Fifty years ago, the last American helicopters lifted off from Saigon rooftops, ending a war that took the lives of 58,000 Americans and several million Vietnamese. Photographs and videos spread the horrific proceedings with a vividness unknown to the cataclysmic abandonments of ages past. The ensuing debates over culpability and lessons, however, differed little from the recrimination among Judeans and Egyptians after the Babylonian conquest.

The South Vietnamese blamed their fate on the United States, which had become their main ally in 1954, overthrowing their first leader in 1963, and gradually withdrawing from 1969 onward. American Anti-war journalists, historians, and many American politicians blamed the defeat on the corruption and ineptitude of South Vietnamese leaders. The passage of 50 years and the death of statesmen have cooled the passions, but the debates persist, and they continue to inform the policy and politics of the present.

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The facts and histories emerging in recent decades indicate that culpability lies primarily with the U.S. Congress and secondarily with the White House. They have shown that national security adviser Henry Kissinger conceded too much to the North Vietnamese in the 1973 Paris Peace Accords because he prioritized détente with the Soviets and Chinese over South Vietnam’s survival. Discarding the long-standing American insistence on mutual withdrawal of forces, Kissinger agreed to remove all American forces from South Vietnam while allowing North Vietnamese forces to remain. South Vietnam, though, was not yet doomed.

American air power had enabled the South Vietnamese Army to repel North Vietnam’s Easter Offensive in 1972, so its disappearance prompted speculation that South Vietnam would soon fold once the North Vietnamese restarted the war. But the South Vietnamese armed forces confounded their doubters, outfighting the North Vietnamese from early 1973 until the middle of 1974, when aid cuts imposed by the U.S. Congress began reducing stocks of ammunition, fuel, and equipment. Even then, South Vietnamese forces continued to perform effectively under leaders such as General Ngo Quang Truong and General Pham Van Phu, men far more capable than the South Vietnamese generals of a decade earlier.

In the fall of 1974, U.S. military analysts concluded that the South Vietnamese needed $1.4 billion for fiscal 1975 to keep the North Vietnamese at bay, yet Congress authorized only $700 million. In the months to come, American legislators ignored repeated warnings that South Vietnam would fall without an emergency infusion of aid. Many justified their actions by claiming the war could be solved through peaceful negotiation rather than violent confrontation. By the time of Hanoi’s 1975 spring offensive, no amount of good generalship could compensate for South Vietnam’s supply shortages and Congress’s prohibitions of U.S. military intervention.

During South Vietnam’s final days, aircraft and ships evacuated roughly 75,000 of its citizens. The rest were left to the mercy of a vindictive North Vietnamese regime. The Communists incarcerated close to one million South Vietnamese in “re-education camps,” where an estimated 150,000 perished. Another 1.5 million “boat people” fled Communist Vietnam in small vessels, of whom somewhere between 200,000 and 600,000 died at sea. The fall of South Vietnam also facilitated the fall of Cambodia to the Khmer Rouge, who proceeded to murder between 1.5 and 3 million Cambodians.

The terrible fate of South Vietnam manifested not only the human capacity for betrayal but also the tendency of liberal democratic politicians to put partisan interests ahead of foreign alliances. 

A Democratic Party that had made massive commitments to South Vietnam during the 1960s turned against the war in droves once the Republican Richard Nixon came to power. The party’s willingness to forsake South Vietnam was based in part on changed opinions about the strategic stakes, but also on opposition to Nixon, which morphed into hatred during Watergate. The same prioritization of partisanship over policy influenced Democrats again during the Iraq War, and most recently, Republicans during the current Ukraine War.

Vietnam also demonstrated the tendency of Americans to misperceive foreign allies and adversaries because of ignorance, partisan prejudice, or the assumption that foreigners are just like us. 

In 1963, journalists such as David Halberstam and Neil Sheehan convinced the U.S. government to replace the country’s first president, Ngo Dinh Diem, on the grounds that someone else could do better. The coup backfired, for Diem’s successors proved far less capable. During the 1970s, Congress slashed aid to South Vietnam because it overestimated both South Vietnam’s faults and North Vietnam’s willingness to negotiate.

Presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson sent troops to Vietnam in the belief that abandoning one ally would cause other alliances to crumble. Subsequent events would prove them right. Standing by an ally in 1965 saved other Asian allies from Communism, most notably Indonesia. The betrayal of this ally 10 years later, therefore, was less damaging, but it did stimulate a new period of Soviet expansionism, which swept up Angola, Mozambique, Ethiopia, Afghanistan, South Yemen, and Nicaragua.

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Although the U.S. no longer has to worry about Communist expansionism, it does have to worry about the ripple effects of abandoning allies. The ignominious withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021 appears to have emboldened Russian President Vladimir Putin to invade Ukraine. 

If President Donald Trump secures Ukraine’s long-term survival through a peace deal, as he is currently endeavoring, he will discourage further aggression by Russia or China. An enduring peace, however, will require a feat that eluded Nixon in Vietnam — installing safeguards that immunize the peace agreement against the vagaries of America’s domestic politics and foreign policy.

Mark Moyar is the Chair of Military History at Hillsdale College and the author of several books about the Vietnam War.