Nixon’s resignation in August 1974 and the withdrawal of U.S. forces from Vietnam paved the way for a serious assessment of what had gone wrong and a reversal of the policies that had led the nation astray, both domestically and globally. But that rarely occurred—certainly not during the presidency of the amiable and well-meaning but extremely limited Gerald Ford, a man who, Lyndon Johnson said, could not walk and chew gum at the same time. From the start, Ford sent all the wrong signals.
First he announced that Henry Kissinger would stay on as both secretary of state and national security advisor. Kissinger understood that the United States was facing severe economic and political challenges. After seventy years of trade surpluses, it had run its first deficit in 1971. Now that deficit was widening. The oil-exporting countries in the Middle East, which had joined together to form OPEC, decided to punish the United States, Western Europe, and Japan for supporting Israel in the 1973 Arab-Israeli War. The price of oil quadrupled in the next year. The United States, which in the 1950s had produced all the oil it needed, was now importing more than one-third of its supply, making it very vulnerable to this kind of economic pressure. With wealth and power shifting to the Middle East, several U.S. allies adopted more Arab-friendly policies, which Kissinger denounced as “contemptible.”2 Kissinger and other top officials contemplated a different kind of response, even floating the idea of invading Saudi Arabia.
Did the United States really want another war? The country was still reeling from its humiliating defeat by Vietnam, which Kissinger had denigrated as “a little fourth-rate power.”3 No wonder he was feeling despondent over the future of the American Empire. Two months into the Ford administration, he told the New York Times’ James Reston, “As a historian, you have to be conscious of the fact that every civilization that has ever existed has ultimately collapsed. History is a tale of efforts that failed, of aspirations that weren’t realized, of wishes that were fulfilled and then turned out to be different from what one expected. So, as a historian, one has to live with a sense of the inevitability of tragedy.”4
North Vietnam began its final offensive in March 1975. The South offered little resistance. Without U.S. forces there to fight its battles and bolster its resolve, the South Vietnamese army simply collapsed. One South Vietnamese officer called it a rout “unique in the annals of military history.” With the South Vietnamese troops in full flight, chaos engulfed much of the country. Soldiers murdered officers, fellow soldiers, and civilians. Defense Secretary James Schlesinger told Ford that only tactical nuclear weapons could prevent defeat. Ford resisted the temptation to use them. Journalist Jonathan Schell realized that this final collapse revealed “the true nature of the war.” He wrote of South Vietnam, “It was a society entirely without inner cohesion, held together only by foreign arms, foreign money, foreign political will. When deprived of that support, it faced its foe alone and the mirage evaporated.”5
Under pressure from the United States, Nguyen Van Thieu resigned on April 21. On April 30, General Duong Van Minh surrendered to North Vietnamese Colonel Bui Tin. Minh said, “I have been waiting since early this morning to transfer power to you.” Bui Tin responded, “You cannot give up what you do not have.”6 Images of South Vietnamese soldiers shooting their way onto planes and U.S. marines beating down desperate Vietnamese trying to escape on the last U.S. helicopters lifting off the embassy roof would remain indelibly imprinted in the American psyche for decades to come. Two years earlier, at the Paris Peace Conference, Nixon had signed a secret protocol promising between $4.25 and $4.75 billion in postwar aid “without any political conditions.” Nixon and Secretary of State William Rogers denied the protocol’s existence. “We have not made any commitment for any reconstruction or rehabilitation effort,” Rogers insisted.7 Ford cited the North Vietnamese victory as proof that Hanoi had reneged on the Paris Agreements and blocked the promised aid. He also imposed an embargo on all of Indochina, froze Vietnamese assets in the United States, and vetoed Vietnamese membership in the United Nations.
The Vietnamese, who had suffered so deeply during the U.S. invasion, would be left to rebuild their war-ravaged land on their own. Nearly 4 million of their citizens had been killed. The landscape had been shattered. The beautiful triple-canopy forests were largely gone. In 2009, land mines and unexploded bombs still contaminated over a third of the land in six central Vietnamese provinces. Efforts by the Vietnamese government, the Vietnam Veterans of America Foundation, and the Vietnam Veterans of America, sometimes led by dedicated U.S. veterans like Chuck Searcy in Quang Tri Province, had cleared over 3,000 acres. But over 16 million acres remained to be cleared. Beyond the terrible toll of the war itself, 42,000 more Vietnamese, including many children, were killed by leftover explosives in the years after the war ended. U.S. veterans would suffer too.8 By some estimates, the number of Vietnam vets who have committed suicide has exceeded the 58,000-plus who died in combat.
Instead of helping the American people learn from this execrable episode in U.S. history, Ford encouraged Americans to “regain the sense of pride that existed before Vietnam.”9 The fact that the United States had not learned the lesson that it should never again support a corrupt dictatorship determined to silence the cries for justice from an oppressed people would come back to haunt it repeatedly in future years.
Reeling from defeat in Vietnam, the United States went out of its way to cultivate anti-Communist allies in the region. Ford and Kissinger visited General Suharto, Indonesia’s right-wing dictator, in early December. The day they left, Suharto’s military invaded the newly independent nation of East Timor, a former Portuguese colony. Suharto had asked his guests for “understanding if we deem it necessary to take rapid or drastic action” in toppling East Timor’s left-wing government. Ford assured him, “We will understand and not press you on the issue.” Kissinger urged Suharto to postpone the invasion until he and Ford had returned to the United States and to finish the job quickly. The invasion proved to be bloody and the occupation prolonged. The estimated death toll from the invasion plus starvation and disease ranges from 100,000 to 200,000 and more. Three hundred thousand people, over half the population, were relocated to camps run by the Indonesian military. The United States continued providing military aid to Indonesia until 1999. East Timor did not regain full independence until 2002.10