“Make no bones of this,” Barry Goldwater declared to a part-elated, part-shocked assembly at the 1964 Republican National Convention, “don't try to sweep it under the rug. We are at war in Vietnam.” Goldwater's speech signified two steps that defined the conservative movement during the 1960s. In accepting the party's nomination for the presidency, Goldwater sealed the deepening practical relationship between conservative activists and the GOP. In defining the situation in Southeast Asia, he attached conservatives' fervent anticommunism to the struggle for supremacy in Vietnam. The association between conservatives and “hawkishness” regarding the Vietnam War was common during the 1960s, and has been a recognized, if neglected, factor in scholarship of the era.Footnote ¹ Recognizing the central importance of military escalation to the conservative position on Vietnam is necessary, but it is also important to understand how the standard conservative line changed, and indeed how it stayed the same, during the course of the long conflict. The Vietnam War did not provide the unified conservative response that was often referred to during this period, and which formed the basis of post-Vietnam assessments of conservative activity regarding the war. This article discusses the divisions within the conservative community over Vietnam, and demonstrates how and why conservative political leaders moved toward acceptance of Richard Nixon's limited military policies and limited political objectives in Vietnam.

Large-scale unity was one of two central characteristics which defined the conservative movement and Vietnam during the Johnson administration. The other was overwhelming opposition to the military policies pursued by the United States in Southeast Asia. In 1965, the leadership of the John Birch Society, a right-wing educational organization, publicly opposed the US ground war in Vietnam; the organization's eccentric millionaire founder, Robert Welch, claimed that the war distracted attention from the Soviet military build-up elsewhere. Welch's position occasioned an outpouring of conservative opposition that was unprecedented; it allowed the political activists associated with Barry Goldwater and the journal National Review to label themselves “responsible conservatives,” and thus to purge the conservative political campaign of far-right influence.

Conservative support for military intervention in Southeast Asia pre-dated the intensification of the conflict in 1964 and 1965, but US intervention could not subdue demands for military escalation.Footnote ² In defining the enemy, conservatives looked to the Democratic Republic of Vietnam – North Vietnam – rather than to the domestic insurgency ravishing the South. As such, they argued that the United States could achieve immediate victory by bombing the war-making potential of the Hanoi government and by eliminating the sanctuaries used by the southern insurgents in Cambodia and Laos. Kennedy and Johnson intended to limit any conflict in Southeast Asia in order to prevent intervention by China or the Soviet Union, a potential outcome of a US venture into North Vietnamese territory. Conservatives argued that this was an unrealistic, even paranoid, assessment of the communist powers' intentions. While fully convinced of the roles played by both powers in arming and sustaining the Vietnamese insurgency, conservatives did not believe that either would be willing to risk a nuclear conflict in order to achieve a unified communist state in Vietnam.Footnote ³ Conservative rhetoric charged limited war strategies with having prolonged the war, and reflected a refusal to acknowledge the limited political objectives in Vietnam. It was believed possible to destroy the war-making potential of North Vietnam by targeting US trade with European states known to be aiding the Vietnamese communist effort, by bombing the supply routes to and inside Indochina, and by exerting consistent pressure on the Hanoi government by bombing its economic centres.Footnote ⁴

Conservative political activism during the 1960s was characterized by two movements. One was represented by grassroots mobilization around often single-issue campaigns. The other involved the creation of elite organizations and the increase of power within the Republican Party. This organizational development on the part of politically motivated actors was to some extent based on a particular foreign-policy agenda. Founded in 1955 by the youthful and outspoken conservative activist William F. Buckley Jr., National Review formed the vanguard in the articulation of a coherent foreign-policy ideology for the emerging conservative movement. Indeed, Buckley stated that the purpose of National Review was “to articulate a position on world affairs which a conservative candidate can adhere to without fear of intellectual embarrassment or political surrealism.”Footnote ⁵ The journal's editorial board included individuals, most notably William Rusher, who were prominent in the campaigns to draft Goldwater for the Republican presidential nomination, and responsible for founding the conservative activist group the American Conservative Union. The Republican right, represented by Goldwater, Ronald Reagan, John Tower and John Ashbrook, was ideologically attached to the foreign policy expressed by National Review. Southern conservatives such as Strom Thurmond, while less allied with the movement propagated by the new conservative activists, were also sympathetic to National Review's foreign policy. By the 1960s, the right wing of the Republican Party had fully discarded its adherence to isolationism, and was engaged with the new conservative political organizations. While neither National Review nor its ally Human Events acted as mouthpieces for the Republican right, the journals' importance in articulating conservatives' political ambitions ensured their significance in the conservative movement. National Review was particularly important in uniting the disparate elements of political conservatism. The journal's role in reflecting and influencing conservative foreign-policy goals was paramount.

