Entering the executive office in 1969, Richard Milhaus Nixon would have to "pick up the slack" of his predecessor Lyndon Johnson who had left office while the Vietnam War was still waging on. Expected to be the "peaceful-president", Nixon was visualized by many Americans as being the one who would put an end to the war in Southeast Asia and bring American troops home. With Henry A. Kissinger as his most trusted foreign policy adviser, Nixon redefined the American role in the world, suggesting limits to U.S. resources and commitments. Therefore, Nixon and Kissinger set out to end the war "honorably", whereby this meant that total withdrawal from Vietnam could not, in Nixon's eyes, be an immediate option. Nixon felt that this would be a total abandonment of the South Vietnamese who had "counted" on American aid in defending the South. Yet certain questions arise that in what affect would immediate withdrawal really have on the south? Also Nixon and Kissinger had their eyes on Moscow and China. According to Herring, they felt that they must extricate the United States from the war in a manner that would uphold US credibility with friends and foes alike. Nixon would try a number of different strategies during his term in attempting to end the war "honorably". Today one can see that Richard Nixon only prolonged what could have been ended earlier.
             Nixon's first policy was sending the message to Hanoi that he meant business. With his "madman" campaign of escalated strategic bombings near the border of Cambodia, he hoped to get the North Vietnamese to believe that he was capable of doing anything to achieve victory. What Nixon did was what Johnson had been skeptical of doing, expand the war into Cambodia. The bombings were to be kept secret from the American public. Here we can see the beginning of Nixon's downfall as being a president of immense secrecy and deception.
             The bombing in Cambodia evidently did nothing in the ...