Peace at Last
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ichard Nixon’s second Inaugural took place on a day much like his first, cold and clear and blustery. I sat on the platform behind the Cabinet with my eighty-six-year-old father. I was no longer surprised at being there, but I was somewhat stunned by the emotional events of the past months. The war would now soon be over and hope was pervasive. Senators and Congressmen came over to chat and to congratulate; my father, whose life’s efforts had been destroyed when Nazism took over his native land, was beaming. He could not really believe what had happened; in a strange way all the anguish of his life seemed vindicated.
There was a blare of trumpets and Nixon appeared to the tune of “Hail to the Chief.” He too seemed as if he could not really believe it had all happened; a term in office had not abated his sense of wonder at being there. And he seemed, if not really happy, indeed quite detached.
Triumph seemed to fill Nixon with a premonition of ephemerality. He was, as he never tired of repeating, at his best under pressure. Indeed, it was sometimes difficult to avoid the impression that he needed crises as a motivating force—and that success became not a goal but an obsession so that once achieved he would not know what to do with it. The festivities surrounding the Inauguration were large but not buoyant. Participants acted as if they had earned their presence rather than as if they shared in a new common purpose. Through it all Richard Nixon moved as if he were himself a spectator, not the principal. He had brought off spectacular successes. He had achieved the international goals he had set for the first term. He had before him a blank canvas, one of the rare times in history that a President could devote himself substantially to new and creative tasks of diplomacy. The legacies of the past were being overcome, the international environment was fluid, as happens at most once in a generation—waiting to be shaped. And yet there was about him this day a quality of remoteness, as if he could never quite bring himself to leave the inhospitable and hostile world that he inhabited, that he may have hated but at least had come to terms with. Perhaps it was simple shyness or fatalism; perhaps it was the consciousness of a looming catastrophe.
Two days later, January 22, I left for Paris for the final meeting with Le Duc Tho. It was to take place for the first time on neutral and ceremonial ground in a small conference room at Avenue Kléber, the scene of 174 futile plenary sessions since 1968. Even now it would be used for only a symbolic event. Sullivan and Thach had spent several days checking all the texts. In a final paranoiac gesture the North Vietnamese insisted that on completion each text be bound by string and the string sealed—I suppose to prevent us from deviously slipping in new pages overnight.
When I arrived in Paris, I learned that Lyndon Johnson had died that day. He was himself a casualty of the Vietnam war, which he had inherited and then expanded in striving to fulfill his conception of our nation’s duty and of his obligation to his fallen predecessor. There was nothing he had wanted less than to be a war President, and this no doubt contributed to his inconclusive conduct of the struggle. In retirement he had behaved with dignity not untinged by melancholy, burdened with the terrible truth that the only pursuit he really cared about, that of public service, was now closed to him—like a surgeon who at the height of his prowess is barred forever from entering a hospital. Haldeman had phoned him on January 15 to tell him that the bombing would stop. (I had briefed him on Nixon’s behalf many times in the past, but, now reduced to a “lower profile,” I had been requested by Haldeman not to do so.) But I had sent him a copy of the peace agreement, with a warm note. It was symbolic that this hulking, imperious, vulnerable, expansive, aspiring man, so full of life, should die with the war that had broken his heart.
The meeting started at 9:35 a.m., Tuesday, January 23. Le Duc Tho managed even on this solemn occasion to make himself obnoxious by insisting on ironclad assurances of American economic aid to North Vietnam. I told him that this could not be discussed further until after the agreement was signed; it also depended on Congressional approval and on observance of the agreement. Finally, at a quarter to one, we initialed the various texts and improvised brief closing statements. Le Duc Tho said:
Mr. Adviser, we have been negotiating for almost five years now. I can say this is now the beginning of a new atmosphere between us. It is also the first stone [sic] which marks our new relationship between our two countries, although the official signing ceremony will take place in a few days time. The restoration of peace is the aspiration of the Vietnamese people, the American people and also the people of the world.
