page_title: Foreign policy of the Gerald Ford administration
section_title: Vietnam
hierarchical_section_title: Foreign policy of the Gerald Ford administration / Vietnam
caption_attribution_description: English: President Ford and daughter Susan watch as Secretary of State Henry Kissinger shakes hands with Mao Tse-Tung; Chairman of Chinese Communist Party, during a visit to the Chairman’s residence. ID #A7912. Français&#160;: Gerald Ford, sa fille Susan, Henry Kissinger et Mao Zedong (1975).
context_page_description: The foreign policy of the Gerald Ford administration was the foreign policy of the United States from August 1974 to January 1977, when Gerald Ford served as president.
  Ford held office during the Cold War, and he continued Richard Nixon's policies regarding detente with both the Soviet Union and China. He presided over the final stages of the Vietnam War, announcing in April 1975 that U.S. participation in the war had ended. In the aftermath of the war, his administration responded forcefully to both the Mayaguez incident and an incident with North Korea in Panmunjom. In the aftermath of the Yom Kippur War, the Ford administration facilitated completion of the Sinai Interim Agreement between Israel and Egypt.
context_section_description: One of Ford's greatest challenges was dealing with the ongoing Vietnam War. American offensive operations against North Vietnam had ended with the Paris Peace Accords, signed on January 27, 1973. The accords declared a cease fire across both North and South Vietnam, and required the release of American prisoners of war. The agreement guaranteed the territorial integrity of Vietnam and, like the Geneva Conference of 1954, called for national elections in the North and South. South Vietnamese President Nguyen Van Thieu was not involved in the final negotiations, and publicly criticized the proposed agreement, but was pressured by Nixon and Kissinger into signing the agreement. In multiple letters to the South Vietnamese president, Nixon had promised that the United States would defend Thieu's government, should the North Vietnamese violate the accords.
  Fighting in Vietnam continued after the withdrawal of most U.S forces in early 1973. As North Vietnamese forces advanced in early 1975, Ford requested Congress approve a $722 million aid package for South Vietnam, funds that had been promised by the Nixon administration. Congress voted against the proposal by a wide margin. Senator Jacob K. Javits offered "...large sums for evacuation, but not one nickel for military aid". President Thieu resigned on April 21, 1975, publicly blaming the lack of support from the United States for the fall of his country. Two days later, on April 23, Ford gave a speech at Tulane University, announcing that the Vietnam War was over "...as far as America is concerned".
  With the North Vietnamese forces advancing on the South Vietnamese capital of Saigon, Ford ordered the evacuation of U.S. personnel, while also allowing U.S. forces to aid others who wished to escape from the Communist advance. Forty-thousand U.S. citizens and South Vietnamese were evacuated by plane until enemy attacks made further such evacuations impossible. In Operation Frequent Wind, the final phase of the evacuation preceding the fall of Saigon on April 30, military and Air America helicopters took evacuees to off-shore U.S. Navy vessels. During the operation, so many South Vietnamese helicopters landed on the vessels taking the evacuees that some were pushed overboard to make room for more people.
  The Vietnam War, which had raged since the 1950s, finally came to an end with the Fall of Saigon, and Vietnam was reunified into one country. Many of the Vietnamese evacuees were allowed to enter the United States under the Indochina Migration and Refugee Assistance Act. The 1975 act appropriated $455 million toward the costs of assisting the settlement of Indochinese refugees. In all, 130,000 Vietnamese refugees came to the United States in 1975. Thousands more escaped in the years that followed. Following the end of the war, Ford expanded the embargo of North Vietnam to cover all of Vietnam, blocked Vietnam's accession to the United Nations, and refused to establish full diplomatic relations.
caption: Ford and his daughter Susan watch as Henry Kissinger shakes hands with Mao Zedong, December 2, 1975
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