-
We have updated our Community Code of Conduct. Please read through the new rules for the forum that are an integral part of Paradox Interactive’s User Agreement.
DensleyBlair: This has certainly been a tough first year in office for Forbes, as he is inheriting the turmoil of the mid-1960s.
While the counterculture, which I devoted a few updates talking about, still emerges, a much earlier end to the Vietnam War will take away the anti-war activism which was a major component of the counterculture during the 1960s. The sex and drug culture will still be there; given that the Forbes Administration is more willing to go after the counterculture than the Johnson Administration historically did, the hippie attitude of "Let's stick it to the Man" will still be alive and well...if not more so. Without the Vietnam War to rally against, however, I think the counterculture will lose some of the bite it historically had. For one thing, I don't see the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago descending into the anti-war chaos it historically did. I see TLL's Chicago convention instead being a lot calmer and more straightforward. No Chicago 7 trial.
Without the Vietnam War, I think liberal white youth will find other causes to rally around, like ending the draft and demanding an end to nuclear testing. Given the conservative nature of the Federal Government under the Republicans, I think Hubert Humphrey may be more attractive to young liberals in 1968 than he was historically, when as Vice President he ran for President with the Vietnam War on his back.
While opposition to the Vietnam War was a major component of the counterculture, it wasn't the main reason people flocked to it. A lot of it had to do with young people being disillusioned with mainstream society's focus on materialism and living the good life (which Forbes embodies). These young people were looking for a completely different lifestyle which rejected mainstream values, which is what the counterculture offered. Sex, drugs, and rock and roll. That is what the counterculture offered and what a lot of young people flocked to. Perhaps without the Vietnam War to oppose, hippies will find that they have a lot more time on their hands to get high, find someone to sleep with, and make psychedelic music.
Thank you very much for the compliment, DensleyBlair.
El Pip: I was 5-years-old when the LA Riot happened in 1992. I have a vivid memory of seeing someone on TV get pulled out of their big-rig truck and get beaten up very badly. That was the first time I had seen violence on TV. I don't remember a lot from the early 1990s. I remember seeing that.
Given how tense relations are between African-Americans and the police, it is only a matter of time before racial violence breaks out. We have had race riots under Republican Presidents. We have had race riots under Democratic Presidents. It just seems to be inevitable, no matter what you do.
The New Left certainly drew inspiration from the Civil Rights Movement, but I don't think supporting Martin Luther King Jr. was high on their priority list. If anything, the New Left seems to be more in line with Malcolm X and the militant Black Power movement than with MLK and his advocacy of nonviolence.
Part of the reason we have the anti-Vietnam War protests is because of the draft. It is a political hot button issue and I think it will remain that way even after the Vietnam War ends. Sure the war is over, but the draft is still in effect. Young men can still be drafted to fight in a future war. I can see the anti-war movement taking their energy and transferring it into an anti-draft movement. Forbes supports the draft while Humphrey is against it, so that will be a major issue between them in the 1968 election.
DensleyBlair: That is a good point about MLK. While he is a revered figure today, he wasn't popular with everybody during his lifetime (just like Abraham Lincoln wasn't). Certain whites thought he was an active Communist; FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover spied on him in order to dig up dirt on his personal life (which he planned to use to embarrass and discredit MLK in the eyes of the public). Blacks meanwhile were divided on their view of King. A lot of them thought he was too accommodating with white government officials and lacked the willingness to be more confrontational with whites. Malcolm X was seen as being the anthesis of King, which is why he found a lot of support among blacks. While MLK was still a major civil rights figure in the mid-1960s, he was no longer the dominant leader he had been early on. Ironically, the more successful the Civil Rights Movement was in enacting change, the more fractured it became. You had those who wanted to stay the course that King had charted versus those who felt that the way to speed up the pace of change was to get in the faces of whites.
Historically in the 1968 Presidential election, Richard Nixon realized he had more to gain courting white Southern voters who resented the racial changes brought on by the Johnson Administration that he did courting black voters who saw their lives improve under LBJ's leadership. With both Democratic and Republican Presidents pursuing civil rights in the 1960s, I don't think the South will go largely Republican like it historically did. I think the South will instead be more mixed politically, especially as a new generation of progressive Southern Democrats like Jimmy Carter begin to emerge from the ashes of the old Dixie South.
As I said before, I think the counterculture will see some reduction after the Vietnam War is concluded much earlier, but I think it will keep going for other reasons. Probably some people who joined the counterculture mainly because of their opposition to the Vietnam War won't.
El Pip: I think with a Republican Administration being more openly hostile to the counterculture, it will push the counterculture to be more aggressive against the Establishment. I think the anti-Establishment rhetoric and actions will be more pronounced.
That would be ironic, but I am not sure the New Left would become more supportive of the Civil Rights Movement. Besides, there's already extremists within the Movement's ranks.
They are good questions, and they have my brain percolating like those old coffee makers.
I think such a sharp divide would exist. Not everybody in the counterculture were protesting the Vietnam War. A lot of them were there just to live the hippie lifestyle. The more radical and politically conscious members I don't think will be satisfied with just ending the Vietnam War. I think they will be looking at other causes in which to exert their voices, like the draft and the Forbes Administration's war on drugs.
DensleyBlair: It's funny the discussions updates can spawn. I have literally read pages of readers going back and forth in an intelligent discussion while waiting for the next update to be posted.
"We have serious issues to confront and you just want to sit there in your tie-dye clothes smoking pot while listening to the Doors! You're useless, man!" I can just picture this conversation happening within the counterculture.
The Yippies historically emerged at the end of 1967, back when there seemed to be no end in sight for the Vietnam War. In these different circumstances, we might still get some form of the Yippies if for no other reason than their anti-establishment theatrics.
El Pip: I don't think the counterculture's emphasis on peace and love is going to vanish once the Vietnam War is over. After all, America still has a rather militant China to deal with.
Indeed, Johnson tried to have his guns and butter at the same time and discovered, much to his dismay, that he couldn't have both. LBJ's massive spending created an inflation problem, which he tried to counter by raising taxes. With no Great Society and a much earlier end to the Vietnam War, I think Forbes will be able to keep spending in check and prevent the inflation we historically saw in the late 1960s. One of his economic goals is to balance the budget by 1970.
As for the Democrats, I see Humphrey leading the charge for more domestic spending in the 1968 campaign. Should he win the election, then he would undoubtably come into office with a checklist of progressive programs to establish and increase funding for.
Kurt_Steiner: I am afraid I don't get the reference.
Well, here we are: the final update of 1965. It has been quite a ride in terms of everything that happened during Forbes' first year in office. What sort of domestic and foreign policy problems will confront him in his second year in office? As Maxwell Smart might say, "If we are going to discuss spoilers, then shouldn't we use the Cone of Silence?"
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
An Asian Divorce
In the final months of 1965:
For the Forbes Administration, their foreign policy attention in these final months was primarily focused on Asia. The Vietnam War was winding down militarily, although exactly how to end it diplomatically wasn’t at all clear to Washington. Meanwhile on September 20th, in a move the Americans knew from their intelligence was coming, the Republic of China became the fifth nation to go nuclear when she successfully detonated a nuclear waste bomb. While China celebrated the accomplishment, Japan was thrown into a state of panic. The Japanese sincerely believed that the Chinese, whom they once conquered and ruthlessly dominated, wanted to nuke them in an act of revenge. To calm down his panic-stricken ally, the President quickly dispatched his Secretaries of State and Defense to Tokyo to meet with the Prime Minister and their Japanese counterparts. “You need to make it abundantly clear to them,” Forbes instructed his top two cabinet members, “That their nation isn’t in any immediate danger.”
In the wake of China’s first nuclear test, additional US warplanes arrived in Japan to beef up the country’s air defense. In mid-October, the United States Navy and the British Royal Navy conducted a joint military exercise near Okinawa. Naval aviators from the two navies coordinated air strikes against a small mothball fleet of obsolete ships, giving them training in the event they had to do battle with the Republic of China Navy. Unbeknownst to Washington and London, Nanjing had begun planning in earnest a preemptive naval war against them. Just as the Japanese had carried out a series of coordinated attacks against American and Allied targets in February 1942 (starting with the surprise military strike on Pearl Harbor which devastated the US Pacific Fleet under the command of Admiral Husband E. Kimmel, who was killed during the attack), the Chinese intended to carry out their own series of coordinated attacks in order to level the playing field in the Western Pacific in their favor as well as to settle old scores.
(Blueprints for the Sun Yat-sen-class light carrier. Named after the founding father of the Republic of China, the Chinese had built six of them by the beginning of 1967. They were the centerpiece of the ROCN, designed to give the Chinese hit-and-run punching power)
With Operation Red Dragon – the Chinese codename for what would become known as the Western Pacific War of 1967 – still being just an idea on the drawing board in the autumn of 1965, the Chinese looked around to find another way in which to exert their power and influence. They found an opportunity in Malaysia. A British colony since the reign of King George IV (1820-1830), Malaya became a sovereign state within the Commonwealth of Nations in August 1957. Tunku Abdul Rahman, a lawyer and statesman who had spearheaded Malaysian independence from British rule, became the country’s first Prime Minister. In addition to Malaya, the British also had the Southeast Asian colonies of Brunei, North Borneo, Sarawak, and Singapore. In the spring of 1961, Lee Kuan Yew, the Prime Minister of Singapore since June 1959, met with Tunku and proposed merging Malaya with these four colonies to form the Federation of Malaysia. Tunku supported the merger and took it to the British government, who formally approved the proposal that October. The British drafted a constitution for Malaysia and spent the next two years negotiating with their colonies to get behind the planned merger. Brunei chose not to get onboard, citing public opposition to the merger and concerns over the status of Sultan Omar Ali Saifuddin III within the Federation. North Borneo, Sarawak, and Singapore on the other hand agreed to merge with Malaya. In July 1963, the Malaysia Agreement was signed in London by representatives of the United Kingdom, Malaya, North Borneo, Sarawak, and Singapore. It went into effect two months later, establishing the Federation of Malaysia, which had a population of 10 million people.
(Tunku Abdul Rahman)
For the new Federation, there was good news and bad news. The good news was her economy. As one of the world’s leading producers of rubber, tin, and palm oil, as well as being a significant producer of iron ore, Malaysia possessed a strong industrial base from which to build a robust economy. Through state planning, the government used the profits to stimulate economic growth through investments in industrial development and infrastructure projects like roads and ports. The bad news for Malaysia was that she now had a racial problem to contend with. Ironically, it came from the very colony which had proposed merging in the first place: Singapore. Established by the British as a trading post in 1819, Singapore (which means “Lion City” in Sanskrit) is an island city located at the southern tip of the Malay Peninsula. In 1959, the colony was granted internal self-government and Lee, a young Cambridge-educated lawyer, was elected Singapore’s first Prime Minister. Once he was in office, Lee sought to merge Singapore with Malaya. Given the historic and economic ties between the two, the Prime Minister viewed a union as being natural. He also believed that Singapore, which lacked natural resources and was hamstrung by stiff unemployment, would benefit economically by merging with the much better off Malaya. Thus, the idea of the Federation of Malaysia was born.
(Lee Kuan Yew)
Once the Federation of Malaysia came into existence, a racial problem emerged. Whereas Malays made up the majority of Malaya’s population, the majority of Singapore’s population was Chinese. By merging Singapore’s population with that of Malaya’s, the Chinese became the largest ethnic group in the Federation at 3.6 million. With their number being only 3.4 million, the Malays found themselves outnumbered in their own country. Not surprisingly, the Malays deeply resented this racial imbalance. While Malaya and Singapore tried to negotiate domestic policies that would make their union work, racial tensions increasingly got in the way. Chinese Singaporeans for example complained about being discriminated against by affirmative action, which under Article 153 of the Constitution of Malaysia guaranteed special privileges to the Malays like preferential financial benefits. They also felt discriminated by the educational requirements that all students learn the Malay language and that schools could only teach in Malay and English. Often times, racial frustrations on both sides led to race riots, which required curfews to be imposed in order for peace to be restored. The deadliest riot took place in July 1964, when a Malay politician named Syed Jaafar Albar gave an incendiary speech in Singapore in which he accused Lee of oppressing his people to the point that he was allegedly even worse than the Japanese occupiers of Singapore during World War Two. Amidst thunderous applause by his audience of several thousand Malay Singaporeans, Albar declared:
“If there is unity, no force in this world can trample us down! Not one Lee Kuan Yew. Not a thousand Lee Kuan Yews. We will finish them off!”
Energized by the speech, the crowd demanded that Lee be arrested and killed. Triggered by these anti-Lee shouts, Lee’s supporters attacked them in the streets. For the next several days, violence reigned in Singapore as the two ethnicities went after each other’s throats. By the time the race riot was over, 23 people were dead, 454 had been injured, and 3,568 had been arrested. In the wake of the rioting, another Malay politician named Mahathir Mohamad – who would later serve twice as the Prime Minister of Malaysia – smeared the Chinese Singaporean majority as being “the insular, selfish, and arrogant type of which Mr. Lee is a good example. They are in fact Chinese first, seeing China as the center of the world and Malaysia as a very poor second.”
By 1965, it was obvious that the Malaya-Singapore marriage was on the rocks. The racial differences between the two sides were proving to be irreconcilable. Watching the marriage go downhill from the sidelines was the ROC. Given the tense political situation within the Federation of Malaysia, the Chinese smelled an opportunity. If they could get the two sides to divorce, Singapore would then be single and the Chinese would be able to mingle with them. That summer, Chinese President Chiang Kai-shek dispatched Foreign Minister Shen Chang-huan to Malaysia to meet separately with Tunku and Lee. Shen, who had lived in the United States and had graduated with a Master of Arts degree from the University of Michigan, had been involved with foreign affairs since the restoration of Chiang’s regime in China in 1947. He told Tunku that given all the racial turmoil the country was experiencing, it would be in Malaysia’s best interest for Singapore to leave the Federation. Without Singapore’s Chinese majority, the Malays would once again be the majority ethnicity in Malaysia and all would be well. Shen then told Lee that it would be in Singapore’s best interest to leave Malaysia and become an independent state. Why stay in such a troubled union when it wasn’t benefitting Chinese Singaporeans at all? The Prime Minister was hesitant about making such a move, citing his worries that Singapore lacked both the natural resources and the economic strength necessary for the island to be a viable nation. Shen assured him that he had nothing to worry about. China was more than willing to help her Singaporean brothers by providing them with generous financial support.
(Singapore in 1965)
American President Theodore Roosevelt, who sent the Great White Fleet around the world to showcase American naval power and who took over the construction of the Panama Canal from the French, summed up his foreign policy by quoting an old African saying:
“Speak softly and carry a big stick. You will go far.”
China in the 1960s wanted everyone to know that she had a big stick; she also had a big carrot, which she dangled in front of Singapore to entice her to leave Malaysia. The Chinese promised the Singaporeans generous trade deals, business investments to help spur job creation, and interest-free loans. Unlike Kuala Lumpur, which imposed tariffs on Singapore-made products, Nanjing indicated that she would allow Singapore to sell her products in China tariff-free. To Singapore’s Finance Minister Goh Keng Swee, a first-class honors graduate from the prestigious London School of Economics, what was being offered to them in terms of economic development was a whole lot better than what they were getting right now. He advised Lee to make a clean break with Malaysia. The Prime Minister still wasn’t sure if that was a good idea, thinking that it might be a mistake to leave the very Federation which he had proposed despite all the problems. “The only way to avoid making mistakes,” Goh responded, “Is not to do anything. And that would be the ultimate mistake.”
