The Treason That Prolonged a War: How Nixon Sabotaged Peace in Vietnam to Win the Presidency

I. DETAILED BREAKDOWN

Context: A War Nearing Its End

By October 1968, the Johnson administration was on the verge of ending the Vietnam War.
Peace talks in Paris were showing real momentum.

The U.S. and North Vietnam were closing in on a ceasefire agreement.
South Vietnam (under President Nguyễn Văn Thiệu) was reluctant but onboard.
LBJ was ready to announce a halt to bombing and a peace deal, mere days before the November 5 election.

Such an announcement would’ve boosted Democratic nominee Hubert Humphrey — potentially swinging the election.

The Sudden Collapse

Then, just two days before the election, South Vietnam mysteriously withdrew from the peace talks.
The bombshell deal collapsed.

Nixon won the election.
The war dragged on for 7 more years.
2 million more Vietnamese died.
30,000 more American troops lost their lives.

II. EXPERT ANALYSIS

1. WHAT REALLY HAPPENED: Nixon’s Secret Sabotage

Expert Lens: Declassified Government Records, FBI Files, Historical Journalism

While Nixon publicly supported peace, he was secretly working behind the scenes to undermine it.

He sent campaign aide Anna Chennault, a Republican power broker, to privately assure the South Vietnamese that they’d get a better deal if they waited until Nixon was in office.
Thieu complied, pulled out of the peace talks, and publicly claimed the U.S. was selling him out.

This shadow diplomacy — known today as the “Chennault Affair” — was an illegal violation of the Logan Act, which forbids private citizens from interfering with foreign negotiations.

📜 Declassified tapes and documents later confirmed that LBJ knew Nixon was interfering — but Johnson feared a national scandal and chose not to go public.

2. WHY IT MATTERS: Political Ambition Over Human Life

Nixon’s act wasn’t just backdoor politics.
It was political treason with devastating consequences:

Millions of lives were sacrificed for electoral gain.
The war continued with Cambodia and Laos bombings, My Lai massacre cover-up, and intensified domestic unrest in the U.S.
Nixon won by a narrow margin — one that may have reversed if peace had been achieved in October.

This decision reflects what historian Robert Dallek called “one of the most reprehensible acts in modern American history.”

3. THE COVER-UP: LBJ’s Silence

Despite having FBI surveillance and CIA intel confirming Nixon’s backchannel communications, President Johnson refused to go public.

Why?

He feared destabilizing the country during a time of war and civil unrest.
He didn’t want to reveal how deeply the U.S. was spying on foreign and domestic actors.
He believed history would eventually uncover the truth.

LBJ on White House tapes:
“This is treason.”
“It would rock the world.”

4. LEGACY AND LESSONS

The Chennault Affair set a dark precedent for how American foreign policy could be hijacked for personal gain.
It raised ethical questions about the limits of campaign power, executive knowledge, and national security secrecy.
This act may have contributed to the culture of political cynicism that exploded during Watergate just a few years later.

III. CONCLUSION: The War That Didn’t Have to Be

The Vietnam War, by late 1968, could have ended.
But Richard Nixon, not yet president, chose power over peace.

He leveraged a nation’s desperation for stability to secure an election victory, then inherited a war he helped prolong.

History did uncover the truth. But not before it buried the lives of hundreds of thousands under the silence of ambition.