April 30th marked five decades to the day since America officially lost the Vietnam War.<\/p>\n
In a new column, the Institute\u2019s Ted Galen Carpenter explains that over the past 50 years, Washington failed to learn a single significant lesson from that failure:<\/p>\n
\u201cAlthough the bruising experience in Vietnam had apparently induced a somewhat greater level of caution \u2013 at least temporarily \u2013 among Washington\u2019s political and policy elites with respect to a few specific cases, it had not caused any reconsideration of the foundational assumptions of US foreign policy. \u00a0In particular, the ‘1930s model’ still dominated elite perceptions about world affairs and America\u2019s proper role in the international system: American opinion leaders were still obsessed with preventing the rise of ‘another Hitler.’\u00a0 Closely related assumptions were that ‘appeasement’ never works, ‘aggression’ had to be stopped in its tracks as soon as signs of it appeared, and that complex, murky geopolitical struggles could be portrayed as stark conflicts between good and evil. \u00a0Despite the negative consequences of the Vietnam War, those attitudes remained intact.<\/p>\n [\u2026]<\/p>\n The painful lessons of the defeat in Vietnam have been largely forgotten, and the current generation of US policymakers is at least as reckless as any of its predecessors. \u00a0The prevailing approach to international conflicts has a dreary, formulaic aspect: exaggerate the severity of the threat to both international peace and America\u2019s security; portray Washington\u2019s adversary as the epitome of evil; and portray any beleaguered US client as both an innocent victim and a proponent of freedom and democracy. \u00a0Washington\u2019s dishonest propaganda regarding the war between Russia and Ukraine \u2013 both corrupt autocracies \u2013 is almost a caricature of that strategy.<\/p>\n The litany of Washington\u2019s military interventions and proxy wars since Vietnam \u2013 Afghanistan, Lebanon, Grenada, Panama, Kuwait, Somalia, Bosnia, Kosovo, Afghanistan (again), Libya, Syria, Yemen, and most dangerous of all, Ukraine \u2013 all convey the extent to which US policy elites and much of the US public have remained impervious to the deeper meaning of the Vietnam debacle. \u00a0As one cynical observer said to me: ‘The only enduring lesson from the Vietnam War appears to be \u2018don\u2019t go to war in a country called Vietnam.\u2019 Such a pervasive failure of policymakers and the American people to learn more substantial lessons may be that horrible conflict\u2019s most tragic and lasting legacy.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n