South, prepared to finish the job and achieve a unified Vietnam. Debate had persisted over the years over whether Nixon and Kissinger were aware of what ultimately would transpire, and that the agreement signed and put into place was nothing other than a facade meant to disguise an ultimate result of which they were well aware. The documents unearthed by Berman demonstrate an awareness of Nixon and Kissinger of the tragic nature of circumstances and the inevitability of a Communist triumph.William Hare

Professor Berman's wonderful book continues his study of the presidency and the war in Vietnam. I have enjoyed his two prior books on the subject and his third effort is also quite good. While other scholars have written about the back channel efforts between Nixon and Thieu prior to the 1968 election, Berman's research is far more compelling than his contemporaries. The deal hammered out in January of 1973 varied little from what Clark Clifford was willing to offer toward the end of 1968. The only difference is that another 20,000 Americans died while Nixon/Kissenger waited and stalled. That does not sound like "Peace with Honor" to me. His trilogy of Vietnam should be on the desk of every student who studies presidential politics and policy.

In 1973, soon after the Nobel Prize Committee announced that Henry Kissinger and Le Duc Tho had won the Nobel Peace Prize for their efforts in bringing about the treaty that ended United States military involvement in Vietnam, former US Ambassador to Japan and Harvard history professor Edwin Reischauer said that the Nobel Committee had apparently changed the award to the "Nobel War Prize." Among other things, Professor Berman's latest book certainly demonstrates that no one deserved a peace prize for the Viet Nam War (what the Vietnamese call "the American War"). That Henry Kissinger and Richard Nixon constantly engaged in duplicity with the South Vietnamese government and with the American people is not exactly news today. However, Berman's prodigious research demonstrates beyond all doubt that Kissinger and Nixon knew very well that whatever peace agreement they reached with the North Vietnamese government would be at best temporary, and would result in the collapse of the South Vietnamese government. Furthermore, Berman demonstrates that Henry Kissinger and Richard Nixon were only interested in getting the US out of Viet Nam,and were not at all concerned with what would happen to the South Vietnamese people afterwards. "No Peace, No Honor" is an important and readable book on the last years of US involvement in the Viet Nam War, especially the behind-the-scenes negotiations that resulted in America's less than honorable exit from Viet Nam.