Opinion | Will the US-China trade war quagmire take as long as the Vietnam war to untangle?
The Vietnam war, fought over nearly two decades from 1955 to 1975, took four US presidents to untangle. Let’s hope this unwinnable trade war will not take as long
Recalling Donald Trump’s infamous claim that a trade war is good, and easy to win, I for some reason keep thinking back to that other war - a real war - that the United States believed would be good and easy to win – the Vietnam war, launched blithely late in 1955, and dogging the term of four US presidents.
Recall the newly inaugurated Lyndon Johnson at a White House meeting in November 1963: “I am not going to lose Vietnam. I am not going to be the president who saw Southeast Asia go the way China went.”
And 18 months later: “We will not be defeated. We will not grow tired. We will not withdraw either openly or under the cloak of a meaningless agreement.”
But then recall a recently unveiled, late-night phone log from Johnson to a top aide in May 1964: “It’s damn easy to get in a war, but it’s going to be awfully hard to ever extricate yourself if you get in.”
Leap forward to Richard Nixon in November 1969, after countless loss of American and Vietnamese lives: “Let us understand: North Vietnam cannot defeat or humiliate the United States. Only Americans can do that... I’m not going to be the first American president to lose a war.”