So today we have accomplished our work. I talked to your Government through you and you talked to my Government through me. We, both of us, should not forget this historical day. Because it is a long distance and difficult way before we come to this, but now we have overcome all these difficulties. It is a subject for satisfaction between Us, for you and for me. And the Agreement will be officially signed in a few days. I solemnly respect [sic] here to you that we will strictly implement the Agreement. I think that both of us should do the same, if lasting peace is to be maintained in Vietnam and in Southeast Asia.
And I replied:
Mr. Special Adviser, our two peoples have suffered a great deal. There have been many painful moments and much destruction. You and I have had the great honor of putting an end to this. It is something we can never forget.
But our work will not be complete unless we bring a lasting peace to the people of Indochina, and an atmosphere of reconciliation between the people of North Vietnam and the people of the United States. I would like also solemnly to promise you that we will strictly implement the Agreement. Beyond that, we shall dedicate ourselves to the improvement of the relationship between our two countries. I think you and I have a special relationship and a special obligation in this respect. So our work today completes our negotiations. And I hope that we will be able to look back to this day as the point which marked the beginning of friendship between the people of North Vietnam and the United States.
After this Le Duc Tho and I stepped out on the street in a cold misty rain, and shook hands for the benefit of photographers. I lunched with Foreign Minister Lam of South Vietnam. He behaved with dignity and courage, giving no hint of the bitter dispute of recent months.
America’s Vietnam war was over.
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Postlude
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N January 23, Washington was, as always before great events, consumed in technicalities. I arrived back in my office around 6:35 p.m. the same day, a few hours before Nixon was to announce the agreement and the cease-fire. For once I was not asked to brief the press until the next day. It was felt, correctly, that the President’s speech would require no elaboration. The President briefed the Congressional leaders in the Cabinet Room, doing most of the explaining himself.
I sat alone in my office, waiting for Nixon’s speech to the nation. It was the culmination of all we had endured and endeavored for four years. Over two million Americans had given parts of their lives to that distant land. Over forty-five thousand had laid down their lives for it; several hundred thousand had been wounded. They and their families could now take some pride that it had not all been in vain. Those who had opposed the effort in Indochina would, we could hope, close ranks now that their goal of peace had finally been achieved. And the peoples of South Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia would perhaps attain at long last a future of tranquillity, security, and progress, a future worthy of their sacrifices.
We stood, I fervently hoped, at the threshold of a period of national reconciliation that would be given impetus by the unique opportunity for creativity I saw ahead. Perhaps America had found the way to merge the idealism of the early Sixties with the sterner pragmatism of the recent past. China was now an important friend; we had built a new basis for stable relations with the Soviet Union through a Berlin agreement, the first strategic arms limitation treaty, and an agreed code of international conduct. The diplomatic revolution that had been brought about opened up an extraordinary opportunity for American diplomacy. This, in addition to the dispelling of our Vietnam trauma, was a reason for enormous hope. We had eased relations with adversaries; it was now time to turn to reinvigorating relations with friends, and to resolving unsolved problems. We had decided to make 1973 the Year of Europe, to reaffirm our Alliance ties with the Atlantic Community—and also Japan. We would show that these ties were stronger and deeper than the tentative new relations with Communist countries. On the basis of Alliance cohesion and vitality we would test the real opportunities for detente. We were at a moment of extraordinary opportunity in the Middle East; I was set to meet with President Sadat’s national security adviser, Hafiz Ismail, in February—my first step as a Middle East negotiator. Nixon entered his second term with an overwhelming public mandate, a strong executive at the height of his prestige.
Only rarely in history do statesmen find an environment in which all factors are so malleable; before us, I thought, was the chance to shape events, to build a new world, harnessing the energy and dreams of the American people, and mankind’s hopes. Almost certainly I would not be able to take part in the whole enterprise over four years; after the peace was well established I would leave—perhaps toward the end of the year. I was grateful for the opportunity I had enjoyed to help prepare the ground.
