There's little in common between US' ignoble exit from Vietnam, Afghanistan

Once the war was over, Vietnam was eager to embrace America against its historic enemy, China

With Kabul’s airport engulfed in chaos, violence, and bloodshed as thousands of terrified Afghans seek to flee their country, some have likened the unfolding disaster to the April 1975 fall of Saigon. The images of heartrending desperation for the many rushing the gates of Kabul airport like thousands of Vietnamese once jammed the entrance at Tan Son Nhut airport reinforce the sense of historical déjà vu. But such parallels are a lazy shorthand premised on an optical illusion.
 
Having witnessed North Vietnamese tanks crashing through the gates of the presidential palace in Saigon and since following Vietnam’s development into a de facto US ally, I see little in common between the United States’ two ignoble departures. The fallacy of any parallel should have been put to bed with the sight just this past week of an American vice president visiting Hanoi to call for “strategic” ties with the very regime that drove US troops out 46 years ago. This is not to deny the heartbreaking similarities in suffering endured by the Afghan and Vietnamese people nor the disastrous blows to Washington’s global standing. But in the broader geopolitical perspective, the bearded and black-clad religious fundamentalists in Kabul have nothing in common with the green-uniformed Vietnamese communists I spoke to in 1975.
 
The day after US Army helicopters ferried the final remaining American personnel out of Vietnam, communist forces controlled Saigon but opted not to hoist their red and gold flag upon the US Embassy flagpole as they had done at other foreign missions. When I asked a communist official why, he explained that Americans would come back soon once they realised that Vietnam was "the cork in the bottle of Chinese expansionism in Asia." Stunning though the explanation was, it was clearly not merely whimsical.

North Vietnamese tank crashes through the cast-iron gate of the presidential palace in Saigon, April 30, 1975 (Photo Courtesy: Nayan Chanda)

For the Vietnamese, American war was a thing of the past; threat from the ancient enemy China was the new reality. Several months later, interviewing Hoang Tung, the editor of the Communist Party daily, I found a surprising aversion to bruising the US ego. When I requested access to abandoned US classified files in Saigon, I was bluntly told no because "the war is over" and “there is no need to pour salt into the American wounds." By way of explanation, he recalled that the day after the Communists’ victory over France in Dien Bien Phu in 1954, Vietnam's founding father Ho Chi Minh had cautioned him to not gloat about the French defeat. "We will need the French help to rebuild the country," Ho had told him. The parallel with the recently defeated America was just as obvious in 1975.
 
With the Taliban demanding the US complete its withdrawal by August 31 and the Biden administration desperately working to extract its citizens and Afghan allies, the contrast between the two victors could not be starker. While Washington is ready, even eager, to turn the page on Afghanistan and focus on China as a challenger over the horizon, the Taliban seem to have followed Islamabad’s approach and embraced China as their new patron. Although Beijing remains concerned about the ISIS and al-Qaeda presence in Afghanistan amid worries Uighur militants might find safe haven, it is surely eager to fill the vacuum left by the US withdrawal. The violence inflicted by suspected ISIS militants near Kabul airport has created the need for tactical cooperation between the US and Taliban on a narrow basis even as the new regime in Kabul cosies up to America’s long-term geopolitical rival in China. Strategic interests often make strange bedfellows. Similar to the surprise visit to Kabul by CIA Director Bill Burns (whose organisation was previously responsible for the imprisonment of the Taliban’s current leader), there will sure be other twists in the future – as there have been in the past.

Vietnamese civilians fleeing from Danang, fallen to the North Vietnamese Communist army, arrive at Vung Tau port near Saigon, April 1975 (Photo Courtesy: Nayan Chanda)

Despite Vietnam’s eagerness to embrace the defeated America to balance against its historic enemy China and to rebuild the country, restoring ties had to wait decades. Seduced by Deng Xiaoping’s reforming China to partner against the Soviet Union, a bitter America neglected Vietnam’s overtures. However, over the last 20 or so years, Washington has slowly rebuilt its relationship, gaining new respect for Vietnam as a partner to balance China’s influence.
 
But as China has grown increasingly assertive and has challenged the US on a variety of fronts, the US has emerged more eager to embrace Vietnam as a strategic ally and Vietnam more reluctant in order not to provoke China.
 
“We need to find ways to pressure and raise the pressure, frankly, on Beijing to abide by the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, and to challenge its bullying and excessive maritime claims,” Vice President Kamala Harris said in Hanoi. She even called for elevating the relationship with Vietnam from a comprehensive to a strategic partnership. A far cry from America’s calamitous departure from Saigon.

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Former editor of the Far Eastern Economic Review, Nayan Chanda is currently Associate Professor of International Relations, Ashoka University