On Aug. 16, 2021, as America’s defeat in Afghanistan was unfolding on live TV in Kabul, the Dow Jones Industrial Average went down by around 300 points or almost 1%. That was mildly surprising: were financial markets starting to pay attention? But by the end of the day, the Dow not only came back but was up more than 100 points. Clearly, as America’s position in the world was crumbling, its financial market was keeping in mind the important thing: making money.
Joe Biden is taking the political blame for the debacle — as he should. But his real crime is to acknowledge the defeat and affirm the glaring incompetence of the political class — both Democrats and Republicans — and of the military and intelligence establishments.
The scenes are parallel at the US Embassy in Saigon on April 30, 1975, and the Kabul Airport (where the US Embassy briefly decamped) on Aug. 16, 2021. And plenty of analysts have done it. Indeed, America lost the war in Vietnam and it lost the war in Afghanistan. But this is where similarities end.
Vietnam was fought by the entire American society. By those who were drafted and went to fight. By those who were drafted and went to Canada. By those who protested the war. By kids and their parents in a generational conflict. At the time it was the idealistic kids building a free and equal world vs. the squares. Now those kids are the Boomers attending Donald J. Trump rallies while their fathers turned out to be the Greatest Generation.
The defeat in Vietnam had a profound effect on the country and society. It was the first American military defeat since the British burned Washington in 1814. Some Vietnam veterans and the military brass even took to pointing out that Americans had won every battle they fought against the Vietnamese and that it had been the politicians who had lost the war.
But it was also the first time Americans came as liberators and defenders of freedom and the population who were going to enjoy the fruits of that freedom seemed to spurn American help. The South Vietnamese simply didn’t want to fight; and offered little resistance to the advancing communists. The consensus that emerged after the war was that Washington had misread the nature of the conflict: for the Vietnamese, it had been a war of national liberation in which communism was of secondary importance.
While offering freedom to the Vietnamese, inequality at home suddenly became glaring. In World War II, the United States fought against the racist Nazi regime and the Japanese Empire which was built on the racist subjugation of its neighbors. Yet, victorious Black American GIs were facing segregation, racial discrimination, humiliation and mistreatment once they returned home. Whatever hopes they had stemming from the desegregation of the military in 1948 were not realized.
In the 1960s, however, the antiwar movement and the civil rights struggle were linked from the start. Martin Luther King was an early opponent of the war. He was criticized for this stance by many of his allies and it led to a rift with Lyndon Johnson.
The Vietnam War and the movement it engendered convulsed American society but also created a much more open and equal America. It also taught politicians an important lesson: in the modern world, a massive, technologically advanced military machine like the United States can easily defeat an enemy force on the battlefield, but wars of occupation are unwinnable even against a much weaker opponent.
More to the point, military power is at its most effective when it is threatened, not actually used. Far greater success can be achieved by soft power and international cooperation.
From 1973 and until 2001, America didn’t fight any wars. There was Grenada, Panama, Kuwait, Yugoslavia, etc., but those were very limited actions with clear objectives. Starting in 1981, the US military was massively rebuilt, but Reagan’s Defense Secretary Cap Weinberger was extremely reluctant for it to be used.
During that time America helped expel the Soviets from Afghanistan, decisively changed the balance of power in the Middle East, defused tensions between India and Pakistan, promoted democracy in Latin America and won the Cold War.
That was a good lesson learned from the Vietnam era. But the George W. Bush and Obama Administrations drew a different conclusion. The wars in Afghanistan and Iraq were fought by an all-volunteer force and kept separate from society. After 9/11 Bush told Americans that their patriotic duty was to go shopping — and they did. There were minimal protests against those wars and revelations of atrocities, torture, surveillance of Americans, open-ended detentions, extra-judicial killings of American citizens, mistreatment of prisoners and other crimes were processed by the American public with complete indifference. Little thought was given to what Americans are doing or why.
Whether or not Washington had to contain communism in Southeast Asia is an open question. I was then living in Moscow and to the minds of adults around me it had no choice, lest the Red Plague spread around the globe.
In Afghanistan Bush probably had no choice either. As Spencer Ackerman states in his best-selling Reign of Terror, US foreign policy after 9/11 had been a psychotic episode and millions of Americans clamored for vengeance. But the truth is that all it needed was concerted international police action to take out Al Qaeda, not fight the Global War on Terror.
In fact, Osama bin Laden is dead but he has won. He achieved what he wanted. He goaded Washington into creating a massive security state. He made America take on a crushing financial and military burden that undermined and splintered its society. Worse, on the eve of the 20th anniversary of the 2001 attacks, the clash of civilizations he was hoping for is taking shape in the Middle East.
The defeat in Vietnam was devastating. The defeat in Afghanistan is not even a blip on the radar. Both defeats severely undermined American credibility around the world. But in 1975 Americans cared about that and now they no longer do. In the 1970s there were ideological rifts in society but the nation remained cohesive. Today’s rifts are economic and ideological and the country is in a state of low-intensity civil war.
Throughout its history, America has been resilient. The nation and its political system found a way to rally even in its darkest hour. This is very likely to happen again this time. But in the meantime, America is withdrawing from the international scene, leaving its allies and friends to their fate.
In the 1930s, as Hitler kept inflicting one humiliation after the other on Western democracies, small nations in Europe kept falling in line behind the Nazis. In the 1970s, after America’s ignominious flight from Southeast Asia and its setbacks elsewhere, countries in Africa and Latin America began sidling up to Moscow as they thought that the Soviets were winning the Cold War.
In the aftermath of the American defeat by the Taliban, we will see more nations making accommodations with Putin. We will see geopolitical advances for Xi Jinping’s China and more repression in Hong Kong. We will see more centrifugal forces straining the European Union and scoundrels like Viktor Orban, Nigel Farage, Marie Le Pen and Matteo Salvini triumph. NATO will be weakened — or at least become less effective as a deterrent. There will be more war and turmoil in the Middle East.
It is an environment that does not bode well for Ukraine and its national aspirations. Fighting the Russian military aggression and political encroachment will be more difficult and costly — both economically and in terms of human lives.
Whether this environment endures will depend in a large measure on whether America can right its own ship.