(Goh Keng Swee)
While Lee mulled over what to do, word of Shen’s visit to Malaysia reached London and Washington. The British and American governments reacted to sudden Chinese involvement in Malaysian affairs with alarm. Given China’s efforts to establish herself as the leading power in Asia, the West saw a Malaya-Singapore split as being bad news for them. In Anglo-American eyes, if Singapore left the Federation and became an independent nation, she would go right into the welcoming arms of the ROC. A Singapore allied with China would strengthen Nanjing’s position in Southeast Asia, driving a wedge right between Malaysia (a member of the Commonwealth of Nations) and Indonesia (an ally of the United States). If China wanted Malaya and Singapore to get a divorce, England and America wanted them to get marriage counseling. The British and the Americans strongly urged Malaya and Singapore to work out their differences and stay together for the good of everybody. “If they go through with this,” Secretary of State Henry Cabot Lodge Jr. warned Forbes, “We will lose Singapore.”
By late September, it was becoming increasingly apparent that this two-year marriage was heading towards a divorce. Tunku was making it clear that he thought Singapore was more trouble than she was worth and that he was ready to wash his hands of the island city. Lee had been persuaded by Goh to finally come around and signal his willingness to support Singapore’s exit from the Federation. In a last-ditch effort to head off an irredeemable split, both Lodge (following his visit to Tokyo) and British Foreign Secretary Alec Douglas-Home flew to Malaysia and strongly urged the two leaders to change their minds. They argued that China was exploiting them for her own gain and that only China would benefit from Singapore leaving the Federation. This last-ditch effort failed. The two leaders had made up their minds to go through with the divorce. On Saturday, October 2nd, Tunku and Lee met in the Malaysian capital Kuala Lumpur and signed the Independence of Singapore Agreement. The agreement, which went into effect two days later, officially marked Singapore’s withdrawal from the Federation of Malaysia. At midnight on October 4th, Lee addressed the new nation on television and radio, formally reading the Proclamation of Singapore while trying to maintain his composure:
“Whereas it is the inalienable right of a people to be free and independent.
And whereas Malaysia was established on the 16th day of September, 1963, by a federation of existing states of the Federation of Malaya and the States of Sabah [North Borneo], Sarawak, and Singapore into one independent and sovereign nation.
And whereas it was also agreed by the parties to the said Agreement that, upon the separation of Singapore from Malaysia, the Government of Malaysia shall relinquish its sovereignty and jurisdiction in respect of Singapore so that the said sovereignty and jurisdiction shall on such relinquishment vest in the Government of Singapore.
And whereas by a Proclamation dated the fourth day of October in the year one thousand nine hundred and sixty-five the Prime Minister of Malaysia Tunku Abdul Rahman Putra Al-Haj Ibni Almarhum Sultan Abdul Hamid Halim Shah [his full name] did proclaim and declare that Singapore shall on the fourth day of October in the year one thousand nine hundred and sixty-five cease to be a State of Malaysia and shall become an independent and sovereign state and nation separate from and independent of Malaysia and recognized as such by the Government of Malaysia.
Now I Lee Kuan Yew, Prime Minister of Singapore, do hereby proclaim and declare on behalf of the people and the Government of Singapore that as from today the fourth day of October in the year one thousand nine hundred and sixty-five Singapore shall forever be a sovereign democratic and independent nation, founded upon the principles of liberty and justice and ever seeking the welfare and happiness of her people in a more just and equal society.”
Now his merger was dead. There would be no more unity between Malaya and Singapore.
Within an hour of the Republic of Singapore officially becoming a sovereign nation, China followed Malaysia in recognizing her independence. Five days later, Singapore informed London that she was withdrawing from the Commonwealth of Nations. That had been a condition by the Chinese government for their support. As Nanjing saw it, this new city-state couldn’t both take Chinese money and be politically associated with the British. Just as Lodge had warned, it didn’t take long for Singapore (which joined the United Nations on November 16th) to become a full-fledged ally of the ROC. With help from Chinese advisers, Lee built factories and steel mills to create jobs and expanded the city’s port to allow for greater shipping. Investments by Chinese corporations further boosted Singapore’s economy by providing a steady cash flow. With the establishment of Singapore Airlines in April 1966 and the Neptune Orient Lines container shipping company in December 1968, China provided an open market for Singaporean goods as well as being a popular tourist/business destination for flights. Through the development of Singapore’s economy, the two countries forged close ties which continue to this day. Following Chiang’s death in April 1975 at the age of 87, Lee attended his state funeral and burial at his majestic marble mausoleum in the Fenghua district of Ningbo. In turn, Chinese President Ma Ying-jeou attended Lee’s state funeral in Singapore when he died in March 2015 at the age of 91. When Nanjing hosted the 2000 Summer Olympics, Singapore’s 14 competitors were given the red-carpet treatment and stayed at high-end accommodations. In sharp contrast, the Chinese intentionally provided Japanese competitors with the worst accommodations: toilets that didn’t work and no running water, among other problems.
(A Neptune Orient Lines container ship)
The Malaya-Singapore split was a setback for the Anglo-American effort to contain China. By becoming an independent country, Singapore gave the Chinese another foothold in Southeast Asia. Her departure from the Commonwealth of Nations prompted the British government to reassess their position in the region. In doing so, it caused them to rethink their neutrality in the Vietnam War. The British had thus far stayed out of the conflict, believing it to be a mistake for the Americans to put all their eggs into the basket of defending South Vietnam when Thailand looked much more defensible to them. While America’s immense military power had successfully stopped North Vietnam from taking over the South, she couldn’t end the war on her own. With his ally stalemated in Vietnam, Prime Minister Rab Butler decided in the last weeks of 1965 to exercise his country's international diplomatic clout by playing the role of mediator. By stepping in and mediating an end to the Vietnam War, Butler would in effect be bailing Forbes out of his predicament. No longer distracted by the war, it was London’s expectation that Washington would then be much more focused on dealing fully – diplomatically as well as militarily – with a Nanjing whose hand had been strengthened by persuading Singapore to leave Malaysia and become independent.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
China is up to no good, making trouble in the neighborhood (to borrow from a certain slap-happy Oscar winner).
Historically Singapore was expelled from Malaysia. Here the Chinese convince Malaya and Singapore to split up. Given the predominantly Chinese population of Singapore, I think Nanjing would view Singapore as a natural country to bring under her wings.
We also get the name and year for China's war with the West, which I have been building up to for years.
British involvement in mediating an end to the Vietnam War will kick off 1966. At this point, I am mulling over what to do with this AAR once the Vietnam War is over. One option is to bring this AAR about the Vietnam War to an end after a peace agreement has been reached and start the third Presidents AAR (which will cover the remainder of the Cold War). Another option is to keep this AAR going, ending it with the 1968 Presidential election. The third Presidents AAR would then pick up with Inauguration Day 1969, taking us through the remainder of the Cold War.
While the counterculture, which I devoted a few updates talking about, still emerges, a much earlier end to the Vietnam War will take away the anti-war activism which was a major component of the counterculture during the 1960s. The sex and drug culture will still be there; given that the Forbes Administration is more willing to go after the counterculture than the Johnson Administration historically did, the hippie attitude of "Let's stick it to the Man" will still be alive and well...if not more so. Without the Vietnam War to rally against, however, I think the counterculture will lose some of the bite it historically had. For one thing, I don't see the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago descending into the anti-war chaos it historically did. I see TLL's Chicago convention instead being a lot calmer and more straightforward. No Chicago 7 trial.
Without the Vietnam War, I think liberal white youth will find other causes to rally around, like ending the draft and demanding an end to nuclear testing. Given the conservative nature of the Federal Government under the Republicans, I think Hubert Humphrey may be more attractive to young liberals in 1968 than he was historically, when as Vice President he ran for President with the Vietnam War on his back.
While opposition to the Vietnam War was a major component of the counterculture, it wasn't the main reason people flocked to it. A lot of it had to do with young people being disillusioned with mainstream society's focus on materialism and living the good life (which Forbes embodies). These young people were looking for a completely different lifestyle which rejected mainstream values, which is what the counterculture offered. Sex, drugs, and rock and roll. That is what the counterculture offered and what a lot of young people flocked to. Perhaps without the Vietnam War to oppose, hippies will find that they have a lot more time on their hands to get high, find someone to sleep with, and make psychedelic music.
Thank you very much for the compliment, DensleyBlair.
El Pip: I was 5-years-old when the LA Riot happened in 1992. I have a vivid memory of seeing someone on TV get pulled out of their big-rig truck and get beaten up very badly. That was the first time I had seen violence on TV. I don't remember a lot from the early 1990s. I remember seeing that.
Given how tense relations are between African-Americans and the police, it is only a matter of time before racial violence breaks out. We have had race riots under Republican Presidents. We have had race riots under Democratic Presidents. It just seems to be inevitable, no matter what you do.
The New Left certainly drew inspiration from the Civil Rights Movement, but I don't think supporting Martin Luther King Jr. was high on their priority list. If anything, the New Left seems to be more in line with Malcolm X and the militant Black Power movement than with MLK and his advocacy of nonviolence.
Part of the reason we have the anti-Vietnam War protests is because of the draft. It is a political hot button issue and I think it will remain that way even after the Vietnam War ends. Sure the war is over, but the draft is still in effect. Young men can still be drafted to fight in a future war. I can see the anti-war movement taking their energy and transferring it into an anti-draft movement. Forbes supports the draft while Humphrey is against it, so that will be a major issue between them in the 1968 election.
DensleyBlair: That is a good point about MLK. While he is a revered figure today, he wasn't popular with everybody during his lifetime (just like Abraham Lincoln wasn't). Certain whites thought he was an active Communist; FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover spied on him in order to dig up dirt on his personal life (which he planned to use to embarrass and discredit MLK in the eyes of the public). Blacks meanwhile were divided on their view of King. A lot of them thought he was too accommodating with white government officials and lacked the willingness to be more confrontational with whites. Malcolm X was seen as being the anthesis of King, which is why he found a lot of support among blacks. While MLK was still a major civil rights figure in the mid-1960s, he was no longer the dominant leader he had been early on. Ironically, the more successful the Civil Rights Movement was in enacting change, the more fractured it became. You had those who wanted to stay the course that King had charted versus those who felt that the way to speed up the pace of change was to get in the faces of whites.
Historically in the 1968 Presidential election, Richard Nixon realized he had more to gain courting white Southern voters who resented the racial changes brought on by the Johnson Administration that he did courting black voters who saw their lives improve under LBJ's leadership. With both Democratic and Republican Presidents pursuing civil rights in the 1960s, I don't think the South will go largely Republican like it historically did. I think the South will instead be more mixed politically, especially as a new generation of progressive Southern Democrats like Jimmy Carter begin to emerge from the ashes of the old Dixie South.
As I said before, I think the counterculture will see some reduction after the Vietnam War is concluded much earlier, but I think it will keep going for other reasons. Probably some people who joined the counterculture mainly because of their opposition to the Vietnam War won't.
El Pip: I think with a Republican Administration being more openly hostile to the counterculture, it will push the counterculture to be more aggressive against the Establishment. I think the anti-Establishment rhetoric and actions will be more pronounced.
That would be ironic, but I am not sure the New Left would become more supportive of the Civil Rights Movement. Besides, there's already extremists within the Movement's ranks.
They are good questions, and they have my brain percolating like those old coffee makers.
I think such a sharp divide would exist. Not everybody in the counterculture were protesting the Vietnam War. A lot of them were there just to live the hippie lifestyle. The more radical and politically conscious members I don't think will be satisfied with just ending the Vietnam War. I think they will be looking at other causes in which to exert their voices, like the draft and the Forbes Administration's war on drugs.
DensleyBlair: It's funny the discussions updates can spawn. I have literally read pages of readers going back and forth in an intelligent discussion while waiting for the next update to be posted.
"We have serious issues to confront and you just want to sit there in your tie-dye clothes smoking pot while listening to the Doors! You're useless, man!" I can just picture this conversation happening within the counterculture.
The Yippies historically emerged at the end of 1967, back when there seemed to be no end in sight for the Vietnam War. In these different circumstances, we might still get some form of the Yippies if for no other reason than their anti-establishment theatrics.
El Pip: I don't think the counterculture's emphasis on peace and love is going to vanish once the Vietnam War is over. After all, America still has a rather militant China to deal with.
Indeed, Johnson tried to have his guns and butter at the same time and discovered, much to his dismay, that he couldn't have both. LBJ's massive spending created an inflation problem, which he tried to counter by raising taxes. With no Great Society and a much earlier end to the Vietnam War, I think Forbes will be able to keep spending in check and prevent the inflation we historically saw in the late 1960s. One of his economic goals is to balance the budget by 1970.
As for the Democrats, I see Humphrey leading the charge for more domestic spending in the 1968 campaign. Should he win the election, then he would undoubtably come into office with a checklist of progressive programs to establish and increase funding for.
Kurt_Steiner: I am afraid I don't get the reference.
Well, here we are: the final update of 1965. It has been quite a ride in terms of everything that happened during Forbes' first year in office. What sort of domestic and foreign policy problems will confront him in his second year in office? As Maxwell Smart might say, "If we are going to discuss spoilers, then shouldn't we use the Cone of Silence?"
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
An Asian Divorce
In the final months of 1965:
- After passing over the Bahamas and South Florida, Hurricane Betsy slammed into Louisiana as a powerful Category 4 with 140 mph winds. Betsy killed 81 people and became the first Atlantic hurricane to cause over $1 billion in damage.
- The Big Three television networks began their 1965-1966 season. In addition to returning shows such as “Gilligan’s Island” (CBS) and “The Addams Family” (ABC) were new shows including “Get Smart” (NBC), “I Dream of Jeannie” (NBC), and “Lost in Space” (CBS). “Batman” would premier on ABC mid-season.
- NASA launched Gemini 9A with Thomas P. Stafford and Eugene A. Cernan aboard. Their mission was to rendezvous and dock with the Augmented Target Docking Adaptor. They were unable to dock with it however when they discovered that the nose cone protecting the docking target had failed to eject due to a launch preparation error. It looked to Stafford “like an angry alligator.”
- Pope Paul VI made the first papal visit to the United States. He addressed the United Nations General Assembly, met with President Malcolm Forbes at the Waldorf Astoria Hotel, and celebrated Mass at Yankee Stadium.
- In St. Louis, Missouri, construction of the 630-foot-tall stainless steel Gateway Arch was completed.
- NASA launched Gemini 10 with John Young and Michael Collins aboard. The mission saw them rendezvous and dock with the Agena Target Vehicle.
- A power failure at a hydroelectric generating station at Niagara Falls in Ontario, Canada triggered a chain-reaction across the Northeast power grid. The resulting blackout left over 30 million people in parts of Ontario and the Northeastern United States without electricity for 13 hours.
- The Beatles released their sixth studio album “Rubber Soul” and the Who released their first studio album “My Generation”.
- The Second Vatican Council came to a close. Opened by Pope John XXIII in October 1962, the Second Vatican Council made numerous changes to the Roman Catholic Church’s practices and teachings.
- “A Charlie Brown Christmas” aired for the first time on CBS, becoming an annual holiday tradition.
For the Forbes Administration, their foreign policy attention in these final months was primarily focused on Asia. The Vietnam War was winding down militarily, although exactly how to end it diplomatically wasn’t at all clear to Washington. Meanwhile on September 20th, in a move the Americans knew from their intelligence was coming, the Republic of China became the fifth nation to go nuclear when she successfully detonated a nuclear waste bomb. While China celebrated the accomplishment, Japan was thrown into a state of panic. The Japanese sincerely believed that the Chinese, whom they once conquered and ruthlessly dominated, wanted to nuke them in an act of revenge. To calm down his panic-stricken ally, the President quickly dispatched his Secretaries of State and Defense to Tokyo to meet with the Prime Minister and their Japanese counterparts. “You need to make it abundantly clear to them,” Forbes instructed his top two cabinet members, “That their nation isn’t in any immediate danger.”
