No Peace, No Honor

From Barnes & Noble

The Barnes & Noble Review
Larry Berman's No Peace, No Honor provides a scorching inside look at the negotiations by which America ended its disastrous intervention in Vietnam. These took place on two separate tracks: There were official talks between the Americans, South Vietnamese, and North Vietnamese, as well as secretive discussions in Paris between Henry Kissinger (authorized by President Nixon) and Le Duc Tho. For years, the role played by these back-channel meetings was unclear. Now, as archives slowly open and documents are declassified, an army of historians is excavating the reality behind the myths. Berman is one of the first off the mark, and his detailed assessment leads to some harsh conclusions about American motives.

Nixon pursued a settlement with Hanoi that would "close the conflict with dignity," as Kissinger put it -- meaning that the blow to national ego would be too strong if we just pulled up stakes and left. Originally, this meant sending thousands of soldiers to prop up the Thieu regime in Saigon. But once domestic considerations dictated that America bring its boys home -- pressure brought to bear by the peace movement and Congress -- Berman shows how Kissinger and Nixon were ready to sell out even Thieu. One gets the feeling that however repugnant Thieu might have been, he had every right to suspect American motives. Indeed, the South was overrun immediately after the last embassy personnel left Saigon on April 30, 1975. And contrary to understandings that America would resume its intervention if that happened, the South was left to its fate.

Berman sifted through an incredible array of papers and transcripts to piece together what really happened during the negotiations. "This story of diplomatic deception and public betrayal has come to light only because of the release of documents and tapes that Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger sought to bury for as long as possible," he explains. While Berman's writing tends to be dry, this is a powerful study of how American foreign policy was cynically grounded in domestic political considerations; Nixon's reelection efforts constantly dictated his handling of the situation in Indochina, especially his refusal to be seen as "having lost" the war. (Jonathan Cook)

Jonathan Cook lives in New York City.

Library Journal

Adm. Elmo Zumwalt, who participated in the negotiations to end the Vietnam War, observed, "There are at least two words no one can use to characterize the outcome of that two-faced policy. One is `peace.' The other is `honor.' " Berman (Lyndon Johnson's War and Planning a Tragedy) confirms Zumwalt and two notable 1998 investigations of the Richard Nixon-Henry Kissinger Vietnam diplomacy: Jeffrey Kimball's Nixon's Vietnam War (LJ 11/1/98) and William Bundy's A Tangled Web (LJ 3/15/98). Berman skillfully navigates recently declassified records to show that Nixon never sought a peaceful solution to the war. Instead, the Paris Peace Treaty, which ended U.S. involvement in 1973 after five years of tortured negotiations between Kissinger and his North Vietnam counterpart Le Duc Tho, was so deliberately ambiguous that Nixon believed he would be able to return with U.S. air power to avoid being blamed for the loss of the war. South Vietnam's President Thieu is portrayed sympathetically as a dupe of Nixon who was forced to sign this "Jabberwocky Agreement," which ensured the downfall of South Vietnam in 1975 as certainly as Watergate destroyed Nixon's scheme to bomb his way to respectability. A worthy choice for academic and most public libraries. Karl Helicher, Upper Merion Twp. Lib., King of Prussia, PA Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.

Kirkus Reviews

A blow-by-blow accounting of the peace negotiations that ended the war in Vietnam, complete with some (hardly earthshaking) recently declassified material. Although Nixon and Kissinger spoke of peace with honor, historian Berman (Planning a Tragedy, not reviewed) claims that other goals dominated the protracted negotiations that led to the cessation of armed hostilities between the US and North Vietnam. The US consistently backed off from its promises to both Nguyen Van Thieu and the South Vietnamese people-in Kissinger's words, it was necessary to "settle the military issues first and leave the political evolution to Vietnam . . . as long as it was done by reasonably democratic processes." There was little doubt how that evolution would play out, given the puppet nature of the Thieu regime. Berman tells how the North Vietnamese had learned from their deception at the Geneva Accords of 1954 how to compromise, giving ground only at the last minute and forcing Kissinger into such preposterous comments as "These are our last proposals, but not an ultimatum." While it is true that the US bailed on the South Vietnamese government in 1975, however, it seems somewhat naïve-what Spiro Agnew might have called a piece of ingenuous incredulity-on the part of Berman to call this a betrayal. As he points out himself in his delineation of the secret process of the negotiations, Thieu knew full well that the US considered him expedient only when he wasn't being a hindrance. Berman's near-daily recounting of the negotiations, though, combined with scene-setting (if stiff) portraits of all the main players, is a real lesson in the squirrelly craft of finding a road to peace, since someone alwaysholds a better hand. Forget the folderol about telling "the shocking hidden story of the peace process"-for almost nothing about the Vietnam War could come as a shock anymore. Appreciate this story instead as a choreography of the long and delicate peace dance, and all the toes that were stepped on along the way.