“When a tank crashed through the gates of the presidential palace in Saigon 50 years ago today, the Potemkin state of South Vietnam collapsed, and the Vietnamese war of independence, fought in its final phase against the overwhelming military might of the United States, came to a close. America lost its war, but Vietnam was devastated. … The U.S. did whatever it could to cripple the reunited Vietnam. Instead of delivering billions in promised reconstruction aid, it pressured international lenders like the International Monetary Fund and World Bank to reject Vietnamese requests for assistance. The newly unified nation of farmers had no choice but to till rice fields filled with unexploded American bombs, artillery shells, rockets, cluster munitions, landmines, grenades, and more. The war’s toll continued to rise, with 100,000 more casualties in Vietnam in the 50 years since the conflict technically came to a close and many more in the neighboring nations of Southeast Asia.” (04/30/25)
“Every dispute between the Trump Administration and the judiciary these days becomes a political morality play about a looming ‘constitutional crisis.’ But the facts of each case matter, and most of the time they don’t support the crisis narrative. That’s the way it looks to us so far in the case of last week’s arrest by federal agents of Milwaukee County Circuit Court Judge Hannah Dugan for allegedly helping an illegal [sic] migrant evade Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Judge Dugan was charged with obstructing a federal proceeding and concealing an individual to prevent an arrest. A federal magistrate found probable cause for the arrest upon reviewing a 13-page criminal complaint. The alleged facts as laid out in the complaint by FBI special agent Lindsay Schloemer don’t look good for the judge.” (04/29/25)
“On the occasion of the Trump administration’s first 100 days, there has been a welter of articles detailing the range of truly awful policies he has sought to enact. … Rather than cataloguing this list of abuses, it may be more useful to consider what motives lie behind them. Since the early days of the first Trump term, a minor industry has grown up trying to put his thoughts and actions into something like a coherent intellectual framework: he is a nationalist, a populist, an isolationist, an imperialist, a postliberal, a nativist, and so on. … The most useful framework in my opinion is psychology, both personal and social. Trumpism is basically a mentality drenched in what Nietzsche labeled ressentiment, that is, acute resentment of others based on wounded pride, perceived disregard, fears of inadequacy, and a desire to exact revenge on those who had earlier failed to pay adequate respect.” (04/30/25)
“Last week, Ukraine and Poland began to put aside a big source of tension in their relationship as neighbors. Work began on exhuming the remains of thousands of Poles killed by Ukrainian nationalists during World War II. Families of the Polish victims have long wanted answers. ‘We have found the right formula: that we will not bargain over the dead, but both sides will fulfill their Christian duty,’ Poland’s foreign minister, Radosław Sikorski, told the radio station TOK. What helped trigger this step of reconciliation in 2025? One more crisis in Europe, namely the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine. Both Poland and Ukraine are neighbors of Russia. In recent decades, the continent has had its fair share of crises, from a financial meltdown to a mass influx of migrants to climate disasters.” (04/29/25)
“When presidents from our top-ranked universities averred before a Congressional committee that they could not crack down on anti-Israel demonstrations last fall, their explanations fell flat. They claimed they were dedicated to the principles of free speech, academic freedom, and the pursuit of knowledge no matter how uncomfortable. Even calls for genocide could be protected depending on the context. That’s what robust free speech norms require. Our universities are meant to embrace robust free speech in pursuit of their fundamental mission to build and promulgate knowledge. Two of the three presidents who made those claims have since resigned. That was likely due at least in part to the rank and obvious hypocrisy in their statements. American universities, including those represented at the hearing, had been the centers of numerous free-speech scandals.” (04/30/25)
“I do not think that I have left much room to doubt my opinion of Donald Trump, but I make liberal allowance for journalists and historians and even for comedians when it comes to meeting people and seeking out opportunities to interact with men and women who are in many cases far from admirable. Larry David lampooned [Bill] Maher in a Times essay headlined ‘My Dinner with Adolf,’ and it was pretty good — not great, but pretty good. (One does not go to the New York Times for big laughs.) But take the counterfactual seriously: How interesting would it have been if some interesting writer of the 1930s — say, Pearl S. Buck or Sinclair Lewis — actually had had a dinner with Adolf Hitler and documented it? Or if Charlie Chaplin had had the opportunity to interview Hitler rather than merely mock him from far?” (04/30/25)
“Steve Jobs co-founded Apple when he was 21 years old. Nine years later, at age 30, he was purged and fired from the company he founded and built by the professional management he helped recruit. Eleven years later, after that management brought the firm to the edge of bankruptcy, Jobs returned to the helm and saved the company. In 1997, when Jobs returned as interim CEO, Apple lost $1.04 billion and estimates were that it was 90 days from insolvency. Jobs restored discipline and focus. He slashed the product line from 15 to four products and fired 3,000 employees. By the end of the next fiscal year, Apple returned to profitability. … Suppose this was government and not a private company? Suppose Jobs needed votes from Congress to cut product lines? Suppose law prohibited him from firing 3,000?” (04/30/25)
“Even for President Donald Trump, the trade war is an act of astonishing hubris. When nearly all economists, the markets and the public are registering their belief that a course of action will harm the country, it takes a lot of confidence in one’s own ideas to persist anyway. Yet viewed from a certain angle, the tariffs are exactly the kind of thing Americans always say we want from government officials. Trump campaigned on raising tariffs to revive manufacturing and force other countries to treat the United States better, and he is following through on his promise …. If we dislike the results, perhaps we should reconsider this popular conception of how presidents should govern. That conception traces back to Trump’s predecessor Woodrow Wilson, who explicitly rejected the Founders’ version of the separation of powers because it stifled government action.” (04/30/25)
Source: Responsible Statecraft
by Andrew Bacevich, Greg Daddis, Carolyn Eisenberg, Morton H. Halperin, Steve Kinzer, Noah Kulwin, Robert Levering, Anatol Lieven, Daniel McCarthy, Robert Merry, Paul Pillar, Tim Shorrock, Monica Duffy Toft, Stephen Walt, & Cora Weiss.
“It’s been 50 years since the Fall of Saigon and we still haven’t reckoned with the biggest question of them all. Until today.” (04/30/25)
