On January 27th, 1973 the U.S. signed a peace treaty that ended its war in Vietnam so Scott and Bob got together to discuss the last stages of the war, the peace treaty, and some of the lessons and legacies of Vietnam.
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The last phase of the war is not discussed as much as the earlier period, so we went into some detail about the last big battles of the war like the Easter Offensive. We discussed the background to negotiations before 1972 and the ways in which Kissinger and Nixon engaged in deceptive diplomacy–reneging on agreements and actually escalating the war. We also corrected the historical record on the so-called Christmas Bombings, which Americans have been told forced the North Vietnamese to make concessions and sign the peace treaty but in reality which were condemned globally and forced the U.S. to agree to terms which had been on the table much earlier.
Finally we discussed the legacy of Vietnam, and pondered the questions “who actually won the Vietnam War?”
