Beginning of the End

In early February ’71, with pressure building at home to complete the withdrawal of American forces from Vietnam, Nixon puts his Vietnamization program to a crucial and very public test. With the world watching, the South Vietnamese army launches an invasion into Laos, where they will engage a formidable North Vietnamese force. US air power will support the South, but for the first time they will be on their own on the ground. The test is a debacle: facing superior military forces, the South Vietnamese sustain heavy casualties and are quickly compelled to withdraw. Nixon and Kissinger spin the defeat as best they can, but privately, it is a moment of reckoning: after six years of war, South Vietnam shows little sign of being able to sustain the war without continuing US help. Through the spring, opposition to the war grows and spreads beyond the traditional leftist and student base. In April, Senator William Fulbright’s powerful Foreign Relations Committee hears testimony from a young vet by the name of John Kerry, representing a new force – Vietnam Veterans Against the War. Clearly, the tide is turning. Faced with a grim reality, Nixon and Kissinger recognize they must find a way to prop up South Vietnam at least long enough to avoid having it collapse before the ’72 election, now only a year away.