The Paris Peace Accords

• Vietcong


  Communist guerrilla forces in South Vietnam
• In 1965 the USA launched Operation Rolling Thunder: the bombing of military targets in North Vietnam
• The increasing level of public criticism of the war was one of the reasons for the growing pressure to find a peaceful solution
• The financial cost was also a factor, as were world politics – the Nixon Doctrine (1969) showed the President was less interested in containment and would only use US troops if the USA was directly threatened
• Nixon was also increasingly trying to work better with the USSR and Chinese – anti-communist battles were less of a pressing concern than they had been when the Vietnam War started
• The Paris Peace Accords

  January 1973
• USA negotiator


  Henry Kissinger, US National Security Advisor
• Vietnam negotiator


  Le Duc Tho, Member of the Vietnamese Communist Party Politburo
• The negotiations were not straight forward. In October 1972 Henry Kissinger had worked out a peace agreement with the North Vietnamese. However, fearing the Americans were going to abandon him, Nguyen Van Thieu, the president of South Vietnam, had refused to sign and the North Vietnamese pulled out of the talks
• Kissinger and Nixon acted as good cop and bad cop throughout the negotiations. Kissinger offered peace terms to the North Vietnamese, while Nixon threatened to launch massive airstrikes if they refused
• Nixon then told the South Vietnamese President, Nguyen Van Thieu, he had to make peace whether he agreed with it or not, and so he was also forced to sign
• A ceasefire was agreed, and American forces would leave Vietnam
• The city of Saigon fell to the communists on 30 April 1975
• The final hours of the American presence in Vietnam were a mad scramble to evacuate US personal and South Vietnamese civilians to US navy ships in the South China Sea
• The signal to head for the helicopters was White Christmas by Bing Crosby playing over the speakers of the US Embassy
• Once American forces were out of Vietnam, the way was open for a communist takeover of the South
• In April 1975, the forces of North Vietnam entered the southern city of Saigon and the country was unified under communist leadership