With American credibility in doubt, minds go back to Saigon in 1975
A look at the way The Economist covered the end of the Vietnam war
Can America’s friends still count on its support? Donald Trump’s apparent willingness to abandon Ukraine is making them doubtful. As the president eyes up Greenland, lays into Canada and bashes other fellow members of NATO, America’s position atop the liberal world order looks uncertain. This is not the first time. Fifty years ago this month, amid chaotic scenes, America pulled its remaining citizens out of South Vietnam, abandoning an ally and a war that it had once defined as essential to its interests. With America’s credibility severely weakened, The Economist was not alone in wondering how prepared it would be to project power abroad.
North and South Vietnam started fighting in the late 1950s. The communist North, which kicked out French colonialist forces in 1954, hoped to unite Vietnam under its rule. America sent troops to the South in 1965, fearing that if communism took hold there, too, it would spread across Asia and tip the balance in the cold war. But in early 1973, after eight years of fighting and the deaths of almost 60,000 of its soldiers, America withdrew its last fighters. (More than 3m Vietnamese civilians and soldiers were killed during the war.) With the communists winning, it faced an embarrassing defeat.
By April 1975 the Americans still in South Vietnam had retreated to its capital, Saigon. The Economist wrote that this had looked, a month earlier, possibly like a strategic withdrawal. But it was revealed to be “a headlong flight”. Images of “trudging refugees, soldiers in rags and dehydrated babies filled the television screens” of Americans. Those TV-watchers were fed up with the war, and with the American bombing campaigns that had killed huge numbers of Vietnamese civilians. So, too, was Congress. The conflict, we argued, had made Americans wonder what they stood to gain by defending any country—and to set that “against the cost of providing the help”.
“Only about one American in three, according to a recent poll, would now be prepared to have American troops fight even for the defence of western Europe. The decline in public support for the commitment to Europe comes partly, to be sure, from a feeling that Europe is now rich enough to spend more on its own defence (although in fact no feasible increase in western Europe's defence spending could make it militarily self-sufficient). But it also comes partly from the damage the Vietnam war has done to American self-confidence.”
In April American pride suffered two big blows. The first came on April 17th, when Cambodia’s American-backed government fled Phnom Penh, the capital, and insurgents from the communist Khmer Rouge took over. Days earlier helicopters had carried out the last Americans. It was, we wrote, “the end of one outpost on a lost frontier”. Cambodia’s then information minister felt his country was “seduced and abandoned” by America. Years later the American ambassador at the time said that his government had “handed [Cambodia] over to the butcher”. As many as 2m Cambodians died during four years of Khmer Rouge rule.
The second was the fall of Saigon, and with it the end of the Vietnam war. The Economist covered “the frantic last days” as the North’s tanks closed in. America rushed to evacuate diplomats and refugees, first by plane and then in overloaded helicopters. Tens of thousands of Vietnamese escaped on their own, some taking perilous journeys in small boats. (They would be followed in later years by over 1m more.) On April 29th a desperate crowd of 10,000 Vietnamese gathered at the American embassy. Thousands were rescued, but many were left behind as the last Americans in Saigon flew out at around 8am on April 30th. Images of the evacuation became symbolic of the humbling of the superpower. (Some would later compare it to America’s chaotic withdrawal from Kabul, Afghanistan’s capital, in 2021.)
Later that morning, Communist tanks smashed through the gates of the presidential palace—and soldiers raised their flag on top of it.
“The Vietnam war ended at 10 o’clock on Wednesday morning, not with a bang but a crumple. […] The victors seem to have made no attempt to organise an uprising in the city to greet them; the communists’ supporters cheered the arriving troops, but the accounts of western reporters suggest that most people watched them in silence.”
Why had four successive American administrations—from Dwight Eisenhower’s to Richard Nixon’s—failed in Vietnam? One mistake, The Economist argued, was thinking they had the political nous or military might to defeat North Vietnam and its allies. They also mistakenly believed that they could win the war “before American opinion grew weary of the casualties and the televised brutalities”. America hoped, too, to create a “democratic structure” in South Vietnam “faster and more convincingly” than was possible. War, it turned out, did “not provide laboratory conditions for an experiment in democracy”.
“When those hopes proved false, the American government thought it could still trudge on with its policy without losing the support of its own people and the acquiescence of its allies. It was wrong on that count too, and it is paying a large price for its misjudgment. It has been a futile war, because it was lost; any war that fails to achieve its purpose is an exercise in wasted lives, money, and political credit.”