In the wake of China’s first nuclear test, additional US warplanes arrived in Japan to beef up the country’s air defense. In mid-October, the United States Navy and the British Royal Navy conducted a joint military exercise near Okinawa. Naval aviators from the two navies coordinated air strikes against a small mothball fleet of obsolete ships, giving them training in the event they had to do battle with the Republic of China Navy. Unbeknownst to Washington and London, Nanjing had begun planning in earnest a preemptive naval war against them. Just as the Japanese had carried out a series of coordinated attacks against American and Allied targets in February 1942 (starting with the surprise military strike on Pearl Harbor which devastated the US Pacific Fleet under the command of Admiral Husband E. Kimmel, who was killed during the attack), the Chinese intended to carry out their own series of coordinated attacks in order to level the playing field in the Western Pacific in their favor as well as to settle old scores.
(Blueprints for the Sun Yat-sen-class light carrier. Named after the founding father of the Republic of China, the Chinese had built six of them by the beginning of 1967. They were the centerpiece of the ROCN, designed to give the Chinese hit-and-run punching power)
With Operation Red Dragon – the Chinese codename for what would become known as the Western Pacific War of 1967 – still being just an idea on the drawing board in the autumn of 1965, the Chinese looked around to find another way in which to exert their power and influence. They found an opportunity in Malaysia. A British colony since the reign of King George IV (1820-1830), Malaya became a sovereign state within the Commonwealth of Nations in August 1957. Tunku Abdul Rahman, a lawyer and statesman who had spearheaded Malaysian independence from British rule, became the country’s first Prime Minister. In addition to Malaya, the British also had the Southeast Asian colonies of Brunei, North Borneo, Sarawak, and Singapore. In the spring of 1961, Lee Kuan Yew, the Prime Minister of Singapore since June 1959, met with Tunku and proposed merging Malaya with these four colonies to form the Federation of Malaysia. Tunku supported the merger and took it to the British government, who formally approved the proposal that October. The British drafted a constitution for Malaysia and spent the next two years negotiating with their colonies to get behind the planned merger. Brunei chose not to get onboard, citing public opposition to the merger and concerns over the status of Sultan Omar Ali Saifuddin III within the Federation. North Borneo, Sarawak, and Singapore on the other hand agreed to merge with Malaya. In July 1963, the Malaysia Agreement was signed in London by representatives of the United Kingdom, Malaya, North Borneo, Sarawak, and Singapore. It went into effect two months later, establishing the Federation of Malaysia, which had a population of 10 million people.
(Tunku Abdul Rahman)
For the new Federation, there was good news and bad news. The good news was her economy. As one of the world’s leading producers of rubber, tin, and palm oil, as well as being a significant producer of iron ore, Malaysia possessed a strong industrial base from which to build a robust economy. Through state planning, the government used the profits to stimulate economic growth through investments in industrial development and infrastructure projects like roads and ports. The bad news for Malaysia was that she now had a racial problem to contend with. Ironically, it came from the very colony which had proposed merging in the first place: Singapore. Established by the British as a trading post in 1819, Singapore (which means “Lion City” in Sanskrit) is an island city located at the southern tip of the Malay Peninsula. In 1959, the colony was granted internal self-government and Lee, a young Cambridge-educated lawyer, was elected Singapore’s first Prime Minister. Once he was in office, Lee sought to merge Singapore with Malaya. Given the historic and economic ties between the two, the Prime Minister viewed a union as being natural. He also believed that Singapore, which lacked natural resources and was hamstrung by stiff unemployment, would benefit economically by merging with the much better off Malaya. Thus, the idea of the Federation of Malaysia was born.
(Lee Kuan Yew)
Once the Federation of Malaysia came into existence, a racial problem emerged. Whereas Malays made up the majority of Malaya’s population, the majority of Singapore’s population was Chinese. By merging Singapore’s population with that of Malaya’s, the Chinese became the largest ethnic group in the Federation at 3.6 million. With their number being only 3.4 million, the Malays found themselves outnumbered in their own country. Not surprisingly, the Malays deeply resented this racial imbalance. While Malaya and Singapore tried to negotiate domestic policies that would make their union work, racial tensions increasingly got in the way. Chinese Singaporeans for example complained about being discriminated against by affirmative action, which under Article 153 of the Constitution of Malaysia guaranteed special privileges to the Malays like preferential financial benefits. They also felt discriminated by the educational requirements that all students learn the Malay language and that schools could only teach in Malay and English. Often times, racial frustrations on both sides led to race riots, which required curfews to be imposed in order for peace to be restored. The deadliest riot took place in July 1964, when a Malay politician named Syed Jaafar Albar gave an incendiary speech in Singapore in which he accused Lee of oppressing his people to the point that he was allegedly even worse than the Japanese occupiers of Singapore during World War Two. Amidst thunderous applause by his audience of several thousand Malay Singaporeans, Albar declared:
“If there is unity, no force in this world can trample us down! Not one Lee Kuan Yew. Not a thousand Lee Kuan Yews. We will finish them off!”
Energized by the speech, the crowd demanded that Lee be arrested and killed. Triggered by these anti-Lee shouts, Lee’s supporters attacked them in the streets. For the next several days, violence reigned in Singapore as the two ethnicities went after each other’s throats. By the time the race riot was over, 23 people were dead, 454 had been injured, and 3,568 had been arrested. In the wake of the rioting, another Malay politician named Mahathir Mohamad – who would later serve twice as the Prime Minister of Malaysia – smeared the Chinese Singaporean majority as being “the insular, selfish, and arrogant type of which Mr. Lee is a good example. They are in fact Chinese first, seeing China as the center of the world and Malaysia as a very poor second.”
By 1965, it was obvious that the Malaya-Singapore marriage was on the rocks. The racial differences between the two sides were proving to be irreconcilable. Watching the marriage go downhill from the sidelines was the ROC. Given the tense political situation within the Federation of Malaysia, the Chinese smelled an opportunity. If they could get the two sides to divorce, Singapore would then be single and the Chinese would be able to mingle with them. That summer, Chinese President Chiang Kai-shek dispatched Foreign Minister Shen Chang-huan to Malaysia to meet separately with Tunku and Lee. Shen, who had lived in the United States and had graduated with a Master of Arts degree from the University of Michigan, had been involved with foreign affairs since the restoration of Chiang’s regime in China in 1947. He told Tunku that given all the racial turmoil the country was experiencing, it would be in Malaysia’s best interest for Singapore to leave the Federation. Without Singapore’s Chinese majority, the Malays would once again be the majority ethnicity in Malaysia and all would be well. Shen then told Lee that it would be in Singapore’s best interest to leave Malaysia and become an independent state. Why stay in such a troubled union when it wasn’t benefitting Chinese Singaporeans at all? The Prime Minister was hesitant about making such a move, citing his worries that Singapore lacked both the natural resources and the economic strength necessary for the island to be a viable nation. Shen assured him that he had nothing to worry about. China was more than willing to help her Singaporean brothers by providing them with generous financial support.
(Singapore in 1965)
American President Theodore Roosevelt, who sent the Great White Fleet around the world to showcase American naval power and who took over the construction of the Panama Canal from the French, summed up his foreign policy by quoting an old African saying:
“Speak softly and carry a big stick. You will go far.”
China in the 1960s wanted everyone to know that she had a big stick; she also had a big carrot, which she dangled in front of Singapore to entice her to leave Malaysia. The Chinese promised the Singaporeans generous trade deals, business investments to help spur job creation, and interest-free loans. Unlike Kuala Lumpur, which imposed tariffs on Singapore-made products, Nanjing indicated that she would allow Singapore to sell her products in China tariff-free. To Singapore’s Finance Minister Goh Keng Swee, a first-class honors graduate from the prestigious London School of Economics, what was being offered to them in terms of economic development was a whole lot better than what they were getting right now. He advised Lee to make a clean break with Malaysia. The Prime Minister still wasn’t sure if that was a good idea, thinking that it might be a mistake to leave the very Federation which he had proposed despite all the problems. “The only way to avoid making mistakes,” Goh responded, “Is not to do anything. And that would be the ultimate mistake.”
(Goh Keng Swee)
While Lee mulled over what to do, word of Shen’s visit to Malaysia reached London and Washington. The British and American governments reacted to sudden Chinese involvement in Malaysian affairs with alarm. Given China’s efforts to establish herself as the leading power in Asia, the West saw a Malaya-Singapore split as being bad news for them. In Anglo-American eyes, if Singapore left the Federation and became an independent nation, she would go right into the welcoming arms of the ROC. A Singapore allied with China would strengthen Nanjing’s position in Southeast Asia, driving a wedge right between Malaysia (a member of the Commonwealth of Nations) and Indonesia (an ally of the United States). If China wanted Malaya and Singapore to get a divorce, England and America wanted them to get marriage counseling. The British and the Americans strongly urged Malaya and Singapore to work out their differences and stay together for the good of everybody. “If they go through with this,” Secretary of State Henry Cabot Lodge Jr. warned Forbes, “We will lose Singapore.”
By late September, it was becoming increasingly apparent that this two-year marriage was heading towards a divorce. Tunku was making it clear that he thought Singapore was more trouble than she was worth and that he was ready to wash his hands of the island city. Lee had been persuaded by Goh to finally come around and signal his willingness to support Singapore’s exit from the Federation. In a last-ditch effort to head off an irredeemable split, both Lodge (following his visit to Tokyo) and British Foreign Secretary Alec Douglas-Home flew to Malaysia and strongly urged the two leaders to change their minds. They argued that China was exploiting them for her own gain and that only China would benefit from Singapore leaving the Federation. This last-ditch effort failed. The two leaders had made up their minds to go through with the divorce. On Saturday, October 2nd, Tunku and Lee met in the Malaysian capital Kuala Lumpur and signed the Independence of Singapore Agreement. The agreement, which went into effect two days later, officially marked Singapore’s withdrawal from the Federation of Malaysia. At midnight on October 4th, Lee addressed the new nation on television and radio, formally reading the Proclamation of Singapore while trying to maintain his composure:
“Whereas it is the inalienable right of a people to be free and independent.
And whereas Malaysia was established on the 16th day of September, 1963, by a federation of existing states of the Federation of Malaya and the States of Sabah [North Borneo], Sarawak, and Singapore into one independent and sovereign nation.
And whereas it was also agreed by the parties to the said Agreement that, upon the separation of Singapore from Malaysia, the Government of Malaysia shall relinquish its sovereignty and jurisdiction in respect of Singapore so that the said sovereignty and jurisdiction shall on such relinquishment vest in the Government of Singapore.
And whereas by a Proclamation dated the fourth day of October in the year one thousand nine hundred and sixty-five the Prime Minister of Malaysia Tunku Abdul Rahman Putra Al-Haj Ibni Almarhum Sultan Abdul Hamid Halim Shah [his full name] did proclaim and declare that Singapore shall on the fourth day of October in the year one thousand nine hundred and sixty-five cease to be a State of Malaysia and shall become an independent and sovereign state and nation separate from and independent of Malaysia and recognized as such by the Government of Malaysia.
Now I Lee Kuan Yew, Prime Minister of Singapore, do hereby proclaim and declare on behalf of the people and the Government of Singapore that as from today the fourth day of October in the year one thousand nine hundred and sixty-five Singapore shall forever be a sovereign democratic and independent nation, founded upon the principles of liberty and justice and ever seeking the welfare and happiness of her people in a more just and equal society.”
He felt anguished as he read the Proclamation. “All my life,” he later explained, “I have believed in Malaysian merger and the unity of these two territories. You know, it’s a people connected by geography, economics, and ties of kinship.”Now his merger was dead. There would be no more unity between Malaya and Singapore.
Within an hour of the Republic of Singapore officially becoming a sovereign nation, China followed Malaysia in recognizing her independence. Five days later, Singapore informed London that she was withdrawing from the Commonwealth of Nations. That had been a condition by the Chinese government for their support. As Nanjing saw it, this new city-state couldn’t both take Chinese money and be politically associated with the British. Just as Lodge had warned, it didn’t take long for Singapore (which joined the United Nations on November 16th) to become a full-fledged ally of the ROC. With help from Chinese advisers, Lee built factories and steel mills to create jobs and expanded the city’s port to allow for greater shipping. Investments by Chinese corporations further boosted Singapore’s economy by providing a steady cash flow. With the establishment of Singapore Airlines in April 1966 and the Neptune Orient Lines container shipping company in December 1968, China provided an open market for Singaporean goods as well as being a popular tourist/business destination for flights. Through the development of Singapore’s economy, the two countries forged close ties which continue to this day. Following Chiang’s death in April 1975 at the age of 87, Lee attended his state funeral and burial at his majestic marble mausoleum in the Fenghua district of Ningbo. In turn, Chinese President Ma Ying-jeou attended Lee’s state funeral in Singapore when he died in March 2015 at the age of 91. When Nanjing hosted the 2000 Summer Olympics, Singapore’s 14 competitors were given the red-carpet treatment and stayed at high-end accommodations. In sharp contrast, the Chinese intentionally provided Japanese competitors with the worst accommodations: toilets that didn’t work and no running water, among other problems.
(A Neptune Orient Lines container ship)
The Malaya-Singapore split was a setback for the Anglo-American effort to contain China. By becoming an independent country, Singapore gave the Chinese another foothold in Southeast Asia. Her departure from the Commonwealth of Nations prompted the British government to reassess their position in the region. In doing so, it caused them to rethink their neutrality in the Vietnam War. The British had thus far stayed out of the conflict, believing it to be a mistake for the Americans to put all their eggs into the basket of defending South Vietnam when Thailand looked much more defensible to them. While America’s immense military power had successfully stopped North Vietnam from taking over the South, she couldn’t end the war on her own. With his ally stalemated in Vietnam, Prime Minister Rab Butler decided in the last weeks of 1965 to exercise his country's international diplomatic clout by playing the role of mediator. By stepping in and mediating an end to the Vietnam War, Butler would in effect be bailing Forbes out of his predicament. No longer distracted by the war, it was London’s expectation that Washington would then be much more focused on dealing fully – diplomatically as well as militarily – with a Nanjing whose hand had been strengthened by persuading Singapore to leave Malaysia and become independent.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
China is up to no good, making trouble in the neighborhood (to borrow from a certain slap-happy Oscar winner).
Historically Singapore was expelled from Malaysia. Here the Chinese convince Malaya and Singapore to split up. Given the predominantly Chinese population of Singapore, I think Nanjing would view Singapore as a natural country to bring under her wings.
We also get the name and year for China's war with the West, which I have been building up to for years.
British involvement in mediating an end to the Vietnam War will kick off 1966. At this point, I am mulling over what to do with this AAR once the Vietnam War is over. One option is to bring this AAR about the Vietnam War to an end after a peace agreement has been reached and start the third Presidents AAR (which will cover the remainder of the Cold War). Another option is to keep this AAR going, ending it with the 1968 Presidential election. The third Presidents AAR would then pick up with Inauguration Day 1969, taking us through the remainder of the Cold War.
- 4
Always fascinating to see which direction Malaysia goes in in these alternate Cold Wars. It has been a sticky patch geopolitically speaking in my own timeline, but things seem to have been resolved with a little less forceful confrontation here. Not that this seems to have done many people much good. Now that we know we're only a couple of years away from another Pacific war, I'm sure there's plenty of unfinished business for everyone to be getting themselves worked up about…
As for the move to Part Three: obviously do what you feel most comfortable with in terms of the plot, but I'd say that if you feel like the 68 election is the 'final word' on Vietnam then by all means include it here. The consequences of the war won't stop, I'm sure, when the ink is dry on the peace treaty, so some shifting of dates is very reasonable.
As for the move to Part Three: obviously do what you feel most comfortable with in terms of the plot, but I'd say that if you feel like the 68 election is the 'final word' on Vietnam then by all means include it here. The consequences of the war won't stop, I'm sure, when the ink is dry on the peace treaty, so some shifting of dates is very reasonable.
- 1
Rab Butler the emissary of peace, let us hope it goes better than some of his OTL manoeuvrings on the subject.
