THE LOST PEACE: NEGOTIATING WHILE FIGHTING IN VIETNAM, 1964-1974

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP80B01495R001100070005-1
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 19
• Document Creation Date: December 16, 2016
• Document Release Date: August 15, 2005
• Sequence Number: 5
• Publication Date: December 1, 1974
• Content Type: REPORT

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THE LOST PEACE;
NEGOTIATING WHILE FIGHTING IN VIETNAM, 1964-1974
December, 1974
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CHAPTER I. A PERSPECTIVE ON PEACE IN VIETNAM
A. How the Vietnamese see peace, and assess the failure
of the Paris Agreement to bring it; a summary of the view-
point reflected in interviews in Indochina.
B. Presentation of major questions and hypotheses.
Central Questions
1. Could the Paris Agree-
ment have been reached
sooner?
2. What are the prospects
for a political settlement
in Vietnam?
Major Hypotheses
Four interrelated elements -- the
nature of the conflict, Hanoi's
strategy, U.S. domestic politics,
and the Johnson-Nixon strategy --
explain the attenuated search for
a settlement and the failure of the
Paris Agreement to end the war and
restore peace to Vietnam.
A political settlement in Vietnam
now depends on direct negotiations
between the GVN and the PRG on the
modalities of shifting the conflict
from the military to the political
arena,
The secret negotiations from 1969-
1973 focused on limiting warfare;
normalization of relations between
adversaries and the creation of
modalities for a political settle-
ment are still ahead.
Significance of the Study.
.1. To understanding the decade of Vietnam,
The Vietnam war was negotiated over almost as long
it was fought.. Yet, the contribution of negotiations
to an end to, and political settlement of, the war is
one of the least discussed aspects of the war.
2. To analyses of negotiation during limited and
internal wars:
a, This study confirms the finding that
the resort to negotiations during internal
wars signals military stalemate and/or the
need to conserve force for an attenuated
-struggle,
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b. This study asserts that negotiation' is
part of a process leading to political settle-
ment: In Phase It negotiating-while-fighting
establishes quid pro quos on the use of force.
In Phase II attention shifts to ending the war
itself; i.e., adversaries begin to re-value
original objectives and/or change timetables
for their achievement. Thereafter., Phase III
negotiations are aimed at normalizing. adversary
relations and creating the bases for a political
settlement.
3. To U. S. diplomacy;
a. While the need to negotiate with Commu-
nist and revolutionary political forces has in-
creased along with the incidence of regional
and internal wars, little is being distilled from
the Vietnam experience about the prerequisites
for and the role of negotiations in conflicts where
the U.S. has an overriding interest in promoting
political settlements.
b. The four elements analysed in this study
that contributed to attenuating the search for a
settlement will continue to complicate the search
for political settlements during internal wars.
c. For negotiations to lead to political settle-
ments during internal wars, governments have to
mobilize support for peace just as they must for
war. Thus, if changing a nation's politics is just.
as important as stalemating its. army, the.U.S. is
poorly equipped to either win internal wars or to
promote a political settlement of them.
D. Data, sources'and methodology.
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CHAPTER II. J.S. DIPLOMACY AND THE SECRET SEARCH FOR PEACE
A. Central question: Could the negotiations, and,
ultimately, the Paris Agreement, have come sooner?
B. Significance of the question,
1. The literature suggests Washington let important
opportunities to enter negotiations or reach an agreement
slip by:
a. U Thant thought negotiations could have
come in 1965 or 1966,
b. Cyrus Vance thought an agreement could have
been reached by November, 1968,
c. Xuan Thuy and George McGovern said an
agreement could have been reached in 1969 and
1971,
d. Tad Szulc, summarizing the opinion of many
government officials, suggests an agreement could
have been completed in 1972, without the Christmas
bombing of Hanoi.
2. The literature also characterizes U. S. diplomacy
as clumsy and incompetent, concluding that it delayed and
frustrated the search for an agreement (e.g., Kraslow and
Loory, Chester Cooper, and Henry Kissinger's attitude
in orei n Affairs)
C, Review of major phases in the negotiations,
I.. Operational definition of negotiation,
2. The legacy of past settlements for the negotiators
and their approach to the Vietnam negotiations.