The end of the conflict prompted questions about America’s role in the world. The international order after the second world war had rested on an assumption of American primacy. Would Vietnam bring that to an end? “To see the acceptance of failure in Indochina as a rejection of foreign responsibilities altogether would be unreal and contrived,” we wrote, referring to data that showed growing support for sending arms to Israel.
But even though the war was “not the only cause of the present diminution of American influence”, we argued, “it is one”. The American alliance was not “as it once seemed”, when the Americans had regarded “a threat to one of their friends as the equivalent of a threat to themselves”. The “assumed knitting together of interests” no longer seemed certain—on either side. Though some countries, such as Australia, had sent troops to Vietnam, America mostly fought alone there. Many of its allies, particularly in Europe, were reluctant to join a war some saw as misguided.
“The past month's events make the question of American credibility a genuine one, and it is important not to exaggerate the answer, either way. The long list of countries around the world that depend, in one degree or another, on the American connection can be ranked in a rough order of priority. The ranking depends on how important each country is to American interests, and particularly American economic interests, on whether it has the sort of political system Americans want to protect, and on whether it possesses an effective lobby of supporters inside the United States itself.”
By those tests, we argued, it was “comforting—and true—for western Europe and probably Japan as well to tell themselves that they stand high on the American list”. Still, it was an oversimplification for European leaders to believe that the “Indochina shambles” would have no effect on America’s older allies at all.
The years after the fall of Saigon seemed to confirm America’s global retreat. Many Americans had become—and remained—sceptical of their governments’ interventions abroad, an attitude that became known as “Vietnam syndrome”. Communists captured Laos in December 1975. Revolutionaries in Iran toppled the American-backed Shah in January 1979. Then the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan at the end of that year, further denting America’s standing and adding to the free world’s worries.
Far from collapsing, however, American supremacy endured. America’s de facto alliance with China against the Soviet Union helped it to remain the world’s supreme power. Communism did not spread from Indochina across Asia. Vietnam duly opened up its economy in the 1980s and America is now its biggest export customer.
But today, as Mr Trump pursues an “America First” foreign policy, the American-led order is again being seriously questioned. And Americans are showing signs of a new version of Vietnam syndrome. ■
With American credibility in doubt, minds go back to Saigon in 1975
A look at the way The Economist covered the end of the Vietnam war
Can America’s friends still count on its support? Donald Trump’s apparent willingness to abandon Ukraine is making them doubtful. As the president eyes up Greenland, lays into Canada and bashes other fellow members of NATO, America’s position atop the liberal world order looks uncertain. This is not the first time. Fifty years ago this month, amid chaotic scenes, America pulled its remaining citizens out of South Vietnam, abandoning an ally and a war that it had once defined as essential to its interests. With America’s credibility severely weakened, The Economist was not alone in wondering how prepared it would be to project power abroad.
North and South Vietnam started fighting in the late 1950s. The communist North, which kicked out French colonialist forces in 1954, hoped to unite Vietnam under its rule. America sent troops to the South in 1965, fearing that if communism took hold there, too, it would spread across Asia and tip the balance in the cold war. But in early 1973, after eight years of fighting and the deaths of almost 60,000 of its soldiers, America withdrew its last fighters. (More than 3m Vietnamese civilians and soldiers were killed during the war.) With the communists winning, it faced an embarrassing defeat.
By April 1975 the Americans still in South Vietnam had retreated to its capital, Saigon. The Economist wrote that this had looked, a month earlier, possibly like a strategic withdrawal. But it was revealed to be “a headlong flight”. Images of “trudging refugees, soldiers in rags and dehydrated babies filled the television screens” of Americans. Those TV-watchers were fed up with the war, and with the American bombing campaigns that had killed huge numbers of Vietnamese civilians. So, too, was Congress. The conflict, we argued, had made Americans wonder what they stood to gain by defending any country—and to set that “against the cost of providing the help”.
“Only about one American in three, according to a recent poll, would now be prepared to have American troops fight even for the defence of western Europe. The decline in public support for the commitment to Europe comes partly, to be sure, from a feeling that Europe is now rich enough to spend more on its own defence (although in fact no feasible increase in western Europe's defence spending could make it militarily self-sufficient). But it also comes partly from the damage the Vietnam war has done to American self-confidence.”
