Ex-Pentagon chief Laird who oversaw US exit from Vietnam dies
washington — Melvin Laird, who as defence secretary under president Richard Nixon from 1969 to 1973 helped extricate US forces from the morass of the Vietnam War in a policy he dubbed “Vietnamization,” has died at age 94.
His death was confirmed by the Richard Nixon Foundation on Wednesday.
Laird, a Republican from Wisconsin who once served in the US House of Representatives, also manoeuvred to get Nixon to pick Gerald Ford as vice-president when Spiro Agnew resigned, was instrumental in creating the all-volunteer US military and privately opposed Nixon’s incursion into Cambodia.
Laird served as defence secretary at a time when the Vietnam War, escalated by Republican Nixon’s Democratic predecessor, Lyndon Johnson, was provoking huge domestic protests in the United States, sapping American financial resources and killing tens of thousands of US troops.
Laird coined the term “Vietnamization” in 1969 to describe a policy of enlarging, equipping and training the forces of US ally South Vietnam to fight the forces of Communist North Vietnam. At the same time, the policy continuously reduced the number of US troops in Vietnam.
There were more than half a million US troops there when Laird became defence chief in 1969. By May 1972, that number had dwindled to 69,000. Some 58,000 US troops died in the war.
Two days before Laird ended his tenure at the Pentagon in January 1973, US and North Vietnamese negotiators signed a deal in Paris that included a full withdrawal of US forces.
The current US defence secretary, Ash Carter, said Laird throughout out his career “demonstrated an unfailing commitment to protecting our country, strengthening our military, and making a better world”.
In his last report as defence secretary, Laird said: “As a consequence of the success of the military aspects of Vietnamization, the South Vietnamese people today, in my view, are fully capable of providing for their own in-country security against the North Vietnamese.” —