3. Review of phases:
a. Hanoi's overtures, 1964-65,
b. U. S. overtures, 1966-68.
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c. The Paris Talks, 1968-72.
d. The Kissinger-Tho Talks, 1967-1973.
1. Kissinger's summer 1967 contacts.
2. Secret talks, 1969-April, 1972.
3. Summitry, May-October, 1972.
4. October 1972-January 1973.
e. Summary of central issues
Findings
a. The Tet offensive of 1968 signaled a military
stalemate to the U.S. and a political stalemate to
Hanoi. Of the Tet offensive, Henry Kissinger observed,
"This made inevitable an eventual commitment to a
political solution and market the beginning of the
quest for a negotiated settlement." 7c e., stalemate, rather than
achieving a position of strength, facilitates negotiation.
b. For Washington, the negotiations were aimed at
extricating American forces from a conflict that was no
longer strategically significant. For Saigon., negotiations
because their attenuation was anticipated -- were accepted
as the least undesirable way for the U.S. to withdraw.
For the communists, the negotiations were part of an.
overall strategy for winning the conflict.
c. In negotiations with communists, the multiplicity
of overtures are part of the negotiating process. They
establish communication patterns and basic understandings
on language, negotiable issues and goals. They reveal
that Hanoi consistently saw negotiations as an end: to
open a particular track, to respond in it, or to go public
were all designed to entice Washington to declare a uni-
lateral bombing halt rather than to bargain. over terms
under which it would be halted.
d. Understanding the early contacts between Hanoi
and Washington is at least as important for assessing
the significance of the Vietnam negotiations as the
Kissinger-Tho dialogue. In the record of those contacts
lies the story of why the war was fought and why the nego-
tiations took as long as they did. For if there is one
overwhelming conclusion from the record of the early
contacts (i.e. 1964-1968), it is that neither Washington
nor Hanoi saw the causes of the war as negotiable. Thus
both would only accept an agreement if they thought it
facilitated victory.
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e. Neither Washington nor Hanoi were prepared to
negotiate a political settlement. This had to be left
ambiguous and, of course, was. For both, progress in
negotiations was limited by the absence of a vision of
where they might lead. What happened in Paris in 1972
was the application of relatively consistent positions
to much narrower issues than were on the. table in 1968;
what was struck, in essence, was not a new bargain.
1. There were no dramatic turning points in
the decade of negotiations. The postures of all
sides and their ultimate concessions were evoluc'
tionary and the decisions about them incremental.
This is the case, for example, for Hanoi's posi-
tion on the separability of military and political
issues, for LBJ's 31 March speech, Kissinger's
1971-1972 concessions, and Thieu's intransigence.
2, Confident that the progress of its Revolution
was irreversible, Hanoi used force to demonstrate
that it would always have the capability to conquer the
South regardless of the level or efficacy of U.B.
assistance to the CVN. A political -settlement,
therefore, could only specify the way hegemony would
be achieved, not whether, it would be achieved.
f. Did the search for peace (i.e. something more than
an armistice).prolong the war? -
1. The more attenuated the negotiations, the more
mistrust may develop.
2. When each party perceives it has achieved a
position of strength or as long as it seeks to do
so, settlement is not facilitated.
D.- Assessment of U.B. Diplomacy.
1. The overall strategy and striking similiarity between
Johnson and Nixon
a, We attached a tremendous importance to being
earnest; we would not be defeated, forced to withdraw,
or abandon an ally. This was interpreted as intran-
sigence by Hanoi and the intermediaries (even the
European ones, ironically) and as deceit by the new left.
