(4 of 10)
Momentum Lost. But when a second wave of some 50,000 demonstrators vowed to "stop the Government," Washington police, federal troops and the Justice Department got tough. Carrying out mass arrests, most of them illegal, they pushed some 12,000 protesters into buses and locked them up. Most were soon released for lack of evidence or improper arrest procedures, but the Government still functioned and the movement's momentum was lost, perhaps permanently.
By year's end, American deaths had fallen to fewer than ten a week. While no end to the death of Vietnamese, Laotians and Cambodians was in sight, Nixon had withdrawn nearly 400,000 U.S. troops, leaving a force of 140,000 on Feb. 1. By election time in November, the current rate of withdrawal would leave well below 50,000 troops, mostly Army support units. Even that involvement may be at an end by then, according to Nixon (see box, page 14). However, the Administration has said that the U.S. will continue to provide air support, from Thailand or elsewhere, so long as the South Vietnamese require it, and continue air attacks on Communist positions in Laos and Cambodia.
U.S. military commanders expressed confidence that the South Vietnamese would not collapse as soon as the U.S. withdraws. After South Vietnamese President Nguyen Van Thieu ran a farcical re-election campaign devoid of any opposition, there was less U.S. hope about the future of democracy in that nation.
In sum, there was no question that the President could have moved faster to get out of Viet Nam; considering his campaign pledge that he would end the war, it was remarkable that the U.S. was still involved three years and 15,000 American deaths later. Yet in essence, the ground war seemed over, and the President defended his slow pace as necessary to ensure that "we leave in a way that gives the South Vietnamese a reasonable chance to survive as a free people," and also in a fashion that does not undermine the credibility of U.S. commitments to other allies or further divide the nation at home.
II: THE WORLD
For sheer shock theater, none of the year's events equaled Nixon's 90-second television announcement on July 15 that he would confer with Chou and Mao in Peking and that Henry Kissinger had already been there to prepare the way. Rarely had official Washington ever kept so momentous a secret so well. Taiwan officials fumed, and Japan's Premier Eisaku Sato lost face because his longtime U.S. ally had failed to consult with him on such a historic development in his own backyard. Besides being humiliated, Japan felt isolated as the U.S. prepared to bargain with its Asian rival; some diplomats feared that it might react by swinging to the right, perhaps even by developing its own nuclear capability. South Korea, still facing Communist troops to the north, now felt less certain of U.S. support. South Viet Nam was equally shocked. "Thieu just