Modern American conservatism was built on a foundation of fervent anticommunism. Shared economic and philosophical beliefs provided the substructure of the conservative movement that emerged in the immediate postwar period, but it was the determined efforts of conservative activists to meet the international communist threat head-on which defined the nature of this movement and its organizations.Footnote ⁶ Having achieved unity regarding the significance of the role in the world of the United States, conservative activists continued to labour under divisions between traditionalists and libertarians. Frank Meyer of National Review provided an apparent solution in the early 1960s. He defined the loose alliance between libertarians and traditionalists based on a shared anticommunism. Meyer's “fusionism” was distilled in a 1964 article (“What is conservatism?”) and was the formula by which Meyer combined conservatives' antistatist views and moral traditionalism with militant anticommunism. This philosophy's origins were mainly practical, born in part from the political experiences of conservatives in the early 1960s, and from the recognition that a more coherent theoretical framework was required if the movement was to avoid the factionalism that undermined earlier forays into politics. Fusionism was a distillation of the cooperative methods and ideas that began with the creation of National Review and which climaxed with the 1960 and 1964 Draft Goldwater drives. Its emphasis on anticommunism heightened the importance of foreign-policy successes for conservatives; intervention in Vietnam was supported because it provided a corrective to the policies of diplomatic posturing, followed by acquiescence and equivocation, which conservatives claimed characterized the unwise and immoral policies pursued by government since 1945.

Conservatives' commitment to Vietnam was based on demands for victory; according to conservative ideologues, containment and neutrality could lead only to such unsuccessful resolutions as the outcomes of the Korean War and the Laos crisis.Footnote ⁷ Conservatives initially opposed the containment policy, arguing that it was morally ambiguous and overtly defensive. While they continued to oppose this policy in theory, there were few calls for “roll-back” of communism in Eastern Europe following the Hungarian uprising in 1956. James Burnham of National Review argued that the Eisenhower administration's failure to intervene, while highly objectionable, forced conservatives to accept realistic limits to US foreign policy. Conservative support for intervention in Vietnam was, in essence, based on the idea of the war as a corrective to earlier policies of equivocation in the face of communist expansion. They viewed it as a demonstration of strength in opposition to the Soviet Union, rather than as a logical application of the containment doctrine. And yet it was during this period that the conservative commitment to roll-back faced its greatest challenge, a challenge that came from within the conservative movement itself, rather than from liberal influence on foreign policy.Footnote ⁸ This coalition of activists moved to increase conservative influence in government, and in so doing altered its position on the Vietnam War. In support of Nixon and his ambiguous calls for “peace with honor,” conservative leaders explicitly accepted containment and the possibility that they would also have to support an ambiguous end to the Vietnam War.

In 1969, the Vietnam War remained a dominant symbol of conservatism's commitment to anticommunist dogma. Bill Buckley dismissed anti-war claims about the civil-war characteristics of the struggle, and about the supposedly negative impact of US intervention. “I will assent,” he stated, “to the proposition that South Vietnam has been harmed by America's efforts during the past five years only to somebody who would say that France was harmed by the efforts of the Allied armies to liberate it during the Second World War.”Footnote ⁹ William Rusher stated the conservative position succinctly: “What will happen if we bug out on Vietnam is World War III.”Footnote ¹⁰ Conservatives denied that the domino theory was flawed; Goldwater asserted in March 1969 that the stakes in Vietnam were as high as they had been ten years before and that “if we don't stop them in Vietnam, we will be trying to stop them in the rest of Southeast Asia.”Footnote ¹¹ James Burnham argued that Vietnam was a

