What would North Vietnam accepted as terms for peace in 1968.

[TheZenPaperboy]

Mentioned in the Nixon thread about how he sabotaged the 1968 peace talks. What plan did LBJ have that would have got all parties to sign a peace treaty. I thought that the North Vietnamese were fighting a civil war, the goal being the reuniting of the country. Which did happen in 1975. So is it a question of sabotage or something that was never going to happen except in the wildest dreams of the democrats?

[GIGObuster]

Thing is that the peace and reunification talks were going to take place, but they did not take place as Nixon grubby hands interfered. BTW Nixon was not the only one that recorded things:

The Lyndon Johnson tapes: Richard Nixon's 'treason'

Declassified tapes of President Lyndon Johnson’s telephone calls provide a fresh insight into his world. Among the revelations - he planned a dramatic entry into the 1968 Democratic Convention to re-join the presidential race. And he caught Richard Nixon sabotaging the Vietnam peace talks… but said nothing.

But by the time the tapes were declassified in 2008 all the main protagonists had died, including Wheeler.

Now, for the first time, the whole story can be told.

It begins in the summer of 1968. Nixon feared a breakthrough at the Paris Peace talks designed to find a negotiated settlement to the Vietnam war, and he knew this would derail his campaign.

He therefore set up a clandestine back-channel involving Anna Chennault, a senior campaign adviser.

At a July meeting in Nixon’s New York apartment, the South Vietnamese ambassador was told Chennault represented Nixon and spoke for the campaign. If any message needed to be passed to the South Vietnamese president, Nguyen Van Thieu, it would come via Chennault.

In late October 1968 there were major concessions from Hanoi which promised to allow meaningful talks to get underway in Paris - concessions that would justify Johnson calling for a complete bombing halt of North Vietnam. This was exactly what Nixon feared.

The US delegation, left, and North Vietnamese delegation at Paris peace talks The Paris peace talks may have ended years earlier, if it had not been for Nixon’s subterfuge

Chennault was despatched to the South Vietnamese embassy with a clear message: the South Vietnamese government should withdraw from the talks, refuse to deal with Johnson, and if Nixon was elected, they would get a much better deal.

So on the eve of his planned announcement of a halt to the bombing, Johnson learned the South Vietnamese were pulling out.

He was also told why. The FBI had bugged the ambassador’s phone and a transcripts of Anna Chennault’s calls were sent to the White House. In one conversation she tells the ambassador to “just hang on through election”.

Johnson was told by Defence Secretary Clifford that the interference was illegal and threatened the chance for peace.

In a series of remarkable White House recordings we can hear Johnson’s reaction to the news.

In one call to Senator Richard Russell he says: “We have found that our friend, the Republican nominee, our California friend, has been playing on the outskirts with our enemies and our friends both, he has been doing it through rather subterranean sources. Mrs Chennault is warning the South Vietnamese not to get pulled into this Johnson move.”

[TheZenPaperboy]

What were the major concessions that were promised. And these were just to get the North Vietnamese to the table. I do not think that there could be any settlement that would please both sides. If all LBJ was doing was to help Humphrey get elected, I think that it would have made matters worse if he had been.
As I said before the goal of the North Vietnamese was to have control over the whole country. No peace talks would let that happen.
It is not that I think that we should have been fighting in that war. If Humphrey had been elected on the basis of new peace talks, then when there is no treaty he is left with a hard decision pull out or go back to fighting. Just like Nixon.
I do find it interesting that LBJ was going to use the plan of peace talks to back into the running. I believe the left did not trust him and the right was not going to vote for him anyway. His political base had just about disappeared.

[GIGObuster]

@TheZenPaperboy

What were the major concessions that were promised. And these were just to get the North Vietnamese to the table. I do not think that there could be any settlement that would please both sides. If all LBJ was doing was to help Humphrey get elected, I think that it would have made matters worse if he had been.

Not very clear, back then it was Nixon talking with one side of his mouth what was interpreted then as a “secret plan” to end the war, those misleading statements were one of the reasons why he won.

@TheZenPaperboy

As I said before the goal of the North Vietnamese was to have control over the whole country. No peace talks would let that happen.

This is missing a lot of context, in the recent past the reason why the USA was in Vietnam was because we prevented a general election from taking place because it was found that the majority of Vietnamese would vote for reunification.

@TheZenPaperboy

It is not that I think that we should have been fighting in that war. If Humphrey had been elected on the basis of new peace talks, then when there is no treaty he is left with a hard decision pull out or go back to fighting. Just like Nixon.

It is not really the point of what would or may had happen, the point was that indeed Nixon did sabotaged the peace talks.

[Captain_Amazing]

Right, but if the peace talks weren’t going to come up with a solution anyway, who cares if he sabotaged them?

[Monty]

Doesn’t the evidence support that even if there were peace between North Vietnam and the US, NV would still continue fighting against South Vietnam?

[GIGObuster]

@Captain_Amazing

Right, but if the peace talks weren’t going to come up with a solution anyway, who cares if he sabotaged them?

That is just old fashion iffinitis. And LBJ and others involved did care.