Vietnam Syndrome

The Vietnam Syndrome is a psychological and political term that is solely used in the United States. It is used in right-wing conservative public political rhetoric and political analysis, to describe the perceived impact of the domestic controversy over the Vietnam War on US foreign policy after the end of that war in 1975.

Since the early 1980s, the public opinion is biased against war or intervention (which is a bit of an obscure way of saying ‘war’). American conservative politicians and right-wing television channels argue that bad memories of the Vietnam War (scandals, protests, images of killed and wounded soldiers, etc.) have caused the American people to distrust any type of war at all. As a result, they argue, any attempt by the United States to engage in a military conflict will be viewed by the American people as "another Vietnam."

Nonetheless, The US government is still thinking in terms of the ‘old world’, where America was powerful enough to end every conflict. In the ‘new world’ wars tend to end in a quagmire of problems (Iraq, Afghanistan, etc) and that only proves that the American public is right in thinking that ‘make peace, not war’ is the only way forward.