Conservatives were thus deeply concerned about US credibility as a superpower and active ally, and were determined to promote the issue in the domestic political arena. They argued that protests against the Vietnam War and calls in Congress for troop withdrawal across the world had already eroded the moral strength of the United States. This, coupled with a negative impression of American military strength vis-à-vis the Soviet Union, made it necessary for the US to stand firm in Southeast Asia if the policy of deterrence were to have any legitimacy. In Rusher's view, “America's determination (or failure of determination) to prevail in Vietnam is very probably the crucial test for the future of the American society.” Despite the domestic focus of Rusher's statement, he concluded, “a nation may very well have to meet certain ‘challenges’ effectively or surrender its claim to greatness – certainly to predominance.”Footnote ¹³ In the face of arms negotiations and growing cooperation with the Soviet Union and the People's Republic of China (PRC), such issues gained greater importance and urgency, and it is within the realm of emerging détente that the true significance of conservative assessment of Nixon's Vietnam policies must be considered.

That conservatives could expect favourable policies from Richard Nixon was by no means certain. Conservative attitudes towards his candidacy in 1968 were certainly divided, but he was understood to be a committed anticommunist hawk.Footnote ¹⁴ Having provided vital support for Nixon, conservatives' expectation that they would play a significant role in the formulation of policy was not unrealistic.Footnote ¹⁵ Throughout the campaign and the early months of the administration, however, few attempts were made to determine the exact nature of Nixon's policies for the conduct and successful conclusion of the Vietnam War. Conservatives believed that Nixon had staked too much of his personal credibility, political support and foreign-policy objectives on a successful end to the war. Even as it became evident that Nixon did not intend to launch a determined effort to win the war militarily, conservatives continued to praise Nixon's handling of the conflict. When describing the new peace terms offered by the United States to the Hanoi government in May 1969, Nixon warned, “if the needless suffering continues, this will affect other decisions.” Rather than focus on the terms of the peace agreements, conservative leaders argued that this statement was proof of Nixon's willingness to take forceful measures if Hanoi did not respond favourably to the generous overtures of the administration. Conservatives fully expected Hanoi to remain intransigent. While acknowledging Nixon's statement that the administration had ruled out a purely military solution, conservative supporters of Nixon's policy praised his emphasis on a refusal to engage in unilateral withdrawal, a policy that the President claimed would “bring peace now,” but which “would enormously increase the danger of a bigger war later.”Footnote ¹⁶

Nixon was confident of the support of congressional Republicans, and the Republican right vociferously endorsed his policies.Footnote ¹⁷ In the months that followed, the administration began to launch the programme that ultimately defined the Nixon–Kissinger approach to the Vietnam War. The Vietnamization programme was designed to continue the war, while meeting the increasing domestic demand for de-escalation of direct American involvement. Furthermore, it was intended to allow Nixon to claim that he had achieved “peace with honor.” Beginning in July 1969, American force levels were systematically reduced under the pretext that new units of the Army of the Republic of Vietnam would replace US soldiers. Additional resources were allocated for training and equipping South Vietnamese forces, and substantial increases in aid were earmarked to improve the Saigon government and its pacification campaign. Historians remain divided in their interpretations of Vietnamization. Some argue that the policy was either a hopeful fantasy to which the administration succumbed, or a charade, designed to disguise a precipitate withdrawal and win popular backing.Footnote ¹⁸ Kimball considers Vietnamization within the context of Nixon's so-called “madman theory” and argues that it was initially developed in concert with the possibility of escalating air and naval force against the communist enemy in Vietnam.Footnote ¹⁹ Larry Berman agrees with Kimball's assessment in many respects, referring to Nixon's secret bombing of Cambodia as evidence of the President's plans to negotiate while fighting, but Berman emphasizes the extent to which Nixon and Kissinger planned to continue the war by alternative means once the US had withdrawn its troops under the auspices of a supposed settlement to end the war.Footnote ²⁰

