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Vietnam War, 50 years on

Fifty years ago today, North Vietnamese troops seized Saigon, and ended the Vietnam war with a communist victory. GZERO writers and producers have taken a deep dive into the history behind this solemn occasion, exploring life in Saigon during the war, the emotional and chaotic scenes that unfolded as thousands fled, the life Vietnamese-Americans built from scratch in their new homes, and asking whether we have learned the lessons of the war.

50 Years on, have we learned the Vietnam War's lessons?

Fifty years after the fall of Saigon (or its liberation, depending on whom you ask), Vietnam has transformed from a war-torn battleground to one of Asia’s fastest-growing economies — and now finds itself caught between two superpowers. Ian Bremmer breaks down how Vietnam went from devastation in the wake of the Vietnam War to become a regional economic powerhouse.

Saigon’s Last Day: The fall, the flight, and the aftermath of the Vietnam War

Don Shearer, US Defense Department via National Archives

Saigon, April 29, 1975. For six weeks, South Vietnamese forces have been falling back in the face of a determined communist offensive. American troops have been gone for two years. The feeble government is in disarray. The people are traumatized by three decades of war and three million deaths.

Bing Crosby’s “White Christmas” begins playing on radios across the capital.

Some Saigonese know it’s a sign: It is time to run.

Lien-Hang T. Nguyen, now a Columbia University history professor, was just five months old, the youngest of nine children. After a failed first escape attempt by helicopter, her family heard about an uncle with access to an oil transport boat. More than 100 refugees crammed aboard the small vessel, where they waited for hours to set sail. Nguyen’s father nearly became separated when he dashed back into the city in a futile attempt to find more relatives.

At nightfall, they finally departed, crossing enemy-controlled territory under cover of darkness before being ordered onto an ammunition barge floating off the coast, bursting with over 1,000 refugees.

“When the sun rose the next day, April 30, we realized Saigon had fallen,” says Nguyen.

Read more about the amazing stories of survival, and just what happened to Vietnam after the war here.

PODCAST: Revisiting the Vietnam War 50 years later, with authors Viet Thanh Nguyen and Mai Elliott

On the GZERO World Podcast, two authors with personal ties to the Vietnam War reflect on its enduring legacy and Vietnam’s remarkable rise as a modern geopolitical player.

Life in Saigon during the Vietnam War

On GZERO World with Ian Bremmer, author Mai Elliott recalls how witnessing the human toll of the Vietnam War firsthand changed her views — and forced her to keep a life-altering secret from her own family.

Growing up as a Vietnamese refugee in 1980s America

On GZERO World with Ian Bremmer,Pulitzer Prize-winning author Viet Thanh Nguyen shares what it was like growing up as a Vietnamese refugee in the US — and how the Americans around him often misunderstood the emotional toll of displacement.

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Growing up as a Vietnamese refugee in 1980s America

On GZERO World with Ian Bremmer, Pulitzer Prize-winning author Viet Thanh Nguyen shares what it was like growing up as a Vietnamese refugee in the US—and how the Americans around him often misunderstood the emotional toll of displacement.

When Nguyen’s family fled Vietnam in 1975, they joined over 130,000 South Vietnamese refugees trying to rebuild their lives in the United States. Nguyen grew up in a tight-knit refugee community steeped in anti-communism and Catholicism, watching his parents work 14-hour days while sending money to relatives they had left behind. “We were a community that had lost so much,” he says, “and we were trying to rebuild our shattered lives.”

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Life in Saigon during the Vietnam War

On GZERO World with Ian Bremmer, Mai Elliott recalls how witnessing the human toll of the Vietnam War firsthand changed her views—and forced her to keep a life-altering secret from her own family.

As a young researcher in Saigon working for the RAND Corporation during the Vietnam War, Mai Elliott had a rare window into the lives of North Vietnamese fighters and rural civilians. What she saw challenged everything she had been raised to believe. “I came from a very anti-communist family... but I began to change my views because I thought it was unjust for the peasants to pay for the cost of the war,” she says.

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50 years after the Vietnam War

On GZERO World with Ian Bremmer speaks with Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist Viet Thanh Nguyen and historian Mai Elliott—two authors whose lives were shaped by the Vietnam War—to understand how one of the 20th century’s most devastating conflicts continues to shape the world today. “We were a community that had lost so much,” Nguyen, author of the bestselling novel "The Sympathizer," says of the Vietnamese refugee experience in the US. Elliott recalls the physical and emotional toll of the war she witnessed firsthand, “I didn’t care who won the war by the end of it—I just wanted it to stop.”

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Revisiting the Vietnam War 50 years later, with novelist Viet Thanh Nguyen and author Mai Elliott

Listen: It’s been 50 years since the fall of Saigon, but the impact of the Vietnam War still reverberates across generations and continents. On the GZERO World podcast, Ian Bremmer speaks with Pulitzer Prize-winning author Viet Thanh Nguyen and historian Mai Elliott—two writers whose lives were shaped by the conflict. Nguyen, author of the bestselling book and TV series "The Sympathizer," recounts growing up in a tight-knit refugee community in California, where “melancholy, rage, anger, bitterness, sadness—the whole gamut of emotions” defined the postwar experience. Elliott, who interviewed insurgents during the war, came to see its human cost up close, saying, “I didn’t care who won the war by the end of it—I just wanted it to stop.”

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50 Years on, have we learned the Vietnam War's lessons?

Fifty years after the fall of Saigon (or its liberation, depending on whom you ask), Vietnam has transformed from a war-torn battleground to one of Asia’s fastest-growing economies—and now finds itself caught between two superpowers. Ian Bremmer breaks down how Vietnam went from devastation in the wake of the Vietnam War to becoming a regional economic powerhouse.

For North Vietnam, the war was a hard-fought victory for independence; for South Vietnamese refugees, it marked a heartbreaking loss of homeland. For the United States, it was a national trauma and a cautionary tale about military overreach and unclear objectives. But beyond the battlefield, the country’s postwar path tells a remarkable story of recovery.

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Trump’s inaction on wrongful deportation may spark constitutional crisis

Ian Bremmer shares his insights on global politics this week on World In :60.

If the US won't work to return a wrongly deported man to El Salvador despite a Supreme Court ruling, are we headed towards a constitutional crisis?

It certainly appears that way, and I think this is the constitutional crisis that the Trump administration would love to have. Because wrongfully deporting someone without evidence who is in the country illegally and therefore guilty of a misdemeanor, but sending them to a max security prison, which the Supreme Court says you shouldn't do, but now is in another country. Very few Americans are sympathetic to the case of this person. And indeed, Trump won on the basis in part of being sick and tired of allowing illegal immigrants to spend enormous amounts of time in the United States without recourse.

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Russian President Vladimir Putin speaks to Russian journalists before his departure at Noi Bai International Airport in Hanoi, Vietnam June 20, 2024.

Sputnik/Vladimir Smirnov/Pool via REUTERS

Bamboo diplomacy: Vietnam goes with the flow on Putin visit

Russian President Vladimir Putinsigned a series of agreements in Hanoi on Thursday that commit Moscow to cooperating with Vietnam on energy, science, health, and education measures. Compared with the first leg of his overseas trip to North Korea, this was a more sedate affair, but Putin is hoping his warm reception proves Russia isn’t as geopolitically isolated as it’s often portrayed.

While North Korea was eager to sign a security agreement with Moscow, none of the 12 publicly released agreements with Vietnam had to do with defense. Unlike Pyongyang, Hanoi actually has friends all over the place, thank you very much, and it won’t be seen supplying the Russian war machine.

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