At first, it was like numerous post-1945 ‘small wars’ waged by Western powers trying to cling onto empire in a changing world. They may have been viewed through a Cold War lens and sold to a sceptical public as wars against ‘the spread of Communism’. But ‘the domino theory’ did not alter the basic truth: these were colonial wars against people fighting for national independence, social reform, and human dignity.
There were dozens of them – in Latin America, in Africa, in the Middle East, across Asia as a whole. But a few swelled into major insurgencies that sent shockwaves back into the imperial heartlands. Algeria was one: the blowback caused France’s Fourth Republic to collapse in 1958. Angola was another: military defeat in the bush triggered revolution back in Lisbon in 1974.
But Vietnam was in a category of its own. This war, once one among many, became the war – the war that divided the world’s greatest superpower, set the rest of the world afire, and shaped an entire generation of radicals.