Conservative leaders believed Vietnamization was a strategy for fighting a more conventional war, and not simply a programme for ending the American war in Vietnam. As such, they offered Nixon significant praise. They believed that by transferring the major onus for fighting the war from US to South Vietnamese hands, the war could be escalated and fought along conventional lines. This intensified military campaign on the part of the South Vietnamese, conservatives argued, should include assaults against North Vietnam and the sanctuaries in Cambodia and Laos, and should be complemented by intensified US bombing campaigns. Believing that military restrictions had been imposed because of liberals' fears of Chinese or Soviet intervention against US forces, the Vietnamization programme offered conservatives the antidote to this problem. South Vietnamese attacks against North Vietnam were unlikely to raise the spectre of international intervention, particularly in light of the clear role of North Vietnam in supporting the southern insurgency. Domestic support for Vietnamization also encouraged conservative political support. As American casualties reduced, and the expected draft reform was introduced, bombing and other necessary military measures would, according to conservatives, surely become more acceptable to the American public.Footnote ²¹

Conservative support for Vietnamization was also determined by favourable interpretations of the Nixon Doctrine, which was articulated by the President in an unscripted press conference at Guam.Footnote ²² It is clear that conservative leaders believed the so-called Nixon Doctrine was a much more influential factor in the development of Vietnamization than was actually the case. Young Americans for Freedom (YAF) went so far as to claim that Vietnamization should have been American policy all along.Footnote ²³ Accepting administration claims that Vietnamization was not a precipitate withdrawal, and that the rate of withdrawal would depend on the readiness of South Vietnamese armed forces, the level of enemy activity, and progress towards a political solution at the Paris talks, conservatives were further convinced by the endorsement of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.Footnote ²⁴ Conservative support was almost universal: from Congress to YAF to National Review, conservatives argued that the war could be lost only in the United States, for it was being won in Vietnam, and that it remained only for the government to continue to provide the necessary material aid, including the use of United States air power, for South Vietnam to maintain its defence and freedom.

The image of unified conservative support is misleading, however. The groundswell of support which accompanied Nixon's “Silent Majority” speech in November 1969 was evident among congressional Republicans as well as conservative political activists. This unity on the right was short-lived, and by early 1970 the board of the American Conservative Union (ACU) openly questioned administration policy. They urged the President to initiate military measures in support of Vietnamization with greater rapidity and force, demands that were echoed by YAF and that were alluded to in the pages of National Review. Within the Republican Party, however, Congressman John Ashbrook of Ohio, chairman of the ACU, stood as a lone voice of conservative opposition to Nixon. Despite growing concerns about the ultimate consequences of phased withdrawal, the Republican right remained predominantly united and consistent in its strong public praise for the President. Conservative anxieties about the Vietnamization strategy were muted by the allied attack on enemy sanctuaries in Cambodia, which, while limited in scope and time, signified the attainment of one of the conservatives' long-standing goals. Cambodia, Goldwater claimed, was the action from which Nixon would achieve “his greatness.”Footnote ²⁵ It convinced conservatives that liberals within Congress, rather than Nixon, threatened the success of the American effort in Southeast Asia, a distinction that served the administration by precluding conservative fears regarding the efficacy of policy from translating into open hostility. Congressional amendments calling for a specific date for withdrawal served only to rally conservatives to the administration position, as did the excesses of anti-war protest. Conservatives universally reiterated the administration line by arguing that the operation resulted in the capture of enemy supplies and the vitally important port of Sihanoukville, prevented the annual enemy offensive during the dry season of 1970, and severely disrupted all future assaults against South Vietnam. Such assessments were overly positive, and were based on ideological and theoretical judgements, rather than independent evaluations of the operation's strategic value. Cambodia was clear evidence, however, that the administration was willing to take strong measures, supporting the thesis of pro-administration conservatives that Vietnamization would enable a more conventional conduct of the war to reach execution.

