ABSTRACT
Richard Nixon was an unlikely peacemaker, especially where Indochina was concerned. As a junior congressman in the 1940s, he had built a reputation battling the spectre of domestic communism. As vice president in the Eisenhower administration, he had recommended that the United States intervene to rescue the French at Dien Bien Phu, and Lyndon Johnson, then leader of the Democratic party majority in the Senate, had denounced "Nixon's war." Nixon and Kissinger soon had a chance to test their ideas. Although Johnson had stopped the bombing unconditionally, the United States believed it had Hanoi's promise that communist forces would cease attacks on major cities and across the demilitarized zone. A pullout from the South by a few People's Army of Vietnam units in summer and fall 1968 seemed to confirm Hanoi's assent to the "understanding." The temptation to strike was irresistible, partly because Nixon's own program of withdrawals had set a limit on how long US power would be available for that purpose.
