The forgotten Forever War

On 8 July 2021 – a mere five weeks before Taliban forces seized Kabul – President Biden was asked whether he saw any parallels between the withdrawal from Afghanistan and the end of the Vietnam War five decades earlier. ‘None whatsoever. Zero,’ he replied. ‘There’s going to be no circumstance where you see people being lifted off the roof of an Embassy… It is not at all comparable.’

The rapid collapse of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan that August and the chaotic evacuation that followed nevertheless set off a flurry of commentary drawing parallels with the fall of Saigon, though senior officials in the US government resisted these comparisons to the end. ‘This is manifestly not Saigon,’ insisted Secretary of State Antony Blinken on the day of the collapse, as the US dispatched helicopters to evacuate its embassy staff.

The two wars had much in common: a superpower propping up a client state widely viewed as corrupt; a gruelling insurgency; a frantic exit. In both cases, the Americans overestimated the durability of the states they left behind: as late as March 1975, roughly a month before South Vietnam surrendered, US intelligence thought it possible that the besieged government in Saigon could retain a foothold in the south and resist total defeat until early 1976. Similarly, in the summer of 2021, the Afghan Republic was widely expected to linger on for six to 12 months after the US departed; it crumbled before the withdrawal was even complete.

It is therefore striking, five years later, how the legacies of the two wars have diverged. The Vietnam War became an enduring symbol of US decline for decades, leaving behind a vast political and cultural footprint. In the immediate aftermath of the war, a period of national soul-searching followed, much of it mediated through art. Michael Herr’s Dispatches (1977) was published to great acclaim; the following year, Tim O’Brien’s surreal war novel Going After Cacciato (1978) appeared, later winning the National Book Award for fiction. Several films now regarded as classics – including Coming Home (1978), The Deer Hunter (1978) and Apocalypse Now (1979) – were released in quick succession. Bitter arguments about how the war should be commemorated were already underway and would soon ignite over Maya Lin’s controversial 1981 design of the Vietnam memorial in Washington DC, which one veteran memorably denounced as a ‘black gash of shame and sorrow’.

Politically, the ‘Vietnam Syndrome’ became shorthand for national stagnation, self-doubt and humiliation. It was accompanied by a reluctance to commit US troops abroad, for fear of another quagmire. In 1980, a few months before he was elected president, Ronald Reagan invoked Vietnam Syndrome and promised a more muscular foreign policy in response. After America’s swift victory in the 1991 Gulf War, President George H.W. Bush claimed that the Vietnam Syndrome had been kicked ‘once and for all’. But Vietnam occasionally resurfaced during later interventions: in Somalia, Bosnia as well as in Iraq after the war turned ugly. The Biden Administration’s prickliness about the comparisons to Saigon in 2021 underscored the war’s lingering potency.

Afghanistan, the longest war in US history, has left a comparatively sparse legacy, despite being bookended by two catastrophes: the collective shock of 9/11 and the fall of Kabul 20 years later. At first, this was because the initial years of the Afghanistan War had relatively few casualties among both Afghans and coalition forces, and public attention was soon diverted by the far deadlier intervention in Iraq. Iraq dominated political debates in America, consistently rated as the most important issue in the country from 2004 well into 2007, while Afghanistan, the ‘forgotten war’, was relatively ignored.

By the end of the decade, both wars were waning in prominence. In 2010, despite the Obama Administration’s efforts to redirect attention and resources to Afghanistan during his first term, the war in Afghanistan accounted for just four per cent of US news coverage, and Iraq a paltry one per cent. No more than one in ten Americans named either conflict as their top news story. By one account, Afghanistan was the ‘least reported war since at least WWI’.

As the Afghanistan War dragged on, the public mood was pessimistic, but resigned. Even if a majority continued to believe the war was not a mistake, most recognised it was not going well. Few believed it was worth the enormous costs, which accumulated to an estimated $2.3 trillion.

Culturally, Afghanistan barely registered. Journalists and observers – both foreign and Afghan – produced several superb narrative accounts of the war, as well as acclaimed documentaries such as Restrepo (2010). However, relatively lightweight mainstream fare like Whiskey Tango Foxtrot (2016) and War Machine (2017) came and went. The Forever War became a popular moniker for US engagement in Afghanistan. That summed up the public mood.

While the collapse in August 2021 briefly brought Afghanistan back into the public consciousness, attention soon receded. By November, Afghanistan had all but disappeared from US television news. One poll from 2023 showed that more than four in ten Americans were unaware of the Taliban retaking control of Afghanistan, while over a third had not heard of the Taliban’s growing restrictions on Afghan women.

