The Vanquished West: 50 Years After the End of Vietnam War, a Memoir of Resistance by the Global South

Fifty years ago, the last American helicopter fled from an abandoned US embassy rooftop in Vietnam's Saigon on 30 April 1975. Forty-six years later, the last US military plane left Kabul airport at 11:59 pm on August 30, 2021.

Between 1975 and 2021, and even earlier from 1953 to 1975, the proverbial Great America and its European allies, have suffered a series of humiliating retreats. Trump has promised to make America great again (MAGA). The record of the US since 1953, when it had to agree to a ceasefire ending the Korean War after the mass intervention of China’s People’s Liberation Army, indicates that America’s global status has not been great for a long while.

Trump’s cantankerous volley of hourly executive orders are a dangerous omen for the world and point to a further decline of America.

Soon after the end of the devastating Second World War in 1945, victorious national liberation forces with the overwhelming support of their people prevailed despite the huge loss of lives, mostly of innocent civilians, through the relentless use of lethal weapons of mass destruction in Asia, Africa and Latin America by the military machines of the US and Europe.

While the millions of deaths, largely in Europe, during World War II are fully documented and widely known, the countless millions of lives extinguished after that War are rarely acknowledged.

The Vietnam War from 1955 to 1975 (with direct US military intervention from 1964), caused 3.3 million Vietnamese deaths, including 2 million civilians, as estimated by the Encyclopaedia Britannica. Widespread aerial spraying of the chemical Agent Orange to destroy forests led to 500,000 Vietnamese children being born with horrendous deformities.

The resilience and tenacity of the Vietnamese people

According to the US National Archives, there were 58,220 American military deaths in that War. The sheer resilience and tenacity of the Vietnamese people to achieve their national liberation stand out.

The heroic will to win, despite overwhelming odds, is replicated in many struggles in the global South (Asia, Africa and Latin America) while the global West (US and Europe) wilts easily in the face of determined resistance. British imperialists were thrice forced out of Afghanistan in 1842, 1880 and 1919. The Soviet Union was forced to withdraw in 1989 and the Americans in 2021 by fierce Afghan resistance.

Dutch colonialists were defeated in Indonesia in 1949, French colonialists were vanquished in Vietnam in 1954 and in Algeria in 1962. The Portuguese were pushed out of Goa by the Indian army in December 1961. They were ousted by armed national struggles in Angola, Mozambique and Guinea-Bissau in 1974 after 13 years of conflict in Africa. The brutal white racist regime in South Africa was cast aside in 1994 by the African National Congress led by Nelson Mandela.

In West Asia, the valiant people of Gaza remain defiant despite being bombed daily by US-supported Israel since October 2023. Israel has killed at least 51,200 Gazans, mostly women and children, in its ruthless extermination campaign.

The most outstanding resistance against US domination in Latin America has been repeatedly displayed by Cuba over the past 65 years from 1960 till today. Many other Latin American resistance movements have been crushed by the CIA and other US agencies.

All these popular movements (and others not named here) have succeeded due to the great sacrifices of the inhabitants of these territories.

Caveat: It cannot be denied that some post-colonial regimes and national liberation movements have turned out to be evil and brutish and involved in disastrous civil wars. They require a separate investigation.

Jawid Laiq has reported and commented on national and global politics for 55 years.

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