The intensification of US withdrawals from Vietnam prompted resurgent anxieties on the right. While there was no outright rejection of the Vietnamization strategy, during September 1970 Senator John Tower was forced to assure anxious conservatives. Tower stated that there was no question of the Nixon administration preparing to “accept a camouflaged surrender to the demands of Hanoi.” He argued that the administration would not leave South Vietnam until its established criteria had been met, and until it was clear that South Vietnam was capable of withstanding any attack from the North. Tower continued, “There is no doubt that a substantial residual American force will have to be maintained there for some time … [W]e will have to continue to provide logistical, air and naval support to South Vietnam.”Footnote ²⁶ The issue of a residual American force was particularly important, as by late 1970 there was little sign that greater South Vietnamese military action, coupled with a concerted US effort to undermine the war-making potential of North Vietnam, would be realized. The demand that a residual force be stationed in South Vietnam became a prerequisite of any possible settlement as far as many conservatives were concerned. By early 1971 the ACU was publicly declaring that the Nixon administration was concerned only with the pace of withdrawals from Vietnam; there was no longer a consideration of victory, of employing options such as blockading Haiphong. Such attacks were due to frustration with the level of control being afforded the South Vietnamese, and growing concern for the American role following final withdrawal. Jeff Bell of the ACU, writing to White House aide Patrick Buchanan, objected to the administration's recent association of a residual American force in Vietnam with the prisoner-of-war matter. According to Buchanan, conservative “feeling is that the prisoners issue alone is a weak intellectual and political reed on which to hang the ‘residual force,’” and that “the case for a residual force, and for gradual as opposed to immediate withdrawal, needs justification … in terms of the United States overall objective in Southeast Asia.” Nixon must, according to Bell, vindicate America's commitment to South Vietnam by leaving sufficient material to ensure the country's defence, and include American air and logistical support. This issue faced a precarious future, considering the growing strength of congressional opposition to continued funding of South Vietnam. Buchanan concluded, “their feeling is that … some polarization is needed now on Vietnam, to shore up the eroding support for overall Administration policy.”Footnote ²⁷ This, ultimately, reflects a failure on the part of certain conservatives to consider fully the political sensitivity of the war, and the extent to which large-scale polarization, particularly in Congress, could hinder basic conservative objectives. Buchanan, though, was not simply referring to “eroding support” on the left, but rather to growing hostility from conservative sources.

Many leading conservatives began to challenge administration policy on grounds quite distinct from those demanding an intensified military campaign to uphold the Saigon government. Columnist James Jackson Kilpatrick and commentator Garry Wills argued that if the US was pulling out of Vietnam, demonstrating its unwillingness to win, it should do so more quickly. This sense of inevitable loss increasingly took its toll on conservative responses to administration policy, not least because of growing public frustration with the war. An acrimonious debate among YAF's National Board is indicative of the divisions within the conservative movement. Jerry Norton, a Vietnam veteran and member of the national board, called on YAF to quietly abandon the Vietnam issue. Norton asserted that, while at one point,

Norton was the only acting member of the YAF national board to have served in Vietnam, but neither his veteran status nor the fact that his assessment of YAF's activities was largely accurate was sufficient to convince his fellow conservatives. YAF's executive board rejected Norton's argument, but it was becoming increasingly clear that it would be difficult to maintain consensus on the Vietnam issue. National Review stalwarts Frank Meyer and William Rusher increased their calls urging fellow conservatives to break with Nixon. Meyer lamented the negative effect that the protracted war was having on the conservative consensus, believing that its longevity was undermining popular support for the struggle against communism, and was eroding public understanding of the importance of this campaign. While still acknowledging that Nixon had done much to withstand anti-war protest, especially congressional pressure, Meyer and others increasingly bemoaned the association of conservatives with the administration's limited policy in Vietnam.