In response to Vietnam, the authorities ended the compulsory draft in 1973 and shifted the US military towards a professional, all-volunteer force. This did not mean fewer soldiers were deployed: over 2.7 million Americans served in Vietnam, while a comparable estimated 2.77 million served in Afghanistan and Iraq, albeit over a longer period of time. The shift to a professional military meant that the war was shouldered by a narrower segment of society, and relied heavily on repeated deployments of the same individuals. By 2008, many active-duty soldiers were already on their second or third tours.

Further reforms included the professionalisation of military reserves (which would become far more active in overseas deployments), a growing reliance on private contractors and a shift towards what Martin Shaw has described as ‘risk-transfer militarism’: a more targeted mode of engagement that kept coalition casualties to a minimum, not least through advancements in drone warfare.

Vietnam imposed more visible economic sacrifices on the American people. Defence spending during the Vietnam War era ran at between eight and 10 per cent of GDP, and the war was financed in part by a temporary 10 per cent income-tax surcharge in 1968, which the Johnson administration justified as supporting ‘our sons and brothers’ serving abroad. By contrast, during the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, defence spending hovered around four per cent of GDP, mostly financed by borrowing. The sum total of these reforms meant that most Americans were insulated from overseas wars to a greater extent than ever before.

Public narratives around the two wars also diverged. Vietnam was more salient because there was far more contestation over the war’s conduct and how it was concluded. Though by no means a universal view, some cleaved to a stab-in-the-back narrative: that the war had been winnable if only civilian leaders had pursued a different strategy, one in which the military had fewer restraints and sustained a longer-term commitment. ‘There is a lesson for all of us in Vietnam,’ said Reagan in his 1980 speech: ‘If we are forced to fight, we must have the means and the determination to prevail or we will not have what it takes to secure the peace… we will never again ask young men to fight and possibly die in a war our government is afraid to let them win.’

The decision to withdraw from Afghanistan was far more bipartisan, stemming from a sense of exhaustion. While there was immense frustration with the South Vietnamese leadership, a sizeable constituency mourned the loss of South Vietnam as a strategic and military ally. By the latter years of the war, there was little love for the Afghan Republic as a political entity, and increasing despair about how it might be independently sustained. While there were a few prominent dissenters who argued in favour of keeping a small military force in Afghanistan, neither the Trump nor Biden administrations were inclined to listen. In this they were in tune with most of the American public; by summer 2021, about 70 per cent of the public supported the decision to withdraw, even if there was widespread concern about the plight of individual Afghans, such as military translators and human rights activists. Most of the criticism thereafter focused on questions of execution, not the strategic decision itself. The manner of America’s departure was embarrassing, but did not constitute a lasting humiliation.

Moving on from the war was also psychologically easier. The Vietnam War was fought at least partly on ideological grounds and a US defeat meant victory for a rival superpower. While the Afghanistan War was frequently justified as being fought for democracy and human rights – in particular the rights of women and girls – there was no comparable ideological defeat, as the Taliban’s draconian form of government had little appeal outside its borders.

Nor, as many initially feared, did America’s withdrawal confer much benefit to its adversaries. There was perhaps some schadenfreude over America’s chaotic exit – not least in Russia, which had endured its own failed venture in Afghanistan a generation earlier – but Afghanistan’s neighbours also feared that regional instability might intensify as a consequence. While the fall of Kabul may have damaged US prestige across 24 countries, there was no corresponding bump in favourability towards rivals like China or Russia. While the US withdrawal was certainly concerning for America’s allies, some, like South Korea and Taiwan, viewed it as a possible opportunity, believing it could free up more resources to be deployed elsewhere.

What do Americans think about their longest war, five years after it ended? Not very much, it seems. While the war rekindled scepticism about the merits of nation-building, it did not fundamentally shake America’s identity or spark heated debates about America’s place in the world, as Vietnam did. To the extent that there is an ‘Afghanistan Syndrome’, it has not led to a reluctance to intervene abroad, simply an aversion to putting large numbers of American boots on the ground. In terms of a willingness to flex its military muscle abroad – in Ukraine, in Venezuela, in Iran – America is as active as ever.

The trauma of Vietnam left America with an identity crisis, one that took decades to resolve, if indeed it ever did. The Forever War ended with a collective shrug. By the time the last American soldier left Afghanistan, the public had long since moved on.