In April American pride suffered two big blows. The first came on April 17th, when Cambodia’s American-backed government fled Phnom Penh, the capital, and insurgents from the communist Khmer Rouge took over. Days earlier helicopters had carried out the last Americans. It was, we wrote, “the end of one outpost on a lost frontier”. Cambodia’s then information minister felt his country was “seduced and abandoned” by America. Years later the American ambassador at the time said that his government had “handed [Cambodia] over to the butcher”. As many as 2m Cambodians died during four years of Khmer Rouge rule.
The second was the fall of Saigon, and with it the end of the Vietnam war. The Economist covered “the frantic last days” as the North’s tanks closed in. America rushed to evacuate diplomats and refugees, first by plane and then in overloaded helicopters. Tens of thousands of Vietnamese escaped on their own, some taking perilous journeys in small boats. (They would be followed in later years by over 1m more.) On April 29th a desperate crowd of 10,000 Vietnamese gathered at the American embassy. Thousands were rescued, but many were left behind as the last Americans in Saigon flew out at around 8am on April 30th. Images of the evacuation became symbolic of the humbling of the superpower. (Some would later compare it to America’s chaotic withdrawal from Kabul, Afghanistan’s capital, in 2021.)
Later that morning, Communist tanks smashed through the gates of the presidential palace—and soldiers raised their flag on top of it.
“The Vietnam war ended at 10 o’clock on Wednesday morning, not with a bang but a crumple. […] The victors seem to have made no attempt to organise an uprising in the city to greet them; the communists’ supporters cheered the arriving troops, but the accounts of western reporters suggest that most people watched them in silence.”
Why had four successive American administrations—from Dwight Eisenhower’s to Richard Nixon’s—failed in Vietnam? One mistake, The Economist argued, was thinking they had the political nous or military might to defeat North Vietnam and its allies. They also mistakenly believed that they could win the war “before American opinion grew weary of the casualties and the televised brutalities”. America hoped, too, to create a “democratic structure” in South Vietnam “faster and more convincingly” than was possible. War, it turned out, did “not provide laboratory conditions for an experiment in democracy”.
“When those hopes proved false, the American government thought it could still trudge on with its policy without losing the support of its own people and the acquiescence of its allies. It was wrong on that count too, and it is paying a large price for its misjudgment. It has been a futile war, because it was lost; any war that fails to achieve its purpose is an exercise in wasted lives, money, and political credit.”
The end of the conflict prompted questions about America’s role in the world. The international order after the second world war had rested on an assumption of American primacy. Would Vietnam bring that to an end? “To see the acceptance of failure in Indochina as a rejection of foreign responsibilities altogether would be unreal and contrived,” we wrote, referring to data that showed growing support for sending arms to Israel.
But even though the war was “not the only cause of the present diminution of American influence”, we argued, “it is one”. The American alliance was not “as it once seemed”, when the Americans had regarded “a threat to one of their friends as the equivalent of a threat to themselves”. The “assumed knitting together of interests” no longer seemed certain—on either side. Though some countries, such as Australia, had sent troops to Vietnam, America mostly fought alone there. Many of its allies, particularly in Europe, were reluctant to join a war some saw as misguided.
“The past month's events make the question of American credibility a genuine one, and it is important not to exaggerate the answer, either way. The long list of countries around the world that depend, in one degree or another, on the American connection can be ranked in a rough order of priority. The ranking depends on how important each country is to American interests, and particularly American economic interests, on whether it has the sort of political system Americans want to protect, and on whether it possesses an effective lobby of supporters inside the United States itself.”
By those tests, we argued, it was “comforting—and true—for western Europe and probably Japan as well to tell themselves that they stand high on the American list”. Still, it was an oversimplification for European leaders to believe that the “Indochina shambles” would have no effect on America’s older allies at all.
The years after the fall of Saigon seemed to confirm America’s global retreat. Many Americans had become—and remained—sceptical of their governments’ interventions abroad, an attitude that became known as “Vietnam syndrome”. Communists captured Laos in December 1975. Revolutionaries in Iran toppled the American-backed Shah in January 1979. Then the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan at the end of that year, further denting America’s standing and adding to the free world’s worries.
Far from collapsing, however, American supremacy endured. America’s de facto alliance with China against the Soviet Union helped it to remain the world’s supreme power. Communism did not spread from Indochina across Asia. Vietnam duly opened up its economy in the 1980s and America is now its biggest export customer.
