Laird was instrumental in forming the administration's policy of withdrawing U.S. soldiers from the Vietnam War; he invented the expression "Vietnamization," referring to the process of transferring more responsibility for combat to the South Vietnamese forces.
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Thus he developed and strongly supported "Vietnamization", a program intended to expand, equip, and train South Vietnam's forces and assign to them an ever-increasing combat role, at the same time steadily reducing the number of U.S. combat troops.
The Nixon Doctrine implied the intentions of Richard Nixon shifting the direction on international policies in Asia, especially aiming for "Vietnamization of the Vietnam War."
With the election of President Richard M. Nixon in 1968 and the announcement of the new American policy of Vietnamization in 1969, America's relations with Cambodia began to change.
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Washington and the American command in Saigon considered the operation a great success, both as a test of the new American policy of Vietnamization and in setting back any communist offensives planned against the Saigon area during the next year.
As observed by Lieutenant Dave Palmer, to qualify an ARVN candidate for U.S. helicopter school, he first needed to learn English; this, in addition to the months-long training and practice in the field, made adding new capabilities to the ARVN take at least two years.
He counted on the success of Vietnamization, peace talks that had begun in 1968 in Paris, and the secret negotiations in Paris between Henry Kissinger, the president's assistant for national security affairs, and North Vietnamese representatives to end the conflict.