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White House Years, to be published on Oct. 23 (Little, Brown; 1,521 pages; $22.50), covers Kissinger's stewardship as National Security Adviser during the period following Richard Nixon's 1968 election, ending with the signing of a Viet Nam peace treaty in January 1973. A second volume, now in preparation, will recount the years to January 1977, during most of which Kissinger was Secretary of State...
...cannot yet write about Viet Nam except with pain and sadness. When we came into office, over half a million Americans were fighting a-war 10,000 miles away. Their numbers were still increasing on a schedule established by our predecessors. We found no plans for withdrawals. Whatever our original war aims, by 1969 our credibility abroad, the reliability of our commitments, and our domestic cohesion were alike jeopardized by a struggle in a country as far away from the North American continent as our globe permits...
...Nixon Administration entered office determined to end our involvement in Viet Nam. But it soon came up against the reality that had also bedeviled its predecessor. We could not simply walk away from an enterprise involving two Administrations, five allied countries and 31,000 American dead as if we were switching a television channel. For a great power to abandon a small country to tyranny simply to obtain a respite from our own domestic travail seemed to me-and still seems to me-profoundly immoral and destructive of our efforts to build a new and ultimately more peaceful pattern...
...idea of going for broke: Perhaps we should combine an attack on the Cambodian sanctuaries with resumption of the bombing of North Viet Nam as well as mining Haiphong? The opposition would be equally hysterical either way. I replied that we had enough on our plate; we would not be able to sustain such a gamble...
Nixon dropped the subject after ten minutes and never returned to it. In retrospect I believe that we should have taken it more seriously. The bane of our military actions in Viet Nam throughout was their hesitancy and inconclusiveness...