Revisiting the Vietnam War 50 years later, with novelist Viet Thanh Nguyen and author Mai Elliott

Listen: It’s been 50 years since the fall of Saigon, but the impact of the Vietnam War still reverberates across generations and continents. On the GZERO World podcast, Ian Bremmer speaks with Pulitzer Prize-winning author Viet Thanh Nguyen and historian Mai Elliott—two writers whose lives were shaped by the conflict. Nguyen, author of the bestselling book and TV series "The Sympathizer," recounts growing up in a tight-knit refugee community in California, where “melancholy, rage, anger, bitterness, sadness—the whole gamut of emotions” defined the postwar experience. Elliott, who interviewed insurgents during the war, came to see its human cost up close, saying, “I didn’t care who won the war by the end of it—I just wanted it to stop.”

But the episode is not just about the past. It’s also about Vietnam’s present and future. The country has become one of Asia’s fastest-growing economies and most strategically important players, carefully navigating a relationship with China and the United States. “If Vietnam gets too close to China, it could lose its country,” Elliott explains. “Too close to the US, and it could lose its regime,” Nguyen adds that while tensions remain between the Vietnamese state and its diaspora, Vietnam’s diplomatic pragmatism is rooted in a thousand-year history of resisting Chinese domination while embracing growth opportunities.

As Washington and Beijing compete for influence in Southeast Asia, Vietnam is charting its path—one shaped by memory, resilience, and the long shadows of war.

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