Overview

The editor of the volume sought to present documentation that explained and illuminated the major foreign policy decisions and problems on Vietnam faced by the President and his key foreign policy advisers during the last 4 and 1/2 months of his administration. The documents highlight the Johnson administration's slow and agonizing internal deliberations on how to achieve formal four-party peace negotiations on Vietnam in Paris. A good part of this search for peace was carried out during the 1968 Presidential election amid suspicions by the Democratic and Republican candidates, and President Lyndon Johnson himself, that the respective Presidential candidates were using the peace process to influence the election. In addition, both the Democratic Republic of Vietnam (North Vietnam) and the Republic of Vietnam (South Vietnam) had their own demands for the procedures and modalities of the formal peace process, all of which had to be reconciled. This volume is the account of how the Johnson administration achieved the opening of formal four-party peace talks in Paris.