Not all conservatives were so willing to abandon the administration, however. Bill Buckley was appointed by Nixon to the United States Information Agency, and was associated with Henry Kissinger.Footnote ²⁹ There is little doubt that he valued his role with the administration highly, but Buckley's association with Kissinger endangered his dominant position within the conservative movement.Footnote ³⁰ In April 1971, Patrick Buchanan warned that “while Buckley's influence nationally is enormous, his influence among the hard-core right politicos is being diminished, and we cannot count on his bringing them over [in the 1972 election].” He concluded, “Buckley gets a bit of the same constant criticism that conservatives in the White House do – that they've ‘sold out.’”Footnote ³¹ As conservative support outside the political arena began to diminish sharply, the administration concentrated its efforts on maintaining the support of figures such as Goldwater, Reagan, Tower and newly elected Senator James Buckley, brother of Bill Buckley and candidate of the New York Conservative Party. Meeting with Senate Republican loyalists in April 1971, Nixon restated the necessity of ending the Vietnam War in such a way that South Vietnam would be able to survive. But on this occasion there was no discussion of the need to ensure South Vietnamese freedom perpetually. Rather, the South Vietnamese were to be given a “chance” of survival. The distinction was highly important and indicated a change in the meaning of “peace with honor.” If Republicans, including Goldwater, objected to the administration's altered objective in Vietnam, there is no record of dissent in the chronicle of the Oval Office meeting. Neither is there evidence to suggest that they were so concerned with the issue as to voice anxiety publicly.Footnote ³² The Republican right continued to project faith in Nixon's “peace with honor,” but largely failed to acknowledge that its meaning and implications had fundamentally altered.

The growing divide within the conservative leadership over Vietnam was overshadowed by the stark divide over Nixon's China initiative. China changed everything. Within two weeks of Nixon's announcement that he intended to visit the PRC, National Review conservatives announced a “suspension” of support for the administration.Footnote ³³ The group included representatives of National Review, Human Events, the ACU, the New York Conservative Party, and YAF.Footnote ³⁴ Nixon's spectacular move towards détente pushed those wavering, such as Buckley and Burnham, into the opposition camp. Despite the deteriorating military situation in Vietnam, however, conservatives focussed their wrath on such issues as US strategic defence vis-à-vis the Soviet Union, rather than on the war.Footnote ³⁵ The failure to attack Nixon's Vietnam policy publicly at this time indicated a willingness to accept a great deal less than victory. The China issue muted alarm over Vietnam, with the conservatives' public statement actually “applauding … the President's steadfastness in resisting the great pressures upon him to desert Southeast Asia.”Footnote ³⁶ Praise of Nixon's stance against his anti-war critics did not necessarily equate with support for his conduct of the war, but individuals such as Buckley were concerned with the image of those protesting the China move. To again demand an intensified military campaign in Vietnam risked making the conservatives look extreme. Considering the division within the movement, with figures such as Buckley and Burnham, and Republican members of Congress, urging continued support for administration policy in Vietnam, it was also difficult to profess an alternative solution. As Congress moved ever closer to limiting the time frame in which Nixon could achieve “peace with honor,” conservatives were left with little option but to push for a rightward shift in administration foreign policy in general. As such, their demands focussed on specific issues of rearmament. When the administration moved closer to détente, they attempted to use their political leverage to launch a campaign by Congressman John Ashbrook to challenge Nixon in several Republican primaries.Footnote ³⁷ The challenge to Nixon's China policy, and the unexpectedly feeble primary challenge by Ashbrook, heightened division among conservative political activists and weakened their focus on lobbying the administration regarding Vietnam.

Despite their hesitancy in publicly challenging the administration, conservative Republicans continued to privately lobby the White House to inaugurate intensified bombing campaigns. They grew unsure about the effectiveness of administration policy, and accepted as unlikely the possibility that a substantial residual force would be left to guard the borders of South Vietnam. In November, Kissinger reassured Goldwater that extensive bombing campaigns were planned for December, but by January Goldwater was once again bewildered.Footnote ³⁸ Writing privately, he stated that a recent briefing on Vietnam was “somewhat disturbing”:

