Wars rarely end in a single act of diplomacy. More often, they pass through a succession of ceasefires, frameworks, understandings, as well as provisional and even secret arrangements before anyone can determine whether peace is actually at hand. The Trump administration’s memorandum with Iran is best understood in those terms. In both form and logic, it recalls an earlier American effort to negotiate an exit from an unpopular conflict: the Paris Peace Accords of 1973.
The four primary parties to the Vietnam War (1965 to 1975) — the United States, South Vietnam, North Vietnam, and the Provisional Revolutionary Government of the Republic of Southern Vietnam (popularly known as the Viet Cong) — signed the Agreement on Ending the War and Restoring Peace in Vietnam on January 27, 1973. This latest agreement was the product of more than four years of semi-public, private, and secret talks held in the French capital.
The agreement was neither a comprehensive settlement nor the harbinger of a permanent peace. Rather, it was a ceasefire arrangement providing for the de-Americanization of hostilities and an exchange of prisoners-of-war and captured foreign civilians among the signatories. It addressed none of the differences between Hanoi and Saigon that lay at the heart of the conflict. Instead, it left them to be resolved among the Vietnamese parties themselves in separate, subsequent negotiations to begin immediately after the ceasefire took effect on the day of signing. According to Article 12 of the Paris Agreement, those parties vowed to “do their utmost” to settle their political divergences within 90 days.
Since the Paris Agreement lacked any tangible inducements and enforcement mechanism, President Richard Nixon made private pledges to both Hanoi and Saigon, aiming to secure their endorsement and compliance. He secretly pledged to North Vietnam’s Prime Minister Pham Van Dong $3.25 billion in “reconstruction” aid, and to South Vietnam’s President Nguyen Van Thieu, continued military and economic assistance as well as swift and savage retaliatory action against North Vietnam in the event Hanoi violated the terms of the settlement. Owing to circumstances — namely, the Watergate scandal but also the Case-Church Amendment and War Powers Resolution — and the fact these were personal guarantees, or “gentlemen’s agreements,” valid only as long as Nixon himself was in office — neither commitment was fulfilled.
The Agreement on Ending the War and Restoring Peace in Vietnam is thus misnamed. It ended not a war but America’s direct participation in it. And it delivered not lasting peace but a framework to achieve it later. In form and substance, the Paris Agreement exposed the shortcomings and ultimate futility of the American military project in Southeast Asia.
As it turns out, neither Hanoi nor Saigon wanted to indefinitely suspend hostilities and accept the status quo in 1973 — the former because it remained hellbent on achieving its decades-old ambition of reunifying the country under an exclusive communist aegis, and the latter since it deemed the enemy troop presence in its own territory still too substantial and threatening to its survival. That Nixon was able to convince both governments to sign a negotiated settlement, imperfect as it was, is quite remarkable in retrospect. The private assurances he extended to each side were key in that respect.
Nixon and his national security advisor, Henry Kissinger, had a relatively clear sense of what they were up against from the moment they assumed responsibility for America’s involvement in Vietnamese affairs. They knew victory — or the successful, long-term containment of communism in southern Vietnam — was impossible after 1969, just as they knew ending American military involvement honorably was bound to be long and tortuous. For Nixon, on the one hand, “peace with honor” meant securing terms that allowed Washington to keep fighting the Cold War despite the failure of its intervention in Indochina, and on the other, for Saigon to sustain its battle against communist-led forces in its own territory, if necessary.
Nixon consciously emulated French President Charles de Gaulle’s diplomatic playbook for Algeria for a reason. If de Gaulle could extricate France from its colony — parts of which constituted sovereign French territory constitutionally — and from the astoundingly messy, ill-fated war to retain it while preventing domestic collapse and safeguarding a measure of French “grandeur,” then surely the American president could accomplish something similar.
In their pursuit of an honorable peace, Nixon and Kissinger employed a carefully calibrated combination of “carrots and sticks” vis-à-vis both allies and adversaries. They failed — and failed miserably — to restore peace in Vietnam and across the rest of the Indochinese Peninsula. But there is no denying that they salvaged a modicum of national credibility by ending America’s floundering military enterprise without legally and formally admitting defeat, extracting meaningful concessions from their equally astute, sanctimonious, and callous counterparts in Hanoi, and standing behind Thieu so his government and armed forces could live to fight another day. In hindsight, Nixon and Kissinger formed a competent, shrewd, and rational duo whose diplomatic acumen was matched only by their capacity for ruthlessness, propensity for self-righteousness, and indifference to human suffering.
