Is Ukraine the new Vietnam?
Russia's spy chief warned last month that the Ukraine conflict will be America's "second Vietnam". How do people in the Socialist Republic feel about the comparison?
This month I’ve been in Vietnam, making a journey from South to North and witnessing the country’s head-spinning growth for myself. There is a palpable energy in the next Asian Tiger, something I noticed particularly in the fastest-growing city of Da Nang. Everything looks like it was built last week.
As an American, there are a lot of emotions that run through your head when visiting Vietnam. Chief among them is the uncomfortable realisation that the government in control of this booming economy, where people have relative freedom for this part of the world, is the same one that Americans were for two decades told would plunge the world into darkness if it were to win. The United States lost the Vietnam War, the Soviet-aligned Communists were victorious. But no further dominos fell. The victory had almost no impact on the wider Cold War. In short, as John Kerry put it in his 1971 congressional testimony, the war was a mistake. And “how do you ask a man to be the last man to die for a mistake?” Few would argue the contrary now. But the inability of American politicians to admit that, for two decades, led to the deaths of up to three million people including 60,000 US soldiers.