Vietnam and Afghanistan: A tale of two US military withdrawals

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Combo image showing a picture of the 1975 fall of Saigon by Dutch photographer Hugh Van Es (left) and a chaotic scene at Kabul airport on August 19, 2021. (Wikimedia Commons and AFP)
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Updated 06 September 2021
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Vietnam and Afghanistan: A tale of two US military withdrawals

  • US enmity with Vietnam’s communist rulers gave way to frienship and strategic partnership
  • Whether Afghanistan’s Taliban rulers and the US can bury their enmity remains to be seen

WASHINGTON D.C.: Images of the chaotic last days of the US mission in Afghanistan have been compared widely to the scenes of the final evacuation from Saigon in 1975 as the victorious North Vietnamese Army rolled into the capital of South Vietnam.

Iconic photos of desperate Vietnamese trying to scale the walls of the US embassy bear a striking resemblance to those of civilians clambering up the gates of Kabul airport last month in hopes of catching one of the last flights out of the country.

In hindsight, the parallels between the American experience in Vietnam and Afghanistan are too many to ignore. Just like the US began a rapid military drawdown in Vietnam after signing the Paris Peace Accords with North Vietnam in 1973, the February 2020 Doha deal between the US and the Taliban set the scene for America’s rush for the exits in Afghanistan.

By 1975, the only US soldiers remaining in South Vietnam were the Marines who guarded the embassy in Saigon and a small contingent at a nearby air base. By the end of April that year, the city, later renamed Ho Chi Minh City, had fallen to the North VIetnamese Army (NVA).




Jubilant communist troops atop tanks make their way to the center of Saigon as the city fell under their control on April 30, 1975. (Vietnam News Agency photo via AFP) 

The US had hoped that the peace accords would allow for the “Vietnamization” of the conflict, transferring combat operations and security away from the US military to the Army of the Republic of Vietnam (ARVN).

But just like the Afghan National Army — in which Washington had invested billions in training and equipment — proved incapable of securing the country on their own, the ARVN crumbled in the absence of the full complement of US ground combat units and field advisers.

For a long time after the humiliating end to the Vietnam War, the US seemed to suffer from a crisis of confidence, questioning its strength, the appeal of its values and its role in the world.

“This will be the final message from Saigon station,” wrote Thomas Polgar, the last serving CIA station chief in Saigon, before his evacuation. “It has been a long and hard fight and we have lost. This experience, unique in the history of the US, does not signal, necessarily, the demise of the US as a world power.”

He added: “Those who fail to learn from history are forced to repeat it. Let us hope that we will not have another Vietnam experience and that we have learned our lesson. Saigon signing off.”




Afghans crowd at the tarmac of the Kabul airport on August 16, 2021, to flee the country as the Taliban took control of Afghanistan. (AFP file)

American military historians would be right to assess that the lessons of Vietnam were lost when the US pursued another open-ended war whose initial limited objectives were overtaken by a zeal for nation-building.

As with Saigon in the late 1960s and early 1970s, the government in Kabul supported by the US military lacked the competence and broad legitimacy to combat an insurgency on its own.

In a now declassified 1969 memo to former president Richard Nixon, his national security adviser, Henry Kissinger, expressed deep concern that the war was unlikely to be won militarily.

“I am not optimistic about the ability of the South Vietnamese armed forces to assume a larger part of the burden than current plans allow,” he wrote, adding: “Hanoi’s adoption of a strategy designed to wait us out fits both with its doctrine of how to fight a revolutionary war and with its expectations about increasingly significant problems for the US.”

In both the Vietnam and Afghanistan missions, time and lack of strategic patience were America’s main weaknesses in the face of a stubborn insurgency. Of the four different administrations that have guided US foreign policy since the Afghan war began, none took a step back to assess the likelihood of success as rationally and impartially as Kissinger did in the 1969 memo.

Although the Afghanistan mission did not produce the kind of civil disturbance and political turmoil synonymous with the Vietnam War, there was a broad consensus among US politicians for some time now that an indefinite military involvement in the culturally distant Central Asian country was not desirable.