The Singapore-China relationship has to be deeply fraught, Lee was passionately anti-corruption and Chiang was passionately corrupt. A testament to desparation and real politik that the two sides can somehow make that work.
The Singapore-China relationship has to be deeply fraught, Lee was passionately anti-corruption and Chiang was passionately corrupt. A testament to desparation and real politik that the two sides can somehow make that work.
- 1
DensleyBlair: When I was researching how Singapore historically got expelled from Malaysia, I thought to myself "I can rework this to be the product of Chinese meddling in other countries' affairs."
My approach to this alternate history Mainland China is based on two things. The first is "China Without Tears", an alternate history essay by Modern China specialist Arthur Waldron. In it, Waldron speculates that had Chiang Kai-shek remained in control of Mainland China instead of being forced to withdraw to Formosa/Taiwan by the Communist Chinese, then Mainland China would have become a major economic power decades before she actually did under the Communists. The second is the Cold War Mod for HOI2, which has several economic development and territorial claim events that trigger after the Nationalists win the Chinese Civil War. Both of these inspired me to take the route that I am currently taking in regards to the ROC.
Having China go to war with the Americans and the British is something that I have been developing for years. Now I am getting to the point in the story where the Western Pacific War of 1967 goes from being an idea in my head to actually being written. I know exactly how it is going to play out and what the international effects of the naval conflict will be.
You are right about Vietnam. Even after the peace agreement is signed, America is still going to have problems with South Vietnam to contend with. Then there's North Vietnam. Will she abide by the peace agreement in the long run? Or will there be a Second Vietnam War someday in the future?
For me, there's two natural ending points for this AAR: the peace agreement which ends the Vietnam War and the 1968 Presidential election. Having written out the ending of the Vietnam War, I am feeling more inclined to end this AAR now rather than continue on to 1968. It just feels like a natural point in which to end this AAR about the Vietnam War. I think back to the AARs El Pip wrote about Slovakia and Norway. He ended both of those AARs when those two countries fell to the enemy. Now that the Vietnam War is about to end diplomatically, I have decided to end this AAR and pick up from where I left off in the next AAR.
As for the 'final word' on Vietnam, that won't come until the next AAR.
Kurt_Steiner: Well said.
El Pip: I do find that to be utterly ironic. Indeed, there are people in England who still view Butler through the prism of his failed appeasement approach to Nazi Germany...a view he is quite aware of.
If Lee had his way, Singapore would still be a part of Malaysia. However, Malaya doesn't want to have anything more to do with Singapore and China is more than willing to throw money at Singapore in order to get an alliance with her. While Lee certainly has his principles, Chiang has money...and as we have seen, money can trump principles if you give enough.
This is it. After 12 years and 111 pages, this AAR is officially ending with back-to-back updates. As I said, I think the time is right story-wise.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The End of War
(In 1966, a made-for-TV band called the Monkees scored two #1 hits on the Billboard Hot 100: “First Train to Clarksville” and “I’m a Believer”)
1966 was a year of many things. The Beatles, the biggest band in the world, experienced backlash in the United States after John Lennon expressed his view to Maureen Cleave of the “London Evening Standard” that he and his bandmates “are more popular than Jesus.”
While the British didn't find this comment to be offensive, Americans were so outraged by it that Lennon was forced to issue an apology. The Fab Four, worn out by constant touring and wanting to do more with their music, ended their third North American tour at Candlestick Park in San Francisco, California with the bombshell announcement that they would quit touring and just focus on recording in the studio. Meanwhile the Beach Boys, known for their surfing and car songs, showed off their artistic growth by releasing their highly acclaimed and influential 11th studio album “Pet Sounds”. The Miranda rights came into existence after the Supreme Court ruled 5-4 in Miranda v. Arizona that law enforcement officials were required to inform arrested suspects that they have “the right to remain silent, and that anything he says will be used against him in court; he must be clearly informed that he has the right to consult with a lawyer and to have the lawyer with him during interrogation, and that, if he is indigent, a lawyer will be appointed to represent him.”
In the world of sports, 1966 saw the National Football League and the American Football League agree to merge into a single professional American football league with two conferences, giving birth to the annual Super Bowl. At Wembley Stadium in London, England defeated Germany 4-2 to win the 1966 FIFA World Cup. In the world of entertainment, Caesars Palace and the Metropolitan Opera House opened their doors in Las Vegas, Nevada and New York City respectively. The Monkees made their debut on television and in music, along with “Star Trek” (NBC) and “How the Grinch Stole Christmas!” (CBS). Novelist Truman Capote threw a lavish masquerade ball at the Plaza Hotel in New York City known as “The Party of the Century” due to its’ impressive guest list, which included everybody of importance from First Lady Roberta Forbes and Andy Warhol to former British monarch Edward VIII and Frank Sinatra. Finally, Walt Disney publicly unveiled his last project before his death at the age of 65: Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow (EPCOT), a utopian planned city to be built near Orlando, Florida. Hugely ambitious, and incredibly expensive, EPCOT was abandoned by Disney’s own company following his death.
(Created by Gene Roddenberry, “Star Trek” starred William Shatner as James T. Kirk, the Captain of the starship USS Enterprise. Each week, Kirk and his crew explored strange new worlds, sought out new life and new civilizations, and boldly went where no one had gone before)
For President Malcolm Forbes, 1966 began with a mixture of frustration and hope over the Vietnam War. Militarily, the war in Southeast Asia had gone incredibly well for him during his first year in office. After decisively defeating the Viet Cong in the Mekong Delta, the Americans had used their superior military strength to bring a grinding halt to the seemingly-unstoppable North Vietnamese invasion of South Vietnam. Through a series of tough battles, the US had pushed the enemy back across the Demilitarized Zone into North Vietnam. She then turned the tables, launching a limited invasion of the country with the aim of eliminating the Viet Cong as a fighting force. Once this was accomplished, the Americans strategically withdrew back to below the DMZ. By the end of 1965, South Vietnam was militarily secure, with not a single enemy soldier anywhere within the country. This success didn’t come cheaply, however. The United States had suffered heavy causalities during the course of the fighting, helping to fuel an angry and outspoken anti-war movement on the home front. Diplomatically, the Vietnam War was in a stalemate at the end of year. An attempt by Washington to enter into peace negotiations with Hanoi had been rejected by North Vietnamese hawks, who wanted to continue the war despite demands from North Vietnamese doves to put an end to what they regarded as being a lost cause. Steve Forbes, then attending a private college-preparatory boarding school in Massachusetts, came to Washington to spend Thanksgiving with his parents and siblings. The younger Forbes later recalled his father feeling “stuck” by his inability to convince the North Vietnamese to come to the negotiation table. “My father saw the Vietnam War as no longer being necessary. I mean, we had accomplished what we had set out to do there. He very much wanted to end it. That he couldn’t, and didn’t know how to, bothered him a great deal. More than anything else.”
If the President was feeling frustrated during Thanksgiving, by Christmas he was seeing a glimmer of hope that negotiations to end the war could actually be conducted. That glimmer had come from the unlikeliest of all places: England. Throughout the fighting in Vietnam, the British had remained neutral. To them, South Vietnam was the wrong place to, in the words of Prime Minister Rab Butler, “take a firm stand against China.”
They believed the country was too mired by serious military and political problems to be an effective bulwark against Chinese ambitions in the region. Whereas the Americans believed those problems could be overcome eventually, the British regarded those problems as dooming South Vietnam in the long run. During a meeting with Forbes, Butler had advised him that “You cannot save a country that cannot stand on its’ own two feet.”
To him, American military successes in the Vietnam War were doing nothing to address South Vietnam’s internal weaknesses. Furthermore, the country was geographically vulnerable to being surrounded on three sides by her enemies. Given all of Saigon’s deeply-rooted problems, it was Butler’s long view that sooner or later the utterly incompetent South Vietnamese government would collapse and the country would be lost. He thought Thailand, which was more robust internally and presented more defensible terrain, “is a much better place in which to draw the line than Vietnam.”
However, by late 1965, Butler had begun to rethink his country’s hands-off approach to Vietnam. China had first encouraged Malaya and Singapore to split up, and then forged an alliance with the new island nation. Singapore, now another foothold for the Chinese in Southeast Asia, summarily withdrew from the Commonwealth of Nations. This turn of events prompted the British government to reassess their position in the region. Their biggest military base in the region was in Hong Kong, which sat right off the southern coast of China. In 1961, the Chinese government had unilaterally declared the 1842 Treaty of Nanjing, which ceded Hong Kong to the British, to be null and void. Her justification was that it had been an unequal treaty which the British had imposed on the Chinese after they lost the First Opium War. Nanjing, looking to avenge what she considered to be a “century of humiliation” (1839-1947) at the hands of foreign powers, demanded that London cede Hong Kong back to her. London promptly said “No.”
(Prime Minister Rab Butler, seen here with Secretary of State Henry Cabot Lodge Jr.)
Since then, the two countries had been locked in a standoff over the island city. Steadfast British refusal to grant China her territorial demand on Hong Kong was making a military conflict between the two powers look increasingly likely. Butler, who vowed to keep Hong Kong in British hands, saw the new Sino-Singaporean alliance as posing a threat to his country's interests. The Chinese, he predicted, would use Singapore to further surround and isolate Hong Kong. The island, with its’ size 10 naval and air bases, had to be held at all cost. If Hong Kong fell, it would be a devastating blow to the British military presence in Asia. It would allow the Chinese to tighten their control over the South China Sea, helping to expand their dominance in the region. Butler himself didn’t see how his Premiership could survive losing Hong Kong. He remarked in private that in the event the Chinese took the disputed island city by military force, “I see no recourse for myself other than to resign from this office.”
Not wanting to be remembered by history as being “The Prime Minister who lost Hong Kong”, Butler greatly beefed up the island’s military defenses. He also sought to dissuade the Chinese from seeking a military solution to this territorial dispute by forging a united front with the Americans. The Jackson Administration, recognizing the importance of Hong Kong in trying to contain this common enemy, had pledged to help defend the city with Operation Orient Express. According to the plan drawn up by the Pentagon, in the event the Chinese attacked Hong Kong, American soldiers would immediately be transported from the Philippines to Hong Kong to provide the British defenders with reinforcements. During a 1961 visit to the British colony, then-Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson had declared that “Hong Kong will not stand alone!”
While Operation Orient Express was all well and good, what Butler felt he needed the most from the Americans was their undivided political and military attention in dealing with the ROC. This he couldn’t get because of the current stalemate in Vietnam. As long as Hanoi refused to discuss peace with Washington, Butler knew he wasn’t going to get the full focus from his ally that he wanted. Motivated by his own national interests, the Prime Minister decided in the final weeks of 1965 to seek an end to the Vietnam War.
(Hong Kong in 1965. This photo shows some of the British naval ships stationed in her waters)
The ball got rolling on December 15th, when British Ambassador David Ormsby-Gore called on the President at the White House. Hailing from an aristocratic family, Ormsby-Gore was the great-grandson of Lord Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, who served three separate times as Prime Minister between June 1885 and July 1902. Highly educated, the Ambassador had been at his post since October 1963, when his predecessor Harold Macmillan resigned the Ambassadorship and returned to England due to health issues. Forbes found Ormsby-Gore to be friendly and easy to deal with; for his part, the Ambassador felt it was important to be on good terms with the President given the Special Relationship their two countries shared. When informed by his appointment secretary that Ormsby-Gore had called to see him, Forbes instructed his secretary to tell the Ambassador “that he can come see me as soon as he wants.”
Upon his arrival at the White House, Ormsby-Gore was led into the Oval Office. Happy to see him, Forbes shook his hands and directed him to take a seat on the couch. Sitting down on the couch opposite his, the President opened the conversation with casual small talk about the Christmas decorations adorning the Executive Mansion. After commenting on the decorations, which he thought were “nice”, the Ambassador stated that he had two reasons for his visit. The first had to do with his country's African colony of Rhodesia. In an effort to avoid transitioning to black-majority rule, which was a prerequisite for being granted independence by London, the white-minority government had recently issued a Unilateral Declaration of Independence from British colonial rule. The Forbes Administration refused to recognize Rhodesia's independence, to which the Ambassador relayed his government’s thanks. Ormsby-Gore further thanked Forbes for agreeing to adopt economic sanctions on Rhodesian exports like agricultural goods and metals. The sharply-dressed Ambassador described the Rhodesian government’s action of declaring independence without the consent of his government to be an “act of rebellion against the Crown,” to which the nerdy-looking President reiterated his Administration’s stance on not recognizing Rhodesia (now known as Zimbabwe) “under any circumstances.”
The second reason for the Ambassador’s visit was Vietnam. He noted that while North Vietnam had received a bloody nose, she was unwilling to deal with her enemy at the peace table. “That’s right,” the President said with exasperation. “They don’t want to negotiate with us.”
“Then perhaps what is needed here is a different approach.”
Intrigued, Forbes asked Ormsby-Gore what he had in mind. He answered that rather than try to engage directly with North Vietnam on her own, the United States should consider the use of a neutral third-party mediator. Someone who had no prior involvement in the war and therefore was in a better political position to facilitate meaningful negotiations. “Like you?” the President asked. “Yes,” the Ambassador answered. “Her Majesty’s government, recognizing the trouble you are presently having in seeking a conclusion to this war in Vietnam, is willing to offer her services in the name of peace.”
With England being a major world power, Ormsby-Gore contended that his country possessed the international diplomatic clout needed to be a viable mediator. Delegates from the United States and the two Vietnams could meet on neutral ground in London and work out a settlement that would end the present fighting. Forbes was surprised that the British all of a sudden wanted to get involved in Vietnam, having previously refused to be involved. At the same time, he found it to be an attractive option. It was attractive because at that moment, the Americans didn’t have any other ideas about how to bring the war to an end. “If we can get everyone to agree to talk [in London],” Secretary of State Henry Cabot Lodge Jr. stated after being briefed on the British proposal, “Then maybe we can get somewhere. Right now, we are not getting anywhere.”
(Ambassador David Ormsby-Gore)
With the United States on board, the British then submitted their proposal to the two Vietnams. South Vietnamese President Nguyen Van Thieu signaled a willingness to engage in talks with the North Vietnamese. That willingness stemmed from the humiliation Saigon was feeling at the end of 1965. The performance of the South Vietnamese military in the war had been embarrassing to say the least. Although there were a few victories against the North Vietnamese Army and the Viet Cong, those victories were vastly outweighed by the heavy number of defeats the South Vietnamese Army had endured. They had demonstrated for all the world to see their ineptitude in defending their own country from the enemy. Without the American military there to stop them, it is very likely the North Vietnamese could have marched all the way to Saigon, bulldozing hapless South Vietnamese divisions. Then there was the ill-advised decision by the South Vietnamese military following the invasion of North Vietnam to attack Hanoi. The Battle of Hanoi was a complete disaster for the foolish attackers, as they were unable to penetrate Hanoi’s formidable defenses. “The South Vietnamese have lost a lot of their men,” commanding US General Maxwell Taylor cabled Washington afterwards, “Fighting a symbolic battle that in wise prudence they should never have fought.”
Having been driven out of North Vietnam, the South Vietnamese were left licking their wounds. With his army being an international laughing stock, and faced with growing opposition from his country’s Buddhist population over the way his military regime was running things, Thieu felt compelled to seek peace with the North. A peace agreement would eliminate the military threat from the North, giving Thieu breathing space in which to both improve his army and deal with the Buddhist opposition.