But today, as Mr Trump pursues an “America First” foreign policy, the American-led order is again being seriously questioned. And Americans are showing signs of a new version of Vietnam syndrome. ■
With American credibility in doubt, minds go back to Saigon in 1975
A look at the way The Economist covered the end of the Vietnam war
Can America’s friends still count on its support? Donald Trump’s apparent willingness to abandon Ukraine is making them doubtful. As the president eyes up Greenland, lays into Canada and bashes other fellow members of NATO, America’s position atop the liberal world order looks uncertain. This is not the first time. Fifty years ago this month, amid chaotic scenes, America pulled its remaining citizens out of South Vietnam, abandoning an ally and a war that it had once defined as essential to its interests. With America’s credibility severely weakened, The Economist was not alone in wondering how prepared it would be to project power abroad.
North and South Vietnam started fighting in the late 1950s. The communist North, which kicked out French colonialist forces in 1954, hoped to unite Vietnam under its rule. America sent troops to the South in 1965, fearing that if communism took hold there, too, it would spread across Asia and tip the balance in the cold war. But in early 1973, after eight years of fighting and the deaths of almost 60,000 of its soldiers, America withdrew its last fighters. (More than 3m Vietnamese civilians and soldiers were killed during the war.) With the communists winning, it faced an embarrassing defeat.
By April 1975 the Americans still in South Vietnam had retreated to its capital, Saigon. The Economist wrote that this had looked, a month earlier, possibly like a strategic withdrawal. But it was revealed to be “a headlong flight”. Images of “trudging refugees, soldiers in rags and dehydrated babies filled the television screens” of Americans. Those TV-watchers were fed up with the war, and with the American bombing campaigns that had killed huge numbers of Vietnamese civilians. So, too, was Congress. The conflict, we argued, had made Americans wonder what they stood to gain by defending any country—and to set that “against the cost of providing the help”.
“Only about one American in three, according to a recent poll, would now be prepared to have American troops fight even for the defence of western Europe. The decline in public support for the commitment to Europe comes partly, to be sure, from a feeling that Europe is now rich enough to spend more on its own defence (although in fact no feasible increase in western Europe's defence spending could make it militarily self-sufficient). But it also comes partly from the damage the Vietnam war has done to American self-confidence.”
In April American pride suffered two big blows. The first came on April 17th, when Cambodia’s American-backed government fled Phnom Penh, the capital, and insurgents from the communist Khmer Rouge took over. Days earlier helicopters had carried out the last Americans. It was, we wrote, “the end of one outpost on a lost frontier”. Cambodia’s then information minister felt his country was “seduced and abandoned” by America. Years later the American ambassador at the time said that his government had “handed [Cambodia] over to the butcher”. As many as 2m Cambodians died during four years of Khmer Rouge rule.
The second was the fall of Saigon, and with it the end of the Vietnam war. The Economist covered “the frantic last days” as the North’s tanks closed in. America rushed to evacuate diplomats and refugees, first by plane and then in overloaded helicopters. Tens of thousands of Vietnamese escaped on their own, some taking perilous journeys in small boats. (They would be followed in later years by over 1m more.) On April 29th a desperate crowd of 10,000 Vietnamese gathered at the American embassy. Thousands were rescued, but many were left behind as the last Americans in Saigon flew out at around 8am on April 30th. Images of the evacuation became symbolic of the humbling of the superpower. (Some would later compare it to America’s chaotic withdrawal from Kabul, Afghanistan’s capital, in 2021.)
Later that morning, Communist tanks smashed through the gates of the presidential palace—and soldiers raised their flag on top of it.
“The Vietnam war ended at 10 o’clock on Wednesday morning, not with a bang but a crumple. […] The victors seem to have made no attempt to organise an uprising in the city to greet them; the communists’ supporters cheered the arriving troops, but the accounts of western reporters suggest that most people watched them in silence.”
Why had four successive American administrations—from Dwight Eisenhower’s to Richard Nixon’s—failed in Vietnam? One mistake, The Economist argued, was thinking they had the political nous or military might to defeat North Vietnam and its allies. They also mistakenly believed that they could win the war “before American opinion grew weary of the casualties and the televised brutalities”. America hoped, too, to create a “democratic structure” in South Vietnam “faster and more convincingly” than was possible. War, it turned out, did “not provide laboratory conditions for an experiment in democracy”.
“When those hopes proved false, the American government thought it could still trudge on with its policy without losing the support of its own people and the acquiescence of its allies. It was wrong on that count too, and it is paying a large price for its misjudgment. It has been a futile war, because it was lost; any war that fails to achieve its purpose is an exercise in wasted lives, money, and political credit.”
