USA and Peace Talks - Vietnam

‘Although the peace negotiations began in 1971, it was the USA that prevented a final end to the conflict being reached until 1975.’

Explain why you agree or disagree with this view. (24 marks) Argument: Even though America did try to push for peace, and many parties were involved in the Paris Peace Accords, America was mainly responsible for the delay as Nixon prevented the agreement being signed in 1972 and America continued the bombing campaigns, however the North Vietnamese were responsible as well as they refused to acknowledge Thieu as important in the agreements.

Paragraph 1: - Nixon refused to sign in 1972 in order to get a stronger political position in time for elections - Elections were due to occur; strong argument for him to stay if peace negotiations were still being held as they had started to take place under Nixon.

- Thought it would look too convenient if he managed to have peace just before an election.

- Deliberately pulled out of the deal as he wanted to make sure he was re-elected Paragraph 2: - America continued to bomb the North Vietnamese and use military offenses to try and intimidate the North - America’s tactic to try and get North Vietnam to negotiate from a weakened position was to show North Vietnam how powerful America was - North Vietnam refused to negotiate while the bombing campaigns were going on as they thought it showed an offensive, rather then encouraged peace talks.

- Operation Linebacker (1 & 2) both bombed heavily in North Vietnam, and aimed at destroying supplies for the PAVN, showing that America was still fighting the war, not trying to halt the war.

- Also offered a lot of support to the South although they were meant to be handing over control; allowed the South to have a stronger opposing force to the North and delay negotiations further Paragraph 3: - North Vietnam refused to co-operate with the Peace Accords as long as Thieu was in power - North Vietnam refused to acknowledge that Thieu was involved much in the peace agreements as they felt like they were fighting America more then South Vietnam - Meant that as Thieu was still in power throughout the discussions not a lot of progress was made - Thieu took out his anger about this by broadcasting on the radio, meaning that lots of people knew about the prejudice South Vietnam was getting - Peace agreements had to be postponed until Thieu was present as well.

Paragraph 4: - HOWEVER America did try to push for peace - Nixon attended summits with China and Russia in order to try and get them to put pressure on North Vietnam to come to peace negotiations - USA started pushing for peace, and compromised a lot of their demands in the final peace accords (e.g. all US troops had to be out of Vietnam within 60 days, prisoners of war would be returned, troops could stay in their positions as long as they did not push forward) showing that they wanted peace to happen Conclusion: Despite the fact that America was a key part with starting the Paris Peace Accords, and other factors also stopped the negotiations, America was also the main reason that the delay in the agreement was made as it deliberately withdrew from the agreement to allow Nixon to be in a better place for the presidential elections, continued to use tactics that had not intimidated the North before to try and intimidate them to negotiate.