Nixon spoke at 10:00 p.m. briefly and with conciliation. He paid tribute to Lyndon Johnson, who had yearned for that day, and he asked Americans to consecrate themselves to “make the peace we have achieved a peace that would last.”
I called Nixon immediately afterward, as I had done after every major speech, to congratulate him. He seemed incapable of resting on any achievement. He was already worrying about the Congressional briefings that would start next day.
Peace at Last
Mrs. Nixon took the phone to congratulate me. It took stout hearts to see it through, she said. What a gallant lady she had been. With pain and stoicism, she had suffered the calumny and hatred that seemed to follow her husband. Unlike the President, she was not capable of the fantasy life in which romantic imaginings embellished the often self-inflicted daily disappointments. She was totally without illusions and totally insistent on facing her trials in solitude. Her dignity never wavered. And if she seemed remote, who could know what fires had had to be banked in her stern existence. She made no claims on anyone; her fortitude had been awesome and not a little inspiring because one sensed that it had been wrested from an essential gentleness.
A few minutes later Nelson Rockefeller called. He had introduced me to public life and sustained me throughout. In a strange way he was both inarticulate and a bit shy, and yet enveloping in his warmth. One had to know him well to understand the tactile manner in which he communicated—the meanings of the little winks, nudges, and mumbles by which he conveyed that he cared, and conferred comfort and inward security. And he was quintessentially American in his unquenchable optimism. He could never imagine that a wrong could not be righted or that effort could not conquer obstacles in the way of honorable goals. He was always encouraging, supportive. He had been there matter-of-factly, unasked, through every crisis of those years. And in this spirit he spoke to me with pride of what his country had accomplished. He saw in America’s strength a blessing conferring a duty—to defend the free, to give hope to the disadvantaged, and to walk truly in the paths of justice and mercy.
Around midnight, when I was at home, Nixon called from the Lincoln Sitting Room, where he was brooding alone. He was wondering whether the press would appreciate what had been done; probably not. But that was not what he really had on his mind. He knew that every success brings a terrific letdown, he said. I should not let it get to me. I should not be discouraged. There were many battles yet to fight; I should not weaken. In fact, I was neither discouraged nor did I feel let down. Listening to him, I could picture the scene: Nixon would be sitting solitary and withdrawn, deep in his brown stuffed chair with his legs on a settee in front of him, a small reading light breaking the darkness, and a wood fire throwing shadows on the wall of the room. The loudspeakers would be playing romantic classical music, probably Tchaikovsky. He was talking to me, but he was really addressing himself.
What extraordinary vehicles destiny selects to accomplish its design. This man, so lonely in his hour of triumph, so ungenerous in some of his motivations, had navigated our nation through one of the most anguishing periods in its history. Not by nature courageous, he had steeled himself to conspicuous acts of rare courage. Not normally outgoing, he had forced himself to rally his people to its challenge. He had striven for a revolution in American foreign policy so that it would overcome the disastrous oscillations between overcommitment and isolation. Despised by the Establishment, ambiguous in his human perceptions, he had yet held fast to a sense of national honor and responsibility, determined to prove that the strongest free country had no right to abdicate. What would have happened had the Establishment about which he was so ambivalent shown him some love? Would he have withdrawn deeper into the wilderness of his resentments, or would an act of grace have liberated him? By now it no longer mattered. Enveloped in an intractable solitude, at the end of a period of bitter division, he nevertheless saw before him a vista of promise to which few statesmen have been blessed to aspire. He could envisage a new international order that would reduce lingering enmities, strengthen friendships, and give new hope to emerging nations. It was a worthy goal for America and mankind. He was alone in his moment of triumph on a pinnacle, that was soon to turn into a precipice. And yet with all his insecurities and flaws he had brought us by a tremendous act of will to an extraordinary moment when dreams and possibilities conjoined.
These things passed through my mind that evening after at long last I had placed my initials on the Paris Agreement on Ending the War and Restoring Peace in Vietnam. And I was at peace with myself, neither elated nor sad.
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