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Author's Synopsis
By early 1972, America’s long struggle in Vietnam was nearing its end. President Richard Nixon’s policy of “Vietnamization” had seen U.S. troop strength plummet to its lowest since 1965, even as military planners ramped up efforts to train and equip South Vietnam to stand alone. In an effort to kickstart peace negotiations, Nixon that January revealed that for more than two years his administration had been in secret talks with North Vietnam to end the war. Nixon proposed a withdrawal of all foreign military forces from South Vietnam and the release of prisoners held by all sides. After which, the president intoned, the people of South Vietnam would be free to decide their own fate through peaceful, democratic means. All that remained was North Vietnam’s acceptance. But Hanoi said no. General Secretary Le Duan, seeing that the United States was already on its way out and calculating that Vietnamization had failed, decided war not peace would bring final victory.
And so on 30 March 1972, the first terrible wave of 30,000 North Vietnamese infantrymen, armor, and heavy artillery rolled across the DMZ separating North and South Vietnam. Within a month, that number would grow to more than 225,000 troops and hundreds of tanks pressing South Vietnam on three battlefronts. But what Le Duan did not calculate was the ferocity of the U.S. response. American airpower—now unshackled by a president determined to win an “honorable peace” in Vietnam—would rain destruction unlike anything the North Vietnamese had experienced. Before it was over, Washington, Hanoi, and Saigon would be pushed to the brink—and toward a deeply flawed peace that merely sowed the seeds of further war. Drawing on archival research and interviews with veterans who were there, J. Keith Saliba tells the tale of America’s last fateful year in Vietnam…and its desperate attempt to achieve an honorable peace.
Format(s) for review: Paper and Kindle
Review Genre: Nonfiction—History
Number of Pages: 444
Word Count: 95,000