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Kissinger Papers: U.S. OK With Takeover
While American cannot make that happen, he said, "if, as a result of historical evolution it should happen over a period of time, if we can live with a communist government in China, we ought to be able to accept it in Indochina."
Pressed by Zhou, Kissinger further acknowledged that a communist takeover by force might be tolerated if it happened long enough after a U.S. withdrawal.
  Dr. Henry Kissinger, left, U.S. Presidential National Security Adviser, shakes hands with Chinese Premier Zhou Enlai of the People's Republic of China at their meeting at Government Guest House in Peking, China, July 9, 1971. As the Vietnam War dragged on Kissinger told Zhou in 1972 that "if we can live with a communist government in China, we ought to be able to accept it in Indochina." (AP Photo/File) Save & Share |
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He said that if civil war broke out a month after a peace deal led to U.S. withdrawal and an exchange of prisoners, Washington would probably consider that a trick and have to step back in.
"If the North Vietnamese, on the other hand, engage in serious negotiation with the South Vietnamese, and if after a longer period it starts again after we were all disengaged, my personal judgment is that it is much less likely that we will go back again, much less likely."
The envoy foresaw saw the possibility of friendly relations with adversaries after a war that, by June 1972, had killed more than 45,000 Americans. "What has Hanoi done to us that would make it impossible to, say in 10 years, establish a new relationship?"
Almost 2,000 more Americans would be killed in action before the last U.S. combat death in January 1973, the month the Paris Peace Accords officially halted U.S. action, left North Vietnamese in the South and preserved the Saigon government until it fell in April 1975.
Whether by design or circumstance, the United States achieved an interval between its pullout and the loss of South Vietnam but not enough of one to avoid history's judgment that America had suffered defeat.
Kissinger said in the interview he was consistent in trying to separate the military and political outcomes in Vietnam _ indeed, a point he made at the time. "If they agreed to a democratic outcome, we would let it evolve according to its own processes," he said Friday, adding that to tolerate a communist rise to power was not to wish for it.
William Burr, senior analyst at the National Security Archive, said the papers are the most extensive published record of Kissinger's work, in many cases offering insight into matters that the diplomat only touched on in his prolific memoirs.
For example, he said Kissinger devoted scant space in one book to his expansive meetings with Zhou on that visit to Beijing, during which the Chinese official said he wished Kissinger could run for president himself.
At the time, Chinese-Soviet tensions were sharp and the United States was playing one communist state against the other while seeking detente with its main rival, Moscow. Kissinger hinted to Zhou that the United States would consider a nuclear response if the Soviets were to overrun Asia with conventional forces.
But when the Japanese separately recognized communist China with what Kissinger called "indecent haste," he branded them "treacherous."
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On the Net:
National Security Archive, offering access to 20 of the documents: http:/
Kissinger-Zhou transcript: http:/