At the time, Vietnam wasn’t “the war”—not yet. It was something smaller, something contained. Advisors. Strategy. A situation we believed we understood.
Looking back, that belief may have been the most dangerous part.
Because by 1963, the United States was already working from a playbook it had used before—most notably in Iran just ten years earlier.
In 1953, the U.S., alongside Britain, helped remove Iran’s democratically elected leader, Mohammad Mossadegh, after he nationalized the country’s oil industry. In his place, we reinforced the rule of Mohammad Reza Pahlavi—a leader more aligned with Western interests.
At the time, it looked like a clean success.
No drawn-out conflict. No troop buildup. Just decisive action in the name of stability and Cold War necessity.
But what we couldn’t see—or perhaps didn’t want to see—was what we had set in motion.
Vietnam unfolded differently, but the thinking behind it felt familiar.
We didn’t begin with war. We began with confidence.
Confidence that we understood the threat. Confidence that we could shape the outcome. Confidence that backing the “right” leadership would bring stability.
So we supported governments in South Vietnam, including leaders like Ngo Dinh Diem, even as their footing at home became more uncertain.
We believed we were preventing something—communism spreading across Southeast Asia.
What we didn’t fully recognize was what we were creating in the process: instability, resistance, and a conflict that could not be managed from the outside.
Iran and Vietnam were not the same.
But the pattern was.
In both cases, American policy was driven by a mix of real strategic concern and a powerful assumption—that we could influence events inside countries we did not fully understand.
In Iran, that assumption produced short-term stability and long-term resentment, culminating in the Iranian Revolution.
In Vietnam, it led to gradual escalation, a prolonged war, and a divided country at home.
Different circumstances. Same blind spot.
The illusion wasn’t that we acted without reason.
The illusion was that we were in control.
That belief—that with enough planning, pressure, or precision we could shape another nation’s future—has echoed through decades of American foreign policy.
Sometimes quietly. Sometimes with consequences that take years to fully reveal themselves.
Today, the names and places have changed, but the instincts can feel familiar.
We still face moments where distant conflicts are framed in simple terms. Where intervention is presented as measured, necessary, and under control. Where the complexities on the ground are compressed into something easier to act on—and easier to explain.
And once again, the question isn’t whether the concerns are real.