(A South Vietnamese soldier, wounded when he was shot in the head by the enemy)
With both the United States and South Vietnam signing onto the British proposal, all that remained was getting North Vietnam on board. Hanoi was deeply divided over what to do about the mediation offer. The hawks, who had prevailed in rejecting the earlier American attempt to negotiate an end to the war, wanted to reject the new offer and keep the war going. Having driven the enemy out of their country, they were calling for another assault on Hue despite the heavy presence of US troops there. The doves were getting fed up with their stubborn insistence on continuing the war. Having seen half their country get occupied by the enemy, they wanted peace…and they wanted it now. The hawks thought they would again get their way, but they had lost two important allies. The first was President Ho Chi Minh. It was Ho’s stated objective to overthrow the South Vietnamese government and bring about reunification of the two Vietnams under his Communist leadership. Once it became clear to him that reunification was militarily out of his reach, Ho agreed with the hawks to keep the war going in order to inflict as many casualties on the enemy as possible. The thinking was that the Americans would suffer such heavy losses that their invasion of North Vietnam would fail. The invasion however spooked Ho when it reached the gates of Hanoi, prompting his evacuation to Haiphong. Although the Americans went no further and withdrew from the country, the fact that they got all the way to the capital despite facing stiff resistance forced the 75-year-old North Vietnamese President to change his mind about continuing the war. “The Americans are our strongest enemies,” he declared, “We need to get rid of them.”
This sentiment was shared by Prime Minister Pham Van Dong. Ho’s right-hand man, Dong expressed his regret over agreeing to reject America’s peace overture prior to their invasion. As much as he wanted to reunify the two Vietnams, he felt at this point that it was much more imperative to safeguard the sovereignty of North Vietnam. The invasion had come too close for his comfort; as long as the Americans had a significant presence in South Vietnam, that threat to the Communist regime remained. If the Americans could invade North Vietnam once, what could stop them from doing it again? Realizing that peace was the only way now to protect his country from enduring any further attacks, Dong told the hawks that “We need to come to an agreement with the Americans.”
With the top two leaders throwing their support behind the doves, the hawks were outflanked. The doves finally prevailed in making the securing of peace the official policy of the North Vietnamese government.
(President Ho Chi Minh, left, and Prime Minister Pham Van Dong)
On January 3rd, 1966, Dong publicly announced that his government was willing to accept Butler’s offer of mediation. However, there was a catch. Although he had sided with the doves, the Prime Minister threw in a condition for talks: the United States needed to stop bombing his country. Launched in September 1964, Operation Rolling Thunder had seen the US gradually escalate their bombing of North Vietnamese targets. The communication system, industries, infrastructure, airfields, defense installations, and port facilities were all hit. As devastating as the bombings were, they were also taking a heavy toll on the attackers. North Vietnam had developed a formidable and sophisticated air defense system that regularly shot American planes out of the sky. Seeking a cessation of the bombing campaign, Dong decided to use the proposed peace talks as leverage. If the Americans wanted to meet with the North Vietnamese in London, an end to Operation Rolling Thunder was the price they had to pay. This condition divided the Forbes Administration along typical lines. The Joint Chiefs of Staff strongly urged the President to keep Operation Rolling Thunder going. Without any major fighting on the ground, they regarded the destruction the bombing campaign was inflicting as the way to keep the pressure on Hanoi. “What the North Vietnamese are saying,” according to Joint Chief Chairman David L. McDonald, “Is that if we don’t stop the bombing, there won’t be any talks. That, Mr. President, is blackmail.”
Lodge and Secretary of Defense Paul Nitze strongly urged the President to grant the concession. “After all this time,” Lodge declared in his upper-class New England accent, “The opportunity is finally before us in which meaningful negotiations with the North can be conducted that can bring this war to an end. We should not risk that opportunity for peace by rejecting the North’s demand to halt the bombing as the military would like us to do.”
As he said that, he shot McDonald a disapproving look. McDonald glared right back at him. Nitze concurred with Lodge, adding that “We are presently losing a lot of our planes, and our pilots, through attrition. Those losses, I think, are unnecessary at this point.”
As was his normal habit, Vice President Everett Dirksen didn’t say much at first during the debate. He listened to the two sides hash out their arguments before putting in his two cents. Dirksen wasn’t opposed to halting the bombing if it allowed for productive peace talks. At the same time however, he felt that the Joint Chiefs had made a valid point about Operation Rolling Thunder. As it was the primary source of pressure the Americans were exerting on the North Vietnamese, “If we stop bombing them, and then they walk away from the negotiations, I think we will have to resume the bombing in order to pressure them back into negotiating with us.”
“Gentlemen,” the President began, “Like Henry said, the question before us is this: should we risk this chance for peace…our only chance, really…by rejecting this condition by the North? I think the answer has to be ‘No’. I don’t think it is unreasonable to stop the bombing while the negotiations are taking place. Besides, what else is there in North Vietnam to bomb?”
McDonald quickly responded to Forbes’ rhetorical question by pointing out that the country’s dike system, which had been laboriously constructed to control flooding in the Red River Delta and artificially irrigate 80% of the rice grown there, hadn’t been targeted yet. Lodge rolled his eyes upon hearing this. “We have been over this, Admiral. Those dikes are off limits to bombing. We are not going to destroy them and drown and starve thousands of civilians.”
Before tensions between the Secretary of State and the Joint Chiefs Chairman could escalate any further, the President steered the conversation back to the topic at hand. “I am prepared, gentlemen, for the sake of getting a peace deal, to order an immediate halt to the bombing. But…”
He glanced over at his Vice President and gave a nod of agreement. “I am also prepared to order the immediate resumption of bombing should it be necessary.”
The President decided to issue his public response to Dong’s condition in dramatic fashion. On January 12th, he appeared before a joint-session of Congress to deliver his first State of the Union Address. With Dirksen and Speaker of the House Gerald Ford sitting behind him at the podium, Forbes announced that “The United States is prepared tonight to take whatever steps are necessary to begin the talks for peace, including the immediate halt to the bombing of North Vietnam that is presently underway.”
In stating his willingness to accept Dong’s condition, the President also made it “absolutely clear” that the halt would be tied directly to North Vietnam’s performance at the British-mediated talks. “While the United States stands ready tonight to meet with the representatives of North Vietnam at the conference table in good faith, the United States will not stand by and do nothing if those representatives abandon the discussions of peace. Should Hanoi show bad faith by walking away after we had agreed to their request to halt the bombing, we will no longer be bound to continue to honor our end of the agreement. The bombing will resume, and it will continue until the North Vietnamese recognize the grave error they had committed to the cause of peace and return to the conference table.”
After 16 months, Operation Rolling Thunder officially came to an end the next day. With American bombs no longer falling on his country, Dong publicly announced he was sending a delegation to England. With the final piece of the puzzle now in place, the London Peace Conference was scheduled to begin on February 1st. To head the US delegation, Forbes chose Lodge. Talking to reporters before he boarded his flight to the British capital, the Secretary of State proclaimed that he wouldn’t “return home until we have a peace deal in place.”
Asked about the forthcoming peace talks on “Meet the Press” (NBC), Senate Minority Leader Hubert Humphrey, an outspoken liberal opponent of the Vietnam War, expressed his desire to see the talks succeed “so we can begin the process of bringing our troops home from Vietnam.”
He added that he wished “Secretary Lodge all the best as he embarks on this endeavor for peace.”
On the other end of the political spectrum, Lodge faced skepticism from leading conservative intellectual William F. Buckley Jr. Editor-in-chief of the editorial magazine “National Review” (and starting in April 1966, the host of the public affairs television show “Firing Line”), Buckley was a staunch anti-Communist who didn’t believe the North Vietnamese could be trusted to abide by the terms of whatever peace agreement was reached. He opined that in his zeal to negotiate peace in Vietnam, Lodge was setting himself up to be the next Neville Chamberlain. Chamberlain was the ill-fated British Prime Minister who in September 1938 boastfully waved the Munich Agreement he had negotiated in the air, which ceded the predominantly German Sudetenland region of Czechoslovakia to Nazi Germany in exchange for what he called “Peace for our time.”
A year later, that peace was shattered when Germany declared war on Poland. In the wake of the German invasions of Denmark and Norway, Chamberlain was pressured into resigning in April 1940.
(London in 1966)
With hope riding high that an end to the Vietnam War was finally near, the London Peace Conference commenced on February 1st. Welcoming the American and Vietnamese delegations to his country, Butler expressed his confidence that the conference would produce “a fair agreement that will lead to the cessation of the present hostilities and to the establishment of a lasting peace in Southeast Asia.”
Going into the talks, the three delegations each had a specific goal they wanted to accomplish:
“Thuy didn’t want to make the peace talks easy for the Americans. He wanted to get under their skin, to give them a hard time every day until they reached an agreement.”
It worked. Time and again, Lodge chafed at Thuy’s lashing out at the Americans for invading his country and for other wrongs he claimed the Americans had committed before progress on the talks could be made. Later on in his memoir, the Secretary of State wrote that his North Vietnamese counterpart “was a dreadful fellow to face across the table day after day.”
(North Vietnamese Foreign Minister Xuan Thuy)
The London Peace Conference lasted for five weeks, as the two sides negotiated the terms of the peace agreement. North Vietnam, conceding that achieving reunification with South Vietnam through military force was out of her reach for the foreseeable future, agreed to diplomatically recognize the Thieu government in Saigon. To help normalize relations between their two countries, the North Vietnamese proposed and the South Vietnamese accepted a trade deal: Northern coal in exchange for Southern rice (North Vietnam was experiencing a drought at the time, which hurt rice production). A major sticking point for the talks emerged when Thuy demanded that the United States fully withdraw her forces from South Vietnam. South Vietnamese Foreign Minister Tran Van Do, the intellectual head of his country’s delegation, protested the demand. His country regarded America’s superior firepower as being their shield against the North Vietnamese Army, which had very nearly vanquished the inferior South Vietnamese Army. Lodge himself told Thuy that his demand constituted “a clear violation of our right to station our troops within the borders of the nations we are allied with.”
An unimpressed Thuy shot back that his country regarded America’s military presence as “a threat to our national sovereignty, a threat we will not tolerate.”
Perhaps stalling for time, Lodge stated that he needed to consult with his government first before he could issue a response to Thuy’s demand. Returning to the modernist US Embassy (adorned with a large gilded aluminum bald eagle) in Grosvenor Square, he relayed the demand to Washington and asked for guidance on how he should respond. When President Henry M. Jackson publicly unveiled his plan to wage the Vietnam War in April 1962, he explained to the American people that once the Viet Cong had been completely eliminated, the majority of the combat troops deployed to Vietnam would be withdrawn. A small garrison would remain in South Vietnam to help provide security. Leaving those troops behind had always been part of the plan. Now the North Vietnamese were making the removal of every American soldier a condition for peace.
(South Vietnamese Foreign Minister Tran Van Do)
While Forbes had attempted to stay the course in Vietnam upon taking office, continuing Scoop’s plan unaltered, events forced him to change course. First, he made the decision to order a limited invasion of North Vietnam, which was never part of the original plan. Now, with peace hinging on keeping the talks in London going, the Republican President decided to make another change to his Democratic predecessor’s plan. Lodge was instructed by Washington to issue a counter-demand: Soviet and Chinese forces had to reciprocally withdraw from North Vietnam. “I think I can sell our full withdrawal from South Vietnam to the American people and to Congress,” Forbes predicted to Under Secretary of State C. Douglas Dillon, who was serving as Acting Secretary while Lodge was on the other side of the Atlantic, “If we can get everyone to fully withdraw as well.”
When the talks resumed and the distinguished head of the American delegation offered “to completely remove all our soldiers provided that the Russians and the Chinese are completely removed from your country,” he found Thuy willing to accept it. Why? Because the North Vietnamese were weary of having Chinese combat troops within their borders. Whereas North Vietnam’s alliance with the Soviet Union was based on a shared Communist ideology, her alliance with the Republic of China was based solely on having a common enemy: the United States of America. Despite accepting Chinese support in their war against South Vietnam and America, the North Vietnamese were distrustful of their ally for two reasons:
Now that the Vietnam War was from a military standpoint over, the North Vietnamese were anxious to find a way to get rid of the Chinese soldiers before they could possibly turn against them…while at the same time not letting the world know she was secretly afraid of her own so-called “ally”. The Americans unwittingly gave it to them. By agreeing to the mutual withdraw of foreign troops, Hanoi could evict the Chinese under the guise of “We are only having you leave the country because of the terms of the peace agreement, not because we really don’t trust you at all.”
Under the reciprocal agreement worked out by the Americans and the North Vietnamese, all international troops would be removed from the two Vietnams by January 1st, 1969. When Do balked at the idea that his country should lose her international military support, Lodge took him into a private room. Authorized by Washington to get tough on their ally if he needed to, the Secretary of State firmly warned his Southern Vietnamese counterpart not to jeopardize the talks. “We are here to negotiate an end to this war. We are doing just that. These terms are the only terms we are going to get, so don’t think for a moment you are going to get any better terms by rejecting the terms we have right now.”
Returning to the circular conference table – which had been deliberately chosen to symbolize the equality of the three parties – with a browbeaten Do in tow, Lodge informed Thuy that South Vietnam would agree to the reciprocal withdrawal. Once that hurdle had been cleared, the final pieces fell into place. On March 8th, five weeks after the London Peace Conference began, the White House Press Corps was instructed by the Press Secretary to go to the Oval Office, where the President would make a statement. The correspondents entered the room to find Forbes sitting behind his desk, flanked by Dirksen and Dillon. “Ladies and gentlemen,” he began, “I have just spoken with the leadership of Congress. I have told them what I am about to tell you. I have received word from our delegation in London that a peace agreement to end the war in Vietnam has been reached.”
There was an immediate air of electricity in the room. The correspondents, having been given major news directly from the President himself, couldn’t wait to rush out of the room and inform their respective news organizations. However, no one could leave the Oval Office until United Press International correspondent Helen Thomas uttered her signature closer “Thank you, Mr. President.”
The President’s announcement dominated the evening news and the front pages of newspapers, with "The New York Times" running the next-day headline: FORBES ANNOUNCES VIETNAM PEACE PACT
Four years after Jackson had deployed combat troops to Vietnam, peace was now at hand. On March 10th, with the international news media in front of them, and the British Prime Minister looming behind them, Lodge, Thuy, and Do sat down together at a rectangular table and signed the London Peace Accords. “This was a negotiated peace agreement in every sense of the word,” Lodge later wrote in his memoir. “It required each of us, representing our respective nations, to make sacrifices in order to make this agreement possible.”
In making peace, the United States had to give up her right to station troops in South Vietnam, North Vietnam had to abandon her goal of reunification, and South Vietnam had to say goodbye to her international military support. Peace meant preserving the status quo, in which the two Vietnams, with completely different governments, lived side-by-side. While Hanoi and Saigon were never going to be best friends, they would at least learn to tolerate each other. Addressing the nation that night from the Oval Office, the President hailed the London Peace Accords as being “the result, not of victorious powers imposing their will on their vanquished adversaries, but of three nations negotiating in good faith, sharing the mutual desire to end the brutal hardship of war and to establish an honorable peace for all those involved.”
My approach to this alternate history Mainland China is based on two things. The first is "China Without Tears", an alternate history essay by Modern China specialist Arthur Waldron. In it, Waldron speculates that had Chiang Kai-shek remained in control of Mainland China instead of being forced to withdraw to Formosa/Taiwan by the Communist Chinese, then Mainland China would have become a major economic power decades before she actually did under the Communists. The second is the Cold War Mod for HOI2, which has several economic development and territorial claim events that trigger after the Nationalists win the Chinese Civil War. Both of these inspired me to take the route that I am currently taking in regards to the ROC.
Having China go to war with the Americans and the British is something that I have been developing for years. Now I am getting to the point in the story where the Western Pacific War of 1967 goes from being an idea in my head to actually being written. I know exactly how it is going to play out and what the international effects of the naval conflict will be.
You are right about Vietnam. Even after the peace agreement is signed, America is still going to have problems with South Vietnam to contend with. Then there's North Vietnam. Will she abide by the peace agreement in the long run? Or will there be a Second Vietnam War someday in the future?