To be sure, Nixon could have reached a deal with Hanoi as early as his first year in office, but not without capitulating — disengaging “unconditionally” — and severing all ties to, or effectively abandoning, his Vietnamese allies. That remained Hanoi’s only acceptable basis for a settlement until October 1972. All else was detail.
Taking into account the agency and intractability of both Vietnamese sides, which American scholars and analysts rarely do, Nixon and Kissinger acquitted themselves rather well in the peace process. Their travails were in vain, but that makes them no less instructive. Indeed, there is much to be learned from their diplomatic calculations and practices.
Above all, Nixon and Kissinger understood that credibility is an important currency in international relations, and essential in high-stakes negotiations. Nixon thus preferred acting to talking. He avoided grand, self-serving public pronouncements. Instead, he carried out meticulously crafted policies thoughtfully. He understood the delicate nature of high-stakes diplomacy and thus conducted it secretly or discreetly. He engaged with both the Soviets and the Chinese — in total secrecy at first with the latter — not to score political points at home but to ratchet the pressure on Hanoi to negotiate earnestly. He did not continually threaten to ferociously bomb North Vietnam only to back down each time. He did it twice and both times delivered on his word, to the consternation of Vietnamese communist authorities and to the delight of Thieu’s regime. And Kissinger declared “peace is at hand” not 40 times, but once. North Vietnamese leaders detested Nixon and Kissinger, a member of Hanoi’s delegation to the secret Paris talks once told me, but they sure respected them.
None of this can be said of the administration of President Donald Trump and its handling of the talks with Tehran. In fact, there is a striking contrast between Nixon and Kissinger’s diplomacy and that of the current executive team. Trump and his entourage may believe that air and missile strikes hurt and intimidated the Iranian regime, but that clearly failed to generate the diplomatic leverage they sought, unlike Nixon’s Linebacker and Linebacker II air campaigns against North Vietnam in 1972.
Fundamentally, the Trump administration has struggled diplomatically because it squandered the better part of its credibility with tough talk and posturing that remained just that: talk and posturing. Recurring threats of civilizational and other forms of annihilation invariably followed by inaction lose their effectiveness. Combined with public statements contradicting policy and, on occasion, reality itself, they irreversibly damage a nation’s prestige and ability to successfully navigate the treacherous waters of the international system. Conducting diplomacy through secret backchannels has its drawbacks, but it beats conducting it on a social media platform. It also helps to rely on seasoned diplomats rather than inexperienced loyalists.
The 14-point Memorandum of Understanding unveiled on June 17 is eerily reminiscent of the Paris Agreement in both tone and substance. It is basically a ceasefire arrangement calling for the immediate end of American and allied (Israeli) military operations in the region. It promises “reconstruction” aid — reparations, in effect — to the enemy in the amount of “at least $300 billion,” which is more than 10 times the sum Nixon secretly pledged to Hanoi in today’s dollars. It provides a framework for achieving, but does not actually deliver, enduring peace. Most problematic, and just like the Paris Agreement, it solves none of the differences, the discord, at the heart of the conflict. Instead, it mandates a new round of negotiations to reach a “final deal” on core matters — in this case, the “future administration and maritime services in the Strait of Hormuz” and the fate of Iran’s nuclear enrichment program — within 60 (extendable) days instead of 90 under the Paris formula.
All things being equal, the Memorandum of Understanding marks no victory for the United States. It is no “major win” for the United States, much less an act of “unconditional surrender” by Iran. Instead, it confirms the Trump administration’s faulty planning and management of the war, and its bungled diplomacy to end it. It is a stopgap measure, a face-saving solution. It averts capitulation and conceals humiliation. It provides political cover for a strategic retreat. In other words, it serves all the functions of the Paris Agreement, the progeny of a lost war.
An off-ramp from an escalating and domestically unpopular war is admittedly preferable to further escalation. Similarly, the indefinite reopening of the Strait of Hormuz — if it happens — and the partial obliteration of Iran’s military capabilities — until Tehran rebuilds them — have merit. But that is little consolation upon reflection. If anything, it constitutes a costly return on investment in light of the price in blood and, especially, treasure for the United States and the attendant lack of enforceable dividends.
