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No More Vietnams
The late president provides his explanation of America's failure in the Vietnam conflict and argues that the U.S. should not allow its foreign policy to be paralyzed by fear of another Vietnam. Reissue. NYT.
240 pages, Hardcover
First published April 1, 1985
16 people are currently reading
208 people want to read
About the author
Richard M. Nixon
97 books100 followersRichard Milhous Nixon was the 37th President of the United States from 1969 to 1974. During the Second World War, he served as a Navy lieutenant commander in the Pacific, before being elected to the Congress, and then serving as the 36th Vice President of the United States in the administration of Dwight D. Eisenhower from 1953 to 1961. After an unsuccessful presidential run in 1960, Nixon was elected in 1968, and re-elected to a second term in 1972. Under President Nixon, the United States followed a foreign policy marked by détente with the Soviet Union and by the opening of diplomatic relations with the People's Republic of China. Nixon successfully negotiated a ceasefire with North Vietnam, effectively ending the longest war in American history. Domestically, his administration faced resistance to the Vietnam War. In the face of likely impeachment by the United States House of Representatives and conviction by the Senate for the Watergate scandal, Nixon resigned. His successor, Gerald Ford, issued a controversial pardon for any federal crimes Nixon may have committed while in office. Nixon is the only person to be elected twice to the office of the presidency and the vice presidency, and is the only president to have resigned the office.
Nixon suffered a stroke on April 18, 1994 and died four days later at the age of 81. ' to 'Richard Milhous Nixon was the 37th President of the United States from 1969 to 1974. During the Second World War, he served as a Navy lieutenant commander in the Pacific, before being elected to the Congress, and then serving as the 36th Vice President of the United States in the administration of Dwight D. Eisenhower from 1953 to 1961.
After an unsuccessful presidential run in 1960, Nixon was elected in 1968, and re-elected to a second term in 1972. Under President Nixon, the United States followed a foreign policy marked by détente with the Soviet Union and by the opening of diplomatic relations with the People's Republic of China. Nixon successfully negotiated a ceasefire with North Vietnam, effectively ending the longest war in American history.
Domestically, his administration faced resistance to the Vietnam War. In the face of likely impeachment by the United States House of Representatives and conviction by the Senate for the Watergate scandal, Nixon resigned. His successor, Gerald Ford, issued a controversial pardon for any federal crimes Nixon may have committed while in office. Nixon is the only person to be elected twice to the office of the presidency and the vice presidency, and is the only president to have resigned the office. Nixon suffered a stroke on April 18, 1994 and died four days later at the age of 81.
Nixon suffered a stroke on April 18, 1994 and died four days later at the age of 81. ' to 'Richard Milhous Nixon was the 37th President of the United States from 1969 to 1974. During the Second World War, he served as a Navy lieutenant commander in the Pacific, before being elected to the Congress, and then serving as the 36th Vice President of the United States in the administration of Dwight D. Eisenhower from 1953 to 1961.
After an unsuccessful presidential run in 1960, Nixon was elected in 1968, and re-elected to a second term in 1972. Under President Nixon, the United States followed a foreign policy marked by détente with the Soviet Union and by the opening of diplomatic relations with the People's Republic of China. Nixon successfully negotiated a ceasefire with North Vietnam, effectively ending the longest war in American history.
Domestically, his administration faced resistance to the Vietnam War. In the face of likely impeachment by the United States House of Representatives and conviction by the Senate for the Watergate scandal, Nixon resigned. His successor, Gerald Ford, issued a controversial pardon for any federal crimes Nixon may have committed while in office. Nixon is the only person to be elected twice to the office of the presidency and the vice presidency, and is the only president to have resigned the office. Nixon suffered a stroke on April 18, 1994 and died four days later at the age of 81.
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Displaying 1 - 21 of 21 reviews
January 4, 2020
From page 211: “Our mistake was not that we did too much and imposed an
inhumane war on peace-loving peoples. It was that in the end we did too little to prevent totalitarians from imposing their inhumane rule on freedom-loving peoples. Our cause must be peace. But we must recognize that greater evils exist than war. Communist troops brought peace to South Vietnam and Cambodia—but it was the peace of the grave.”
inhumane war on peace-loving peoples. It was that in the end we did too little to prevent totalitarians from imposing their inhumane rule on freedom-loving peoples. Our cause must be peace. But we must recognize that greater evils exist than war. Communist troops brought peace to South Vietnam and Cambodia—but it was the peace of the grave.”