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b. We were continually pre-occupied with achieving
a position of strength before-entering serious negotia
tions. This led to overrating the significance of military
events and developments on both providing a decent inter-
val for the GVN (the DI depended as much on political as
military capabilities) and. on affecting a change in Hanoi's
attitudes towards a negotiated settlement.
c. All the U.S. negotiators sought to avoid predicta-
bility. But bykeeping so many off balance or in the dark,
policy was uncoordinated (e.g., LBJ discovered to his
horror in the middle of Marigold that the bombing of Hanoi
had been authorized), threats of the use of force were
ineffective (i.e., they lacked incentives for Hanoi to
accept U.S. offers), and our credibility consistently
was suspect by friend and foe alike (e.g., operation
Enhance).
2. Staffing
a. The impact of the isolation and segmentation of advice
b. Verification of overtures and offers
c. Washington's goals: were they.formulated "on the plane"?
3. US effectiveness in making offers and using threats
4. The impact of domestic oppostiion: how it shaped the terms rather than thi
the timing of the agreement.
5. The role of detente
a. The Soviets and the Chinese were the medium not the drafters of th
mesgge.
b. Did Kissinger think the Vietnam war would impair the progress o
detente?
6. The reality of the fear that a breakthrough in the negotiations would
not occur.
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CHAPTER III. WHY 1973? WHY THE SEARCH FOR A NEGOTIATED
SETTLEMENT WAS SO ATTENUATED.
Nature of the conflict,
1. Because commitments to and escalation of the war were
gradual and because there was little initial worry about the
cost or feasibility of military victory,. the early overtures
were rebuffed,
forces -- there was a. convergence of pressure to avoid pre-
3. The complexity of the war made coordination of secret
diplomacy difficult because of the minimum goals each parti-
cipant sought to achieve - Washington sought to assure a
decent interval (DI; i.e., time prior.to an agreement to
strengthen Saigon's army and administration so that a non-
Communist government would continue to exist in the wake of
the withdrawal of U.S. forces); Saigon sought Hanoi's'recog-
i it'.i.c n of and international guarantees for the maintenance of
the status-quo ante; and Hanoi sought to achieve a military
and political position in the South assuring it unhampered
capabilities to ' liberate the South after the departure of U.S.
rather than. negotiated settlement.
2. Hanoi's strategy and U.S. doctrines of counter-
insurgency stressed the importance of military victory
mature negotiations and premature agreement..
U.S. domestic 'politics.
1. Opposition to a war and the mobilization of support
for a negotiated settlement only translate into a policy debate
. 2 , Sntra-governccnental dissent depends on whether advocates
of change can argue that the current policy is counter-productive
and propose either new objectives or new instruments. Mobilizing
support within the government for such changes requires time for
the current policy or instrument to have its failure demonstrated.
George Ball's failure.
b. The Clifford-Warnke success.
3. When the population is finally divided over and mobilized
against the war, the way to end the war that is sought (i.e.,
negotiations rather than unilateral withdrawal) and -the terms
to end it' that are sought (i.e., lasting peace rather than an
armistice) are designed to serve the larger goals of uniting'
the country and healing the wounds of internal strife. This
requires 'a more complex.agreement and, consequently, more time
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a. The agreement Harriman and Vance could have
had in 1968, versus'
b. The agreement achieved in 1973.
C. Hanoi's Strategy.
1. Because Hanoi counted on U.S. politics forcing an end
to the war, they were psychologically prepared to endure its
ravages for longer and put less faith in the negotiating pro-
cess.
2. Negotiating-awhile-fighting reinforces mistrust and
makes the acceptance of any agreement finally reached
difficult.
a. Hanoi's use of the whipsaw.
b. Leapfrogging public and private positions to
maximize the impact on U.S. domestic politics.
. 3. The strategy of protracted struggle and the dynamics
of politburo politics require that competing goals be accomo_.
.dated by prolonging the conflict.
4. Negotiation is a tactic -- "to open another front" --
and using it depends on the course of the war more than the
offers and threats of the adversary. Since the conflict is
protracted, reaching the phase in which negotiations would
be appropriate takes longer than if the war were fought all out
D. U. S. Strategy.
1. Summary of the U. S. approach.
a. What
b-:- Why
c. When
d. How
2. For both Nixon and Johnson the search. for peace came
third (i.e., after defeating aggression and building South
Vietnam.)
