One of the most dangerous effects of Nixon's, Vietnamization policy was what the June 1971 issue of the Armed Forces Journal called the collapse of the American military. By 1971 the easy availability of drugs in Vietnam had led to widespread drug abuse by American soldiers. The U.S. Army estimated that 35 percent of all soldiers had tried heroin; use of marijuana was nearly universal. Racial tensions in an army that was disproportionately nonwhite and poor were high, and racial confrontations often occurred. Pacifism in the military was widespread: the Armed Forces Journal estimated that there were 144 underground newspapers and fourteen antiwar organizations within the ranks of the military. Most important, the command structure of military authority was breaking down. Desertion rates were three times what they had been in the Korean War. Soldiers increasingly murdered their own officers, a practice known...