574
Reviews of Books
This book is a superb addition to the library on the
1960s-and it is a lucid and stimulating read.
TERRY ANDERSON
Texas A&M University
LARRY BERMAN. No Peace, No Honor: Nixon, Kissinger,
and Betrayal in Vietnam. New York: Free Press. 200l.
Pp. xv, 334. $27.50.
Among all the controversies provoked by the Vietnam
War, few have been more heated than that which has
raged about the January 1973 peace agreements. Richard M. Nixon and Henry Kissinger have stoutly maintained that they established a foundation for peace
with honor, only to be undercut by a vindictive Congress that bound their hands militarily and ruthlessly
slashed U.S. military aid, leaving South Vietnam defenseless in the face of North Vietnamese aggression.
Critics have claimed that Nixon and Kissinger sought
nothing more than a cynical "decent interval" between
U.S. withdrawal and the inevitable collapse of South
Vietnam-and barely attained that.
The truth is much worse, Larry Berman argues in
this stinging indictment of the secret negotiations that
ended the war. However much they talked of peace,
Nixon and Kissinger in fact viewed the January agreements as a means to continue the war. They were
certain North Vietnam would violate the agreements,
and they planned to retaliate with U.S. airpower. Nor
did they have illusions of honor. They recognized that
by leaving North Vietnamese troops in the South while
withdrawing U.S. forces, they were signing South
Vietnam's death warrant. Indeed, in a variant of
Daniel Ellsberg's "stalemate machine" thesis, Berman
concludes that Nixon sought to perpetuate an indefinite stalemate that would keep South Vietnam afloat
until the end of his presidency, after which he could no
longer be held responsible for what happened.
A political scientist and the author of two wellreceived books on Lyndon Johnson and Vietnam,
Berman has been adept at exploiting newly released
documents, and he does so again here. Totally in
character, Nixon and Kissinger have sought to keep
their papers from historians, but Berman gets around
their restrictions by using other newly declassified U.S.
sources, most importantly notes taken by Kissinger's
aides on his extensive secret discussions with North
Vietnam. The book occasionally lapses into an expose
mode, and it is not footnoted in the usual fashion.
Berman nevertheless uses this new documentation to
craft a provocative analysis of the negotiations that led
to the 1973 agreements.
He begins his tale of "diplomatic deception and
public betrayal" (p. 10) with the Johnson administration's opening of negotiations in Paris in May 1968 and
concludes with the January 1973 agreement. He condemns the secrecy in which Nixon and Kissinger
shrouded their diplomacy, and their repeated deceitfulness in telling one story to the North Vietnamese,
another to the South Vietnamese, and often another to
AMERICAN HISTORICAL REVIEW
the American people and Congress. Nixon clung stubbornly to Nguyen Van Thieu, Berman insists, mainly
because he needed the recalcitrant South Vietnamese
president to carry out his plan to continue the war. The
apparent success of U.S. airpower in the May and
December 1972 Linebacker operations confirmed
Nixon in his strategy. He saw the 1973 peace agreement mainly as a way to continue the war, and he was
convinced that the American people would support
him when North Vietnam violated the terms.
The result was a "sham peace held together with a
plan to deceive the American public with the rhetoric
of American honor" (p. 261). There was little difference, Berman argues, between the National Liberation
Front's 1969 program and the 1973 agreement. All the
latter accomplished was to secure the withdrawal of
U.S. troops and the return of American prisoners of
war. Thousands of people thus died "for very little, or
simply while waiting for Thieu to give in because Nixon
had allowed him to remain in office because Nixon
believed that there was no acceptable American alternative to Thieu." Thieu was betrayed not by Watergate, as Nixon and Kissinger have charged, but by the
"men who kept him in power and made him sign the
so-called peace agreement" (p. 246).
Berman demonstrates conclusively that Nixon and
Kissinger knew the agreement would not bring peace.
He produces convincing evidence that they intended to
continue the war with airpower.
But much remains murky. The differences between
Nixon and Kissinger are not always clear and what
Nixon actually sought (if indeed he knew) is even less
so. Did he perhaps delude himself that he could
sustain South Vietnam's independence? Did he really
believe that he could continue the war until 1976, or,
like Kissinger, was he merely seeking a decent interval? Or was he trying to shift blame to Congress for the
fall of South Vietnam? The new evidence, however
interesting, does not provide clear answers to these
questions. Nor is the charge of betrayal-heretofore
the mantra of the political right-altogether persuasive. By resisting negotiations and stubbornly clinging
to power, Thieu helped prolong the war, and he was as
much the agent of his own-and South Vietnam'sdestruction as a victim of Nixon-Kissinger perfidy.
A valuable addition to the literature, this book
provides much new information and offers bold new
interpretations ofthe complex and tortuous diplomatic
path to the flawed agreements of January 1973. An
authoritative account must still await the release of
Nixon's and Kissinger's papers and additional sources
from North Vietnam.
GEORGE C. HERRING
University of Kentucky
A Not So Foreign Affair: Fascism,
Sexuality, and the Cultural Rhetoric of American Democracy. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press. 200l.
Pp. x, 368. Cloth $64.95, paper $19.95.
ANDREA SLANE.
APRIL
2002