Negotiations around Ukraine are an experience of recent history

What is happening around us now reminds me very much of the experience of negotiations during two wars – in Vietnam and Afghanistan. In South Vietnam, the US supported a government that was being attacked by communists with the support of China and Russia from the north. After President Nixon succeeded President Johnson in the United States, he persistently sought to get out of an unpopular war. The president of South Vietnam was Nguyen Van Thiu. Nixon and Kissinger forced him to negotiate with North Vietnam, although everyone knew that the Communists would not honor any agreements.

In parallel with official negotiations, Kissinger held secret talks with the Communists, trying to convince them to at least temporarily comply with possible agreements – until the next presidential election in the United States, in which Nixon was going to be re-elected. Kissinger called it “the interval.”

At official negotiations, the communists refused to withdraw troops from those regions of South Vietnam that they occupied. The Americans persuaded President Thieu to agree to this, promising in return security guarantees in the form of arms and financial support.

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The president of South Vietnam was forced to sign this agreement, relying on American guarantees. Nixon got what he wanted — he won a new election, after which he withdrew the remaining American troops from Vietnam. A few months later, North Vietnam broke the truce and attacked South Vietnam.

In the midst of the fighting, the US Congress refused to provide further financial and military aid. What’s more, the Americans forced the president of South Vietnam, Nguyen Van Thiu, to resign, as this was a condition for the communists to conclude a new truce.

However, the resignation of the president not only did not stop the communist offensive, but on the contrary accelerated it, and soon Saigon fell. The world remembers the tragic footage of the evacuation from the roof of the American embassy. More than half a century later, similar scenes were repeated at the Kabul airport. And this time, the circumstances preceding the disaster were very similar to the events in Vietnam.

Both there and there, America sought a quick end to the war. Both there and there she trusted parties who could not be trusted. In both cases, the US made security guarantees that were never fulfilled. Both in Vietnam and in Afghanistan, it ended in a complete disaster.

The parallels with the current Ukrainian situation are obvious. But Ukraine should not be an object, but a subject of the processes taking place, and taking into account historical experience, it should determine its own destiny.

There is a fundamental difference between Ukraine, South Vietnam and Afghanistan. Unlike the latter, Ukraine has not lost its will to resist. And if those countries were completely dependent on the USA, then Europe stands behind Ukraine, for which it is vitally important to support Ukraine.

Mikheil Saakashvili

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