We fought a military war; our opponents fought a political one. We sought physical attrition; our opponents aimed for our psychological exhaustion. In the process we lost sight of one of the cardinal maxims of guerrilla war: the guerrilla wins if he does not lose. The conventional army loses if it does not win. The North Vietnamese used their armed forces the way a bull-fighter uses his cape -- to keep us lunging in areas of marginal political importance.
-- Henry Alfred Kissinger (27 May 1923 - 29 November 2023), German-American politician, diplomat, and geopolitical consultant who served as United States Secretary of State and National Security Advisor under the presidential administrations of Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford, "The Vietnam Negotiations", Foreign Affairs, Vol. 48, No. 2 (January 1969), p. 214
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