March 9, 2016
This book was so well written, nobody could not enjoy reading it. I know it was how Nixon saw things but still i think he was fair. He even admitted making mistakes. I must have highlighted 30 plus quotes.
August 23, 2008
If you have never read any of President Nixon's books - start with this one. I think that this book is his best, and the easiest to read. Worth the read!
August 17, 2025
Nixon’s No More Vietnams is a detailed, often unapologetic account of the Vietnam War, emphasizing lessons for U.S. strategy from the vantage of 1985 and, more broadly, the proper exercise of power in limited wars. The book is part memoir, part strategic analysis, and part geopolitical treatise, and reading it through the lens of policy and military effectiveness makes it unusually instructive although gets quite dense with lawyerlike prose (Nixon was a practicing lawyer in the 1960s). I decided to reread this fully in light of Netflix’s very biased Turning Point documentary, released 50 years after the fall of Saigon, which like most mainstream history is very harsh on Nixon which I felt was always unfair since he did end the war inherited from Johnson even if his political calculations were more naked.
Overall, the book reads like a strategic post-mortem, with Nixon refuting popular myths, although not by a numbered list I would have liked, while simultaneously justifying his own decisions. It’s unapologetically self-serving in places, but the level of detail on troop movements, diplomatic triangulation, and timing decisions gives you a real sense of how the war could have—and in his view, should have—been managed.
Nixon’s case for involvement initially is not as strong as his strategies for getting out, but by the end he makes a decent case for global containment as opposed to Kennan’s original strongpoint containment, which only committed to the defense of strategic areas rather than countering Soviet influence everywhere. Commonly referred to as the domino theory, global containment was ridiculed as disproven by Vietnam but immediately afterwards communist and anti-American forces scored huge wins across Central America, Africa, Asia and the Middle East in Nicaragua, Angola, Ethiopia, Iran and Afghanistan sensing reduced American resolve towards allies giving an opportunity to revise regional order, which came to a stop with Reagan’s intervention in Grenada and clandestine support of opposition globally. Global containment is also tied to offensive realism in which states constantly aim to revise global order in their favor rather than favor the status quo, defensive realism, so that one region changing hands invites further changes to the balance of power, giving influence to aggressive powers.
Tentative summary:
Nixon starts by hitting us with a laundry list of claims about the Vietnam War—everything from “it was a civil war” to “life is better in Indochina now that the U.S. is gone”—and immediately declares them all false. Right away, he frames the book as a myth-busting project: these widely accepted conclusions aren’t just wrong, they distort how the war is remembered and understood, and he argues they had tragic consequences in real life.
From the outset, Nixon identifies three priorities that should have guided U.S. policy in Vietnam: stopping South Vietnam’s defeat by guerrillas, blunting the Ho Chi Minh trail through Laos and Cambodia, and preparing the South to defend itself. He argues that between 1964–1968, the U.S. focused almost exclusively on the first while neglecting the latter two. Mistakes, he claims, include viewing the North’s aggression as merely a Southern insurgency, failing to take a hard stance in Laos, and toppling Diem’s government, which weakened both the South militarily and politically. Johnson, Nixon contends, was trying not to lose rather than win, prioritizing domestic programs over a clear, achievable war goal.
Nixon’s five facts for a sound strategy are worth highlighting: the theater had to include all of Indochina; North Vietnam’s aggression was the war’s central cause; South Vietnam needed to assume internal responsibility; conventional search-and-destroy tactics were insufficient; and Laos was key to controlling the region. Blind faith in counterinsurgency, unwarranted trust in agreements, fear of Chinese intervention, and public reticence led to gradual escalation, which only strengthened the North.
The first half of the book recounts Ho Chi Minh’s consistency as a communist revolutionary and critiques the French and early American approaches, arguing that a realistic understanding of North Vietnamese intentions would have suggested a broader, more integrated strategy from the beginning. Nixon critiques counterinsurgency, showing how Pentagon orthodoxy treated every challenge like a conventional military problem, while guerrilla tactics and political control dictated a different approach. The Tet Offensive, though a tactical communist failure, demonstrated the strategic trap Johnson had walked into: a war of attrition that favored the insurgents politically and militarily.
