(5 of 8)
The Communists' massive Easter offensive also fits into the equation, although how it fits is a matter of debate. The Pentagon has been selling the offensive as a serious defeat. While it is true that an estimated 100,000 Communist troops were killed over seven months and that Thieu was not toppled, it is also true that the Communists are in better military shape in the South than they have been since 1969. With 100,000 to 145,000 North Vietnamese troops now in the country, the Communists control over one-third to one-half of South Viet Nam's territory (see map, page 15). Those areas encompass about 10% of the South's 17 million people; the Communists also have considerable but unmeasured strength in "government-controlled" areas. Thus the White House view is that Hanoi is reaching for the fig leaf to mask a defeat; but it seems plausible that the North has merely decided that this is an opportune time to seek a military end of the conflict in order to protect and possibly expand its political gains. A captured Communist directive dictated the new strategy last September: "Although we will stop with the ceasefire and the big guns will fall silent, the small guns will remain in action."
Hint. Overlaying the equations in Viet Nam has been the ineluctable fact of an American election year. By now, Washington's quadrennial political fixation must be one of the few institutions that governments everywhere can count on and plan for. Thus the timing of the "breakthrough" decision to negotiate was almost certainly dictated by Hanoi's perception, some time in September, that there was little prospect of a McGovern victory and a unilateral American withdrawal. Hanoi's haste to get Nixon to sign this week suggests that it is impressed with the argument that a settlement after the election might be less advantageous.
At first, events moved slowly. When Kissinger was in Moscow last April, Soviet Boss Leonid Brezhnev hinted that Hanoi might begin to bargain seriously if the U.S. would resume the formal Paris negotiations, which it had broken off a month earlier. The negotiators went back to the Majestic Hotel, but nothing happened. Then when Kissinger was in Peking in July, China's Premier Chou En-lai dropped a similar hint; this time the results were more encouraging. By August a cease-fire was emerging as the central topic of the secret talks for the first time—and Kissinger flew to Saigon to prepare Thieu. Kissinger's first serious discussion of a deal with Le Due Tho came in late September. That session lasted two days, and this time Kissinger's deputy, General Alexander M. Haig Jr., made the trip to Saigon.