(8 of 8)
2) agree to a post-cease-fire National Council of Reconciliation that is not a disguised coalition government or an independent governmental structure;
3) accept an international force to supervise the cease-fire with enough men and muscle to be able to carry out its mission;
4) join in some recognition of the Demilitarized Zone as a provisional boundary between two Viet Nams, neither of which will impose its will by force on the other.
All that may now be a very large agenda for North Viet Nam to swallow, and the U.S. thinks it will have some indication of how things will go when talks between technical experts of both sides resume in Paris this week. And, since the full substance of negotiations and the reason for their resumption has not been made fully public, both sides in the end may be able to interpret any agreement as having won points and saved face.
Though the history of the war and North Viet Nam's will to wage it argues against it, it is always possible that Nixon's show of force may pay off, and he will succeed in largely getting what he wants. Other Nixon gambles have paid off in the past. The Cambodian invasion, widely and correctly criticized at the time for spreading the war into yet another country, nevertheless helped speed the withdrawal of U.S. troops. And the mining of Haiphong Harbor and the resumption of the bombing in the North last spring did not bring the U.S. to the edge of World War III as so many feared, or even result in the cancellation of the Moscow summit. Rather, they are now credited with nudging the North Vietnamese toward the bargaining table. Now the new bombing has succeeded in getting the talks scheduled again. Certainly, the Russians and the Chinese took the blitz on Hanoi and Haiphong with a measure of resigned acceptance.
But even if it brings the planned results, the bombing will not soon be forgotten or forgiven by many Americans, by much of the rest of the world, or by North Viet Nam, a country with which the U.S. will eventually have to come to terms.
And what if it does not work? What happens if the talks begin again, without the hoped-for "good will" on the part of the North? Presumably, Nixon will be in an even more uncomfortable position than he was before the bombing. He will have gained nothing but the renewed mistrust of many European statesmen as well as a large segment of the American public. Having so dramatically expressed his dissatisfaction with the current demands of the North, like their insistence on tying the fate of American prisoners together with that of political prisoners in the South, it would be doubly difficult now to turn around and accede to any more of those demands. If anything, the bombing, far from making future negotiations easier, could make them even more arduous.
The Administration clearly does not think so, by its own rationale for starting —and stopping—the blitz against North Viet Nam. Says Kissinger, once burned and choosing his words with care: "We expect to have serious negotiations and have some reason to believe we will have serious negotiations."