Once in office, Nixon laid out a five-part strategy: Vietnamization, pacification, diplomatic isolation of the North, negotiations, and gradual withdrawal. Each step reinforced the others, allowing the South to assume responsibility while preserving U.S. credibility and leverage. Secret operations in Cambodia, combined with measured withdrawals, bought time for South Vietnamese forces to consolidate control, while triangulation with China and the USSR pressured Hanoi diplomatically. Nixon shows an acute awareness of both military and political timing, emphasizing that withdrawals must come from strength, not retreat.
Nixon also addresses domestic challenges, including antiwar protests, youth dissent, and media narratives. He emphasizes that public support was never uniform and that the U.S. military, particularly young soldiers, performed honorably under difficult conditions. Vietnamization, along with pacification programs and reforms under Thieu, shifted control of the countryside back to the South, illustrating the book’s central thesis: victory is not simply a function of firepower but of political, military, and diplomatic integration.
The book’s last chapter Third World War situate Vietnam within a global context. Nixon draws lessons about proxy wars, the limits of conventional military power, and the importance of combining diplomacy, economic support, and credible deterrence. He stresses that democracies are constrained by public opinion, but that properly managed, these constraints can be leveraged to achieve long-term goals without catastrophic escalation.
Overall, No More Vietnams is compelling for anyone interested in strategy, U.S. foreign policy, or the lessons of Vietnam. It blends memoir with prescriptive analysis and challenges simplistic narratives of failure, placing responsibility on both policy missteps and structural limits of American decision-making. While Nixon’s perspective is obviously partisan, the book offers a coherent competing framework for understanding why the war unfolded as it did, how it could have been managed differently, and what lessons future leaders might draw from it.
Overall, the book reads like a strategic post-mortem, with Nixon refuting popular myths, although not by a numbered list I would have liked, while simultaneously justifying his own decisions. It’s unapologetically self-serving in places, but the level of detail on troop movements, diplomatic triangulation, and timing decisions gives you a real sense of how the war could have—and in his view, should have—been managed.
Nixon’s case for involvement initially is not as strong as his strategies for getting out, but by the end he makes a decent case for global containment as opposed to Kennan’s original strongpoint containment, which only committed to the defense of strategic areas rather than countering Soviet influence everywhere. Commonly referred to as the domino theory, global containment was ridiculed as disproven by Vietnam but immediately afterwards communist and anti-American forces scored huge wins across Central America, Africa, Asia and the Middle East in Nicaragua, Angola, Ethiopia, Iran and Afghanistan sensing reduced American resolve towards allies giving an opportunity to revise regional order, which came to a stop with Reagan’s intervention in Grenada and clandestine support of opposition globally. Global containment is also tied to offensive realism in which states constantly aim to revise global order in their favor rather than favor the status quo, defensive realism, so that one region changing hands invites further changes to the balance of power, giving influence to aggressive powers.
Tentative summary:
Nixon starts by hitting us with a laundry list of claims about the Vietnam War—everything from “it was a civil war” to “life is better in Indochina now that the U.S. is gone”—and immediately declares them all false. Right away, he frames the book as a myth-busting project: these widely accepted conclusions aren’t just wrong, they distort how the war is remembered and understood, and he argues they had tragic consequences in real life.
From the outset, Nixon identifies three priorities that should have guided U.S. policy in Vietnam: stopping South Vietnam’s defeat by guerrillas, blunting the Ho Chi Minh trail through Laos and Cambodia, and preparing the South to defend itself. He argues that between 1964–1968, the U.S. focused almost exclusively on the first while neglecting the latter two. Mistakes, he claims, include viewing the North’s aggression as merely a Southern insurgency, failing to take a hard stance in Laos, and toppling Diem’s government, which weakened both the South militarily and politically. Johnson, Nixon contends, was trying not to lose rather than win, prioritizing domestic programs over a clear, achievable war goal.
Nixon’s five facts for a sound strategy are worth highlighting: the theater had to include all of Indochina; North Vietnam’s aggression was the war’s central cause; South Vietnam needed to assume internal responsibility; conventional search-and-destroy tactics were insufficient; and Laos was key to controlling the region. Blind faith in counterinsurgency, unwarranted trust in agreements, fear of Chinese intervention, and public reticence led to gradual escalation, which only strengthened the North.