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3.a Negotiations were always viewed as part of a broader
process with which any agreement would have to be coordinated.
Detente the guarantor of any agreement reached -- took
time to achieve3
4. Both Johnson and Nixon sought more from negotiations
than an armistice; i,e., they sought an agreement that would
unite the country, provide a basis for healing the internal
divisions the war had caused, and usher in lasting peace for
Indochina. The more that was sought from the negotiations,
the longer the :negotiators required to develop the terms.
5. Graduated force programs failed:: they permitted
Hanoi time to recover from and adjust to new increments
of force encouraging delay-in making concessions.
6. Kissinger thought that the first step in the process
leading to an agreement "between parties :that had been
murd,tring and betraying each other for decades" was to
create a balance of forces such that.each adversary thought
that with a few more years of post agreement' struggle they
would achieve their maximum objectives- i.e., for Saigon,
its continued existence in the face of a declining military
threat from the DRV and with the prospect of prosperity
and growth similar to that enjoyed by South Korea; for Hanoi,
the liberation of the south and eventual unification; for
Washington, the gradual accomodation of the adversaries to
the terms of the Paris Agreement and the reality that in South
Vietnam there would exist two armies, and two. governments.
Implementing this strategy required achieving a position of
military strength for Saigon and this required time and war-
fare. (It also explains why Nixon and Kissinger.differed
from Melvin Laird over the rate at which U.S. forces could
be withdrawn. Laird wanted. the rate to be faster because
he saw how the drain on the economy from the war was beginning
to hurt other DOD programs in. Congress ; Nixon and Kissinger
wanted the rates to be slower. for fear that Saigon would
balk at any agreement as premature)
7... Washington's handling of Saigon tended to increase
Thieu's resistance to the agreement tuts'and timing and
this contributed to further delay.
Saigon may h:_-_ve been kept in the dark, but it was
never in.the dark as far as what it expected would result.
from negotiations. This contributed to Saigon's sense of
de ja vu both about the importance of the war and the nego-
tza ns to Washington. Thieu was prepared by late 1968,
my notes indicate, to accept the reality that the U.S. would
negotiate a separate peace. In any case, my research
suggests'that by 1971, Thieu had clearly in mind the shape
of the agreement that emerged in January 1973
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8. Because of the open-ended terms Washington offered
Hanoi and the failure of graduated force, the U.S. relin-
quished control over the factors that would induce Hanoi to
agree to talks and later to terms; i.e., as Washington and
Saigon gained on the battlefield, they could not translate
this into pressure to accelerate the progress of negotiations.
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CHAPTER IV. WHAT WENT WRONG?
A. The provisions of the Paris Agreement.
1. Kissinger's perspective: "...it is not easy to achieve
through negotiations what has not been achieved on the battle-
field, and if you look at the settlements that have been made
in the post-war period, the lines of demarcation have almost
always followed the lines of actual control. ....we have taken
the position, throughout that the agreement cannot be analyzed
in terms of any one of its provisions, but it has to be seen
in its totality and in terms of the evoluation that it starts."
.(24 January 1973 press conference).
B. slow the provisions of the Paris Agreement were determined
by prolonging the war and attenuating the search for a negotiated
settlement a
1. Impact of the nature of the conflict.
a. Since the military aspects of the conflict were
dealt with separately from the political aspects, the
process providing for future political evolution had to
be left ambiguous.
b. An integrated agreement could. not be reached that
linked the end of warfare to a process of political
Impact of ' Hanoi'' s strategy.
as It limited what was negotiable t
l
t
o on
y
he terms
and timing of U. S. withdrawal and the size of the inspec-
tion force.
.
b.' What was not negotiable:
11 Vietnamese unity.
2. The end of all hostile U.S. acts against
the territory of the DRV.
3> The status of the PRG.
4. The process of determining area control in
the south,
5,. The provisional nature of the DMZ.