Now that the Afghanistan chapter is closed, some point to the fact that the post-1975 period has seen a slow but remarkable rapprochement between the US and Vietnam.

Within the space of 20 years, the former belligerent nations were able to forge a relationship that today has evolved into a veritable strategic partnership, symbolized by the US-Vietnam Comprehensive Partnership of 2013.

A quarter of a century after the establishment of bilateral relations in 1995, the US and Vietnam are thus partners with a friendship grounded in mutual respect and suspicion of China’s geopolitical motives.

The partnership now spans political, economic, security and people-to-people ties. Tens of thousands of Vietnamese citizens study in the US and contribute almost $1 billion to the US economy.

“We must remember that the immediate consequences of the Vietnam War were horrible. Many in South Vietnam were sent to camps and murdered, resulting in a huge human-rights tragedy,” James Carafano, a fellow at the Heritage Foundation, told Arab News. “Today, Vietnam is a different place. Vietnamese are terrified of China and they need the US to defend them.”

A strong, prosperous and independent Vietnam is very much in Washington’s interest as Hanoi and Beijing remain locked in a standoff over competing territorial claims in the South China Sea.

Bilateral trade between the two nations has grown from $451 million in 1995 to more than $90 billion in 2020. US goods exports to Vietnam were worth more than $10 billion in 2020, while imports were worth a whopping $79.6 billion. US investment in Vietnam touched $2.6 billion in 2019.




Vietnam's exports to the US swelled over the past decade. (Reuters file photo)

Now that the war in Afghanistan is over and discussions between the Taliban and regional countries toward diplomatic normalization are ongoing, the evolution of US-Vietnamese relations from enmity to a flourishing partnership can prove instructive.

Could economic leverage, common security interests and deft diplomacy achieve in Afghanistan what the expenditure of billions of dollars in building a defense force in the mold of Western militaries failed to do?

The Taliban have been keen to signal that they are ready to engage diplomatically with regional powers, including China, the Arab Gulf states, Turkey and even India.

For the US, the immediate security objective is to make sure that neither Al-Qaeda nor Daesh establishes a base of operations to plot transnational terror attacks from. To this end, the US will have to make use of all the tools at its disposal: Soft power, diplomacy and economic incentives.

The worst-case scenario at the time of the 1975 US defeat was a communist victory in South Vietnam having a “domino effect,” leading to the collapse of Southeast Asian governments allied with the US. But such an eventuality did not come to fruition.

The dramatic turnaround in US-Vietnam relations means there is room for hope in the case of Afghanistan, too, but with a number of caveats.

“There were two reasons why the US remained in Afghanistan: One, to prevent another space for transnational terror again, and two, to prevent the destabilization of South Asia. Both were legitimate US interests,” said Carafano.

“Now we have no presence, no visibility on the terrorist situation and no deterrent against actors in the region. We have lost the trust of allies.”

As for the future, Carafano said: “The Taliban are not going through an evolution like Germany post-Second World War. It’s a ridiculous notion that the Taliban will normalize as a government. Daesh are useful idiots who do not have the capacity to threaten anybody. They are a bigger threat to the Taliban than to us.

“Will the Taliban break with the Haqqani network and Al-Qaeda? They won’t. The Taliban may not plan the next 9/11, but Al-Qaeda and Haqqani will.”




In this photo taken on May 31, 2017, Afghan security forces stand at the site of a deadly explosion blamed on the Haqqani network. (AP file)

Clearly, the time-worn tribal partnership between the Haqqani network, which is an integral part of the Taliban, and Al-Qaeda, will be a major complicating factor in the Taliban’s ability or willingness to prevent the international terror group from rebounding.

For the moment, the Taliban seem to be making all the right noises. The political leadership has emphasized that they are pursuing a nationalist vision, not a transnational one.

What remains to be seen is whether the group can prioritize the needs of running the affairs of state, which will require significant outside financial support and technical expertise, over a wild-eyed “revolutionary” vision that includes terror sanctuaries.

“In Vietnam, military victory over the US did not translate to a strategic defeat of the US and the anti-communist bloc globally,” Carafano told Arab News.