The first half of the book recounts Ho Chi Minh’s consistency as a communist revolutionary and critiques the French and early American approaches, arguing that a realistic understanding of North Vietnamese intentions would have suggested a broader, more integrated strategy from the beginning. Nixon critiques counterinsurgency, showing how Pentagon orthodoxy treated every challenge like a conventional military problem, while guerrilla tactics and political control dictated a different approach. The Tet Offensive, though a tactical communist failure, demonstrated the strategic trap Johnson had walked into: a war of attrition that favored the insurgents politically and militarily.
Once in office, Nixon laid out a five-part strategy: Vietnamization, pacification, diplomatic isolation of the North, negotiations, and gradual withdrawal. Each step reinforced the others, allowing the South to assume responsibility while preserving U.S. credibility and leverage. Secret operations in Cambodia, combined with measured withdrawals, bought time for South Vietnamese forces to consolidate control, while triangulation with China and the USSR pressured Hanoi diplomatically. Nixon shows an acute awareness of both military and political timing, emphasizing that withdrawals must come from strength, not retreat.
Nixon also addresses domestic challenges, including antiwar protests, youth dissent, and media narratives. He emphasizes that public support was never uniform and that the U.S. military, particularly young soldiers, performed honorably under difficult conditions. Vietnamization, along with pacification programs and reforms under Thieu, shifted control of the countryside back to the South, illustrating the book’s central thesis: victory is not simply a function of firepower but of political, military, and diplomatic integration.
The book’s last chapter Third World War situate Vietnam within a global context. Nixon draws lessons about proxy wars, the limits of conventional military power, and the importance of combining diplomacy, economic support, and credible deterrence. He stresses that democracies are constrained by public opinion, but that properly managed, these constraints can be leveraged to achieve long-term goals without catastrophic escalation.
Overall, No More Vietnams is compelling for anyone interested in strategy, U.S. foreign policy, or the lessons of Vietnam. It blends memoir with prescriptive analysis and challenges simplistic narratives of failure, placing responsibility on both policy missteps and structural limits of American decision-making. While Nixon’s perspective is obviously partisan, the book offers a coherent competing framework for understanding why the war unfolded as it did, how it could have been managed differently, and what lessons future leaders might draw from it.
September 6, 2022
….Wherein Nixon makes the argument that America actually won the Vietnam War.
February 5, 2013
Such a tragic story. No More Vietnams is hard reading because of the impending sense of doom. All the bad guys win. All the guys who should have known better sit by, let it happen, and make excuses for murderers. It's just horrible.
On the other hand. Nixon is an excellent writer. He is clear, precise, and straightforward. Nixon does not have the obfuscating style I've come to expect from politicians. His sentences have weight.
Nixon also seems to a bit prophetic: does anyone use conventional tactics anymore? If we had paid more attention in Vietnam, we might have been effective faster in the Middle East. Terrorism is the reality of warfare today.
The only thing I could ask for: have the text divided into shorter chapters and shorter paragraphs. Sometimes felt like the action got a bit lost in the flow of text. But that's a minor style thing.
I hope we never, never, never fight so half-heartedly ever again.
On the other hand. Nixon is an excellent writer. He is clear, precise, and straightforward. Nixon does not have the obfuscating style I've come to expect from politicians. His sentences have weight.
Nixon also seems to a bit prophetic: does anyone use conventional tactics anymore? If we had paid more attention in Vietnam, we might have been effective faster in the Middle East. Terrorism is the reality of warfare today.
The only thing I could ask for: have the text divided into shorter chapters and shorter paragraphs. Sometimes felt like the action got a bit lost in the flow of text. But that's a minor style thing.
I hope we never, never, never fight so half-heartedly ever again.
January 19, 2013
Richard Nixon finally gives his side of the Vietnam War. The book answers a lot of questions about why he did some of the things he did during the war, and the aftermaths of those decisions. Nixon's goal was to get the North Vietnamese and Viet Cong to sign a cease-fire, which they did, and, as such, we won the war.
January 3, 2010
Again, this is not a book whose ideology I subscribe, but I thought it was well written, and I learned a lot about the history of the Vietnam War that quite truthfully I was ignorant to prior.
September 16, 2010
a great work from an outstanding president and totally amoral man.
August 3, 2011
Fascinating stuff - I need to go back and reread this.
January 16, 2022
Nixon's main thesis in No More Vietnams: We failed in our attempts to free the people of Vietnam from the yoke of Communist tyranny. "No more Vietnams" could mean we shouldn't try again [elsewhere], but it should mean we shouldn't fail again.
