Different nations, different wars — yet U.S. power will survive both defeats.
The images are still haunting. Desperate people clinging to overloaded aircraft. Stowaways falling to their deaths from aircraft wheel wells. Frantic mobs seeking escape from a doomed city, fearing the vengeance of a conquering army. This wasn’t just the scene this month in Afghanistan’s capital Kabul as the Taliban took complete control of the nation. It was also the scene in Saigon in April 1975, as North Vietnamese armies closed in on South Vietnam’s capital. After 20 years of blood and treasure spent on staving off Communist control of Southeast Asia, the Vietnam War ended with pictures of the last evacuation helicopter leaving the roof of the U.S. embassy. By 1975, as the United States reeled from the effects of Watergate, oil prices and economic recession, scenes of evacuation helicopters being tossed overboard into the ocean from overcrowded aircraft carriers seemed to symbolize the American superpower had sunk into termina decline. Why would anyone be surprised that the Fall of Afghanistan is being likened to the Fall of South Vietnam? After 46 years, even the tropes are the same: Domino effect. Loss of American prestige. Fearful U.S. allies, and emboldened American enemies circling like wolves around a wounded prey. But the prophets of doom were wrong. Just 15 years after Saigon fell, it was the Soviet Union that faded into a footnote of history. Nearly 50 years later, Vietnam is a semi-capitalist nation and a tacit American ally against China. When Vietnam’s biggest export market is America, and U.S. aircraft carriers make friendly visits to Vietnamese ports, then perhaps losing the Vietnam War wasn’t quite so catastrophic in the long run. However, those Cold War fears are not even relevant to Afghanistan. The Fall of Afghanistan is not the Fall of South Vietnam. First and foremost, Vietnam was a proxy battlefield in the Cold War. That superpower chess game between the U.S. and Soviet Union was zero-sum: if the Communists were perceived to have won somewhere in the world, then the U.