“Both Republican and Democratic administrations have taken successive steps toward strengthening Washington’s commitment to a security partnership with Vietnam. Previously unthinkable, US Navy aircraft carriers are now allowed to dock in Vietnamese ports.




US Vice President Kamala Harris meets with Vietnam's Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh din Hanoi on August 25, 2021. (REUTERS/Evelyn Hockstein/Pool)

“Whether the US and Taliban-controlled Afghanistan can develop some level of security arrangement based on a common threat perception is an open-ended question.

“But already, China and Russia have signaled that they are ready for a bigger role in Afghanistan in the wake of the US withdrawal. Though they are likely to engage cautiously. Both powers’ interest in Afghanistan lies in winning without fighting. But they’ll take their time in Afghanistan.”

In the final analysis, time was the overarching factor in America’s military defeat by the insurgency in both Vietnam and Afghanistan. But it also was the passage of time following the Vietnam War that enabled the adversaries to grow into friends based on common interests and threats.

It remains to be seen what American policymakers have learnt from the two humiliating withdrawals in order to avoid a third. With Vietnam, the US was able to salvage a measure of diplomatic victory from its military defeat. In Afghanistan, much will depend on the Taliban leadership’s ability and willingness to make a complete break with the past.

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Twitter: @OS26


Spain orders town to scrap motion restricting Muslim festivities

Updated 2 sec ago
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Spain orders town to scrap motion restricting Muslim festivities

  • Spain’s leftist government on Monday ordered a town to drop a ban on religious celebrations in municipal sports facilities, a measure critics say was aimed at blocking longstanding Muslim festivities
MADRID: Spain’s leftist government on Monday ordered a town to drop a ban on religious celebrations in municipal sports facilities, a measure critics say was aimed at blocking longstanding Muslim festivities.
The town council of Jumilla, in the southeastern region of Murcia, approved the ban last week with support from the conservative Popular Party (PP), saying it sought to “promote and preserve the traditional values” of the area.
Far-right party Vox had demanded the measure in exchange for backing the PP mayor’s municipal budget.
Spain’s national government swiftly denounced the ban, with minister for inclusion and migration Elma Sainz calling it a “racist motion.”
Territorial Policy Minister Angel Víctor Torres announced on X on Monday that the central government had formally ordered the Jumilla council to scrap the ban, arguing it violates the constitution.
Jumilla, a wine-producing town of about 27,000 people, has a significant Muslim community, many of whom work in the agricultural sector.
For years, the community has used sports venues for celebrations such as Eid Al-Fitr, which marks the end of the holy fasting month of Ramadan.
The controversy comes just weeks after far-right groups and immigrant residents clashed for several nights in another Murcia town following an assault on a retired man by a young North African.
Even Spain’s Catholic Church criticized the ban in Jumilla, saying public religious expressions are protected under the right to religious freedom.
Vox leader Santiago Abascal said he was “perplexed” by the Church’s stance, suggesting it might be tied to public funding or to clergy abuse scandals that he claimed have “gagged” the institution.

Pakistan suspends train services after railway bombing in insurgency-hit Balochistan

Updated 11 min 48 sec ago
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Pakistan suspends train services after railway bombing in insurgency-hit Balochistan

  • Balochistan has long been the scene of insurgency by separatists seeking independence from the central government; it is also home to militants linked to the Pakistani Taliban

QUETTA: Pakistan’s railways on Monday suspended all train services to and from an insurgency-hit southwestern province for four days after separatists blew up a railway track, derailing six cars of a passenger train, officials said.
No one was harmed in the attack Sunday in Mastung, a district in Balochistan, said railways spokesman Ikram Ullah. Engineers were repairing the damaged track, he said.
The Jaffer Express was traveling from Quetta, the provincial capital, to the northern city of Peshawar when assailants targeted it with a bomb, Ullah said.
The banned Baloch Liberation Army, in a statement, claimed responsibility for the attack, which comes months after BLA fighters hijacked a train in the same district, killing 21 hostages before security forces were able to kill 33 assailants.
The attack came as Pakistan prepares to mark its 78th Independence Day on Aug. 14.
Balochistan has long been the scene of insurgency by separatists seeking independence from the central government. The province is also home to militants linked to the Pakistani Taliban.
Local administrator Shahid Khan said the government imposed curfews in some areas of the district of Bajaur along the Afghan border in the troubled northwest and advised residents to stay indoors, prompting many to flee to safer places in preparation for a possible security operation against the Pakistani Taliban.
Bajaur was once a stronghold of the Pakistani Taliban, who are known as Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan, and the group has resurfaced there. TTP is a separate group but closely allied to the Afghan Taliban.


