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Humane Position. Too much has been said too often for a new report to give a fresh perspective to the long debate over U.S. policy in Indochina. "If winding down the war is my greatest satisfaction in foreign policy, the failure to end it is my deepest disappointment," Nixon said. "We will not be content until all conflict is stilled." Yet Nixon cast new doubt on just how far away that day may be. He pledges that the U.S. will not remove all of its forces from Viet Nam until the Communists release all U.S. prisoners of war—an understandably humane position but one complicating further the ending of the war. He thus once more plainly rejects demands for a specific withdrawal date put forth by both Democratic and Republican critics of his policy.
Nixon nevertheless restates his confidence in the eventual success of Vietnamization. He notes that the policy was largely forced by U.S. public opinion and was "the only policy available once we had rejected the status quo, escalation and capitulation." Unlike his foreign policy report of last year, Nixon's statement carefully avoids scolding the Soviet Union for supplying arms to Communist troops in Viet Nam. Yet the difficulty of reaching Soviet leaders was demonstrated anew on the same day that Nixon's report was released. The Soviet government attacked Vietnamization as an effort to prolong the war and announced that it would "continue giving all necessary aid" to Hanoi.