What would it take for the Soviets to draw down support for the Vietnam War?

Nixon's Gamble: How a President's Own Secret Government . . . , Locker, page 49:

https://books.google.com/books?id=a... between the desire for a peace deal"&f=false

' . . . Nixon veered between a desire for a peace deal to end the Vietnam War and the impulse to look too tough to care about peace. The Soviets, however, knew from their secret Dobrynin channel that Nixon did not believe the war was winnable. That rendered much of his war strategy strictly for show and undermined Nixon's so-called madman theory, which he thought made him formidable and unpredictable. Instead, Nixon unsettled his own team, . . . '
I'm not a great fan of the 'madman' strategy anyway. Too much risk, and not enough reward to make up for it. It's like someone trying to be new sheriff at the poker table. How often does that shit work? Only occasionally.

But perhaps a modified version of the 'madman' theory ? ?
 
I'm not a great fan of the 'madman' strategy anyway. Too much risk, and not enough reward to make up for it. It's like someone trying to be new sheriff at the poker table. How often does that shit work? Only occasionally.

But perhaps a modified version of the 'madman' theory ? ?

IKE moving nukes to the Asia sure got Mao and company to move during Korea to make peace.

The enemy has to think you are willing to massively commit to a war at times to achieve peace though I wouldn't call it mad man theory.
 
The enemy has to think you are willing to massively commit to a war at times to achieve peace though I wouldn't call it mad man theory.
I can see the steady eddie workaday approach. Like Nixon and Operation Dewey Canyon where U.S. forces moved to a corner of Vietnam they hadn't been to a while and found significant caches of arms. All the same, about 125 U.S. marines and about twelve hundred communist fighters lost their lives.

And while we might cheer at the ratio, shit, this is one reason I'm a (contingent) pacifist. I mean, I agree with the Quakers and Mennonites much more than I don't.

And I'll tell you what I really don't like. When we the United States helped lead the NATO bombing in 1999 of areas in Serbia, one of the stated justifications was that whether the war continues or not it's in the hands of Milosevic ? ? So, this is the guy we call a sociopath, with good reason, and then say the whole damn thing is in his hands. So, yeah, this is kind of a version of the greater madman theory.
 
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