Nixon was a very good writer, which makes it hard to separate his spin/perception from reality unless you're very familiar with the time and events. His beliefs and approach - as written - are so reasonable, it's hard to understand how divisive that war was without having been politically aware at the time. The only thing I could identify as fabrication or fancy in this book was was his assertion the attack on US warships in the Gulf of Tonkin (which popped the cork on US escalation in Vietnam) actually happened as reported at the time. That incident has been so thoroughly discredited by so many different people of all political persuasions, it's amazing Nixon stuck with the story as late as '85 when the book was published.
All-in-all an interesting read.
Nixon was a very good writer, which makes it hard to separate his spin/perception from reality unless you're very familiar with the time and events. His beliefs and approach - as written - are so reasonable, it's hard to understand how divisive that war was without having been politically aware at the time. The only thing I could identify as fabrication or fancy in this book was was his assertion the attack on US warships in the Gulf of Tonkin (which popped the cork on US escalation in Vietnam) actually happened as reported at the time. That incident has been so thoroughly discredited by so many different people of all political persuasions, it's amazing Nixon stuck with the story as late as '85 when the book was published.
All-in-all an interesting read.
August 25, 2021
Throughout our lives it is important to reframe our view of mistakes. We need to learn how to make the most of them so that going forward we can reshape our goals and expectations. Reading “No More Vietnams” is not an effort to learn from mistakes but just a blame game.
In 1991 the Washington Post published and article by E.J. Dione Jr. titled Kicking The Vietnam Syndrome that started out saying, “Wars transform nations, but the response to wars can transform them even more”.
Richard Nixon’s book, “No More Vietnams” was not a response to the war but was instead just his finger pointing blame on everyone who he felt didn’t support him in his book that was “actually Nixon’s diatribe against the antiwar movement, academics, the media, and everyone else he thinks lost Vietnam.”
See the rest of this review at:
https://connectedeventsmatter.com/blo...
In 1991 the Washington Post published and article by E.J. Dione Jr. titled Kicking The Vietnam Syndrome that started out saying, “Wars transform nations, but the response to wars can transform them even more”.
Richard Nixon’s book, “No More Vietnams” was not a response to the war but was instead just his finger pointing blame on everyone who he felt didn’t support him in his book that was “actually Nixon’s diatribe against the antiwar movement, academics, the media, and everyone else he thinks lost Vietnam.”
See the rest of this review at:
https://connectedeventsmatter.com/blo...
February 19, 2020
Interesting as a historical footnote and a certain perspective on the Vietnam War and U.S. foreign policy that I fundamentally disagree with. Argues that we (and, particularly, the Nixon Administration) won the war and lost the peace in Vietnam. Argument is laughable given that it decries "reasonable interval" thinking about the North Vietnam takeover of the South, when the historical record suggests that's exactly what his administration has in mind. But it's a cogent, readable work that shows a nimble mind, even if a lot of the nimbleness is used to dissemble.
February 23, 2023
Reading this book is like asking the devil "what the f** did you have in mind?" and getting very detailed responses. Reading this you will know about the ideas, hidden reasons behind the most useless war in history (well, is there any useful war?), strategy and hidden plans. You will also learn how pacifist movements were fundamental and impactful and about the power we hold in making a difference.
May 2, 2024
Very interesting read. Regarding the facts - Nixon is pretty much right on. I worked years in intelligence and during the Vietnam era my primary target was COSVN. So much of what is in this book is backed up by the intelligence information that I worked with. Plus, he makes a lot of excellent points regarding foreign affairs and communism.
December 26, 2019
Eye opening.
Want to read
February 26, 2021good
August 26, 2024
An examination of self by a failed president about a failed war. If you can put politics aside, an interesting treatment of the war we lost.
July 19, 2025
Extremely enlightening and very interesting new information on this controversial war.
June 8, 2014
As much as I hated reading this when I had to read it for school, it really helped me understand the Vietnam war. (not that I remember much of it now) The one thing I noticed throughout the entire book was Nixon's tendency to blame everyone else. Having not heard other perspectives on the war, I can't fairly judge right or wrong. Many of the steps Nixon took were successful in getting the US out of Vietnam. However, in light of the fact that the situation deteriorated as soon as the US left, it was all for nothing. The US could have left years earlier for the same result. I also did not like Nixon's preference for secrecy.
October 20, 2008
Excellent explaination of the Vietnam War
Displaying 1 - 21 of 21 reviews