Vietnam marks 50 years since fall of Saigon, but American corporations overshadow communism today

At Hoàn Kiếm Lake, Hanoi

Vietnam recently celebrated the 50th anniversary of the fall of Saigon, and I visited Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City to see the country today.

(All contemporary photos by RJ Peltz-Steele, CC BY-NC-SA 4.0, with no claim to underlying works.) 

Known in Vietnam as "the civil war" or "the American war," the Vietnam War was a hot chapter in the Cold War story, as the United States sought to counter expansion of communism in Indochina.

The war was barbaric on the ground and devastating to life and land. Estimates range from one to three million civilian and military lives lost in Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos. More than 58,000 U.S. service members were killed. Land and wildlife were laid waste by lethal chemical defoliants, Agent Orange just one among them, inducing waves of cancer and birth defects. 

In the United States, veteran healthcare was overwhelmed by what would later be recognized as post-traumatic stress disorder. Meanwhile, the social turmoil of war protest shaped a generation of counterculture so powerful that it went mainstream, transforming law and society—even working as impetus in the development of modern First Amendment and transparency doctrine.

(For an anecdote from "the Hanoi Hilton" prison, see Analog propaganda proves persuasive to some at 'Hanoi Hilton,' where exhibits selectively whitewash war, The Savory Tort, July 30, 2025.)

Shipmate, the magazine of the U.S. Naval Academy Alumni Association, recently has published a series on the Vietnam War and its aftermath for veterans, "Legacy of Valor." The latest issue, July/August 2025, contains the fourth entry in the series and features USNA alumni stories.

The May/June 2025 Shipmate, which featured Marines' stories, also highlighted Vietnam War exhibits in the National Medal of Honor Museum (MOHM), which opened in Arlington, Texas, just in March. I was struck by similarities between MOHM—in the narrative and pictures, at least; I have not visited yet—and the War Remnants Museum in Ho Chi Minh City, where I visited in June. MOHM's largest artifact is a restored Bell UH-1 "Huey" helicopter donated by a veteran pilot; there's an American UH-1 Huey at the museum in Vietnam, too (with me below).

(Inset: Cover of Shipmate, March/April 2025, credited to Capt. Tom Murphy, USNA '66, USN (Ret.), depicting Murphy, at left, with his SEAL team in Vietnam in 1969. "Murphy was awarded a Silver Star for his actions that helped eliminate a heavily fortified Viet Cong camp on 2 March 1969," the magazine added.)

An American Huey UH-1H at the War Remnants Museum, Ho Chi Minh City

Ho Chi Minh's Mausoleum, Hanoi

Saliently, the superpower United States lost the war, beating a humiliating retreat from the southern capital, Saigon. Vietnamese forces trumpeted the persevering efficacy of ruthless guerilla warfare. The sweep of communism crushed western collaborators and the remaining resistance and sparked a humanitarian crisis as refugees escaped to the sea.

Yet to walk the streets of Vietnam's major cities today, one could be forgiven for confusion over which side in fact won the war.

Ho Chi Minh City

The fall of Saigon—today, Ho Chi Minh City, though "Saigon" is still widely used, at least to refer to the touristic center, and "SGN" is the IATA code of the international airport—is celebrated on April 30. The contiguity of international labor day on May 1 makes for a holiday break.

This year, innumerable banners, signs, and monuments lined streets throughout the country to celebrate the 50th anniversary. I wonder at the cost. The posters bore patriotic illustrations that would be at home in a historical compilation of 20th-century Cold War propaganda.

Yet the banners stand juxtaposed against a background of signs demonstrating the market dominance of western corporations, namely the likes of Coca-Cola, KFC, and ubiquitous 7-Elevens. 

A local guide who took me to the Cu Chi tunnels, from where Viet Cong guerilla fighters waged brutal resistance against American forces from underneath a great swath of the country, told me how his family lost their home and modest wealth and fled Saigon when all property was nationalized after the communists took over the south.

Communism never delivered on its promises, he said. When his father returned to the family home, he found it occupied by party apparatchiks, hardly "the people." Still today, he said, despite commercial development, Vietnamese people suffer poverty, grade-school-limited public education, and no universal healthcare. That's not much to show for a communist people's victory.

"We hate Americans," he joked, smiling. He explained that the regime, apropos of the classic propaganda-poster style of the 50th anniversary images, still teaches schoolchildren to hate America. But people know better and have "moved on," he said. "Now we drink Starbucks."

It occurred to me, insofar as corporatocracy is the measure of the day, it's maybe truly representative democracy that lost the war, both in Vietnam and in America. 

Lunar-new-year commemorative beer from Budweiser, for sale at shop, Mỹ Tho

Roadside signs, Ho Chi Minh City

Billboards, Ho Chi Minh City

Exhibit at War Remnants Museum, Ho Chi Minh City

Marker at Hoàn Kiếm Lake, Hanoi

Exhibit at Thăng Long Imperial Citadel, Hanoi

 

Marker in traffic circle, Hanoi

Happy Independence Day, Namibia!

Your humble blogger reaches Swakopmund, crossroads of the Namib Desert and South Atlantic Ocean.
All photos RJ Peltz-Steele CC BY-SA 4.0.

Yesterday, March 21 was independence day in Namibia. One of the youngest countries in the world, Namibia attained independence from South Africa in 1990 after a brutal war and bloody history of subjugation as the German colony of Southwest Africa. Public celebrations of 30 years of independence were cancelled because of the coronavirus, though an inauguration ceremony of President Hage Geingob, for his second term, proceeded.

Sign fallen to the ground in Windhoek.

I found mixed feelings on the ground about Geingob, who was the country's first prime minister and a hero of the independence movement. One middle-aged man from Namibia's rural north told me Geingob can't be blamed for entrenched intransigence and corruption in the political establishment, that he can only do so much. Meanwhile a young woman in the capital, Windhoek, stringing together multiple jobs to put herself through university, blamed Geingob squarely for double-digit unemployment--by various estimates, one in three Namibians, or more, need work--and fiercely lamented his second term.

The National Museum and historic German Lutheran church stand in juxtaposition in Windhoek.

Me and Nujoma. He holds the Namibian constitution.

I've been sensitive in traveling Africa to the subtleties of foreign influence, especially that of China, and that shadow turned up in a curious way in Namibia. Like elsewhere in Africa (I wrote earlier about Guinea-Bissau), communists financed the independence movement as an aspect of the Cold War; consider, for Namibia, this was the 1980s. North Korea grew close to legendary independence leader Sam Nujoma. North Korea financed a great many public works projects in independent Namibia, including recently and strikingly, the National Museum, which opened in Windhoek in 2014. The building is modernist (technically "socialist realist"), marking a contrast with Windhoek's colonial center, and boasts a Kim Jong-ish statue of Nujoma. The interior is to match, celebrating Namibian independence with socialist-style murals and cult-of-personality-type homages to national leaders.

A mural in the National Museum celebrates independence.

The sun rises over the Rössing Uranium Mine in the Namib.

Why does North Korea's interest persist so many years after independence? Locals point to Namibia's especially valuable natural resource: uranium mines in the western Namib desert. Though North Korea formally is walled off by the West from materials that might advance the DPRK's nuclear capabilities, suspicions point to China as a willing intermediary. And so the African "natural resources curse" persists.

Namibian Parliament: A banner on the Parliament's administrative building heralds 30 years of independence.