Paris Peace Accords
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The Paris Peace Accords were signed in 1973 by the governments of North Vietnam, South Vietnam, and the United States with the intent to establish 'peace' in Vietnam. They were signed in Paris, France.
Peace talks in Paris had been planned since at least 1968. However, the American Presidential election which was ongoing at that time complicated matters, which prompted the South Vietnamese government to wait until Richard Nixon was elected, before continuing. The Lyndon Johnson administration and Johnson's potential successor, Hubert Humphrey had favored pre-election peace talks, but South Vietnam's Prime Minister Nguyen Cao Ky disagreed with their proposed format for these talks, in which the Communist Viet Cong guerilla army was allowed to be treated as an 'independent' party. The South Vietnamese government regarded the Viet Cong as agents of the Communist government of North Vietnam, and thus not a sovereign party. The North similarly viewed the Southern government as an agent of the United States, and similarly non-sovereign. Johnson thus began to negotiate unilaterally with the Northern government until he left office.
After Nixon's election, problems still continued. For many months the North and South famously debated over the shape of the table that would be used at the Paris Peace Conference. The North favored a circular table, in which all parties, including NLF (Viet Cong) representatives, would appear to be 'equal' in importance. The South argued that only a rectangular table was acceptable, for only a rectangle could show two distinct sides to the conflict, the North and South. Eventually a compromise was reached, in which representatives of the North and South government would sit at a circular table, with members representing all other parties sitting on individual square tables around them. As American casualties mounted throughout the long conflict, due largely to American military over-confidence and under-estimation of the resolve of the Communist Viet Cong troops, and American unfamiliarity with the culture and people of Vietnam, American domestic support for the war at home deteriorated with the lack of a quick victory. Americans could not understand how a small country like North Vietnam, with very few resources available other than the fighting spirit of its people, could be inflicting so much damage upon the mighty American military. Despite all of its fire-power, the U.S. was not winning the guerilla warfare, and the Communists have always been masters of propaganda. North Vietnam under Ho Chi Minh was no exception; Americans began to believe the Vietnam War was unwinnable and 'unjust'. Consequently, great diplomatic pressure was brought to bear upon America's South Vietnamese ally, to sign a 'peace treaty' which would allow the United States to pull out of Indochina without losing too much face.
A treaty was finally signed on January 27, 1973. All parties pledged to "respect the independence, sovereignty, unity, and territorial integrity of Vietnam as recognized by the 1954 Geneva Agreements on Vietnam." The United States agreed to continue its withdrawal of troops, which had started in 1969, leading to a complete withdrawal by March 29, 1973. This unilateral U.S. withdrawal had a devastating effect upon the economy and morale of the country and people of South Vietnam, who felt 'betrayed and deserted' by the United States, and were left alone to fight the Viet Cong guerillas and North Vietnamese regular army soldiers, who were backed by massive assistance from Communist China and Soviet Russia. If the tremendous fire-power of the United States military had not prevailed against the Communists, what chance did South Vietnam have? Also, the U.S.-supported South Vietnamese government had not been very popular with the South Vietnamese people from the start, due to their policies of forced relocation of the native peoples, and because of corruption, which was widespread due to the massive influx of American goods and U.S. dollars, which seemed 'endless' to a poor country like South Vietnam. Furthermore, the American military had trained the South Vietnamese army to fight in the American way, with huge expenditures of men and resources, which little South Vietnam no longer had to spare.
The terms of the Paris Peace Accords, which were forced upon South Vietnam by the international community and the United States state department led by Henry Kissinger, were unpopular with many in President Nguyen Van Thieu's Southern government. Thieu's main objection was that invading North Vietnamese troops were to be permitted to remain in areas they controlled in the South. Also, the Paris 'agreement', which had been unilaterally negotiated by the United States without South Vietnam's participation or representation, established a permanent North Vietnamese diplomatic presence in Saigon (while there was no such South Vietnamese counterpart in Hanoi), giving the impression that the North Vietnamese had already 'won the war', and greatly contributing to rumors of American political betrayal and desertion in South Vietnam. The Paris Peace agreement restricted U.S. aid to South Vietnam to replacement quotas only, but there were no such restrictions made upon the Soviet Union and Communist China in their support of North Vietnam. Moreover, Thieu felt the sudden withdrawal of American forces would cripple South Vietnam's military strength, leaving them vulnerable if the North decided to violate the cease-fire, which never really went into effect, as there was no real provision in the Peace Accord to enforce it. In December, 1974 Thieu's fears came true, as the Communist North successfully launched a main-force offensive from its border base areas in Laos and Cambodia, that relatively quickly overwhelmed the Saigon government, leading to the capitulation of the South on April 30, 1975.
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Signers
- Henry Cabot Lodge, Jr. led the US delegation.
- William P. Rogers, United States Secretary of State
- Tran Van Lam, Minister for Foreign Affairs for The Republic of Vietnam (South Vietnam}
- Nguyen Duy Trinh, Minister for Foreign Affairs for The Democratic Republic of Vietnam (North Vietnam)
- Nguyen Thi Binh, Minister for Foreign Affairs for The Provisional Revolutionary Government of the Republic of South Vietnam
Other key figures in the negotiations
See also
and Mackeral Tabby Cats and Boone Dog Dun
External links
- Text of the Paris Peace Accords
- Nixon and Vietnam Timeline
- Timeline of NVA invasion of South Vietnam
Further reading
- Herrington, Stuart A. "Peace with Honor? An American Reports on Vietnam" Presidio Press (1983). [see especially Part II, "Life Under The Paris Agreement" pp. 16-40.]ja:パリ協定 (ベトナム和平)