Twenty-five years after the ignominious American withdrawal from what was then South Vietnam, this much is clear: the United States lost the war, but won the peace. Indeed, it is difficult to imagine how things could have turned out much better if we had won the war. The United States remains the dominant power in the Asia-Pacific region. U.S. alliances with such critical states as Japan, South Korea and Australia are robust; U.S. relations with China are extensive if not always warm. Even U.S. relations with Vietnam are now proper and improving. The region is mostly democratic, wealthy and at peace. And despite gloomy predictions to the contrary, “dominos” did not fall to Communism after we lost in Vietnam.
Also worth noting is that some 15 years after the flag came down over the American Embassy in Saigon and the helicopters flew away from its roof, the Cold War ended. In this case, though, the United States and the West won the war. This outcome resulted not just from Soviet shortcomings—exacerbated by the Soviet “Vietnam” in Afghanistan—but from American perseverance. The U.S. failure in Vietnam did not trigger the wholesale retreat from responsibility into isolationism that many feared would result.
