Vietnam’s Foreign Service Legacy: Shaping Trump’s 2025 Diplomacy

BY JACKSON SIMMONS-FURLATI

Jackson Simmons-Furlati: 2025 Essay Contest Winner

The Vietnam War was a watershed in American foreign policy, laying bare the limits of military power and precipitating a paradigmatic change in diplomatic practice that continues to shape American foreign policy to this day. As America faces nascent international problems, Donald Trump’s second term in office, in accordance with Project 2025, revises and redefines certain lessons derived from Vietnam to suit his administration’s vision: Trump’s America First policy. This contentious policy framework, remised in unilateralism and suspicion about international cooperation, is designed to disassemble established paradigms in favor of isolationalism. This paper discusses how the diplomatic legacy of Vietnam—most particularly American diplomats’ failures and setbacks—contributes to foreign policy in the present era, with implications for policy in the administration of Donald Trump. Analyzing American diplomacy leading to, during, and in the aftermath of Vietnam, this paper reveals both the enduring power of Vietnam’s diplomatic lessons and the potential peril in failing to apply these in international affairs in the present era.

The US Foreign Service has and continues to shape American diplomacy through negotiation, alliance-building, and promotion of international stability. Foreign Service officers during the middle half of the 20th century were undoubtedly critical to Cold War diplomacy in navigating delicate affairs with the Soviet Union and in building coalitions through institutions like NATO and the United Nations and through the Marshall Plan that facilitated post-World War II reconstruction and in countering communism through targeted aid programs (U.S. Department of State, "Milestones: The Marshall Plan"; "Milestones: The Formation of NATO"). The Vietnam War, however, showed how military intervention overshadowed diplomatic efforts, which not only undercut the strength of the Foreign Service but created additional diplomatic complications.

Throughout the war in Vietnam, American diplomacy was polarized between engagement by diplomacy and an increasingly militarized foreign policy that significantly constrained its role in determining US policy. Though diplomats such as Lucien P. Stone worked to achieve political solutions and warned about corruption in the regime in South Vietnam and weakness in winning hearts among the citizens in-country, these warnings tended to be overruled by the White House in favor of military escalation (Stone, 2002). Military solutions by the Pentagon overwhelmed diplomats who grasped reality in-country, in particular rising alienation among citizens in South Vietnam. As war in Vietnam progressed, US policy makers in an attempt to keep America credible in international affairs and to avoid communist penetration continued to pursue military victory over diplomacy in repeated warnings by the American Foreign Service about impossibility in winning this war. This was most poignant during Paris Peace Negotiations where diplomats attempted to achieve an accommodation that would allow US withdrawal short of absolute loss of prestige. However, in this drawn-out process in negotiating, diplomats unveiled limitations in diplomacy where military objectives overrode everything, in this context proving that political accommodations tended to be compromised by an overreaching military design (Kissinger, 1994).

The rift between diplomats and military officials, fueled by differing judgments regarding the direction of war, added to American foreign policy during this era. Diplomats advocated an expansive and lasting policy of peace while military officials advocated short-term tactical victory at the potential expense of lasting stability. This internal debate ultimately hindered overall policy and complicated final resolution to the crisis. All this aside, diplomats in Vietnam created an invaluable precedent in American diplomacy to come. Their work stressed value in extended diplomatic engagement and intercession in intractable conflicts, something later influencing American policy in the Balkans, in Iraq, and in Afghanistan. This war reaffirmed value in integrating military action with diplomacy, something which is to this day essential to American foreign policy (McMaster, 2017).

The Pentagon Papers (Ellsberg, 1971) dismantled trust in official descriptions of Vietnam, exposing targeted misinformation and strategic ambiguity efforts. The breakdown in trust that led to a realignment in US foreign policy trends is still traceable in modern-day diplomacy. Recognizing risks in interventions without restraint, the Foreign Service Institute (FSI) extended training to include crisis negotiations, cultural awareness, and area expertise, equipping diplomats with skill in managing complex conflicts in geopolitics (McCarthy, 2004). The experience in the war—the superiority of diplomacy in place of escalating to warfare and requiring area expertise in theaters of conflict—helped shape later US interventions in the Balkans, in Iraq, and in Afghanistan. By President Obama’s time, conflicts in Libya and in Syria saw US response reflect Vietnam’s cautioning influence—reliance on targeted strikes, negotiations, and coalitions in place of mass-scale wars (McMaster, 2017; Hunt, 2010). The foreign policy doctrine after Vietnam, once established in Southeast Asia, today governs US policies towards North Korea and towards Iran, in which financial sanctions and top-level diplomacy have substituted for old-style interventions.

