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The article discusses the important role of U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, Secretary of Defense Melvin Laird in U.S. President Richard Nixon's Vietnamization, a policy to end the country's involvement in the Vietnam War while improving South Vietnamese military capabilities, during his term in office from 1969 to 1973. It explores the origin of the strategy which defined the country's exit from Vietnam. It also looks at the influence Laird had on Nixon in 1969 and his battle with Kissinger over the direction of the strategy.

The author revises existing historical accounts of a critical period during the Vietnam War when the North Vietnamese urgently needed economic aid from their Communist allies in order to prepare for the ambitious Tet Offensive in January 1968, and to help the DRV economy survive President Lyndon B. Johnson's bombardment of North Vietnam under Operation Rolling Thunder. Using new evidence from the archives in Hanoi, this article shows that China-not the Soviet Union-was the biggest donor of economic aid to the Democratic Republic of Vietnam (DRV, or North Vietnam) in 1967 and 1968. The new evidence suggests that American intelligence estimates of Communist bloc economic aid to the DRV were incorrect. Misled by inaccurate data, U.S. officials failed to understand the remarkable resilience of the DRV economy to survive U.S. bombardment. An accurate understanding of Communist bloc aid arrangements might have strengthened the arguments of those American officials advocating early peace negotiations with the DRV. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article examines the diplomatic strategy employed by the Democratic Republic of Vietnam (DRV) government during the Vietnam War and the U.S. presidential administration of Richard M. Nixon. It analyzes the decisions made by the DRV government in the aftermath of the 1968 Tet Offensive against U.S. military forces in Vietnam and the DRV government's decision to negotiate with U.S. diplomats in Paris, France. It examines the military, economic, and political reasons that the author identifies as reasons why the DRV shifted its diplomatic strategy in 1969 following Nixon's inauguration to the U.S. presidency and the signing of the Paris Peace Accords in January 1973. It also analyzes the diplomatic strategies of U.S. secretary of state Henry Kissinger.