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By 1968, the USA had decided that it needed to withdraw from Vietnam. Negotiations for peace began under President Lyndon B Johnson (a Democrat) in May 1968. However, a presidential election was coming up and the rival to Johnson’s party, Richard Nixon (a Republican), tried to delay peace negotiations until after the election. He wanted to prevent Johnson’s Democratic Party from making peace in Vietnam so as to damage the chances of the Democratic candidate, Hubert Humphrey, winning the election.

Nixon won the election and became president in early 1969. During his campaign, he had promised ‘peace with honour’ in Vietnam. He wanted the USA to leave but not look like they had failed. To put this into practice, representatives from South Vietnam, the National Liberation Front (NLF) and North Vietnam met in Paris in January 1969. The US negotiator, Henry Kissinger, began to work on peace negotiations.

Vietnamisation

During the peace negotiations in 1969, Nixon’s plan to secure ‘peace with honour’ became clear. His policy was called ‘V����ٲԲ����������پ��Dz�’, which involved:

• the gradual withdrawal of US troops from South Vietnam
• an increase in the number of Army of the Republic of Vietnam (ARVN) troops to replace the US forces
• the Nixon Doctrine, which was a promise to supply US military equipment to support the ARVN instead of providing US troops

Early successes

Nixon announced a plan to bring back the first of the 538,700 troops in June 1969. By 1970, the number of US troops in Vietnam had dropped to 334,600. At the same time, the ARVN’s forces grew from 820,000 in 1969 to 968,000 in 1970. At first, Vietnamisation looked like a successful policy. However, there were still problems, such as:

• the ARVN’s forces suffered high casualties in conflicts and their morale was low
• corruption and poor management of the ARVN
• the North Vietnamese Army (NVA) troops were still a serious threat to ARVN