Today is the 50th Anniversary of the Liberation of Saigon and the reunification of Vietnam after almost a century of colonial and great power meddling. It was the first full blown American military defeat since Red Cloud’s War over a century before and the culmination of wise long term strategy on the part of the Vietnamese. The human cost was immense and the danger was not yet over, as the Sino-Soviet Split was about to go hot in Southeast Asia. Within almost no time at all Vietnamese forces would be ejecting the Khmer Rogue from power in neighboring Cambodia, toppling what had to have been the worst (adjusted for population and size) government of the 20th Century in the process, and incurring a retaliatory and ultimately ineffective limited invasion by the Chinese in 1979 (tacitly backed by a bitter US).

The Sino-Soviet Split preceded these events by about a decade, and Nixon and Mao’s diplomacy was basically a sealant on the end of the Cold War’s ideological phase. Vietnam, fighting what was always first and foremost an anti-colonial struggle, already knew this. The proximity and domineering attitude of the Chinese always meant that the USSR was a superior partner (this was the reverse of most communist states’ interests, showing the importance of geographic proximity), and that the security concerns of Chinese power projection could not be ignored. First was driving out the French and the Americans, then came dealing with a diplomatic assertion of independence in the near abroad. Sovereignty is not just ejecting foreign dominion, but asserting a ‘clear field’ over ones autonomy of action in diplomacy, similar to the difference between an actual planet and a dwarf planet, one isn’t all the way there if the baycenter of its orbit with a moon lies outside the primary central mass.

So Vietnam served as an obvious example of small state realpolitik in action. Less by actively seeking to be part of the preexisting Sino-Soviet Split and more by ignoring it entirely as it focused on more pressing matters. The world responded accordingly after Vietnam took action. More importantly, this was not just a part of the war of independence, but rather a hint of what was to come. Both Vietnamese and Chinese diplomacy dropped all pretense of being anything but national interest-based after this. Vietnam sought diplomatic connections with many abroad regardless of regime type, while China focused on anti-Soviet activities for the remainder of the Cold War. This even included support of the Afghan Mujahedeen. With the loss of its great power patron in the fall of the USSR in 1991, Vietnam immediately began to pivot to normalizing relations with the United States, something that would occur at the end of the decade. Since that time, maudlin Boomer tears for the doomed mafia-like client state of South Vietnam aside, the two countries have largely had positive relations. The U.S. has even worked to redirect offshoring away from China and towards Vietnam for reasons of obvious mutual benefit.

This has not meant that Vietnam has pursued hostile relations with the Chinese. Far from it, it attempts a kind of cautious neutrality and guarded openness to its giant neighbor. Something currently paying dividends as Hanoi becomes targeted by an erratic and undirected US trade policy. The true lesson of the Cold War, something the Vietnamese learned that the Americans and Russians often did not, is that globally-focused ideology in foreign policy is a leash. The smaller the country, the shorter the leash.

Despite having the formative events of its modern state tied up with the Cold War almost like no other state around today, Vietnam serves as an example of keeping grand political projects localized and non-universal. The freedom and security of their nation and their diplomatic autonomy always came first. They would have their own path to sovereignty, divergent from others. This is, after all, the point of independence and national unity.

Ho Chi Minh was scorned at Versailles by the imperious universalist Woodrow Wilson, but maintained an admiration for George Washington, one of the preeminent examples of turning an independence war into a diplomatic posture of non-alignment. This was the correct path as the war that Americans were told was necessary to maintain world order, which they were willing to kill millions to keep going, ultimately didn’t matter. The two countries live with each other and have largely constructive relations. Vietnam had no global capacity or ambitions, and the United States, so used to both itself and the Soviets, had to be reminded that sometimes all politics really are just local. And yet if you go to Vietnam in person in the 21rst Century, as I have, you’ll find nothing but water under the bridge. The world moved on. Geopolitics is always in flux. And in a world where constant rebalancing, entropy, and changing circumstances reign supreme there can be no universal principle save adaptability. Those who embrace this reality can outperform those who refuse to.

Vietnam didn’t just beat France and America, it beat the idea of a Cold War itself. In doing so it ensured its own success. This is worth remembering today when modern people try to tell us we live in a world of ‘freedom vs authoritarianism’ or ‘a new Cold War’. Any state that engages with the rest of the world as part of some kind of Platonic/existential struggle will meet only disaster, while the agility of the practical and situationally positioned states will run rings around them.

But lest you think I have only negative things to mention about the failed experiment of South Vietnam, check this out: