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After 51 hours in Viet Nam, he was airborne again. He seemed genuinely moved by his meeting with the troops. "They make tears come to your eyes," he said. "There's a strength out there. If the political leadership can equal these men, we're going to bring this war to an end on the right basis, and before long." Of the South Vietnamese, he said: "They are going to make it." Saigon, Nixon observed, was not going to become "Ho Chi Minh City."
Crucial Continents. Except for 100°-plus heat, Nixon's final two stops in Asia were more routine. India's Indira Gandhi was pleased with the beginning of U.S. troop withdrawals from Viet Nam, but —probably mindful of the running Indian disputes with Pakistan—was doubtful that collective security would be successful for the nations of the Asian periphery. Pakistan's Yahya Khan wanted to buy new arms from the U.S., but Nixon could only tell him that the matter was under review in Washington. The government-lining Pakistan Times rejected collective security as a trap that might embroil the country in big-power conflicts, and announced that the "special" U.S.-Pakistan relationship of the 1950s "cannot be revived." Nixon later reflected that relations between the Indians and the Pakistanis are no better now than they were when he first visited there in 1953, as Vice President of the U.S.
What had Nixon achieved? At best, he prompted his hosts to think seriously about standing more independently in the future. He took care to limit the ceremonial aspects of the trip, but his very presence was highly symbolic. In office less than seven months, he had already toured Europe and Asia. The U.S. still looks out across both the Atlantic and Pacific oceans, he was saying, and a new President was clearly marking out his own way of dealing with friends and adversaries on both the troubled overseas continents crucial to U.S. interests.