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3. Impact of U.S. politics..
a. Opinion against the war, against the 1972
Christmas bombing of Hanoi, and against the continued
use of U.S. airpower in Indochina prevented Washington
from holding out for better terms or a broader agree-
ment incorporating political questions and the rest of
Indochina.
b. Opposition to the war had its greatest impact
on determining the terms Washington finally accepted
rather than when negotiations began.
4. Impact of Washington's strategy.
a. Ambiguity in the agreement, could be tolerated
because of:
1. The understandings reached. with Le Due
Tho in the secret talks.
2. The prospect that detente would result in
a tapering off of communist country aid and support
to Hanoi.
3.` The follow-on process anticipated
a. The International Conference
b. The Kissinger-Tho dialogue
c. The normalization of U.S.-DRV relations
and U.S. post-war economic reconstruction assis-
tance to the DRV.
4. The transforming effect the process of
negotiations would have on Hanoi: "Any inter-
national settlement represents a stage in a
process by which a nation reconciles its vision
of itself with the vision of it by other powers."
(Henry Kissinger, A World Restored.)
b. There is also a profound cynicism associated
with Kissinger's strategy about Hanoi's motives and
the prospects for ending the war. Nixon and Kissinger
were prepared to accept ambiguities and rest so much of
the agreements implementation on understandings to
facilitate later disavodingthe agreement it events demon-
strated that the understandings reached would not be
honoured.
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What went wrong in implementing the Paris Agreement:
1.
The status of the postwar war
a.
b.
NVA infiltration
The less-fire in place
2.
Status of UOS-DRV relations
as The follow-on talks
b. The DRV's call for normalization of relations
c. Post-war assistance and the MIA accounting
Status of GVN,-PRG relations
a. The talks at Le Celle. St. Cloud
b, Accomodation in the south.
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CHAPTER V. PROSPECT FOR A POLITICAL SETTLEMENT IN VIETNAM
A. Summary of the contribution of negotiations to date.
B. Nature of the political struggle ahead.
C. Current Saigon, Hanoi, and Washington expectations.
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A. Prerequisites for and role of negotiation in conflicts
where the U.S. seeks to promote a political settlement.
1. When to negotiate.
2. How to negotiate.
a. Private vs. public talks.
c, Costs of using the back channel.
d, Relations with allies: _
Use of intermediaries.
a.. Unilateral initiatives vs. insistence on
reciprocity: costs and benefits of "understandings".
b. The importance of time-specific offers,
states and revolutionary 'political forces.
1. Mobilizing U.S. public opinion.
t. Target for the adversary.
b. 'Dilemma for the President-. i.e., fear that if
mobilized popular support for the war,, a limited war
cannot be fought vs. fear that if the public support.
for the war -not, developed, opposition would force
a premature curtailment of U.S. involvement and/or
encourage the adversary to persist convinced that
U.S. war weariness would precipitate major concessions
at the negotiating table s
. B. Unique problems posed in negotiations with Communist
2. Paucity of ways to influence adversary?s politics.
a. Failure of force
b. Illusion of detente:
condominium, not detente.
i.e..
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3. There is no substitute for military victory.
C. The building-blocks of political settlements of internal
wars.
1. Negotiation
2. Accomodation
3. How divided countries get together. Relevance of
Korean and German cases to drawing dividing lines in.
Vietnam; one people, two states.
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HOOVER INSTITUTION
ON WAR, REVOLUTION AND PEACE
Stanford, California 94305 . [phone]
Dear Gary:
i^< ,
I4t,t!6!!1!,__ =1EIa,0-
12 December 1974
Good talking with you -- and, needless to say, glad to
hear that your memo on me is making the rounds.
Here is the latest version of my outline for the
book I am doing here on the Vietnam negotiations.
You comments on it would be welcome. I tend to work
my putting down my thoughts in the most blunt way
possible to elicit comment, so I am not defensive about
the arguments listed and you should not hestiate to
take issue with them.
I leave here on 26 December and expedt to return on
3 or 4 February. When I am back, I'll drop you a note
on the dates and places I visited.
Warmest regards and all best wishes for the coming
holiday season.
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