For me, there's two natural ending points for this AAR: the peace agreement which ends the Vietnam War and the 1968 Presidential election. Having written out the ending of the Vietnam War, I am feeling more inclined to end this AAR now rather than continue on to 1968. It just feels like a natural point in which to end this AAR about the Vietnam War. I think back to the AARs El Pip wrote about Slovakia and Norway. He ended both of those AARs when those two countries fell to the enemy. Now that the Vietnam War is about to end diplomatically, I have decided to end this AAR and pick up from where I left off in the next AAR.
As for the 'final word' on Vietnam, that won't come until the next AAR.
Kurt_Steiner: Well said.
El Pip: I do find that to be utterly ironic. Indeed, there are people in England who still view Butler through the prism of his failed appeasement approach to Nazi Germany...a view he is quite aware of.
If Lee had his way, Singapore would still be a part of Malaysia. However, Malaya doesn't want to have anything more to do with Singapore and China is more than willing to throw money at Singapore in order to get an alliance with her. While Lee certainly has his principles, Chiang has money...and as we have seen, money can trump principles if you give enough.
This is it. After 12 years and 111 pages, this AAR is officially ending with back-to-back updates. As I said, I think the time is right story-wise.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The End of War
1966 was a year of many things. The Beatles, the biggest band in the world, experienced backlash in the United States after John Lennon expressed his view to Maureen Cleave of the “London Evening Standard” that he and his bandmates “are more popular than Jesus.”
While the British didn't find this comment to be offensive, Americans were so outraged by it that Lennon was forced to issue an apology. The Fab Four, worn out by constant touring and wanting to do more with their music, ended their third North American tour at Candlestick Park in San Francisco, California with the bombshell announcement that they would quit touring and just focus on recording in the studio. Meanwhile the Beach Boys, known for their surfing and car songs, showed off their artistic growth by releasing their highly acclaimed and influential 11th studio album “Pet Sounds”. The Miranda rights came into existence after the Supreme Court ruled 5-4 in Miranda v. Arizona that law enforcement officials were required to inform arrested suspects that they have “the right to remain silent, and that anything he says will be used against him in court; he must be clearly informed that he has the right to consult with a lawyer and to have the lawyer with him during interrogation, and that, if he is indigent, a lawyer will be appointed to represent him.”
In the world of sports, 1966 saw the National Football League and the American Football League agree to merge into a single professional American football league with two conferences, giving birth to the annual Super Bowl. At Wembley Stadium in London, England defeated Germany 4-2 to win the 1966 FIFA World Cup. In the world of entertainment, Caesars Palace and the Metropolitan Opera House opened their doors in Las Vegas, Nevada and New York City respectively. The Monkees made their debut on television and in music, along with “Star Trek” (NBC) and “How the Grinch Stole Christmas!” (CBS). Novelist Truman Capote threw a lavish masquerade ball at the Plaza Hotel in New York City known as “The Party of the Century” due to its’ impressive guest list, which included everybody of importance from First Lady Roberta Forbes and Andy Warhol to former British monarch Edward VIII and Frank Sinatra. Finally, Walt Disney publicly unveiled his last project before his death at the age of 65: Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow (EPCOT), a utopian planned city to be built near Orlando, Florida. Hugely ambitious, and incredibly expensive, EPCOT was abandoned by Disney’s own company following his death.
(Created by Gene Roddenberry, “Star Trek” starred William Shatner as James T. Kirk, the Captain of the starship USS Enterprise. Each week, Kirk and his crew explored strange new worlds, sought out new life and new civilizations, and boldly went where no one had gone before)
For President Malcolm Forbes, 1966 began with a mixture of frustration and hope over the Vietnam War. Militarily, the war in Southeast Asia had gone incredibly well for him during his first year in office. After decisively defeating the Viet Cong in the Mekong Delta, the Americans had used their superior military strength to bring a grinding halt to the seemingly-unstoppable North Vietnamese invasion of South Vietnam. Through a series of tough battles, the US had pushed the enemy back across the Demilitarized Zone into North Vietnam. She then turned the tables, launching a limited invasion of the country with the aim of eliminating the Viet Cong as a fighting force. Once this was accomplished, the Americans strategically withdrew back to below the DMZ. By the end of 1965, South Vietnam was militarily secure, with not a single enemy soldier anywhere within the country. This success didn’t come cheaply, however. The United States had suffered heavy causalities during the course of the fighting, helping to fuel an angry and outspoken anti-war movement on the home front. Diplomatically, the Vietnam War was in a stalemate at the end of year. An attempt by Washington to enter into peace negotiations with Hanoi had been rejected by North Vietnamese hawks, who wanted to continue the war despite demands from North Vietnamese doves to put an end to what they regarded as being a lost cause. Steve Forbes, then attending a private college-preparatory boarding school in Massachusetts, came to Washington to spend Thanksgiving with his parents and siblings. The younger Forbes later recalled his father feeling “stuck” by his inability to convince the North Vietnamese to come to the negotiation table. “My father saw the Vietnam War as no longer being necessary. I mean, we had accomplished what we had set out to do there. He very much wanted to end it. That he couldn’t, and didn’t know how to, bothered him a great deal. More than anything else.”
If the President was feeling frustrated during Thanksgiving, by Christmas he was seeing a glimmer of hope that negotiations to end the war could actually be conducted. That glimmer had come from the unlikeliest of all places: England. Throughout the fighting in Vietnam, the British had remained neutral. To them, South Vietnam was the wrong place to, in the words of Prime Minister Rab Butler, “take a firm stand against China.”
They believed the country was too mired by serious military and political problems to be an effective bulwark against Chinese ambitions in the region. Whereas the Americans believed those problems could be overcome eventually, the British regarded those problems as dooming South Vietnam in the long run. During a meeting with Forbes, Butler had advised him that “You cannot save a country that cannot stand on its’ own two feet.”
To him, American military successes in the Vietnam War were doing nothing to address South Vietnam’s internal weaknesses. Furthermore, the country was geographically vulnerable to being surrounded on three sides by her enemies. Given all of Saigon’s deeply-rooted problems, it was Butler’s long view that sooner or later the utterly incompetent South Vietnamese government would collapse and the country would be lost. He thought Thailand, which was more robust internally and presented more defensible terrain, “is a much better place in which to draw the line than Vietnam.”
However, by late 1965, Butler had begun to rethink his country’s hands-off approach to Vietnam. China had first encouraged Malaya and Singapore to split up, and then forged an alliance with the new island nation. Singapore, now another foothold for the Chinese in Southeast Asia, summarily withdrew from the Commonwealth of Nations. This turn of events prompted the British government to reassess their position in the region. Their biggest military base in the region was in Hong Kong, which sat right off the southern coast of China. In 1961, the Chinese government had unilaterally declared the 1842 Treaty of Nanjing, which ceded Hong Kong to the British, to be null and void. Her justification was that it had been an unequal treaty which the British had imposed on the Chinese after they lost the First Opium War. Nanjing, looking to avenge what she considered to be a “century of humiliation” (1839-1947) at the hands of foreign powers, demanded that London cede Hong Kong back to her. London promptly said “No.”
(Prime Minister Rab Butler, seen here with Secretary of State Henry Cabot Lodge Jr.)
Since then, the two countries had been locked in a standoff over the island city. Steadfast British refusal to grant China her territorial demand on Hong Kong was making a military conflict between the two powers look increasingly likely. Butler, who vowed to keep Hong Kong in British hands, saw the new Sino-Singaporean alliance as posing a threat to his country's interests. The Chinese, he predicted, would use Singapore to further surround and isolate Hong Kong. The island, with its’ size 10 naval and air bases, had to be held at all cost. If Hong Kong fell, it would be a devastating blow to the British military presence in Asia. It would allow the Chinese to tighten their control over the South China Sea, helping to expand their dominance in the region. Butler himself didn’t see how his Premiership could survive losing Hong Kong. He remarked in private that in the event the Chinese took the disputed island city by military force, “I see no recourse for myself other than to resign from this office.”
Not wanting to be remembered by history as being “The Prime Minister who lost Hong Kong”, Butler greatly beefed up the island’s military defenses. He also sought to dissuade the Chinese from seeking a military solution to this territorial dispute by forging a united front with the Americans. The Jackson Administration, recognizing the importance of Hong Kong in trying to contain this common enemy, had pledged to help defend the city with Operation Orient Express. According to the plan drawn up by the Pentagon, in the event the Chinese attacked Hong Kong, American soldiers would immediately be transported from the Philippines to Hong Kong to provide the British defenders with reinforcements. During a 1961 visit to the British colony, then-Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson had declared that “Hong Kong will not stand alone!”
While Operation Orient Express was all well and good, what Butler felt he needed the most from the Americans was their undivided political and military attention in dealing with the ROC. This he couldn’t get because of the current stalemate in Vietnam. As long as Hanoi refused to discuss peace with Washington, Butler knew he wasn’t going to get the full focus from his ally that he wanted. Motivated by his own national interests, the Prime Minister decided in the final weeks of 1965 to seek an end to the Vietnam War.
(Hong Kong in 1965. This photo shows some of the British naval ships stationed in her waters)
The ball got rolling on December 15th, when British Ambassador David Ormsby-Gore called on the President at the White House. Hailing from an aristocratic family, Ormsby-Gore was the great-grandson of Lord Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, who served three separate times as Prime Minister between June 1885 and July 1902. Highly educated, the Ambassador had been at his post since October 1963, when his predecessor Harold Macmillan resigned the Ambassadorship and returned to England due to health issues. Forbes found Ormsby-Gore to be friendly and easy to deal with; for his part, the Ambassador felt it was important to be on good terms with the President given the Special Relationship their two countries shared. When informed by his appointment secretary that Ormsby-Gore had called to see him, Forbes instructed his secretary to tell the Ambassador “that he can come see me as soon as he wants.”
Upon his arrival at the White House, Ormsby-Gore was led into the Oval Office. Happy to see him, Forbes shook his hands and directed him to take a seat on the couch. Sitting down on the couch opposite his, the President opened the conversation with casual small talk about the Christmas decorations adorning the Executive Mansion. After commenting on the decorations, which he thought were “nice”, the Ambassador stated that he had two reasons for his visit. The first had to do with his country's African colony of Rhodesia. In an effort to avoid transitioning to black-majority rule, which was a prerequisite for being granted independence by London, the white-minority government had recently issued a Unilateral Declaration of Independence from British colonial rule. The Forbes Administration refused to recognize Rhodesia's independence, to which the Ambassador relayed his government’s thanks. Ormsby-Gore further thanked Forbes for agreeing to adopt economic sanctions on Rhodesian exports like agricultural goods and metals. The sharply-dressed Ambassador described the Rhodesian government’s action of declaring independence without the consent of his government to be an “act of rebellion against the Crown,” to which the nerdy-looking President reiterated his Administration’s stance on not recognizing Rhodesia (now known as Zimbabwe) “under any circumstances.”
The second reason for the Ambassador’s visit was Vietnam. He noted that while North Vietnam had received a bloody nose, she was unwilling to deal with her enemy at the peace table. “That’s right,” the President said with exasperation. “They don’t want to negotiate with us.”
“Then perhaps what is needed here is a different approach.”
Intrigued, Forbes asked Ormsby-Gore what he had in mind. He answered that rather than try to engage directly with North Vietnam on her own, the United States should consider the use of a neutral third-party mediator. Someone who had no prior involvement in the war and therefore was in a better political position to facilitate meaningful negotiations. “Like you?” the President asked. “Yes,” the Ambassador answered. “Her Majesty’s government, recognizing the trouble you are presently having in seeking a conclusion to this war in Vietnam, is willing to offer her services in the name of peace.”
With England being a major world power, Ormsby-Gore contended that his country possessed the international diplomatic clout needed to be a viable mediator. Delegates from the United States and the two Vietnams could meet on neutral ground in London and work out a settlement that would end the present fighting. Forbes was surprised that the British all of a sudden wanted to get involved in Vietnam, having previously refused to be involved. At the same time, he found it to be an attractive option. It was attractive because at that moment, the Americans didn’t have any other ideas about how to bring the war to an end. “If we can get everyone to agree to talk [in London],” Secretary of State Henry Cabot Lodge Jr. stated after being briefed on the British proposal, “Then maybe we can get somewhere. Right now, we are not getting anywhere.”
(Ambassador David Ormsby-Gore)
With the United States on board, the British then submitted their proposal to the two Vietnams. South Vietnamese President Nguyen Van Thieu signaled a willingness to engage in talks with the North Vietnamese. That willingness stemmed from the humiliation Saigon was feeling at the end of 1965. The performance of the South Vietnamese military in the war had been embarrassing to say the least. Although there were a few victories against the North Vietnamese Army and the Viet Cong, those victories were vastly outweighed by the heavy number of defeats the South Vietnamese Army had endured. They had demonstrated for all the world to see their ineptitude in defending their own country from the enemy. Without the American military there to stop them, it is very likely the North Vietnamese could have marched all the way to Saigon, bulldozing hapless South Vietnamese divisions. Then there was the ill-advised decision by the South Vietnamese military following the invasion of North Vietnam to attack Hanoi. The Battle of Hanoi was a complete disaster for the foolish attackers, as they were unable to penetrate Hanoi’s formidable defenses. “The South Vietnamese have lost a lot of their men,” commanding US General Maxwell Taylor cabled Washington afterwards, “Fighting a symbolic battle that in wise prudence they should never have fought.”
Having been driven out of North Vietnam, the South Vietnamese were left licking their wounds. With his army being an international laughing stock, and faced with growing opposition from his country’s Buddhist population over the way his military regime was running things, Thieu felt compelled to seek peace with the North. A peace agreement would eliminate the military threat from the North, giving Thieu breathing space in which to both improve his army and deal with the Buddhist opposition.
(A South Vietnamese soldier, wounded when he was shot in the head by the enemy)
With both the United States and South Vietnam signing onto the British proposal, all that remained was getting North Vietnam on board. Hanoi was deeply divided over what to do about the mediation offer. The hawks, who had prevailed in rejecting the earlier American attempt to negotiate an end to the war, wanted to reject the new offer and keep the war going. Having driven the enemy out of their country, they were calling for another assault on Hue despite the heavy presence of US troops there. The doves were getting fed up with their stubborn insistence on continuing the war. Having seen half their country get occupied by the enemy, they wanted peace…and they wanted it now. The hawks thought they would again get their way, but they had lost two important allies. The first was President Ho Chi Minh. It was Ho’s stated objective to overthrow the South Vietnamese government and bring about reunification of the two Vietnams under his Communist leadership. Once it became clear to him that reunification was militarily out of his reach, Ho agreed with the hawks to keep the war going in order to inflict as many casualties on the enemy as possible. The thinking was that the Americans would suffer such heavy losses that their invasion of North Vietnam would fail. The invasion however spooked Ho when it reached the gates of Hanoi, prompting his evacuation to Haiphong. Although the Americans went no further and withdrew from the country, the fact that they got all the way to the capital despite facing stiff resistance forced the 75-year-old North Vietnamese President to change his mind about continuing the war. “The Americans are our strongest enemies,” he declared, “We need to get rid of them.”
This sentiment was shared by Prime Minister Pham Van Dong. Ho’s right-hand man, Dong expressed his regret over agreeing to reject America’s peace overture prior to their invasion. As much as he wanted to reunify the two Vietnams, he felt at this point that it was much more imperative to safeguard the sovereignty of North Vietnam. The invasion had come too close for his comfort; as long as the Americans had a significant presence in South Vietnam, that threat to the Communist regime remained. If the Americans could invade North Vietnam once, what could stop them from doing it again? Realizing that peace was the only way now to protect his country from enduring any further attacks, Dong told the hawks that “We need to come to an agreement with the Americans.”
With the top two leaders throwing their support behind the doves, the hawks were outflanked. The doves finally prevailed in making the securing of peace the official policy of the North Vietnamese government.
