If the Other Guy Gives You a Slap on the Wrist, Kick Him in the Groin”

[I]f the other guy gives you a ... slap on the wrist, ... you kick him in the groin. Despite the State Department's Historical Advisory Committee's criticism of a publication backlog, 2010 was a good year for the department's Office of the Historian.1 Ten volumes were published, and four of these conclude the series' documentation of the Vietnam War. To celebrate this achievement, the Office of the Historian organized a conference on “the American Experience in Southeast Asia, 1946–1975” last September, which included contributions by Henry Kissinger, the late Richard Holbrooke, and John Negroponte.2 The volume under review covers the period from January to October 1972, which was dominated by the U.S. response to Hanoi's Easter Offensive and the Paris peace talks. Although the 284 documents confirm standard accounts of the period, they add color and nuance. Jeffrey Kimball, for example, has charged Richard Nixon and Kissinger with “self-serving” retrospective accounts and with being as intransigent as North Vietnam in the peace talks.3 Judging by the sources in this volume, one is tempted to go further. What emerges is particularly Nixon's desire to beat Hanoi and not to commit to a compromise peace. As Edward Brynn puts it in the preface, “force drove diplomacy” (p. iv). Nevertheless, by September, even Nixon was willing to settle and to make considerable concessions, primarily for domestic reasons

Compromise · Diplomacy · Foreign policy · Offensive · Operations research · Political science · Politics · Engineering · History · Law · Vietnamese History and Culture Studies