Half a century after the fall of Saigon, the reverberations of Vietnam continue to be felt in America’s debates about foreign policy — from the complications of Ukraine to the larger questions about America’s role in the world. The United States and Vietnam, which were bitter enemies for more than three decades, are now bound together by increasingly close economic relations and strategic interests, including opposition to China’s rise. Yet this alliance is still shadowed by the unresolved legacy of the Vietnam War — a legacy that, as America’s global power wanes, continues to shape what it means to be both Vietnamese and American
This developing partnership represents a significant change. However, genuinely coming to terms with the past cannot end at pragmatic cooperation. It requires moving away from a strictly American-centric understanding and coming to grips with the war as the Vietnamese experienced it — as a fight for national liberation, albeit a war tragically caught up in the machinations of a global Cold War.
Vietnam is a wound for many Americans: a bloody quagmire, a blot on our conscience, a war that claimed more than 58,000 American lives and shattered faith at home in the good intentions of the government. But if you view Vietnam purely through the prism of American defeat, you risk overlooking the deeper meaning of the war — and its enduring consequences.
The failure of America in Vietnam was a failure of political imagination. Terrified of the prospect of communist victory, Washington sabotaged the 1954 Geneva Accords, which had called for national elections, and supported an anti-communist government in the South. In so doing, it contributed to freezing and escalating what might otherwise have remained a limited postcolonial struggle. With greater and greater military engagement, Vietnam turned into a proxy battleground for Cold War hostilities at an enormous human cost. But any honest history must also be forthright about the genuine fears that shaped American policy and the deeper currents of ideology.
Admitting American error does not excuse Hanoi of its own obligations. The Communist Party’s postwar policies — reeducation camps, political purges, forced collectivization — not only deepened Vietnam’s internal wounds but also led to a mass exodus that remade Vietnamese communities around the globe. Policies shaped by that era still influence the political landscape today, and they stand in the way of a true, open effort to reckon with the past.
As the country strides ahead economically, the question is: Can the nation, sooner rather than later, come to terms with its past? To Lam, general secretary for Vietnam’s Communist Party, has recently written about “reconciliation” and “tolerance,” explaining that genuine “unity” entails “accepting different perspectives in the spirit of tolerance and respect, to jointly aim for the greater goal: building a peaceful, unified, powerful, civilized, and prosperous Vietnam.” But real healing will take more than rhetoric. It requires making room for a multitude of memories — including those of the diaspora — to coexist, ungated by the official narrative.
The lessons of Vietnam are deep for America as well. Not even the strongest army can replace political legitimacy. Conflicts within a region are as complicated as the regions they take place in and can’t be reduced to simple ideological categories. And how wars end is as important as how they are fought. The manner in which the war in South Vietnam came to a close — with abrupt withdrawal, broken commitments and implosion — damaged America’s status in the world in ways that still echo.
Now, as the United States contends with a multipolar world, the Vietnamese ghost lingers still. In Ukraine, we see echoes of the past: a smaller country fighting for its life against a bigger aggressor, with American backing a combination of the practical and the moral. Of course, the contexts are different — Ukraine is a sovereign democracy facing a conventional invasion, not a civil war driven by Cold War proxy rivalries. But the quandaries of loyalty, character and honor reverberate eerily.
As we navigate this new era, it is worth remembering the lessons of Vietnam: the price of intervention, the limits of power and the ongoing importance of moral clarity. It’s a clarity often obscured by the fog of that distant, unfinished war.
Leo Tran was born and raised in Vietnam. As a writer, he addresses international business and politics, with a focus on Southeast Asia.
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