Paris Peace Accords
The Paris Peace Accords (Vietnamese: Hiệp định Paris về Việt Nam), officially the Agreement on Ending the War and Restoring Peace in Viet Nam (Hiệp định về chấm dứt chiến tranh, lập lại hòa bình ở Việt Nam), was a peace agreement signed on January 27, 1973, to establish peace in Vietnam and end the Vietnam War. The agreement was signed by the governments of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam (North Vietnam); the Republic of Vietnam (South Vietnam); the United States; and the Provisional Revolutionary Government of the Republic of South Vietnam (PRG), which represented South Vietnamese communists.[1] US ground forces had begun to withdraw from Vietnam in 1969, and had suffered from deteriorating morale during the withdrawal. By the beginning of 1972 those that remained had very little involvement in combat. The last American infantry battalions withdrew in August 1972.[2] Most air and naval forces, and most advisers, also were gone from South Vietnam by that time, though air and naval forces not based in South Vietnam were still playing a large role in the war. The Paris Agreement removed the remaining US forces. Direct U.S. military intervention was ended, and fighting between the three remaining powers temporarily stopped for less than a day. The agreement was not ratified by the U.S. Senate.[3][4]
For the treaties marking the official end of the Cambodian–Vietnamese War, see 1991 Paris Peace Agreements.
The negotiations that led to the accord began in 1968, after various lengthy delays. As a result of the accord, the International Control Commission (ICC) was replaced by the International Commission of Control and Supervision (ICCS), which consisted of Canada, Poland, Hungary, and Indonesia, to monitor the agreement.[5] The main negotiators of the agreement were U.S. National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger and the North Vietnamese Politburo member Lê Đức Thọ. Both men were awarded the 1973 Nobel Peace Prize for their efforts, but Lê Đức Thọ refused to accept it.
The agreement's provisions were immediately and frequently broken by both North and South Vietnamese forces with no official response from the United States. Open fighting broke out in March 1973, and North Vietnamese offensives enlarged their territory by the end of the year. Two years later, a massive North Vietnamese offensive conquered South Vietnam on April 30, 1975, and the two countries, which had been separated since 1954, united once more on July 2, 1976, as the Socialist Republic of Vietnam.[1]
Part of the negotiations took place in the former residence of the French painter Fernand Léger; it was bequeathed to the French Communist Party. The street of the house was named after Philippe Leclerc de Hauteclocque, who had commanded French forces in Vietnam after the Second World War.[6]
The agreement called for:
Assessment[edit]
According to Finnish historian Jussi Hanhimäki, due to triangular diplomacy which isolated it, South Vietnam was "pressurized into accepting an agreement that virtually ensured its collapse".[26] During negotiations, Kissinger stated that the United States would not intervene militarily 18 months after an agreement, but that it might intervene before that. In Vietnam War historiography, this has been termed the "decent interval".[27]
, Minister for Foreign Affairs for the Provisional Revolutionary Government of the Republic of South Vietnam
Nguyễn Thị Bình
Henry Cabot Lodge Jr., former United States Ambassador to South Vietnam, head of the U.S. delegation