Consequences of the Vietnam War

6 min readNov 2, 2021

Introduction

The Vietnam War which lasted from 1955 to 1975 was fought between North Vietnam (supported by the Soviet Union, China, and North Korea) and South Vietnam (supported by the United States, and its allies) and was the longest war during the Cold War period. Besides being a stigma on the acumen of the political leadership and a blot on the military capabilities of the USA, the Ghost of Vietnam defeat still shadows every misadventure of the USA

Like any momentous event, the Vietnam War had some far-reaching repercussions. Some of these are

1. Myth of US Invincibility Broken

Americans had won two world wars and emerged as the main superpower. The Korean War too ended not in humiliation but a deadlock. It had successfully handled the Cuban Missile Crisis and was considered invincible. Until this war, Americans had thought that a bigger army, advanced weaponry, a capitalist economy, and a moral high ground (liberal order as opposed to communist/autocratic) meant that they could intervene and win wars. American defeat in Vietnam shattered the myth that a technologically advanced, and resource-rich superpower cannot be defeated by a small country.

It helped the Afghan Mujahideen to defeat another superpower of the day in the 1980s, while it again proved in the case of the Taliban against the USA in Afghanistan

2. Ghost of Vietnam

The ghost of Vietnam’s defeat still shadows every misadventure of the USA; imagine how the ruthless USA would have been if it had won the Vietnam War. Steve Coll in his book argues that since a lot of current army generals/seniors and politicians have seen the Vietnam War firsthand, they are always hesitating to go full force in their recent campaigns. As an example, he provided the case of the Bush administration vs. the Taliban during the Afghanistan war. He presented accounts of army officers who were frustrated as to why they were being limited to few places, few troops, and limited warfare. They were sure that had they have been givenfull power in the initial years of the war in Afghanistan, they could have finished the Taliban.

The American military has become even more cautious of its image. They hesitate to directly participate in battles, and often third parties/contractors are hired to do the job. This gives them plausible deniability. Contractors/third parties have become a huge industry in America. Raymond Davis too was a hired hand, who was captured in Pakistan for murdering civilians. The research on what went wrong took a lot of American attention as well.

3. Afghanistan War -2 (1979–1989)

After realizing that defeat was imminent in Vietnam, Americans started to destabilize Afghanistan to take revenge on the Soviet Union for this humiliation. By 1978, the CIA had recruited more than 5000 fighters from all over the Islamic world and started infiltrating Afghanistan. This infiltration had the full support of Iran, Saudi Arabia, and Egypt. Pakistan’s Prime Minister Bhutto’s refusal to go along with the American scheme cost him his life later. In his autobiography (From the Shadows: The Ultimate Insider’s Story of Five Presidents and How They Won the Cold War) Robert Gates states that the CIA had got involved in Afghanistan to cause a Russian invasion, “sucking the Soviets into a Vietnamese quagmire”.

4. China USSR Rift/Sino-American Rapprochement

The Vietnam War played an extremely crucial part in the reconfiguration of friends-foes relations in global power politics. The USA escalated the war tempo by increasing the scale and scope of its military operation, hoping irreconcilable differences between China and the USSR would assist the Vietcong in a big way. It proved wrong; both outbid each other to assist them. One of the lessons learned by the Americans was that they could not simultaneously antagonize both the communist regimes, namely China and the Soviet Union. It led to the efforts by the USA to befriend China, which had developed differences with the Soviet Union for multiple reasons, one being the latter’s playing a larger-than-life role in the backyard of China.

5. Black Empowerment in the USA

The Vietnam War strengthened the politics of protests as a mainstream strategy for bringing socio-political change when there were widespread anti-Vietnam War rallies throughout America. Its first fallout was the Black Empowerment. Although Americans of African origins had been taking part in all the wars America fought since its independence, including the civil war, their contributions were never recognized or acknowledged. However, the Vietnam War being the first televised war had a deep impact on the socio-political landscape of the country. Even those black American families whose near and dear ones did not take part in the war as combatants felt themselves to be part of mainstream America and clamored for equal rights. Several movements were springing up for black empowerment, leaving no choice for the white ruling elite of the USA to grant them equal rights

6. American Psychology toward war Changed

The Vietnam War had a profound impact on the public attitude toward the war. It was the first war that was televised and seen by the public on TV screens in their homes instead of government-sponsored films in the cinema houses. It created a lot of resentment among the public regarding the way successive governments lied to them. The publication of the Pentagon Papers developed a sense of skepticism toward their government and the goodwill, the government had developed during the FDR period was lost. Many Vietnam veteran soldiers later joined politics and advocated against more military adventures. They stressed the importance of dialogues. John Kerry, who later became Secretary of State during the Afghanistan war; and Senator John McCain too, stressed this point. One can say that America’s humiliation in Vietnam helped prevent the deaths of hundreds of thousands or even millions of Central Americans or Angolans in American interventional wars that did not occur in the 1980s because of lessons learned, at least temporarily, following defeat in Vietnam.

7. Powell-Weinberger Doctrine.

Failure to achieve US policy objectives in Vietnam through the use of military power led to the development of what is known as the Powell-Weinberger Doctrine, suggesting guidelines under what circumstances the United States could effectively employ military power in the future. On 28 November 1984, then-Secretary of Defence Caspar Weinberger proposed the following six criteria to determine the conditions under which the use of military force was warranted:

a. The United States should not commit forces to combat overseas unless the particular engagement or occasion is deemed vital to our national interest or that of our allies. . . .

b. If we decide it is necessary to put combat troops into a given situation, we should do so wholeheartedly and with the clear intention of winning. . . .

c. If we do decide to commit forces to combat overseas, we should have clearly defined political and military objectives. . . .

d. The relationship between our objectives and the forces we have committed — their size, composition, and disposition — must be continually reassessed and adjusted if necessary. . . .

e. Before the United States commits combat forces abroad, there must be some reasonable assurance we will have the support of the American people and their elected representatives in Congress. . .

f. The commitment of US forces to combat should be a last resort.

No doubt this doctrine seemed relevant in the 1980s since any use of military power in those times carried the threat of superpower confrontation with dire consequences for humanity. However, after the fall of the Soviet Union, the Americans just forgot these guidelines with disastrous results in their Afghan, Iraq, and Syrian misadventures.

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Consequences of the Vietnam War

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Written by Shahid H. Raja