Ukraine could be Trump's fall of Saigon

Telegraph

30-04-2025

On April 30, 1975, North Vietnamese forces captured Saigon after a rapid-fire spring offensive. The fall of Saigon rendered the collapse of the US-aligned South Vietnamese regime inevitable and facilitated the unification of Vietnam under communist rule.
This chain of events dealt a devastating blow to US prestige and marked an ignominious end to its two-decade-long struggle against communist expansion in Southeast Asia. The humiliation stemmed not just from South Vietnam's state failure but from the voluntary nature of the US's surrender to communism. President Richard Nixon's desperation to end the Vietnam War resulted in him declaring 'peace with honour' in January 1973 and set the stage for North Vietnam to militarily overwhelm its depleted southern neighbour.
A half-century later, the US is at a similar inflection point. After more than three years of stoic resistance against Russian military aggression, Ukraine faces overwhelming headwinds. Russia is unevenly expanding its grip on eastern Ukraine and has structural war materiel and manpower advantages. If President Donald Trump stops US military aid to Ukraine, he risks repeating Nixon's fateful mistake and facilitating a Saigon-style fall of Kyiv.
The events that immediately followed Saigon's demise underscore the grave consequences of such an abdication. Under Pol Pot's despotic tyranny, the Khmer Rouge regime in Cambodia perpetrated a genocide that killed three million people. The Pathet Lao movement leveraged North Vietnamese assistance to place Laos under communist rule in December 1975. While the much-feared domino effect of communist takeovers in Southeast Asia did not transpire, the US was a spectator to totalitarian consolidation and mass murder.
If Russia can outlast US military assistance and capitalise on Europe's defensive limitations, it could eventually overthrow Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and establish a puppet regime in Kyiv. President Vladimir Putin's neo-imperial delusions suggest that he will not stop there. President Alexander Lukashenko's retirement or death could trigger a Russian invasion of Belarus. Georgia and Moldova lack ironclad security guarantees and are sufficiently vulnerable that Russia could turn partial occupations into complete ones.
Even if Russia does not test Nato's Article 5 by invading the Baltic States, the end of Ukrainian sovereignty would have harrowing spillover impacts. Given Russia's track record of levelling of major cities and gun-barrel cultural assimilation in Ukraine, the human costs of Putin's further aggression would be catastrophic.
Taking the Saigon precedent a step further, the aftershocks of Trump's abandonment of Ukraine could lead to the unravelling of US primacy. After South Vietnam's collapse, the aura of invincibility that surrounded the US after World War II fell apart. The Soviet Union transcended economic stagnation and expanded its sphere of influence in Africa. China embarked on the course of economic reform that would make it the world's second most powerful country. Japan and West Germany continued their economic booms.
A bipolar world where the US had material superiority over the Soviet Union became somewhat more multipolar. This shift also encouraged malign actors to carry out aggression with impunity. Sensing the US's Vietnam-induced crisis of confidence, Iran took fifty-three Americans hostage in November 1979 and the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan a month later. It took President Ronald Reagan's defence spending boom, the collapse of the Soviet Union and rapid-fire US triumph in the 1991 Gulf War to eviscerate these negative trendlines.
A Saigon 2.0 in Kyiv would have even more disastrous consequences for US primacy and the world order. China's appeal as an alternative superpower partner would rise precipitously. Europe could eventually reconstitute itself as an independent pole detached from US hegemony. Russia's expanded territorial reach and India's economic dynamism could further erode US dominance. In the name of America-First, Trump risks overseeing the end of American exceptionalism and birth of a post-hegemonic multipolar world order.
If Russia is rewarded for its neo-imperialism, China could follow a similar path in the Indo-Pacific region. Much like after Saigon, nuclear proliferation and proxy warfare would intensify. Trump's pledges to prevent World War III and make America safe again would ring alarmingly hollow.
The US can still pull itself back from the brink of Saigon 2.0. Trump's periodic willingness to call out Russian obstructionism provides a glimmer of hope. Now is the time for these statements to transform into the reaffirmation of US support for Ukraine and peace through strength.