Newly released papers show Soviets didn’t bite on Nixon’s ‘madman strategy’

? President Nixon ordered a worldwide secret nuclear alert in October 1969, calling his wartime tactic a “madman strategy” aimed at scaring the Soviets into forcing concessions from North Vietnam, declassified documents show.

It didn’t work, as Moscow displayed no concern. The reason is unclear. The Soviets may not have cared, may not have been as influential as Nixon believed — or, like the rest of the world, might not have noticed the alert.

The aim of the alert was kept secret from even the generals who put it into place.

The bluff was part of what Nixon described as a “madman” strategy to his new administration at the outset of 1969: ratcheting up military pressure on the North Vietnamese at unpredictable intervals to pressure them into concessions at peace talks in Paris.

Nixon believed this would accelerate accommodation by the North Vietnamese, forcing them into an agreement that would leave U.S. ally South Vietnam in place.

Among declassified documents published this week by the independent National Security Archive is a memo to National Security Adviser Henry Kissinger from his assistant, Gen. Alexander Haig. It described plans to signal “U.S. intent to escalate military operations in Vietnam in the face of continued enemy intransigence in Paris.”

Among the “signals” in Haig’s March 2 outline: bombing enemy positions in Cambodia. On March 17, Nixon launched a massive secret bombing campaign against communist bases in that country.

Despite such pressures, the Paris talks remained deadlocked, and Nixon began to contemplate the nuclear alert in the summer of 1969.

A memo telegraphed Oct. 19 from Gen. Earle Wheeler, the Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman, to all his commanders in chief ordered a “series of actions during the period 13 October – 25 October to test our military readiness in selected areas worldwide to respond to possible confrontation by the Soviet Union. These actions should be discernible to the Soviets, but not threatening in themselves.”

He recommended grounding combat aircraft in selected areas for readiness checks, periods of radio silence and increased surveillance of Soviet ships — all actions that suggested posturing for a nuclear conflict, and which the Americans believed the Soviets were sure to notice. A later “talking points” document showed Wheeler also ordered heightened combat readiness for ground troops.

The alert spread far beyond the Southeast Asian theater, and included U.S. forces in the Mideast and Europe.

The commanders carrying out the orders did not know the purpose of the exercise. Wheeler told them only that “we have been directed by a higher authority,” an apparent reference to Nixon’s immediate policy circle.

In an Oct. 17 diary entry, Chief of Staff H.R. Haldeman wrote: “(Kissinger) has all sorts of signal-type activity going on around the world to try to jar the Soviets and NVN (North Vietnam).”

Keeping the secret to a small circle of advisers prevented leaks as well as widespread panic and protest, anathema to Nixon’s plans to tightly control the war maneuvering. But it may have backfired.

According to a report on the nuclear alert in the January 2003 issue of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, Soviet Ambassador Anatoly Dobrynin betrayed no knowledge — or concern — of the nuclear alert in a meeting with a U.S. official a few days after the alert.

The Soviets resented attempts to use means unrelated to the Vietnam conflict to pressure them to rein in the North Vietnamese. Nixon brought Vietnam into arms reduction and Mideast talks as well. Although the Soviets were a major arms supplier to North Vietnam, Hanoi adeptly played the USSR against the Chinese, threatening a move to the other sphere of influence at the first sign of pressure.