In my novel, WORLD WAR NIXON: An Alternate History of the 1970s, I ask what would have happened if President Richard Nixon had gotten away with Watergate, and had not been forced to resign ahead of being impeached. It is also a world where Chairman Mao dies before there could be an opening to China, radically altering the course of the Cold War. The story is told in the form of an oral history, one where many characters caught up in the turmoil of an alternative world where history took a much different course than the one we know. In this excerpt, President Nixon is in Moscow for a summit with the Soviet leadership in September of 1972 in order to finalize a nuclear arms control agreement. But behind the scenes, a clandestine meeting in the Kremlin between Nixon and the leadership of North Vietnam has been arranged with Soviet foreign minister Andre Gromyko presiding. They hope to find a way to end the stalemated Vietnam War.


An excerpt (told from Nixon’s POV) from WORLD WAR NIXON:

I wanted peace in Vietnam with honor, not peace at any price. That is what the Democrats would have settled for, even though they were the ones responsible for the war in the first place. I replied to Brezhnev that I would hear the North Vietnamese out but nothing more. For over a year at the talks in Paris, they had been demanding a complete American withdrawal from Vietnam and the elimination of the Thieu government in Saigon, which was to be replaced with one that included the Viet Cong (the South Vietnamese Communists), as a prelude to reunifying the country presumably under Hanoi’s rule. They flat out refused to discuss the return of our brave POWs until these demands were met. While they were refusing to budge even one inch at the negotiation table, the North had invaded the South with a force of over 60,000 troops in April of ‘72, an offensive which required an equally tough response on our part, as wave after wave of bombers pounded the North on a daily basis.

That was where things stood on our third day in Moscow when I went to meet with the North Vietnamese delegation in the great hall of the Kremlin. I was accompanied by Kissinger and his aide, General Alexander Haig, among others. Though there had been no intelligence before arriving in Moscow as to who from Hanoi we might be meeting with, upon arriving, word got to us that Pham Van Dong, the North Vietnamese Prime Minister, was in the city. That was who greeted us upon arriving in the great hall; Pham was one of the late Ho Chi Minh’s most devoted followers and was known to be a hardline Communist. He and a half dozen of his fellow members of the North Vietnamese Politburo were seated at a table in the middle of the immense hall, all of them dressed in the same drab khaki uniform popular among Communist leaders in Asia. None of them stood when we entered, nor so much as allowed even the hint of a smile on their faces, acknowledging our arrival with only the slightest nod and a stony expression. We were shown seats at a table facing Pham and his delegation. About 20 feet separated us, and just off to the side was a much smaller table; sitting at it was Gromyko, playing the role of host.

Once we took our seats at the table, Gromyko spoke, welcoming both sides and saying it was in the interests of peace that the Soviet Union had asked the North to send a delegation to the summit and stressing that perhaps a meeting like this one, held behind closed doors, unseen by the prying eyes of those who do not share a desire to see the war end, could surely help the cause of peace. I immediately took notice that Gromyko left out the usual Communist boiler plate about the solidarity of socialist countries or a mention of the Soviets’ support of their brave allies in the North. He actually sounded sincere.

Since there was no itinerary, I spoke up as soon as Gromyko was finished, saying that though there was nothing that would cause America to waver in its support for the free people of South Vietnam, I had come to this meeting with an open mind, ready to listen and take part in any honest discussion that might end the war, which had gone on far too long at the cost of far too many lives. In effect, I was saying, I’m listening, Premier Pham; the ball is in your court.


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