“No More Vietnams”: How America 'Lost the Peace' - New York Times book review by James Chace (April 7, 1985)
… ''No More Vietnams'' is two books. The first is a highly selective history of the Vietnam War - a war, as he tells it, that we won. We then, however, ''lost the peace.'' The second and more interesting book (confined unfortunately to one of his six chapters) is his program to win the hearts and minds - and stomachs - of the third world.
Mr. Nixon's history of the Vietnam War expands on the interpretation given in his memoirs. He stresses throughout his need to threaten to bomb North Vietnam in order to force Hanoi to sue for peace. This threat was at the heart of his effort to win the war, a strategy he explained to his aide H. R. Haldeman this way:
''I call it the Madman Theory, Bob. I want the North Vietnamese to believe that I've reached the point where I might do anything to stop the war.''
The bombing of Cambodia to wipe out the North Vietnamese sanctuaries in 1969, he says, made Hanoi resume negotiations with the United States in Paris; unfortunately, little else happened. Only in the fall of 1972, when the United States dropped its demand that the North Vietnamese withdraw from the South and North Vietnam no longer insisted on unilateral American withdrawal, did peace seem at hand. But since Mr. Nixon had been reducing our armed forces all along, South Vietnam's President Nguyen Van Thieu, fearing final American withdrawal would mean the North Vietnamese would ultimately control all of Vietnam, balked. Hanoi then stiffened its demands.
To compel Hanoi to agree to Washington's terms and doubtless to demonstrate his willingness to support the Thieu Government after America's withdrawal, Mr. Nixon unleashed furious bombing raids against the Hanoi-Haiphong complex in December 1972 - the so-called Christmas bombing. In 11 days, American aircraft flew almost 3,000 sorties and dropped some 40,000 tons of bombs. It was not, Mr. Nixon insists, ''carpet bombing.'' But it certainly brought home the message to Hanoi that the Madman Theory should not be dismissed out of hand.
On Dec. 30, 1972, Washington stopped the bombing. On Jan. 8, 1973, negotiations reconvened. On Jan. 27, a peace agreement was signed, very little different from the draft worked out in October. And so, Mr. Nixon writes, ''We had won the second Vietnam War.'' …