Word: battlefield
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...most conducive to fruitful negotiations; a policy of exerting continuing military pressure or one of inviting de-escalation by example. Despite the strong faith of some critics in the efficacy of voluntary deescalation, the evidence that Hanoi was signaling tacit willingness to lower the level of fighting during the battlefield lull is still far from compelling. The Communists, after all, needed the rest just as urgently for military reasons ?and may well have decided to stay in the jungle in order to prepare for another blow that would force Nixon's hand...
Nixon feels that he must retain "the ability to make 20 moves or more at the same time," as one top adviser puts it ?and make them largely in secrecy. He must maintain the pressure on the battlefield, but not so intensely that Hanoi breaks off the peace talks in Paris. He must continue preparing the South Vietnamese to assume more responsibility, but not undercut them by bargaining with the North behind their backs. He must allow the Saigon government to negotiate as an equal partner, but not permit it to exhaust U.S. public patience by foot dragging...
...good faith in a succession of moves, rather than asking it to risk its position on a single bold stroke. For another, it would give U.S. fighting men time to initiate their ARVN replacements with firsthand experience?and keep providing, until the last phase, the most complicated kinds of battlefield assistance, especially air support...
...shelling of cities, the ordinary life in the country continues almost normally. Communications and roads are largely unimpaired, and the vital pacification effort-dealt a heavy blow in last year's assault-is unaffected in 36 of the country's 44 provinces. Saigon, which became an urban battlefield in 1968, has so far felt the offensive's blows only in the form of rocket salvos. There are no new curfew restrictions, no hoarding, no staggering price increases. Acts of terrorism, while still a threat, are well below last year's level, and the number of civilians...
...spot; if he lived, he was often mistreated. As far as his superiors were concerned, he had proved himself on the field; they were happy if he did not defect to the enemy. But in this century of total war, the prison camp has become an extension of the battlefield. Totalitarian nations are not content merely to extract information from a P.O.W. They often hound and harass a man for months and even years in order to win his mind and soul, to reduce him to an instrument of propaganda. It is, of course, a tactic that the Soviet Union...