Reckless: Henry Kissinger and the Tragedy of Vietnam Audible Audiobook – Unabridged Robert K. Brigham (Author), Jeff Bottoms (Narrator), Hachette Audio (Publisher) (Hachette Audio)

Henry Kissinger is the grand doyen of the 'Realist' school of US Foreign Policy. One of the pillars of realism, along with an anarchic and security-centric view of states and their interests, is that high level bilateral negotiations by intelligent and empowered plenipotentiary, can achieve successful foreign policy. Kissinger's role in the the ending of the Vietnam War should be a prime example. After all, he got a Nobel Peace Prize for negotiating the end, peace with honor and all of that. Anything that happened after the American withdrawal was not his fault. Right?

Yeah, right. In this book drawing on a close read of the historical record and new archival sources, Brigham shows that Kissinger failed in every single one of his major goals in the negotiations. His paranoid personal style cut key stakeholders out of negotiations, meaning that there was no broad support for his treaty in the American bureaucracy, the public mind, or especially South Vietnam. Kissinger was a major driver of military escalations, which caused immense suffering without commensurate military or diplomatic benefits. Kissinger had a weak hand, but he played it poorly, dragging out the end of the war.

The American objectives for a political resolution of the war was a peace covering Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia, mutual withdrawal of American and North Vietnamese forces, the recognition of South Vietnam as an independent nation with a border at the DMZ, and return of American prisoners of war. Of these, he accomplished only the last. North Vietnamese goals were more flexible, but their essential core was recognition of NVA forces on the ground and a weak political outcome for South Vietnam that would lead to unification on Communist terms.

The major sticking point was the removal of South Vietnamese leaders Thieu and Ky. The hardline North Vietnamese position was that their removal was a prerequisite for negotiations and forming a provisional government that contained the National Liberation Front. Negotiations dragged on for years. For obvious reasons, Kissinger refused to throw Thieu under the bus, but he also never engaged with the possibilities of South Vietnamese politics. The South Vietnamese were very much junior partners in their own fate, and their job was to accept whatever deal Kissinger negotiated.

Meanwhile, with every month that passed, more American troops left South Vietnam, and Kissinger's military leverage deteriorated. Domestic political concerns drove the negotiating position. North Vietnam didn't need to agree to mutual withdrawals, they simply had to outwait the American public. As his military bargain cards slipped away, Kissinger was a strenuous advocate for enlarging the war; secretly bombing Cambodia, invading Laos, and area bombing of North Vietnam in Linebacker and Linebacker II. For what it's worth, Kissinger was right that a maximum pressure air campaign in Vietnam would not lead to Chinese intervention and World War III, especially as a response to the massive conventional Easter Offensive in 1972, but there were no diplomatic results from this coercion. The victims died for Kissinger's ambition.

In the end, as conventional wisdom puts it, "We bombed them into accepting their concession." The final treaty accepted the victories of the NVA, allowing ten divisions to remain in South Vietnam, along with the supply routes through Laos and Cambodia. The political resolution was deliberately vague, and a clear victory for North Vietnam. While they did not get their non-Thieu provisional government, there were no mechanisms to defend South Vietnam, aside from Nixon's word of honor. The political outcome would be settled, finally, as NVA tanks rolled into Saigon in 1975 and America did nothing.

Kissinger was a mediocre negotiator at the close of the Vietnam War. He was much more adept at managing upwards, playing to Nixon's distrust of bureaucracy, love of intrigue and military options, and siege-mentality paranoia. Kissinger has also been adept at shaping the historical record to conceal his basic failure in seeking a settlement. The facts on the ground were the facts on the ground, and Kissinger failed to change them militarily. Rather than bold genius, his negotiation tactics were ineffective and conventional, and ultimately a fig-leaf over a drawn out American defeat. The lessons here are lessons in what not to do.