(President Ho Chi Minh, left, and Prime Minister Pham Van Dong)
On January 3rd, 1966, Dong publicly announced that his government was willing to accept Butler’s offer of mediation. However, there was a catch. Although he had sided with the doves, the Prime Minister threw in a condition for talks: the United States needed to stop bombing his country. Launched in September 1964, Operation Rolling Thunder had seen the US gradually escalate their bombing of North Vietnamese targets. The communication system, industries, infrastructure, airfields, defense installations, and port facilities were all hit. As devastating as the bombings were, they were also taking a heavy toll on the attackers. North Vietnam had developed a formidable and sophisticated air defense system that regularly shot American planes out of the sky. Seeking a cessation of the bombing campaign, Dong decided to use the proposed peace talks as leverage. If the Americans wanted to meet with the North Vietnamese in London, an end to Operation Rolling Thunder was the price they had to pay. This condition divided the Forbes Administration along typical lines. The Joint Chiefs of Staff strongly urged the President to keep Operation Rolling Thunder going. Without any major fighting on the ground, they regarded the destruction the bombing campaign was inflicting as the way to keep the pressure on Hanoi. “What the North Vietnamese are saying,” according to Joint Chief Chairman David L. McDonald, “Is that if we don’t stop the bombing, there won’t be any talks. That, Mr. President, is blackmail.”
Lodge and Secretary of Defense Paul Nitze strongly urged the President to grant the concession. “After all this time,” Lodge declared in his upper-class New England accent, “The opportunity is finally before us in which meaningful negotiations with the North can be conducted that can bring this war to an end. We should not risk that opportunity for peace by rejecting the North’s demand to halt the bombing as the military would like us to do.”
As he said that, he shot McDonald a disapproving look. McDonald glared right back at him. Nitze concurred with Lodge, adding that “We are presently losing a lot of our planes, and our pilots, through attrition. Those losses, I think, are unnecessary at this point.”
As was his normal habit, Vice President Everett Dirksen didn’t say much at first during the debate. He listened to the two sides hash out their arguments before putting in his two cents. Dirksen wasn’t opposed to halting the bombing if it allowed for productive peace talks. At the same time however, he felt that the Joint Chiefs had made a valid point about Operation Rolling Thunder. As it was the primary source of pressure the Americans were exerting on the North Vietnamese, “If we stop bombing them, and then they walk away from the negotiations, I think we will have to resume the bombing in order to pressure them back into negotiating with us.”
“Gentlemen,” the President began, “Like Henry said, the question before us is this: should we risk this chance for peace…our only chance, really…by rejecting this condition by the North? I think the answer has to be ‘No’. I don’t think it is unreasonable to stop the bombing while the negotiations are taking place. Besides, what else is there in North Vietnam to bomb?”
McDonald quickly responded to Forbes’ rhetorical question by pointing out that the country’s dike system, which had been laboriously constructed to control flooding in the Red River Delta and artificially irrigate 80% of the rice grown there, hadn’t been targeted yet. Lodge rolled his eyes upon hearing this. “We have been over this, Admiral. Those dikes are off limits to bombing. We are not going to destroy them and drown and starve thousands of civilians.”
Before tensions between the Secretary of State and the Joint Chiefs Chairman could escalate any further, the President steered the conversation back to the topic at hand. “I am prepared, gentlemen, for the sake of getting a peace deal, to order an immediate halt to the bombing. But…”
He glanced over at his Vice President and gave a nod of agreement. “I am also prepared to order the immediate resumption of bombing should it be necessary.”
The President decided to issue his public response to Dong’s condition in dramatic fashion. On January 12th, he appeared before a joint-session of Congress to deliver his first State of the Union Address. With Dirksen and Speaker of the House Gerald Ford sitting behind him at the podium, Forbes announced that “The United States is prepared tonight to take whatever steps are necessary to begin the talks for peace, including the immediate halt to the bombing of North Vietnam that is presently underway.”
In stating his willingness to accept Dong’s condition, the President also made it “absolutely clear” that the halt would be tied directly to North Vietnam’s performance at the British-mediated talks. “While the United States stands ready tonight to meet with the representatives of North Vietnam at the conference table in good faith, the United States will not stand by and do nothing if those representatives abandon the discussions of peace. Should Hanoi show bad faith by walking away after we had agreed to their request to halt the bombing, we will no longer be bound to continue to honor our end of the agreement. The bombing will resume, and it will continue until the North Vietnamese recognize the grave error they had committed to the cause of peace and return to the conference table.”
After 16 months, Operation Rolling Thunder officially came to an end the next day. With American bombs no longer falling on his country, Dong publicly announced he was sending a delegation to England. With the final piece of the puzzle now in place, the London Peace Conference was scheduled to begin on February 1st. To head the US delegation, Forbes chose Lodge. Talking to reporters before he boarded his flight to the British capital, the Secretary of State proclaimed that he wouldn’t “return home until we have a peace deal in place.”
Asked about the forthcoming peace talks on “Meet the Press” (NBC), Senate Minority Leader Hubert Humphrey, an outspoken liberal opponent of the Vietnam War, expressed his desire to see the talks succeed “so we can begin the process of bringing our troops home from Vietnam.”
He added that he wished “Secretary Lodge all the best as he embarks on this endeavor for peace.”
On the other end of the political spectrum, Lodge faced skepticism from leading conservative intellectual William F. Buckley Jr. Editor-in-chief of the editorial magazine “National Review” (and starting in April 1966, the host of the public affairs television show “Firing Line”), Buckley was a staunch anti-Communist who didn’t believe the North Vietnamese could be trusted to abide by the terms of whatever peace agreement was reached. He opined that in his zeal to negotiate peace in Vietnam, Lodge was setting himself up to be the next Neville Chamberlain. Chamberlain was the ill-fated British Prime Minister who in September 1938 boastfully waved the Munich Agreement he had negotiated in the air, which ceded the predominantly German Sudetenland region of Czechoslovakia to Nazi Germany in exchange for what he called “Peace for our time.”
A year later, that peace was shattered when Germany declared war on Poland. In the wake of the German invasions of Denmark and Norway, Chamberlain was pressured into resigning in April 1940.
(London in 1966)
With hope riding high that an end to the Vietnam War was finally near, the London Peace Conference commenced on February 1st. Welcoming the American and Vietnamese delegations to his country, Butler expressed his confidence that the conference would produce “a fair agreement that will lead to the cessation of the present hostilities and to the establishment of a lasting peace in Southeast Asia.”
Going into the talks, the three delegations each had a specific goal they wanted to accomplish:
- The Americans wanted the North Vietnamese to recognize the sovereignty of South Vietnam and pledge to stop trying to conquer her
- The North Vietnamese wanted the Americans to completely withdraw from South Vietnam
- The South Vietnamese wanted the North Vietnamese to leave them alone
“Thuy didn’t want to make the peace talks easy for the Americans. He wanted to get under their skin, to give them a hard time every day until they reached an agreement.”
It worked. Time and again, Lodge chafed at Thuy’s lashing out at the Americans for invading his country and for other wrongs he claimed the Americans had committed before progress on the talks could be made. Later on in his memoir, the Secretary of State wrote that his North Vietnamese counterpart “was a dreadful fellow to face across the table day after day.”
(North Vietnamese Foreign Minister Xuan Thuy)
The London Peace Conference lasted for five weeks, as the two sides negotiated the terms of the peace agreement. North Vietnam, conceding that achieving reunification with South Vietnam through military force was out of her reach for the foreseeable future, agreed to diplomatically recognize the Thieu government in Saigon. To help normalize relations between their two countries, the North Vietnamese proposed and the South Vietnamese accepted a trade deal: Northern coal in exchange for Southern rice (North Vietnam was experiencing a drought at the time, which hurt rice production). A major sticking point for the talks emerged when Thuy demanded that the United States fully withdraw her forces from South Vietnam. South Vietnamese Foreign Minister Tran Van Do, the intellectual head of his country’s delegation, protested the demand. His country regarded America’s superior firepower as being their shield against the North Vietnamese Army, which had very nearly vanquished the inferior South Vietnamese Army. Lodge himself told Thuy that his demand constituted “a clear violation of our right to station our troops within the borders of the nations we are allied with.”
An unimpressed Thuy shot back that his country regarded America’s military presence as “a threat to our national sovereignty, a threat we will not tolerate.”
Perhaps stalling for time, Lodge stated that he needed to consult with his government first before he could issue a response to Thuy’s demand. Returning to the modernist US Embassy (adorned with a large gilded aluminum bald eagle) in Grosvenor Square, he relayed the demand to Washington and asked for guidance on how he should respond. When President Henry M. Jackson publicly unveiled his plan to wage the Vietnam War in April 1962, he explained to the American people that once the Viet Cong had been completely eliminated, the majority of the combat troops deployed to Vietnam would be withdrawn. A small garrison would remain in South Vietnam to help provide security. Leaving those troops behind had always been part of the plan. Now the North Vietnamese were making the removal of every American soldier a condition for peace.
(South Vietnamese Foreign Minister Tran Van Do)
While Forbes had attempted to stay the course in Vietnam upon taking office, continuing Scoop’s plan unaltered, events forced him to change course. First, he made the decision to order a limited invasion of North Vietnam, which was never part of the original plan. Now, with peace hinging on keeping the talks in London going, the Republican President decided to make another change to his Democratic predecessor’s plan. Lodge was instructed by Washington to issue a counter-demand: Soviet and Chinese forces had to reciprocally withdraw from North Vietnam. “I think I can sell our full withdrawal from South Vietnam to the American people and to Congress,” Forbes predicted to Under Secretary of State C. Douglas Dillon, who was serving as Acting Secretary while Lodge was on the other side of the Atlantic, “If we can get everyone to fully withdraw as well.”
When the talks resumed and the distinguished head of the American delegation offered “to completely remove all our soldiers provided that the Russians and the Chinese are completely removed from your country,” he found Thuy willing to accept it. Why? Because the North Vietnamese were weary of having Chinese combat troops within their borders. Whereas North Vietnam’s alliance with the Soviet Union was based on a shared Communist ideology, her alliance with the Republic of China was based solely on having a common enemy: the United States of America. Despite accepting Chinese support in their war against South Vietnam and America, the North Vietnamese were distrustful of their ally for two reasons:
- There was a historical enmity between the Vietnamese and the Chinese, going back 1,000 years
- There was uncertainty about China’s expansionist foreign policy
Now that the Vietnam War was from a military standpoint over, the North Vietnamese were anxious to find a way to get rid of the Chinese soldiers before they could possibly turn against them…while at the same time not letting the world know she was secretly afraid of her own so-called “ally”. The Americans unwittingly gave it to them. By agreeing to the mutual withdraw of foreign troops, Hanoi could evict the Chinese under the guise of “We are only having you leave the country because of the terms of the peace agreement, not because we really don’t trust you at all.”
Under the reciprocal agreement worked out by the Americans and the North Vietnamese, all international troops would be removed from the two Vietnams by January 1st, 1969. When Do balked at the idea that his country should lose her international military support, Lodge took him into a private room. Authorized by Washington to get tough on their ally if he needed to, the Secretary of State firmly warned his Southern Vietnamese counterpart not to jeopardize the talks. “We are here to negotiate an end to this war. We are doing just that. These terms are the only terms we are going to get, so don’t think for a moment you are going to get any better terms by rejecting the terms we have right now.”
Returning to the circular conference table – which had been deliberately chosen to symbolize the equality of the three parties – with a browbeaten Do in tow, Lodge informed Thuy that South Vietnam would agree to the reciprocal withdrawal. Once that hurdle had been cleared, the final pieces fell into place. On March 8th, five weeks after the London Peace Conference began, the White House Press Corps was instructed by the Press Secretary to go to the Oval Office, where the President would make a statement. The correspondents entered the room to find Forbes sitting behind his desk, flanked by Dirksen and Dillon. “Ladies and gentlemen,” he began, “I have just spoken with the leadership of Congress. I have told them what I am about to tell you. I have received word from our delegation in London that a peace agreement to end the war in Vietnam has been reached.”
There was an immediate air of electricity in the room. The correspondents, having been given major news directly from the President himself, couldn’t wait to rush out of the room and inform their respective news organizations. However, no one could leave the Oval Office until United Press International correspondent Helen Thomas uttered her signature closer “Thank you, Mr. President.”
The President’s announcement dominated the evening news and the front pages of newspapers, with "The New York Times" running the next-day headline: FORBES ANNOUNCES VIETNAM PEACE PACT
Four years after Jackson had deployed combat troops to Vietnam, peace was now at hand. On March 10th, with the international news media in front of them, and the British Prime Minister looming behind them, Lodge, Thuy, and Do sat down together at a rectangular table and signed the London Peace Accords. “This was a negotiated peace agreement in every sense of the word,” Lodge later wrote in his memoir. “It required each of us, representing our respective nations, to make sacrifices in order to make this agreement possible.”
In making peace, the United States had to give up her right to station troops in South Vietnam, North Vietnam had to abandon her goal of reunification, and South Vietnam had to say goodbye to her international military support. Peace meant preserving the status quo, in which the two Vietnams, with completely different governments, lived side-by-side. While Hanoi and Saigon were never going to be best friends, they would at least learn to tolerate each other. Addressing the nation that night from the Oval Office, the President hailed the London Peace Accords as being “the result, not of victorious powers imposing their will on their vanquished adversaries, but of three nations negotiating in good faith, sharing the mutual desire to end the brutal hardship of war and to establish an honorable peace for all those involved.”
Last edited:
- 2
The Beginning of Peace
On March 10th, 1966, the London Peace Accords was signed, officially ending the Vietnam War after years of fighting. There was now peace, but what did peace mean exactly? It obviously meant an end to the violence which had engulfed Indochina. No more sounds of gun fire, no more bombs pounding targets across North Vietnam, no more Viet Cong guerrillas carrying out surprise attacks across South Vietnam, and no more images of war being broadcast every night on the evening news. Peace meant more than that however. It meant to the British an end to a conflict which they regarded as being nothing more than a distraction for the Americans from the bigger looming conflict with the Chinese. It meant to Prime Minister Rab Butler personally the honor of the Nobel Peace Prize, which was awarded to him in recognition of his role in mediating an end to the Vietnam War. It meant to the Soviets and the Chinese failure in overthrowing an American ally. Having been stopped cold in South Vietnam, the Soviets looked around the globe for another place where they could stir up trouble for their Cold War enemies. They set their sights on the Middle East. Despite looking on the surface to be rather stable, Arab nationalism simmered underneath which Moscow became eager to stroke – especially in the British-aligned countries of Iraq and Iran. Having been thwarted first in Korea and now in South Vietnam, the expansionist Chinese shifted their focus towards the Western Pacific. Since the beginning of the 1960s, China had been engaging in territorial disputes with England and Portugal over Hong Kong and Macao respectively. There was also the growing Anglo-American military presence for the Chinese to contend with. Nanjing believed there was only one way to deal with these issues. In ending one war in Asia, the London Peace Accords helped quicken the march to another.
In the United States, peace meant victory. By committing her combat troops early and decisively, America had triumphed in Vietnam. The Viet Cong had been completely destroyed and the North Vietnamese Army had been forced completely out of South Vietnam. The military-run government in Saigon, dysfunctional as it was, had been saved and could be reformed to be more competent. At least Washington optimistically thought so. Success in Vietnam reinforced America’s confidence in herself, that there wasn’t anything she couldn’t do. The United States military had once again made the crucial difference, this time stopping Communism from spreading into South Vietnam. As Americans were generally congratulating themselves on a job well done, some people weren’t convinced that everything was as good as it looked. William F. Buckley Jr. and other skeptics openly questioned the London Peace Accords:
- Was it a real peace, or only the illusion of peace?
- Was North Vietnam sincere in her promise not to attack South Vietnam again, or were the North Vietnamese planning to break their promise once they had rebuilt their military strength and the time was right in which to renew the conflict?