Goldwater maintained a public silence; he was convinced of the need to support the administration because of Kissinger's emphasis on the negative impact of the Mansfield amendment on negotiations, and by the President's assurance that “what we have done is as far as we can go” in terms of concessions.Footnote ⁴⁰ The administration had clearly conceded far more than Goldwater was willing to accept in 1969, but conservative support was buoyed by White House assurances that neither a coalition government nor an in-place ceasefire would be imposed on South Vietnam. Goldwater responded in simple terms, stating that the administration should take the peace proposal and, with regard to the Democratic doves, should “shove it down their throats.”Footnote ⁴¹ Goldwater's comment indicates a frustration with the anti-war movement, particularly that in Congress, and frustration with the continuing war. Yet he retained his faith in the President, writing privately that Nixon had personally assured him that he would not abandon the government of South Vietnam, and concluding that Nixon “feels, as I have often said, that if we do this it will end the United States as a world power as it would destroy the confidence of the world.”Footnote ⁴²

North Vietnam's Spring Offensive against South Vietnam, which began on 30 March 1972, provoked a stern US response. Nixon approved a massive bombing campaign targeting enemy troops in South Vietnam and heavy bombing of North Vietnam, including Hanoi and Haiphong harbour. While the Paris peace talks continued in fits and starts during this period, they were indefinitely suspended by the US on 4 May. Four days later, Nixon announced a new aerial interdiction campaign, Operation Linebacker, which was the first continuous bombing of North Vietnam since 1968. Nixon also announced the mining of Haiphong harbour, one of the principal demands made by conservatives throughout the war. Because of their focus on external impetuses and support for the North Vietnamese campaign, conservative supporters of the war particularly welcomed the interdiction effort. Conservative praise for the new military policies was almost universal, and was most obvious in the declarations of support offered by conservatives in Congress. Goldwater expressed admiration for Nixon “finally taking the steps so necessary to bringing about a quick end to the war in Indochina.” The North Vietnamese invasion of South Vietnam was, Goldwater asserted, comparable to the North Korean invasion of South Korea or the Cuban Missile Crisis. It was “another instance of the Soviet Union attempting to alter the world balance of power by remote control.”Footnote ⁴³ Bill Buckley stated that Nixon's “determination to use air power to stay the enemy's juggernaut is not simply a point of pride,” but also “derives from a commitment to history, annealed by the experiences that led to the second world war … if you let a military power which is strong enough to disturb the peace of the whole world underwrite armed aggression against a little power, the fabric of peace and stability is ruptured.” Conservatives thus attempted to connect events in Vietnam to the wider international situation, largely in an attempt to undermine the validity of détente.

National Review offered significant praise for Nixon's steadfastness in the midst of severe domestic and international condemnation of the US attacks. Conservatives were not relieved of their concern over the direction of US foreign policy, however. Buckley claimed that it was paradoxical that Nixon was acting against the Soviet “planned and authorized” attack against South Vietnam, while scheduling to visit Moscow in a matter of weeks. The administration remained committed to the negotiation of a peace settlement in the near future, a fact that angered conservatives hoping for a more hardline approach from the White House in line with the altered military strategies. Buckley charged that the United States had “drastically reduced [its] peace terms,” which now “appear to be open-ended, so that there seems to be nothing to stand in the way of the North Vietnamese continuing their offensive until the opportune moment and then announcing that they will go for cease-fire.”Footnote ⁴⁴ Nixon's declaration before Congress that he would not abandon Vietnam prompted Buckley to declare, “By God, I was proud of Richard Nixon.”Footnote ⁴⁵ But throughout the summer, National Review conservatives continued to stress that the military campaign must be intensified to such a degree that Hanoi would be forced to accept US peace terms. Conservatives called for bombing the dikes in North Vietnam.Footnote ⁴⁶ Such demands were less than heartfelt, however, as there was an air of resignation regarding the pro-victory cause. While conservatives called for the administration to remain tough in the final weeks of negotiations, particularly in October and November, there was a more general realization that if the war were not concluded through negotiation, it might be ended on less favourable terms by an oppositional Congress.

