The end of the war

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A: formal peace talks began in Paris. B: President Nixon resigned because of the Watergate affair.

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Source A criticises the award because it contrasts the two smiling prize-winners with the war still going on behind them. Through the window soldiers are still fighting in Vietnam, and the caption 'Peace? What peace?' suggests that there was no real peace to reward. The huge medal and the photographers suggest the prize is more about publicity than achievement. This fits what happened. The Paris Peace Agreement of January 1973 set up a ceasefire, but fighting between the South Vietnamese army and North Vietnamese and Viet Cong forces began again almost at once, as both sides tried to seize territory. When the award was announced in October 1973, Le Duc Tho refused to accept his prize, saying that peace had not yet been established in South Vietnam, and two members of the Nobel committee resigned in protest. Many critics also remembered that Kissinger had backed the Christmas bombing only ten months earlier. The cartoon was published in an American newspaper during the Watergate scandal, when many Americans had become cynical about claims made by their leaders.

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Source B is useful because it shows how President Nixon wanted Americans to see the Paris Peace Agreement. He claims that the agreement will 'end the war and bring peace with honor', and he stresses that the people of South Vietnam can decide their own future and that the USA will continue to recognise Thieu's government. This tells the historian what the USA said it had achieved: an end to American involvement without abandoning its ally. The provenance makes it valuable as evidence of the official view, because it is the President speaking to the whole nation on the day the agreement was initialled. However, the provenance also limits its reliability. Nixon had promised 'peace with honor' since 1968, and after the heavy criticism of the Christmas bombing he needed to present the agreement as a success. He does not mention that the agreement allowed about 150,000 North Vietnamese troops to remain in the South, or that the PRG was given a political role, concessions that President Thieu had bitterly opposed. Nor does he mention his secret promises to Thieu that the USA would respond if North Vietnam broke the agreement.

Source C is useful because it shows how the agreement worked in practice. The journalist reports that 'the war has not stopped', with fresh clashes every day, and describes how both sides rushed to plant their flags in villages just before the ceasefire, which matches what historians call the 'war of the flags'. He also identifies the agreement's central weakness: the Americans were leaving while North Vietnamese divisions remained inside South Vietnam. This was accurate, since the last US combat troops left on 29 March 1973 and the North Vietnamese troops stayed, which made the eventual collapse of the South possible. The provenance adds to its value. The writer was a British journalist, not directly involved in the war, who was reporting what he could see in Saigon two months after the ceasefire. However, it describes only the first weeks of the agreement and mainly reflects the fears of South Vietnamese officers, so it does not show the American or North Vietnamese view.

Overall, the sources are most useful when used together. Source B shows what the agreement was meant to achieve and how it was presented to the American people, while Source C shows the gap between those claims and reality. With contextual knowledge, an historian can see that the agreement achieved Nixon's main aims - US withdrawal and the return of the prisoners of war - but did not bring peace to Vietnam, as the collapse of South Vietnam in 1975 proved.

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In some important ways the Paris Peace Agreement was a success for the USA. Nixon's main aim by 1972 was to get American forces out of Vietnam without appearing to be defeated, and the agreement achieved this. All remaining US troops were to leave within 60 days, and the last combat troops left on 29 March 1973. Just as important to Americans, all prisoners of war were to be released, and in Operation Homecoming 591 prisoners were flown home. American deaths in Vietnam stopped and the draft ended. The agreement also kept President Thieu in power, so the USA could claim it had not abandoned its ally, and Nixon told the nation on 23 January 1973 that he had achieved 'peace with honor'. At home, the end of American involvement calmed the bitter divisions that had led to the protests and the shootings at Kent State. In the short term, then, the agreement gave the USA what it most wanted.

However, the terms show that the USA had to make major concessions. About 150,000 North Vietnamese troops were allowed to remain in the South, and the PRG was given a political role through the National Council of National Reconciliation and Concord. Thieu had opposed these terms so strongly that he had demanded 69 changes and had to be pressured into signing by the Christmas bombing, by Nixon's secret promises and by Nixon's threat to sign without him. The agreement therefore left South Vietnam in a dangerous position.

The agreement also failed to bring peace. The ceasefire was broken almost at once in the 'war of the flags', and the international commission set up to supervise it was powerless. Nixon's secret promises to take 'swift and severe retaliatory action' if Hanoi broke the agreement could not be kept, because Congress passed the Case-Church Amendment in 1973 and Nixon resigned over Watergate in August 1974. When North Vietnam attacked in 1975, the USA did nothing, and Saigon fell on 30 April 1975.

In the long term, therefore, the agreement was a failure for the USA's wider aims. Since 1954 the USA had tried to keep South Vietnam independent and non-communist as part of its policy of containment. By 1975 not only South Vietnam but also Laos and Cambodia were communist. Pictures of helicopters evacuating the US Embassy damaged American prestige around the world, and about 58,000 Americans had died for a cause that was lost. Some critics argued that similar terms might have been available years earlier, which would have saved thousands of lives, and some historians believe Nixon and Kissinger accepted that South Vietnam might fall after a 'decent interval'.

Overall, I agree with the statement only to a limited extent. The agreement was a success in Nixon's narrow and short-term aims: it got American troops and prisoners home and ended the war for the USA. But it was not a success for the USA's original aims in Vietnam, because it left North Vietnamese troops in the South, did not bring peace and led within two years to the communist victory the USA had fought to prevent. It may have been the best deal available to a country that was determined to leave, but that is not the same as a success.