President Richard Nixon spent New Year's Eve 1972 watching his beloved Washington Redskins defeat the Dallas Cowboys 26-3. Afterward, Nixon wrote in his diary, "As the year 1972 ends I have much to be thankful for — China, Russia, May 8, the election victory, and, of course, while the end of the year was somewhat marred by the need to bomb Hanoi-Haiphong, that decision, I think, can make the next four years much more successful than they otherwise might have been. 1973 will be a better year."
It was a fair assessment of 1972. It was, of course, wildly wrong about the years to come, thanks to Watergate, but on that New Year's Eve, Nixon had reason to be optimistic. His biggest foreign policy problem, inherited from LBJ, had been the ongoing Vietnam War. Heading into 1973, it seemed likely that a peace treaty was just around the corner. Indeed, as he wrote, peace negotiations were getting restarted. The New York Times reported that Hanoi's negotiator, Le Duc Tho, was en route to Paris for a new round of meetings with Henry Kissinger. As we now know, Tho was first making a secret stop in Beijing in order to consult with Chou Enlai. The Chinese premier summarized the state of affairs nicely. He began by noting that Nixon's effort "to exert pressure through bombing has failed." Observing that Nixon faced numerous international and domestic problems, Chou advised Tho to "adhere to principles but show the necessary flexibility" that would produce a settlement. "Let the Americans leave as quickly as possible. In half a year or one year the situation will change," Chou Enlai advised Le Duc Tho. As he knew full well, 150,000 North Vietnamese troops were still in the South. The North was positioned for eventual victory; America was fed up with the war to the point of exhaustion. The ally that America had long supported, and continued to guarantee the safety of, was facing almost certain doom.
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