The end of the conflict prompted questions about America’s role in the world. The international order after the second world war had rested on an assumption of American primacy. Would Vietnam bring that to an end? “To see the acceptance of failure in Indochina as a rejection of foreign responsibilities altogether would be unreal and contrived,” we wrote, referring to data that showed growing support for sending arms to Israel.
But even though the war was “not the only cause of the present diminution of American influence”, we argued, “it is one”. The American alliance was not “as it once seemed”, when the Americans had regarded “a threat to one of their friends as the equivalent of a threat to themselves”. The “assumed knitting together of interests” no longer seemed certain—on either side. Though some countries, such as Australia, had sent troops to Vietnam, America mostly fought alone there. Many of its allies, particularly in Europe, were reluctant to join a war some saw as misguided.
“The past month's events make the question of American credibility a genuine one, and it is important not to exaggerate the answer, either way. The long list of countries around the world that depend, in one degree or another, on the American connection can be ranked in a rough order of priority. The ranking depends on how important each country is to American interests, and particularly American economic interests, on whether it has the sort of political system Americans want to protect, and on whether it possesses an effective lobby of supporters inside the United States itself.”
By those tests, we argued, it was “comforting—and true—for western Europe and probably Japan as well to tell themselves that they stand high on the American list”. Still, it was an oversimplification for European leaders to believe that the “Indochina shambles” would have no effect on America’s older allies at all.
The years after the fall of Saigon seemed to confirm America’s global retreat. Many Americans had become—and remained—sceptical of their governments’ interventions abroad, an attitude that became known as “Vietnam syndrome”. Communists captured Laos in December 1975. Revolutionaries in Iran toppled the American-backed Shah in January 1979. Then the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan at the end of that year, further denting America’s standing and adding to the free world’s worries.
Far from collapsing, however, American supremacy endured. America’s de facto alliance with China against the Soviet Union helped it to remain the world’s supreme power. Communism did not spread from Indochina across Asia. Vietnam duly opened up its economy in the 1980s and America is now its biggest export customer.
But today, as Mr Trump pursues an “America First” foreign policy, the American-led order is again being seriously questioned. And Americans are showing signs of a new version of Vietnam syndrome. ■
With American credibility in doubt, minds go back to Saigon in 1975
A look at the way The Economist covered the end of the Vietnam war
Can America’s friends still count on its support? Donald Trump’s apparent willingness to abandon Ukraine is making them doubtful. As the president eyes up Greenland, lays into Canada and bashes other fellow members of NATO, America’s position atop the liberal world order looks uncertain. This is not the first time. Fifty years ago this month, amid chaotic scenes, America pulled its remaining citizens out of South Vietnam, abandoning an ally and a war that it had once defined as essential to its interests. With America’s credibility severely weakened, The Economist was not alone in wondering how prepared it would be to project power abroad.
North and South Vietnam started fighting in the late 1950s. The communist North, which kicked out French colonialist forces in 1954, hoped to unite Vietnam under its rule. America sent troops to the South in 1965, fearing that if communism took hold there, too, it would spread across Asia and tip the balance in the cold war. But in early 1973, after eight years of fighting and the deaths of almost 60,000 of its soldiers, America withdrew its last fighters. (More than 3m Vietnamese civilians and soldiers were killed during the war.) With the communists winning, it faced an embarrassing defeat.
By April 1975 the Americans still in South Vietnam had retreated to its capital, Saigon. The Economist wrote that this had looked, a month earlier, possibly like a strategic withdrawal. But it was revealed to be “a headlong flight”. Images of “trudging refugees, soldiers in rags and dehydrated babies filled the television screens” of Americans. Those TV-watchers were fed up with the war, and with the American bombing campaigns that had killed huge numbers of Vietnamese civilians. So, too, was Congress. The conflict, we argued, had made Americans wonder what they stood to gain by defending any country—and to set that “against the cost of providing the help”.
“Only about one American in three, according to a recent poll, would now be prepared to have American troops fight even for the defence of western Europe. The decline in public support for the commitment to Europe comes partly, to be sure, from a feeling that Europe is now rich enough to spend more on its own defence (although in fact no feasible increase in western Europe's defence spending could make it militarily self-sufficient). But it also comes partly from the damage the Vietnam war has done to American self-confidence.”
