Tuesday, April 7th

Changing U.S. role in Vietnam

• TET offensive deafeat for North and NLF but suffered heavily in casualities and no territorial gains
• serious psychological defeat for the U.S.
• Americans argued Vietnamese should take on more of a burden

1968- Nixon wins election- round forces began to be withdrawn from Vietnam policy called Vietnamization
-Nixon Doctrine- July 1969- pledged that U.S. would provide military assistance to anti-communist governments in Asia but would leave them to provide own military forces
- new military offensives- Nixon & Kissinger accelerated both ground and air war by launching new offensives in South Vietnam
-in 1970 US forces drove into Cambodia to destroy North Vietnamese & NLF supply depots
-Cambodia was ostensibly a neutral country
-set off more demonstrations at home-

• two students at Jackson State killed
• National Guard troops fired on Kent State, killing four students
• US troops massacred 200 women and children in a hamlet named My Lai

-Secret Bombings:

• US air bombardments in South Vietname, Cambodia, and Laos, largely secret
• spring 1972 North Vietnam offensive approached with 30 miles of capitol of South Vietnam, Saigon
• Nixon responded by resuming bombing of North Vietnam and by mining Haiphong Harbor
• Over Christmas 1972, heaviest bombardment in history occurred in North Vietnam

-Vietnamization: Nixon proceeded with full-scale vietnamization, Jan 1973 North Vietnam and US signed peace accords in Paris stipulation withdrawl of US Troops- South Vietnam tried to hang on but by spring 1975 were weakened by US withdrawl and fell to North Vietnamese army and Vietnam was unified under a communist government

-Economic problems of 1970s: Johnson had tried to carry on war with vietnam without cutting great society programs- left Nixon with deteriorating trade balance and rising inflation
-Stagflation- rare economic situation where unemployment increased as well as inflation