Yet, despite these hard-learned lessons, the instinct to sideline diplomacy in favor of politically expedient military action remains a recurring threat. The Foreign Service Journal’s 40th anniversary reflections underscore how career diplomats, who accurately assessed the infeasibility of victory in Vietnam, were systematically ignored in favor of military escalation (Foreign Service Journal, 2015). Foreign Service officers in Saigon consistently reported that South Vietnam’s corruption and lack of popular support would doom the U.S. mission, but these assessments were drowned out by public relations-driven military optimism. Prioritizing short-term victory at the cost of lasting stability is still a dangerous trend. The same neglect of diplomats' experience manifested in Iraq and Afghanistan as decision-makers chose short-term tactical triumphs easily marketed at home at the cost of diplomats' cautions about longer-term instability to follow. In addition to military miscalculation, Vietnam changed the mission of the Foreign Service in human tragedies, expanding its mandate in relief for refugees and reconstruction following wars—a mission in which it would be indispensable in later decades.

The fall of Saigon in 1975 produced one of modern history’s biggest displacements, requiring the U.S. Foreign Service to execute evacuation and resettlement of over 110,000 Vietnamese refugees in Operation Babylift and Operation New Life (Robinson, 2000). The novel cooperation among diplomats and humanitarians and members of the armed forces established a blueprint for later asylum and refugee policies and affected American reaction to mass displacements in Afghanistan, Iraq, and in Syria. The rapid American withdrawal in Afghanistan in 2021 evoked fears about abandonment in a Saigon-like manner and emphasized how once more, the Foreign Service is at the center in mitigating American withdrawal fallout. The parallels affirm a time-transcending reality: diplomacy is not about evading warfare but about being capable of managing its implications in a responsible way.

Robert McNamara’s postmortem analyses of Vietnam exposed not just errors in military strategy, but deep systemic failures in intelligence gathering and interpretation (Logevall, 2001; Moyar, 2006). These failures of perception and policy formulation resurfaced in the Bush administration’s justification for the 2003 invasion of Iraq, a conflict where flawed intelligence and ideological overreach eerily echoed Vietnam’s mistakes. Both wars, initiated under the banner of strategic necessity, ultimately exposed the dangers of misreading geopolitical realities and sidelining diplomatic expertise. The exclusion of experienced diplomats from these decisions exacerbated intelligence failures, leading to avoidable entanglements that drained U.S. resources and credibility. The historical pattern is clear: whenever diplomatic caution is overridden by political urgency, the United States risks repeating its most costly foreign policy mistakes.

Now, Trump’s 2025 agenda, encapsulated in Project 2025, revives Nixon-era skepticism toward the State Department, treating career diplomats as bureaucratic obstacles rather than strategic assets (Schultz, 2018). This shift has led to the sidelining of seasoned foreign policy professionals in favor of personal envoys and political appointees, mirroring past miscalculations that prolonged the Vietnam War. The Foreign Service Journal warns that excluding career diplomats from wartime decision-making fosters intelligence failures and strategic miscalculations with generational consequences (Foreign Service Journal, 2015). The danger in disregarding Vietnam’s lessons is not theoretical—it is already unfolding, as Trump’s doctrine favors transactional deal-making over sustained diplomatic engagement. By rejecting the post-Vietnam commitment to diplomacy, the U.S. risks reentering an era of unilateralism and military adventurism that Vietnam had once tempered.

Where Vietnam once curbed American overreach, Project 2025 signals a return to diplomatic marginalization and strategic brinkmanship. A Foreign Service that once fought to temper military excess now navigates an era of diminished influence, as the administration reshapes U.S. engagement on its own terms. Vietnam’s lessons are clear: diplomacy, not military force alone, determines national security. The question is not whether these lessons remain relevant—their continued relevance is self-evident. The real danger lies in their deliberate rejection. As America recalibrates its foreign policy once again, history warns that neglecting the hard-earned wisdom of Vietnam will come at a profound cost.

References

Foreign Service Journal. (2015). Reflections on the 40th anniversary of the fall of Saigon. American Foreign Service Association.

Kissinger, H. (1994). Negotiating peace: The Paris talks and the U.S. exit from Vietnam. Harper & Row.

Logevall, F. (2001). Choosing war: The lost chance for peace and the escalation of war in Vietnam. University of California Press.

McCarthy, T. (2004). Diplomatic training and the evolution of the Foreign Service. Brookings Institution Press.

McMaster, H. R. (2017). Battlegrounds: The fight to defend the free world. HarperCollins.

Robinson, C. (2000). Terms of refuge: The Indochinese exodus and the international response. Zed Books.

Stone, L. P. (2002). The Vietnam War: A diplomat’s view. Foreign Service Journal.

U.S. Department of State. (n.d.). Milestones: The formation of NATO. Office of the Historian. Retrieved from https://history.state.gov

U.S. Department of State. (n.d.). Milestones: The Marshall Plan. Office of the Historian. Retrieved from https://history.state.gov