In April American pride suffered two big blows. The first came on April 17th, when Cambodia’s American-backed government fled Phnom Penh, the capital, and insurgents from the communist Khmer Rouge took over. Days earlier helicopters had carried out the last Americans. It was, we wrote, “the end of one outpost on a lost frontier”. Cambodia’s then information minister felt his country was “seduced and abandoned” by America. Years later the American ambassador at the time said that his government had “handed [Cambodia] over to the butcher”. As many as 2m Cambodians died during four years of Khmer Rouge rule.
The second was the fall of Saigon, and with it the end of the Vietnam war. The Economist covered “the frantic last days” as the North’s tanks closed in. America rushed to evacuate diplomats and refugees, first by plane and then in overloaded helicopters. Tens of thousands of Vietnamese escaped on their own, some taking perilous journeys in small boats. (They would be followed in later years by over 1m more.) On April 29th a desperate crowd of 10,000 Vietnamese gathered at the American embassy. Thousands were rescued, but many were left behind as the last Americans in Saigon flew out at around 8am on April 30th. Images of the evacuation became symbolic of the humbling of the superpower. (Some would later compare it to America’s chaotic withdrawal from Kabul, Afghanistan’s capital, in 2021.)
Later that morning, Communist tanks smashed through the gates of the presidential palace—and soldiers raised their flag on top of it.
“The Vietnam war ended at 10 o’clock on Wednesday morning, not with a bang but a crumple. […] The victors seem to have made no attempt to organise an uprising in the city to greet them; the communists’ supporters cheered the arriving troops, but the accounts of western reporters suggest that most people watched them in silence.”
Why had four successive American administrations—from Dwight Eisenhower’s to Richard Nixon’s—failed in Vietnam? One mistake, The Economist argued, was thinking they had the political nous or military might to defeat North Vietnam and its allies. They also mistakenly believed that they could win the war “before American opinion grew weary of the casualties and the televised brutalities”. America hoped, too, to create a “democratic structure” in South Vietnam “faster and more convincingly” than was possible. War, it turned out, did “not provide laboratory conditions for an experiment in democracy”.
“When those hopes proved false, the American government thought it could still trudge on with its policy without losing the support of its own people and the acquiescence of its allies. It was wrong on that count too, and it is paying a large price for its misjudgment. It has been a futile war, because it was lost; any war that fails to achieve its purpose is an exercise in wasted lives, money, and political credit.”
The end of the conflict prompted questions about America’s role in the world. The international order after the second world war had rested on an assumption of American primacy. Would Vietnam bring that to an end? “To see the acceptance of failure in Indochina as a rejection of foreign responsibilities altogether would be unreal and contrived,” we wrote, referring to data that showed growing support for sending arms to Israel.
But even though the war was “not the only cause of the present diminution of American influence”, we argued, “it is one”. The American alliance was not “as it once seemed”, when the Americans had regarded “a threat to one of their friends as the equivalent of a threat to themselves”. The “assumed knitting together of interests” no longer seemed certain—on either side. Though some countries, such as Australia, had sent troops to Vietnam, America mostly fought alone there. Many of its allies, particularly in Europe, were reluctant to join a war some saw as misguided.
“The past month's events make the question of American credibility a genuine one, and it is important not to exaggerate the answer, either way. The long list of countries around the world that depend, in one degree or another, on the American connection can be ranked in a rough order of priority. The ranking depends on how important each country is to American interests, and particularly American economic interests, on whether it has the sort of political system Americans want to protect, and on whether it possesses an effective lobby of supporters inside the United States itself.”
By those tests, we argued, it was “comforting—and true—for western Europe and probably Japan as well to tell themselves that they stand high on the American list”. Still, it was an oversimplification for European leaders to believe that the “Indochina shambles” would have no effect on America’s older allies at all.
The years after the fall of Saigon seemed to confirm America’s global retreat. Many Americans had become—and remained—sceptical of their governments’ interventions abroad, an attitude that became known as “Vietnam syndrome”. Communists captured Laos in December 1975. Revolutionaries in Iran toppled the American-backed Shah in January 1979. Then the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan at the end of that year, further denting America’s standing and adding to the free world’s worries.
Far from collapsing, however, American supremacy endured. America’s de facto alliance with China against the Soviet Union helped it to remain the world’s supreme power. Communism did not spread from Indochina across Asia. Vietnam duly opened up its economy in the 1980s and America is now its biggest export customer.
But today, as Mr Trump pursues an “America First” foreign policy, the American-led order is again being seriously questioned. And Americans are showing signs of a new version of Vietnam syndrome. ■