Italy’s defense minister says Israel has ‘lost humanity’ on Gaza

Updated 39 min 37 sec ago
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Italy’s defense minister says Israel has ‘lost humanity’ on Gaza

ROME: Italy’s defense minister said in an interview published Monday that Israel’s government had “lost its reason and humanity” over Gaza and signalled an openness to potential sanctions.
“What is happening is unacceptable. We are not facing a military operation with collateral damage, but the pure denial of the law and the founding values of our civilization,” Defense Minister Guido Crosetto told La Stampa daily.
“We are committed to humanitarian aid, but we must now find a way to force Netanyahu to think clearly, beyond condemnation.”
Asked about possible international sanctions against Israel, Crosetto said that “the occupation of Gaza and some serious acts in the West Bank mark a qualitative leap, in the face of which decisions must be made that force Netanyahu to think.”
“And it wouldn’t be a move against Israel, but a way to save that people from a government which has lost reason and humanity.
“We must always distinguish governments from states and peoples, as well as from the religions they profess. This applies for Netanyahu, and it applies to (Russian President Vladimir) Putin, whose methods, by now, have become dangerously similar.”
He was speaking after Netanyahu defended his plan to take control of Gaza City and target the remaining Hamas strongholds, a plan which has sparked criticism from across the world.
Italy has declined to join other nations in saying it would recognize a Palestinian state — a decision Crosetto defended, saying that “recognizing a state that doesn’t exist risks turning into nothing but a political provocation in a world dying of provocations.”


Four days left to square the circle on global plastic pollution treaty

Updated 11 August 2025
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Four days left to square the circle on global plastic pollution treaty

  • The 184 countries meeting at the United Nations to sculpt a first international accord setting out the way forward return to the negotiating table after a day off Sunday to reflect on their differences

GENEVA: Countries remained at loggerheads Monday over how to tackle plastic pollution, with only four days left to craft a landmark global treaty on reining in the ever-growing scourge.
While plastic has transformed modern life, plastic pollution poses an increasing threat to the environment and the human body — and every day the garbage accumulates on land and in the oceans.
The 184 countries meeting at the United Nations to sculpt a first international accord setting out the way forward return to the negotiating table after a day off Sunday to reflect on their differences.
The first week of talks in Geneva fell behind schedule and failed to produce a clear text, with states still deeply divided at square one: the purpose and scope of the treaty they started negotiating two and a half years ago.
Last week, working groups met on technical topics ranging from the design of plastic to waste management, production, financing for recycling, plastic reuse, and funding waste collection in developing countries.
They also discussed molecules and chemical additives that pose environmental and health risks.


A nebulous cluster of mostly oil-producing states calling themselves the Like-Minded Group want the treaty to focus primarily on waste management.
The United States and India are also close to this club.
At the other end of the spectrum, a growing faction calling themselves the “ambitious” group want radical action written into the treaty, including measures to curb the damage caused by plastic garbage, such as phasing out the most dangerous chemicals.
Plastic pollution is so ubiquitous that microplastics have been found on the highest mountain peaks, in the deepest ocean trench and scattered throughout almost every part of the human body.
The ambitious group wants a clause reining in plastic production, which is set to triple by 2060.
The club brings together the European Union, many African and Latin American countries, Australia, Britain, Switzerland and Canada.
It also includes island micro-nations drowning in plastic trash they did little to produce and have little capacity to deal with.
Palau, speaking for 39 small island developing states (SIDS), said the treaty had to deal with removing the plastic garbage “already choking our oceans.”
“SIDS will not stand by while our future is bartered away in a stalemate,” and “this brinkmanship has a real price: a dying ocean,” the Micronesian archipelago said.


