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At around 6:30 am, Friday (or Saturday: memories are going) and after so many interruptions, I came to the last line of the last page of “White House Years.” In January, 1973, Kissinger concluded the negotiations with Hanoi in Paris to end the war in Vietnam, after a breakthrough in October of the previous year, when the Hanoi government demonstrated its willingness to end the war as rapidly as possible. The subsequent stonewalling and cunning tactics of North Vietnam and South Vietnamese President Nguyen Van Thieu’s resistance to an agreement with Hanoi greatly unnerved the whole US negotiating team and President Nixon, who resorted a B-52 Christmas bombing to force the North to come back to serious negotiations. It is easy to forget the fact that Nixon and Kissinger inherited the US escalated involvement in Vietnam, which was started by Eisenhower whose Vice President was Nixon ironically. The Nixon Administration seems to have wanted to get out of Vietnam soon in a way that could preserve the honour of America. A near certain fund cutoff by the new Congress strengthened the resolve.In the second volume, “Years of Upheaval,” Kissinger visits Hanoi, a distressing experience for him. It was clear that, only two weeks after the signing of the Agreement, the North was violating its major clauses. The issues of the neutrality of Laos and Cambodia and the troop withdrawals by North Vietnam from these countries remained unresolved.
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