This was a difficult period for the larger conservative movement. Writing to Buckley in March 1972, Rusher cautioned that he could not “recall a time when American conservatism was in greater disarray,” and blamed disagreement over Richard Nixon as the primary cause of schism within the movement.Footnote ⁴⁷ The ACU's opposition to the support of Goldwater, Reagan and others for Nixon led the organization to accuse the “conservative leadership” of “dancing attendance on Richard Nixon,” and of being “partisan apologists for Cold War accommodation.”Footnote ⁴⁸ The ACU was not alone in attacking the position assumed by conservative Republicans, but neither was division over Nixon the only reason for disorder on the right. YAF suffered from a financial debacle that forced the organization to severely reduce its activities and to re-evaluate its future management.Footnote ⁴⁹ Both the ACU and National Review endured sharp opposition because of Ashbrook's campaign against Nixon. Within this context, it became difficult to consider and formulate a consistent, united policy regarding Vietnam. The longevity and growing unpopularity of the war challenged conservative commitment, as did the decreasing likelihood of a successful conclusion. Abrogating responsibility for the war and its outcome, conservatives increasingly focussed on blaming liberals for the likely loss in Vietnam.

Operation Linebacker II, the so-called Christmas Bombing of North Vietnam, did much to foster conservative support for the final outcome of Nixon's policies in Vietnam. In dealing with the enemy in terms of force, the administration salvaged a measure of credibility with conservatives. The bombing formed the basis of right-wing retrospective thinking on the war: essentially that Nixon's Vietnamization policy could have succeeded, hence conservative support for Nixon's early strategy, had it been coupled with more forceful military measures. Blame for its failure was firmly laid at the door of congressional weakness and ignorance. The bombing campaign was hailed as evidence that a military solution to the war had been possible, and indeed was the determining factor in forcing Hanoi to submit to US demands. Pro-war convention stated that the war was lost in Washington, not Vietnam, that anti-war protests comforted the enemy and weakened American resolve, and that a morally feeble, liberal Congress undermined the Nixon administration's ability to fight the war to a successful conclusion.

Conservatives, including, but certainly not limited to, those who had remained faithful to the administration claimed that this had been their understanding of Vietnamization all along. Goldwater, speaking in January 1973, stated,

The bombing campaign served to overcome the glaring weaknesses of the Accords, allowing conservatives to declare publicly that North Vietnamese violations would be met with swift and forceful responses. Genuine Vietnamization would ensure that such would be the case, for the South Vietnamese would be free from the political constraints imposed by the United States' policy of limited war. Coming full circle, the conservative interpretation of Vietnamization once again appeared commensurate with administration policy. It may not have been implemented to the extent that conservatives desired, but Operation Linebacker II ensured that there was sufficient credibility to Nixon's claims that he had achieved “peace with honor,” while also highlighting the extent to which conservative political figures were concerned with the means, rather than the ultimate consequences, of ending the Vietnam War.

Nixon's personal preference for the hardline methods espoused by conservative supporters of the war was much in evidence throughout his administration. Conservatives found an ally in their interpretation of the war's significance to the US position in international relations. Nixon's perspective and goals in the international arena differed greatly, however, from those of his conservative critics, fundamentally undermining conservative support for the administration, and challenging the initial interpretation of phased withdrawal. But such differences did not devastate support for the means by which Nixon was ending the war in Vietnam. By accepting that military victory was politically impossible, conservatives effectively abandoned a core principle of their standard policy regarding Vietnam, and undercut their commitment to this particular war. It must be recognized that the movement's leaders attached favourable meanings to the policy of Vietnamization, meanings that were challenged by Nixon's unexpected commitment to détente. Essentially, however, conservative political leaders, particularly those in the Republican Party, were exhausted by the Vietnam War, exhausted by its negative impact on domestic support for the anticommunist crusade, exhausted by its correlation to the rise of the new left, and exhausted by its successful challenge to the codes of warfare. Herein lay much of conservative support for Nixon's policies, support that was at times less than entirely enthusiastic, but which must surely be acknowledged as a defining characteristic of the conservative movement during this period, and a determining factor in the changing nature of conservative foreign policy objectives and methods.