The treaty is set to be settled by universal consensus; but with countries far apart, the lowest-ambition countries are quite comfortable not budging, observers said.
“We risk having a meaningless treaty without any binding global rules like bans and phase-outs. This is unacceptable,” Eirik Lindebjerg, global plastics adviser for the World Wide Fund for Nature, told AFP.
“Expecting any meaningful outcome to this process through consensus is a delusion. With the time remaining, the ambitious governments must come together as a majority to finalize the treaty text and prepare to agree it through a vote.”
Without touching on whether ambitious countries would ultimately abandon consensus and go for a vote, the EU’s environment commissioner Jessika Roswall, due in Geneva on Monday, urged countries to speed up negotiations and not “miss this historic opportunity.”
The draft treaty has ballooned from 22 to 35 pages — with the number of brackets in the text going up near five-fold to almost 1,500 as countries insert a blizzard of conflicting wishes and ideas.
“With four more days to go, we have more square brackets in the text than plastic in the sea. It’s time to get results,” Roswall said.
In total, 70 ministers and around 30 senior government officials are expected in Geneva from Tuesday onwards and could perhaps help break the deadlock.


EU to hold urgent Ukraine talks before Trump-Putin meeting

Updated 11 August 2025
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EU to hold urgent Ukraine talks before Trump-Putin meeting

  • Saturday’s statement by top European leaders came after the White House confirmed the US president was willing to grant Putin the one on one meeting Russia has long pushed for

BRUSSELS: EU foreign ministers will hold emergency talks on Monday to discuss their next steps before talks between presidents Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump, as Europe fears any deal made without Ukraine could force unacceptable compromises.

The two leaders will meet in the US state of Alaska on Friday to try to resolve the three-year war but the European Union has insisted that Kyiv and European powers should be part of any deal to end the conflict.

The idea of a US-Russia meeting without Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has raised concerns that a deal would require Kyiv to cede swathes of territory, which the EU has rejected.

EU foreign ministers will discuss their next steps in a meeting by video link on Monday at 1400 GMT, joined by their Ukrainian counterpart Andriy Sybiga.

European leaders pushed hard over the weekend for Ukraine to be a part of the talks.

“The path to peace in Ukraine cannot be decided without Ukraine,” leaders from France, Germany, Italy, Poland, Britain and Finland, and EU Commission chief Ursula von der Leyen said in a joint statement, urging Trump to put more pressure on Russia.

German Chancellor Friedrich Merz said on Sunday he hoped and assumed that Zelensky would attend the leaders’ summit.

Leaders of the Nordic and Baltic countries – Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Iceland, Latvia, Lithuania, Norway, and Sweden – also said no decisions should be taken without Kyiv’s involvement.

Talks on ending the war could only take place during a ceasefire, they added in a joint statement.

Vice President JD Vance on Sunday said the United States is working to “schedule” a meeting between Trump and his Russian and Ukrainian counterparts.

Asked on CNN if Zelensky could be present, US Ambassador to NATO Matthew Whitaker responded that “yes, I certainly think it’s possible.”

“Certainly, there can’t be a deal that everybody that’s involved in it doesn’t agree to. And, I mean, obviously, it’s a high priority to get this war to end.”

The EU’s top diplomat Kaja Kallas said any deal between the United States and Russia to end the war had to include Ukraine and the bloc.

“The US has the power to force Russia to negotiate seriously. Any deal between the US and Russia must have Ukraine and the EU included, for it is a matter of Ukraine’s and the whole of Europe’s security,” she added.

As a prerequisite to any peace settlement, Moscow has demanded Kyiv pull its forces out of the regions and commit to being a neutral state, shun US and EU military support and be excluded from joining NATO.

Kyiv said it would never recognize Russian control over its sovereign territory, though it acknowledged that getting land captured by Russia back would have to come through diplomacy, not on the battlefield.

Zelensky thanked those countries backing Kyiv’s position in his Sunday evening address.

“Clear support for the fact that everything concerning Ukraine must be decided with Ukraine’s participation. Just as it should be with every other independent state.”