- Could South Vietnam – which had thus far proven herself to be militarily weak – stand on her own two feet without immense support from the Americans, or was she a house of cards just waiting to collapse?
(Deciding to meet the skeptics head-on, Secretary of State Henry Cabot Lodge Jr. voluntarily appeared on “Firing Line”, where he defended the London Peace Accords against Buckley’s polite but skeptical questioning)
Another immediate impact the London Peace Accords had was that it caused the anti-war movement to collapse. At the beginning of 1966, protests against the war in Vietnam were a fact of life in America. Demands for the US to stop fighting could be seen everywhere, from college campuses to city streets. Now that the Vietnam War was over, protestors no longer had a war to protest. From coast to coast, men and women who had been shouting slogans, holding up signs, and burning their draft cards in defiance were now asking themselves “What do I do now?”
Many former anti-war activists turned their attention to the draft. Although the war was over, the draft remained in effect. That meant young men were continuing to be called up for military service whether they wanted to serve or not. With numerous ways to avoid the draft, such as getting an educational deferment or enlisting in the National Guard, critics of the draft argued that it was an unfair system that disproportionately favored whites. Eligible African-Americans were twice as likely to be drafted than whites, who were educationally and economically better off. As more and more men were deployed to Vietnam, resistance to conscription escalated. Out of the ruins of the anti-war movement emerged the anti-draft movement, which became dedicated to ending the draft and switching to an all-volunteer military. Although not nearly as big as the anti-war movement had been, the anti-draft movement nonetheless attracted major support. Democratic Senator Hubert Humphrey of Minnesota, who was planning to run for President in 1968, endorsed the movement. Free market economist Milton Friedman likewise came out in favor of abolishing the draft, calling it an “inequitable and arbitrary” way to get soldiers that was “inconsistent with a free society.”
Although the Forbes Administration publicly stated its’ intention to keep the draft in effect, citing the need to have a ready manpower pool to tap into in the midst of the Cold War, it quietly reduced the number of monthly draft call-ups from 50,000 to 12,500. Over at the Pentagon, an idea floating around to increase the size of the manpower pool by reducing mental and medical standards was rejected by Secretary of Defense Paul Nitze. Allegedly Nitze dismissed the idea by saying “You cannot make effective soldiers out of morons.”
This decision to maintain current standards kept many men ineligible for the draft. One of those men was world heavyweight boxing champion Muhammad Ali. After he had turned 18 in 1960, Ali registered for conscription and was classified as 1-A (meaning he was available for unrestricted military service). Four years later, he was reclassified as 1-Y (meaning he could only serve in the event of a national emergency) after failing the U.S. Armed Forces qualifying test due to his dyslexia. Had the Pentagon lowered its standards, Ali most likely would have been reclassified as 1-A, making him eligible again for the draft…which he likely would have resisted on religious grounds. Instead, he maintained his 1-Y classification. Not having to worry about being drafted, Ali continued to fight, defending his title against several opponents. In an October 1967 boxing match at Madison Square Garden in New York City, the world heavyweight champion was finally defeated, losing to the powerful left hook of Joe Frazier.
(Joe Frazier: the man who finally took down Muhammad Ali)
Other activists found new causes in which to channel their idealism. Some became environmentalists, inspired to do more to protect the environment after reading a string of books that came out in the 1960s highlighting the negative impacts human activity were having on the natural world. The most famous of these books was “Silent Spring”; published by Rachel Carson in 1962, it documented the damages synthetic pesticides were inflicting on nature. Meanwhile, a 32-year-old consumer advocate from Connecticut named Ralph Nader was recruiting former anti-war activists to join his crusade for safer automobiles. His recently-published book “Unsafe at Any Speed” was attracting national attention by detailing how the American automotive industry’s lack of interest in safety were making automobiles deadly to drive. Recognizing that he had a better chance of pressuring Congress to enact Federal safety standards for motor vehicles through a grassroots campaign, Nader recruited activists to join him in building up public pressure. These recruits were dubbed by the media as being “Nader’s Army”. The diversification of youthful activism the nation experienced in the wake of the Vietnam War prompted “Time” magazine to choose what it called “The 25 and Under Generation” as its’ “Man of the Year” for 1966. “This is not just a new generation,” the magazine wrote, “But a new kind of generation, promising to infuse the future with a new sense of morality, a transcendent and contemporary ethos that could infinitely enrich the ‘empty society’.”
Not all anti-war activists found new causes to throw themselves into. Some activists turned instead to the more relaxing hippie lifestyle. While hippies were against the Vietnam War, they weren’t as militant about it as the hardline anti-war activists were. They preferred a gentler approach in advocating peace. With the war now over, hippies urged activists to take it easy and join their laidback world of sexual liberation, psychedelic drugs, and counterculture entertainment. Actor Peter Coyote, then a member of the Diggers (an anti-money community-action group in San Francisco which organized free music concerts featuring the Grateful Dead and Janis Joplin, and provided free food and medical care), explained what he found so appealing about the hippie lifestyle:
“It was an environment where your personal history did not matter. Nobody cared who your parents were; whether you were rich; whether you were poor.
You get up every day and you had no idea what the day would bring. There were the greatest-looking women parading up and down the street. There was a sense of adventure. Random combinations. You could catch a woman’s eye and offer her your arm, and without a word, walk away and spend an afternoon making love; and if you didn’t talk, that was okay.”
Some anti-war activists, like Jerry Rubin, simply dropped out of activism altogether. As a student at the University of California, Berkeley, Rubin was one of the leaders of the anti-war movement there. He organized protests and planned teach-ins against the war. Then the war ended with a negotiated peace, leaving him feeling directionless. Rubin wasn’t sure what to do now that his big cause had ceased to exist. Then a friend of his made a life-changing suggestion. He was leaving California for New York, where a family friend had offered him a job on Wall Street. “Do you want to come, Jerry? I think I can get you a job there too.”
Rubin, not knowing what else to do with himself, agreed. He moved to New York City and got a job at a brokerage firm. In this new financial environment, he discovered that he had a knack for making money in the stock market. By the 1980s, Jerry Rubin was a multimillionaire. Not content to be rich himself, Rubin taught young people how they could make money in the stock market. “I have seen the American Dream,” he boasted to them, “And it is located on Wall Street.”
In addition, Rubin used his fortune to help young people get their own businesses off the ground. In 1977 for example, a pair of entrepreneurs named Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak were looking for investors to give them financial support for a new computer company they had founded called Apple. Rubin was among the first investors to give them his backing.
(Jerry Rubin, who went from being a bearded anti-war activist in the 1960s to being the wealthy self-proclaimed “Professor of Wall Street” in the 1980s)
In the summer of 1966, American soldiers began to return home from Vietnam. They came back to a country which regarded the war they had fought as being a success. To many Americans, the Vietnam War represented one of the things their country did best: defeat the forces of authoritarianism. The fighting had been tough, and there had been heavy casualties, but the spread of Communism in Southeast Asia had been halted. The veterans of the Vietnam War had answered their nation’s call to duty, fought bravely and courageously, and were now making their way home as heroes. Across the nation, there were scenes of veterans happily reuniting with their loved ones and being treated by their local communities as, in the words of an admiring John Wayne, “the best we have.”
These scenes inspired a pair of songwriters named Tommy Boyce and Bobby Hart to write a song capturing the spirit of the time. They wrote it for a new band they were working for that was about to make its’ public debut. Unlike other bands that first recorded music and then went on TV to perform it, this band was created specifically for a sitcom that was set to premier on NBC that fall. They were called the Monkees, and the song Boyce and Hart wrote for them was called “First Train to Clarksville”. Featuring an opening guitar riff based on the Beatles’ song “Paperback Writer”, the lyrics – sung by drummer Micky Dolenz – was about a soldier who, having just returned home from Vietnam, was so anxious to reunite with his beloved girlfriend that he called her up from the train station he was at and told her to:
Take the first train to Clarksville
And I’ll meet you at the station
You can be here by eleven thirty
Cause I made your reservation
Don’t be slow
Oh, no, no, no
Oh, no, no, no
Cause I want to come back home with you
Although Boyce and Hart wrote “First Train to Clarksville” from the perspective of a returning Vietnam War veteran, Vietnam was only vaguely referred to in the song as “a place far away”.
“We were writing a pop song for teenage girls,” Hart later explained, “So we couldn’t be too direct with [Vietnam]. We kind of said it without saying it.”
Despite being intentionally vague, “First Train to Clarksville” was nonetheless recognized as being, in the words of “Cashbox” magazine, “a hard-driving, pulsating romantic wailer” which celebrated the homecomings that were taking place across America. Released as the Monkees’ debut single on August 16th, “First Train to Clarksville” went all the way to #1 on the Billboard Hot 100.
Of course, not everyone was returning home to resume their lives as civilians. Thousands more returned home to be laid to rest. The cost of achieving success in Vietnam had been steep, with 8,407 Americans being killed there. Those who made the ultimate sacrifice for their country would later be honored with a national memorial in Washington: a wall of polished black granite panels engraved with the names of all the service members who died during the Vietnam War. Those who returned home from the conflict wounded had a long road of recovery ahead of them. Those who returned home from the conflict as former prisoners of war had a new appreciation for freedom after being held in captivity. With peace established in Southeast Asia and her men steadily returning, the United States in 1966 sought to put the military combat and social unrest of the Vietnam War behind her and look towards a more peaceful future. That peace however would be very short lived.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------With that, The Presidents: The Vietnam War Edition is finished. I now have two completed AARs under my belt. My plan is to begin work on the third AAR in The Presidents series: America and the Cold War (1966-1991). It will pick up where this AAR left off and take us through the remainder of the Cold War Era.
Last edited:
- 4
I’ll go back and read through again when I have time to digest it all properly later on, but I just wanted to mark this momentous occasion by saying congratulations on hitting the end, Nathan! A very considerable achievement indeed. Well done!
Congratulations indeed on reaching "The End" of another excellent work and you ended it in great form. A heart felt well done on this achievement.
Nobel Prize Winner Rab Butler still seems a mildly surreal concept, though he clearly earned it as those Peace Talks were rough and must have been a real challenge to host and keep running. I wonder if the peace holds long enough for him to actually collect the prize? Because there is a definite feel that North Vietnam will try again and no real hope that the South will be able to hold them, not without massive US support or fundamental reform that they never managed in OTL.
The second post on the people and culture was just as interesting, Vietnam vets being welcomed home as heroes is a hell of a change on top of all the counter-culture ideas we've discussed earlier. I'm glad you included these, it would have been easy to just look at the military or strategic impacts, after all that is what HOI2 is all about, but these things are important and interesting too.
I am looking forward to seeing how all these many threads and changes come together in the next AAR and what happens when the Cold War turns hot. Please be sure and post a link in this thread so I can find it and be with it from the start.
Nobel Prize Winner Rab Butler still seems a mildly surreal concept, though he clearly earned it as those Peace Talks were rough and must have been a real challenge to host and keep running. I wonder if the peace holds long enough for him to actually collect the prize? Because there is a definite feel that North Vietnam will try again and no real hope that the South will be able to hold them, not without massive US support or fundamental reform that they never managed in OTL.
The second post on the people and culture was just as interesting, Vietnam vets being welcomed home as heroes is a hell of a change on top of all the counter-culture ideas we've discussed earlier. I'm glad you included these, it would have been easy to just look at the military or strategic impacts, after all that is what HOI2 is all about, but these things are important and interesting too.
I am looking forward to seeing how all these many threads and changes come together in the next AAR and what happens when the Cold War turns hot. Please be sure and post a link in this thread so I can find it and be with it from the start.
- 1
Kurt_Steiner: ...And the "M*A*S*H*" TV show went on far longer than the Korean War.
DensleyBlair: I understand. Take your time, DensleyBlair. This AAR isn't going anywhere.
Thank you for your warm congratulations. It is indeed a considerable feeling of satisfaction, seeing a AAR you have spent over a decade writing finally reach the conclusion.
It's also kinda funny. I started off writing anime fanfiction (I think the first thing I ever wrote and posted on-line was an Ash/Misty Pokémon fanfic way back in the early 2000s). Now I have written two alternate history AARs based on HOI2 covering 38 years of history. Quite the evolution.
By the way, Buckley's appearance in the finale was inspired by your Echoes of A New Tomorrow AAR.
El Pip: Thank you very much, El Pip.
This literally leaves The Butterfly Effect as the only HOI2 AAR still going in 2023...for now.
Historically, Henry Kissinger and Le Duc Tho were jointly awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for negotiating the end of the Vietnam War. Looking for an alternate history recipient of this prize, I chose Butler. I love the irony of the Nobel Peace Prize going to one of the appeasers of Nazi Germany in the 1930s.
Although the Vietnam War is now over, I assure you South Vietnam will still be a problem for the Forbes Administration to contend with. Even without the fighting, Saigon is still Saigon.
As for what the future holds for North Vietnam, you will see in the next AAR.
Given that the Vietnam War TTL wasn't the long drawn-out slog fest that people both on the battlefield and on the home front became disillusioned with, I certainly think both the reputation of the Vietnam War and the public's regard for her veterans will be a lot better TTL. I have heard several stories from Vietnam War veterans about how they were poorly received upon their return home from a very unpopular war. I really wanted to emphasize in the final update how differently people look at Vietnam and her veterans in the wake of the war ending much earlier and much more decisively than it historically did.
Thank you. I am looking forward to writing the next AAR, which will take us into the post-Vietnam War world. For Forbes, one foreign policy problem is now behind him but he has many more to face.
I will post a link when the time comes. I will be glad to have you and everyone else along for the ride to come.
If The Butterfly Effect is "An insane project of terrifying detail in the HOI2 sub-forum that refuses to die", then The Presidents is a HOI2 series that keeps going and going...like the Energizer Bunny.
DensleyBlair: I understand. Take your time, DensleyBlair. This AAR isn't going anywhere.
Thank you for your warm congratulations. It is indeed a considerable feeling of satisfaction, seeing a AAR you have spent over a decade writing finally reach the conclusion.
It's also kinda funny. I started off writing anime fanfiction (I think the first thing I ever wrote and posted on-line was an Ash/Misty Pokémon fanfic way back in the early 2000s). Now I have written two alternate history AARs based on HOI2 covering 38 years of history. Quite the evolution.
By the way, Buckley's appearance in the finale was inspired by your Echoes of A New Tomorrow AAR.
El Pip: Thank you very much, El Pip.
This literally leaves The Butterfly Effect as the only HOI2 AAR still going in 2023...for now.
Historically, Henry Kissinger and Le Duc Tho were jointly awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for negotiating the end of the Vietnam War. Looking for an alternate history recipient of this prize, I chose Butler. I love the irony of the Nobel Peace Prize going to one of the appeasers of Nazi Germany in the 1930s.
Although the Vietnam War is now over, I assure you South Vietnam will still be a problem for the Forbes Administration to contend with. Even without the fighting, Saigon is still Saigon.
As for what the future holds for North Vietnam, you will see in the next AAR.
Given that the Vietnam War TTL wasn't the long drawn-out slog fest that people both on the battlefield and on the home front became disillusioned with, I certainly think both the reputation of the Vietnam War and the public's regard for her veterans will be a lot better TTL. I have heard several stories from Vietnam War veterans about how they were poorly received upon their return home from a very unpopular war. I really wanted to emphasize in the final update how differently people look at Vietnam and her veterans in the wake of the war ending much earlier and much more decisively than it historically did.
Thank you. I am looking forward to writing the next AAR, which will take us into the post-Vietnam War world. For Forbes, one foreign policy problem is now behind him but he has many more to face.
I will post a link when the time comes. I will be glad to have you and everyone else along for the ride to come.
If The Butterfly Effect is "An insane project of terrifying detail in the HOI2 sub-forum that refuses to die", then The Presidents is a HOI2 series that keeps going and going...like the Energizer Bunny.
- 4
- 2