The word “Vietnam” immediately conjures images of guerrilla warfare, the 1960s peace movements and the flight from Saigon from the top of the American embassy. For South Vietnamese, their memories would be quite different. Theirs would be more local and specific since they not only lived through it, as Americans had, but the South Vietnamese also had to live in it.
Vietnam syndrome has been attributed to the United States of America due to the after-effects of the Vietnam War. It’s often defined as the population’s unwillingness after Vietnam to become entangled in another foreign war. Within the article I will highlight how the considerations of the Vietnam war had affected public perception of overseas conflicts and that the American public often choose to refrain from retaliating against or engaging with other countries on war footing. After George H. W. Bush and the United Nations decided to intervene in the Gulf War, President H.W. Bush had believed the Vietnam syndrome had been overcome. However, as I’ve laid out below, I’ve given my specific reasons and argument about why that is not true and why the Vietnam syndrome still exist today nearly fifty years later.
