Defense & Intelligence Policy, Business and Technology

40 Years After the Fall of Saigon, Every Country Has Its Own 'Vietnam'

Foreign Policy: Long before the last American helicopter flew out of Saigon 40 years ago Thursday, the Vietnam war had become the leading symbol of a large, wealthy country’s failure to batter a smaller, poorer country into doing its political and economic bidding. After more than two decades, seven million tons of bombs, 11 million gallons of Agent Orange, 58,000 dead American soldiers, and millions of Vietnamese lives, the United States hadn’t stopped South Vietnam “falling” to the country’s communist north.

Since then, journalists, pundits, and scholars have constantly employed the Vietnam metaphor to describe the military misadventures of pretty much every country — with the possible exception of those like France and China that literally fought their own Vietnam wars.

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