ABSTRACT
Richard Nixon came to the White House in January 1969 determined to end US military involvement in Vietnam. Nixon began the military withdrawal in 1969, and in the spring of 1970 he initiated plans to withdraw another 150,000 troops. Private citizen Nixon had concluded already in 1967 that the massive US military intervention in Vietnam was counterproductive to worldwide US interests and had to be ended in the least painful way. Nixon’s radio and TV address to the nation on April 30, his press conference statements on May 8, and subsequent reports on the Cambodian operation provide good insights into his perceptions and the reasoning that lay behind his decision to go into Cambodia. Nixon thus conceded that the US political climate had been damaged by his sending US forces into Cambodia, an action he felt was totally justified on political grounds within Cambodia and on military grounds in terms of North Vietnamese activities inside Cambodia.
