l than the former. People may accept their leaders' lies if those lies are seen as having been a price of victory, but have only contempt for lies that brought defeat.
The following discussion outlines the consequences of the war in Vietnam, consequences that showed in the economic, political, military, diplomatic, social, and cultural spheres of American life. The consequences in these varied spheres cannot be readily partitioned off from one another, allowing them to be dealt with separately; instead, they inpinge on one another in complex ways.
Political leaders' fears of the "Vietnam syndrome," or Americans' unwillingness to accept losses in overseas wars, constrained the freedom of US diplomats to employ the threat of military intervention in a foreign crisis, while military leaders' concerns led them in turn to resist any military deployment that did not have sharply defined goals, and above all an "exit strategy." In turn, the lack of a credible threat of force led to international setbacks that further undermined Americans' confidence in their leaders' ability to control events abroad. "No more Vietnams," as one writer observes, has been the single most agreed-upon foreign policy objective of the last quarter-century--though, as that same writer points out, what people actually mean by it varies enormously (Davidson, 143).
Consider, for example, the Arab oil embargo of 1973-74. This embargo was possible, in part, because in the immediate aftermath of Vietnam, the US could not plausibly threaten the use of military force to keep the oil flowing. Had such intervention even been seen as plausible, the OPEC powers might not have risked the embargo. Had there been no embargo, inflation--already a problem due to the costs of Vietnam itself--might not have spiralled up as it did throughout the 1970, with the resulting sense of e
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