by Prof. Pierre Asselin (San Diego State University)

As I sit here and reflect on the contemporary relevance of my Past & Present article “National liberation by other means: US visitor diplomacy in the Vietnam War” (August 2024) on US citizens who visited North Vietnam during the Vietnam War (1965-75), it strikes me how some world leaders learn from the past while others completely ignore or refuse to heed the lessons and other insights it offers.

The ongoing Russo-Ukrainian War is a telling example.  Consciously or serendipitously, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has borrowed from the North Vietnamese wartime/revolutionary playbook to offset his army’s inferiority relative to Russia’s, and frustrate Moscow’s geo-strategic designs over his country, as of the time of this writing at least.  He has done so by undertaking an aggressive diplomatic campaign à la Ho Chi Minh to win foreign hearts and minds, and vital military aid along with that.  While Hanoi at the time managed to secure material, economic, political, and moral support from a broad range of state and non-state actors – including the socialist bloc, Third World governments, and progressive action groups in the West –, Kyiv has been most successful at winning over state leaders and publics in Europe and North America.

To meet the purposes of their diplomatic campaign, Zelenskyy and his government have weaponized actual and alleged war crimes perpetrated by enemy forces on home soil, just as authorities in Hanoi did during their war against the United States, as I relate in my article.  Most interestingly, Kyiv, like Hanoi before it, has also resorted to what I call “visitor diplomacy” – namely, warzone tours carefully crafted and curated to elicit maximal sympathy from visitors – with a view to showcasing the merits of its cause and exposing the immorality of political leaders and military commanders on the other side.

Ho-chi-Minh with children (date unknown), Musée Annam, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Ukrainian authorities have even harnessed the power of famous people, including movie stars, just as the North Vietnamese did more than half-a-century ago.  At the height of its war against the United States, Hanoi rolled out the red carpet for Jane Fonda, Susan Sontag, and Joan Baez.  Since the onset of the Russian invasion in 2022, Zelenskyy has rubbed shoulders with Ben Stiller, Jessica Chastain, and Mark Strong, among other Hollywood celebrities.  Strong is in fact “ambassador” for United24, “the main venue for collecting charitable donations in support of Ukraine,” according to its official website.  United24 is fundamentally a front organization, a government-run organ created to facilitate the expeditious achievement of politico-military objectives.  Hanoi, too, created several such organizations during its war with the United States.

While Zelenskyy has demonstrated that History can teach us powerful and sometimes quite useful lessons, other leaders have proven Spanish philosopher George Santayana’s old adage true: “Those who do not learn history are doomed to repeat it.”  As I mention in my article, the international community banned usage of cluster munitions in the aftermath of the Vietnam War because they not only constitute dreadful anti-personnel devices, but also harm innocent civilians, especially children, during and long after conflicts.  In their obvious desire to make the Russians bleed in Ukraine as they made the Soviets bleed in Afghanistan in the 1980s, US policymakers have been oblivious to all that and transferred cluster munitions deliverable by artillery and ballistic missiles to their Ukrainian allies.

Russian President Vladimir Putin, for his part, has chosen to ignore some of the more valuable lessons learned the hard way by Washington decision-makers in the 1960s who were convinced the big and mighty United States would easily prevail over a “damn little piss-ant country” – in the words of US President Lyndon Johnson – like North Vietnam.  Just as American authorities never tried very hard to shape the global narrative on the war in Vietnam, to explain and justify in sensible terms the reasons for their massive military intervention there, Putin and his government have not done enough to seriously engage the international community and present their side of the story in a manner palatable to foreign audiences, especially in the West.  To be sure, few outside Russia itself buy the official line that this is about “de-Nazifying” Ukraine.  Shaping and controlling the narrative of a war is as important as waging it, the Cold War and the American war in Vietnam in particular have shown us.  Zelenskyy, like Ho Chi Minh before him, gets that.  Putin, in the image of Presidents Johnson and Richard Nixon, does not.  The Ukrainian President has masterfully exploited his underdog status, just as Ho Chi Minh did.  Putin, on the other hand, has failed miserably at countering the (predominantly Western) line demonizing him as a bully, a thug, and an existential threat to world peace, much as Johnson and especially Nixon failed to do in the Vietnam War.

In more ways than one the Americans did worse for lesser reasons in Vietnam – to say nothing of Iraq and Afghanistan more recently – than the Russians have done to this point in Ukraine.  Similarly, Washington, abetted by West European governments, has lavishly aided militarily and unconditionally supported politically the Israeli government in its ongoing war against Hamas, a war that has produced untold collateral physical damage and human suffering across the entirety of the Gaza Strip.  Irrespective of who may be on the right and the wrong side of History in the latter conflict, to condemn as the West has Russia’s actions in Ukraine while it, the West, not only tolerates but actively supports those of Israel in Gaza evinces a double standard, even duplicity and hypocrisy.  Yet, Moscow has thus far proven unable to capitalize on that pretense.

Volodymyr Zelenskyy paid a visit to the wounded defenders of Ukraine undergoing treatment at a military hospital (March 2022), Author: President Of Ukraine from Flickr, author has placed in public domain, via Wikimedia:Commons

Once their war ended, in light of all the death and sorrow they had endured, Vietnamese would cynically claim that the big powers had been prepared to sustain hostilities in their country “to the last Vietnamese.”  By that rationale, Moscow and Beijing, on the one hand, and the United States, on the other, had proven generous with their military aid to North and South Vietnam, respectively, because the war served and advanced their own selfish, national interests.  The big powers had never actually cared about Vietnam and the Vietnamese, for if they had, then they would have done more to end their suffering by diplomatic or related means.

Similarly, today, one must wonder whether US/Western policy toward Ukraine is motivated and conditioned by genuine feelings of empathy and solidarity with its government and people, or simply and uniquely by the ambition of weakening and humiliating Russia, to the last Ukrainian, if necessary.  After all, a negotiated solution at this point seems sensible and even desirable, but merely calling for it is tantamount to national treason in both West Europe and North America.

But the question begs an answer: What will average Ukrainians themselves think when their ordeal finally ends?  Kyiv certainly has a chance to emerge triumphant from its war against Russia.  But at what cost?  For even in victory, many in North Vietnam felt they had lost.  After all, what is there to celebrate when the enemy has been vanquished but one’s family, home, and country have been completely and utterly destroyed?

It took the Vietnamese ten years and millions of lives lost and irretrievably shattered to achieve and complete their own “national liberation” as leaders in Hanoi envisioned it.  Today, those who lived through and experienced the war, including combat veterans, feel neither joy nor elation when reflecting on their defeat of the United States; instead, they feel pain, loss, heartache, even regret.  Sometimes, there are no winners in war.  This is arguably the most important – and tragic – lesson the “victory” of Vietnam’s national liberation struggle teaches us.  Leaders and allies on both sides of the Russo-Ukrainian conflict should pay heed.