1968 in the Vietnam War Adams' iconic image of South Vietnamese General Nguyễn Ngọc Loan's execution of a Viet Cong operative was taken in 1968. The year also saw Walter Cronkite's call to honourably exit Vietnam because he thought the war was lost. This negative impression forced the US into the Paris peace talks with North Vietnam. US troop numbers peaked in 1968 with President Johnson approving an increased maximum number of US troops in Vietnam at 549,500. The year was the most expensive in the Vietnam War with the American spending US$ (US$ in 2019) on the war. The year also became the deadliest
Soviet Middle Eastern foreign policy during the Cold War Israelis and ending the nuclear-arms race. Nixon also became a key player in Middle East peace talks, ignoring Dwight D. Eisenhower's non-interventionism and hoping that his reputation for ending the Vietnam War, brokering the first nuclear-arms treaty and opening China to American trade would overshadow the Watergate scandal. The Arab-Israeli peace process was complex during the Soviet era. Although the Soviets were reluctant to join the American-backed peace movement (since they wanted a divided West), the cost of the arms race was beginning to bankrupt the Soviet Union. Strained relations among the parties stalled the initial negotiations, exacerbated by American-North