Nixon’s private assurances to secure compliance from both allies and adversaries were as tangible as they were explicit. Troubles at home leading to his resignation made them worthless in the end, yet the documentary record demonstrates his readiness to act upon them for a period. More importantly, the assurances were wholly consistent with his diplomatic style and formed an integral part of his peace strategy. They were his word, his own personal guarantees committed to actual paper, bolstered by a record of honoring that word and delivering on both threats and promises. Hanoi and Saigon apprehended this.
Auxiliary understandings with Iran also exist, Vice President J. D. Vance has acknowledged, but are not written. A settlement whose core terms are variously nebulous, declarative, and secretive constitutes the very definition of a framework — a poor one at that — masquerading as a “deal.” It also runs counter to the administration’s own claim to be “the most transparent administration in history.” Such deficits, plus the fact that the public terms are rather favorable to the opposing side, point to another crucial difference in aptitude and logic.
Unlike Nixon, Trump’s use of the prospect of renewed bombings to encourage compliance with the Memorandum of Understanding rings hollow. Empty threats and broken promises have dramatically eroded his credibility. Moreover, repeated bluffs have made it amply evident that he is not likely to resume military operations unless Iran flagrantly violates the Memorandum of Understanding without cause. The sitting president is obviously hamstrung by the lack of domestic support for his war, even more so than Nixon was. North Vietnamese Prime Minister Pham Van Dong’s words directed at Gerald Ford in 1974, hyperbolic as they were, capture the quandary Trump has created for himself: “He’s the weakest president in U.S. history… [E]ven if you gave him candy, he doesn’t dare to intervene in Vietnam again.”
Trump has for all intents and purposes bombed Iran into opening negotiations for a comprehensive final pact, the kind President Barack Obama finalized in 2015 with the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action and which he, Trump, abrogated. The ultimate irony is that Trump built much of his case against the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action on the charge that it concealed undisclosed pacts with Iran. In the final analysis, he has embraced the same conduct he once condemned to the same ends: evading public scrutiny and criticism.
Nixon inherited the Vietnam War; Trump willingly jumped into the Iran conflict for reasons as unclear as they are disputed. By official account, this latest war presumably aimed to eliminate both Iran’s ballistic missile and nuclear programs. If that was indeed the case, the Memorandum of Understanding is an admission of failure.
The Paris Agreement attests to Nixon’s obduracy, patience, and obsession with preserving a measure of national prestige under highly unfavorable, trying circumstances. Conversely, the Memorandum of Understanding reflects the limits of Trump’s resolve and the extent of his susceptibility to popular, congressional, allied, and economic pressures. Trump has long been compared to Nixon, at times even seemingly embracing his “madman” posture. But this posture stems from his mercurial character, not some coherent and logical grand strategy. When it comes to the exercise of assertive, competent, and resolute leadership and the conduct of diplomacy along similar lines, Trump does not hold a candle to Nixon. The latter — not Ronald Reagan — must be “rolling over in his grave” right now.
And then there is Israel. Like South Vietnam during the Vietnam War, it holds important cards, perhaps the most critical of all. Jerusalem shows no interest in a compromise settlement for the time being, much as Saigon did then, because it too views the enemy as an enduring existential threat undiminished by the ceasefire. As Nixon excluded South Vietnam from the deliberative process with Hanoi — arguably his greatest diplomatic failure — Trump has negotiated the Memorandum of Understanding behind Israel’s back. In the end, the exclusion justified Saigon’s obstructionism that contributed in no insignificant ways to the prompt resumptions of hostilities in Vietnam, even as it underscored the limits of American influence over its own allies. The same may turn out to be true today, making all of this diplomatic back-and-forth moot. Already, Jerusalem has repeatedly struck at targets inside Lebanon in violation of both the letter and the spirit of the Memorandum of Understanding.
When it comes to recent armed conflicts, history has not been kind to the United States. The major wars it has waged since 1945 have almost invariably fallen short — sometimes spectacularly so — of presidential ambitions and expectations. Possession and frequent deployment of the world’s most expensive, sophisticated, and destructive military have failed to translate into an ability to easily and successfully alter the behavior of “bad” international actors. History sometimes teaches us valuable lessons, painful as they may be. Unfortunately, Trump and his team have chosen to ignore them.
Pierre Asselin is the Dwight E. Stanford Chair in U.S. Foreign Relations History at San Diego State University. He speaks Vietnamese and has studied the Vietnam War on the basis of American, French, and Vietnamese archival materials for more than three decades. His latest book is Vietnam’s American War: A New History (2024).
Image: Robert LeRoy Knudsen via Wikimedia Commons
