Before the Ukrainians get too giddy over US President Joe Biden’s promise that the United States will stand by their country until its fight for freedom is won, they should remember how steadfast the US was in defending the freedom of the South Vietnamese and the Afghans.
In particular, Biden as a young senator did not support aid to the South Vietnamese nationalists. Nor did he vote to accept refugees from South Vietnam in 1975. On April 23, 1975, Senator Biden said: “The United States has no obligation to evacuate one, or 100,001, South Vietnamese.”
And in Afghanistan, Biden used a draft peace agreement to abandon his allies to their enemies.
Given the racialist preferences of Joe Biden and most leading Democrats and progressives, the Ukrainians do have an advantage over the Vietnamese and the Afghans in securing long-term American support. They are European.
The Paris Agreement
Fifty years ago, Henry Kissinger’s Paris Peace Agreement supposedly brought an end to the Vietnam War with victory for the South Vietnamese. The Agreement recognized their sovereign independence within the community of nations under international law and their right to enjoy political freedoms.
But the Paris Agreement was, in fact, a death warrant for South Vietnam. It authorized the Communists in Hanoi to leave their army in South Vietnam after peace was declared. This privilege given to the Vietnamese Communists was first proposed by Henry Kissinger on January 9, 1971, to Soviet ambassador Anatoly Dobrynin.
In his meeting with Dobrynin, Kissinger went further to betray his allies in South Vietnam. He gave Moscow the green light to fund and arm Hanoi for its final conquest after American forces had left the battlefield and a couple of years of peace had expired.
Kissinger then made the same proposals to Zhou Enlai when he met with the Chinese leader in Beijing on July 9 and 10, 1971.
In early 1975, Hanoi – most impressively armed and funded by Moscow and Beijing – launched an offensive against South Vietnamese forces. Outgunned and outmanned in existential combat engagements, and abandoned by the United States, South Vietnam collapsed.
The cowardly precedent set by Henry Kissinger in his secret negotiations with Hanoi, which I have just revealed in my new book Kissinger’s Betrayal (RealClear Publishing), should give pause to America’s Asian allies, challenged as they are by President Xi Jinping’s commitment to China having the right to impose “Chinese characteristics” on the Tian-xia, or the All-Under-Heaven.
In his report to then-US president Richard Nixon of that January 9, 1971, meeting with Dobrynin, Kissinger did not mention that he had suggested Hanoi leaving its army in South Vietnam. At the time, Nixon’s public position was reciprocal withdrawals of US and North Vietnamese forces from South Vietnam, leaving the South Vietnamese in peace.
Not until December 1972 did Nixon realize what Kissinger had not accomplished in his secret negotiations with Hanoi.
On December 14, a frustrated Kissinger let the truth slip from his mouth: “It seems to me, to sign an agreement which leaves whatever number they’ve got there – let’s say 150,000, which we think, plus the unlimited right of movement across the border, and, indeed, not just the right to movement across the border, but abolishing the border – that I think is close to a sell-out.”
A few minutes later, Nixon focused on that reality, saying: “They were using these negotiations solely for the purpose, not of – that is not [unclear] not for the purpose of ending the war, but of continuing the war in a different form…. And not of bringing peace, but of having – continuing war in this terribly difficult part of the country. War in South Vietnam; peace in North Vietnam. Well, that was their proposal: peace for North Vietnam and continuing war in South Vietnam.”
Kissinger replied: ”So, we have come to the reluctant conclusion that – you have expressed it very well right now, Mr President – that this wasn’t a peace document. This was a document for perpetual warfare, in which they create …”
Nixon said: “Perpetual warfare in South Vietnam …”
Kissinger affirmed: “That’s right.”
Nixon continued: “And peace in North Vietnam. That’s the way to put it.”
Kissinger: “That’s right …”
Nixon focused in on Kissinger’s abandonment of South Vietnam: “Peace in North Vietnam and perpetual warfare in South Vietnam, with the United States – and the United States cooperating with them in … imposing a Communist government on the people of South Vietnam against their will.”
Nixon then reflected on what he really wanted: “We are the party that wants peace in Vietnam, for both sides. And let the future of this poor, suffering country be determined by the people of South Vietnam and not on the battlefield. That’s what our proposal is. We call on the South and we call on the North to agree to this kind of thing. Call on them both to agree.”
In late January 1971, the Soviet ambassador in Hanoi passed on to North Vietnam’s prime minister the substance of Dobrynin’s report to Moscow.
The Vietnamese Communists were told: “If the US undertakes to withdraw all its forces by a certain time limit and possibly does not demand a simultaneous withdrawal of [Democratic Republic of Vietnam] forces from [South Vietnam] … the North Vietnamese should undertake to respect a ceasefire during the US withdrawal plus a certain period of time, not too long, after the US withdrawal.…
“If thereafter war breaks out again between North and South Vietnam, that conflict will no longer be an American affair.”
Hanoi then used a former French colonial official, Jean Sainteny, to inform Kissinger during a lunch on May 25, 1971, that it had accepted Kissinger’s proposal.
Kissinger told Nixon that he had met with Sainteny but did not elaborate on their conversation.
On May 31, 1971, in his secret meeting with North Vietnamese diplomats in Paris, Kissinger officially tabled a proposal that Hanoi need not withdraw its troops from South Vietnam. Kissinger ended his remarks by saying: “When US forces are finally withdrawn, the political future of South Vietnam will have to be left to the Vietnamese.” This comment was not reported to Nixon.
Kissinger in China
On July 9 and 10, 1971, Kissinger was in Beijing meeting with Chinese premier Zhou Enlai to arrange for Nixon’s historic trip to China to meet with Mao Zedong. Page 5 of Kissinger’s briefing paper prepared for his meeting with Zhou reads:
“On behalf of President Nixon, I want to assure the Prime Minister solemnly that the United States is prepared to make a settlement that will truly leave the political evolution of Vietnam to the Vietnamese alone. We are ready to withdraw all our forces by a fixed date and let objective realities shape the political future.”
In the margin next to these words Kissinger wrote: “We want a decent interval.”
To clinch his decision to abandon his South Vietnamese allies, Kissinger’s briefing paper also promised: “If the Vietnamese people themselves decide to change the present government, we shall accept it.”
Kissinger did not tell his president that he had made this commitment to the Chinese Communists.
The South Vietnamese and Nixon did not fully learn of Kissinger’s intended endgame for South Vietnam until October 1972 when he reached agreement with Hanoi on the text of a peace deal and presented the proposed agreement to presidents Nguyen Van Thieu and Richard Nixon.
By that point, Nixon could not withdraw Kissinger’s concession that Hanoi could leave its army inside South Vietnam given the fierce opposition to the war from the Democrats in the US Congress.
The sorry lesson first learned by the South Vietnamese, and then later by the Afghans, is: Don’t trust Americans to negotiate with your enemy behind your back.