American Imperialism's Toxic Legacy: Vietnam's Endless War
S Krishnaswamy
THE Vietnam War was from 1955 to 1975. But it is an unacknowledged and unrepented catastrophic chapter in history. It left upon the human and environment worlds a deep scar. This was not just any other war – but like many wars – it was a constant and merciless imperialistic attack against a country, its people, and their world. Its sheer extent of destruction and pain cannot be paralleled and resonates through decades. The war's historical origins, ruthless environmental destruction it brought along, and appalling legacy still haunts Vietnam and its people and people of the earth.
IMPERIALISM AND COLD WAR AGGRESSION
The Vietnam War did not arise overnight. Rather it was a consequence of imperialistic power play around the world and paranoia of the Cold War. After World War II, Vietnam remained under the shackles of French colonial rule. It was exploited and repressed by the French. The communist rebellions in Malaya and the Philippines, and the formation of the People’s Republic of China in 1949, caused the US great concern. By end of the Korean War in 1953, the United States was irrevocably committed to defending the French against the increasingly aggressive Viet Minh forces. Eisenhower, President of USA, described in 1954 a metaphor of falling dominoes to explain the link between Vietnam’s status and that of the rest of Southeast Asia: if one country fell to communism, the rest of them would follow. Despite this, the Viet Minh forces led by Ho Chi Minh in 1954 defeated the French at Dien Bien Phu. This compelled France to vacate. Vietnam's freedom was however short-lived. The Geneva Accords, engineered by the forces of exploitation, forcibly divided the country into the communist North and the anti-communist South.
The United States, intoxicated with its imperial ambitions and spurred by the "domino theory," launched a headlong plunge into Vietnam's affairs. It saw communist North as an existential threat to hegemony in western control in Southeast Asia. A questionable naval skirmish over the Gulf of Tonkin in 1964 was just the pretext needed by the US President Lyndon B. Johnson to launch an open full-scale military campaign without congressionally declared approval. This marked the start of one of the most atrocious wars in the modern history of warfare.
From 1965 through 1973, the United States committed more than half a million troops to Vietnam. The hallmark of US strategy became bombing campaigns and chemical warfare – relentless operations like Rolling Thunder and Operation Ranch Hand – left no corner of Vietnam unscathed. However in the home front in USA, anti-war protests erupted across USA and tearing apart its social fabric. By the time the Paris Peace Accords were signed in 1973, the withdrawal of the United States had already become inevitable rather than a choice, considering the international condemnation and domestic disturbances.
APOCALYPTIC SCALE BOMBING: NEW EVIDENCE
Perhaps the best example of indiscriminate destruction in the world is the bombing campaigns of the Vietnam War. Newly declassified documents have turned up some horrifying dimensions: 13 million tons of bombs fell on Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia. That sum dwarfs the tons dropped on World War II by an astronomical degree. The result? Bomb craters litter the Vietnamese countryside, an uncomfortable reminder to each visitor of human hubris and technological overreach.
Recently, declassified KH-9 (photographic reconnaissance satellites) imagery taken during the 1970s were used by researchers to detect by machine learning methods the Vietnam War-era bomb craters. They detected a high concentration of craters near the cities of Quang Tri and Kon Tum, which were subject to heavy bombing during the year preceding the KH-9 image acquisition. They identified more than 500,000 bomb craters across the Quang Tri province in Vietnam and the Tri border area that straddles Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia. They are not quiet monuments; they continue to be an extremely busy killing ground due to the Unexploded Ordinance (UXO) littered across the region. Nearly 40 years after the Vietnam War, an estimated 600,000 tons of UXO remain in the ground. Vietnamese authorities have said these mortars, bombs and grenades have killed or wounded around 100,000 people since the war's end. They keep local communities in a permanent state of fear and loss.
CHEMICAL WARFARE OF MASS DESTRUCTION: AGENT ORANGE
If the bombing campaigns symbolised the disregard of the US to human beings, then the application of Agent Orange showed its callousness. During the Vietnam War, between 1962 and 1971, the United States military sprayed nearly 75 million litres of various herbicides including the toxic Agent Orange in Vietnam, eastern Laos, and parts of Cambodia as part of Operation Ranch Hand, reaching its peak from 1967 to 1969. Among the weapons of mass destruction, chemical warfare is probably one of the most brutal created by mankind. It attempted to rip open the Viet Cong bare of their cover, with forests, leaving them to wither up through crop destruction. In ecological terms, it became a disaster: 3 million hectares of lush forests turn into wastelands, biodiversity killed, and ecosystems marred irreparably.
This chemical warfare, replete with toxic dioxins, is the worst nightmare from which the world cannot wake up. It has brought an epidemic of cancers and neurological disorders, besides being responsible for horrific birth defects. Vietnam estimates that three million Vietnamese are afflicted with illnesses caused by exposure to Agent Orange, one million of who suffer from serious disabilities. The generations that were born after the war bear, in their genes, scars and sufferings for something they did not know. The attempts of reparations by the United States, particularly minuscule funding for cleaning up dioxin, are a joke to the scale of devastation the war wrought.
The war devastated the country's economy. Arable lands, doused with Agent Orange and riddled with bomb craters, became hostile to any kind of agricultural activity, and rural communities began to sink into poverty and hunger cycles. Forests, which once supported an entire village, had to be bulldozed, leaving hundreds of thousands of families without a source of livelihood. Rivers and water sources, defiled by chemical residues, turned toxic lifelines and added to health crises.
The social fabric of Vietnam was ripped apart. Death, displacement, and psychological trauma due to war had torn apart families. Two million civilians were killed, and millions were displaced within the country, creating a massive humanitarian crisis. Vietnam’s post-war reconstruction has been painfully slow, hampered by the scale of destruction and a lack of adequate international support.
ACCOUNTABILITY AND WARFARE
The legacy of the Vietnam War is a stark condemnation of unaccountable military aggression. Indiscriminate chemical warfare and remorseless bombardment of civilian centres prove a grotesque disregard for human life and the environment. As wars proliferate globally, led by US interests, protection and support, the Vietnam War lessons remain largely ignored today.
Not fully assuming responsibility is one glaring failure of moral principles on the part of the United States: symbolic gestures – cleanup programmes involving dioxin and health measures for a fragment of all victims – don't quite scratch the surface of it. Real accountability must mean owning up to all that is done, promises to bring about large-scale remedial efforts and refraining from instigating and supporting wars around the globe.
The scars of the Vietnam War call for more than reflection; they call for action. The world needs to force nations to abide by the laws of the international community regarding indiscriminate bombing, chemical and now biological weapons. They need to ensure rogue nations, like Israel, and wrongdoers are brought to book. Reparation to affected communities is no charity but an obligation flowing from natural justice.
Redemptions for the United States are found in transparency and restitutions. The most basic requirement is comprehensive support to the victims of Vietnam combined with aggressive restoration efforts. Anything short of this will only prolong the suffering and injustice that war brought.
Indeed, it is a sobering lesson that the story of Vietnam teaches to the world. Amidst both armed conflict and environmental degradation, the world cannot afford to go that way again and again. Costs of war run deeper than battle-scarred fields. They leave a long-lasting poisoned legacy of shattered lives and broken nations. The story of Vietnam needs to be a call against imperialistic forces and one for peace, accountability, and preservation of our common humanity.
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