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Iran as Vietnam, Ukraine as Korea Similar Wars End in Similar Ways Gideon Rose May 20, 2026 U.S. flight operations during the Iran war at an undisclosed location, March 2026 U.S. flight operations during the Iran war at an undisclosed location, March 2026 U.S. Navy / Reuters GIDEON ROSE is an Adjunct Senior Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and the author of How Wars End.

More by Gideon Rose Listen Share & Download Print Save It has taken the Trump administration just two months to race through all five years of the Johnson administration’s Vietnam policy: entry, escalation, frustrated stalemate, and negotiations. Now, it’s on the Nixon administration’s turf: first blustery threats, then gradual realization of the need to extricate via an unsatisfying deal. If this pace holds, the intervention in Iran should be over in another few months, by which point the recriminations will already have begun.

Of course, no historical analogies are perfect, and there are many obvious differences between the conflicts in Iran and Vietnam: different regions, different ideologies at play, a much shorter time frame, no U.S. ground troops or draft, no change in administrations, advanced military technology, and more. Still, there are notable symmetries in the structures of the two conflicts. And the same is true of the war in Ukraine, which has a structure symmetrical to that of the Korean War. And because structures constrain policymakers’ choices, recognizing these patterns provides clues to how the wars will end.

The U.S.-Israeli war on Iran is likely to conclude like the Vietnam War did in 1973, with an unstable compromise settlement that addresses some issues but leaves other important ones unresolved. Just as the ultimate fate of South Vietnam was left to be determined later, the ultimate fate of the Islamic Republic and its nuclear program will be left for another day. In contrast, the war in Ukraine, like the Korean War, will probably end with a settlement that solidifies something like the current line of conflict, with frozen borders patrolled indefinitely in an armistice that proves more stable and durable than most observers expect.

HALF THE WAY WITH LBJ In November 1963, the leaders of both South Vietnam and the United States were assassinated, putting President Lyndon Johnson suddenly in charge of two countries in crisis. In Vietnam, motivated and well-led northern forces, together with their guerrilla associates in the south, were steadily gaining ground against a hapless South Vietnamese regime. Unless Washington did something to reverse the trend, it seemed Saigon would eventually fall, and the country would be reunified under communist control. Johnson and his team were not greatly optimistic about winning the war, but they feared the domestic and international consequences of losing it. So they decided to increase support for Saigon in hopes that a show of force would cause Hanoi to back off.

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At first, this meant sending economic aid and military advisers. Then it meant bombing. Then it meant sending ground troops. And then it meant more of everything. Yet Hanoi stuck to its core objectives and refused to give in. By 1968, the war was costing so much blood and treasure and causing such domestic turmoil that Washington started looking for a way out. Johnson himself never accepted defeat, but he capped the war’s escalation, declared a unilateral halt to the bombing, withdrew from political life, and passed the problem on to his successor.

That turned out to be Richard Nixon, who, with his national security adviser, Henry Kissinger, inherited a fundamental imperative to finish the war but little political capital for new ventures. Neither Nixon nor Kissinger ever contemplated simply abandoning Saigon, but they had their sights set on remaking superpower relations and understood the United States had to move on relatively soon—certainly before the next presidential election. At first, they tried to achieve old goals through a new mixture of force and bluff. They hoped that the North Vietnamese could be cowed by savage new bombing and wild threats, the Soviet Union and China could be cajoled into helping, and the American public could be pacified with small troop reductions—and that all this together would produce an agreement allowing American withdrawal, South Vietnamese survival, and North Vietnamese disengagement. This was the period White House Chief of Staff H. R. Haldeman later immortalized in his memoirs:

[Nixon] was certain he could force the North Vietnamese—at long last—into legitimate peace negotiations. The threat was the key, and Nixon coined a phrase for his theory. . . . He said, “I call it the Madman Theory, Bob. I want the North Vietnamese to believe I’ve reached the point where I might do anything to stop the war. We’ll just slip the word to them that, ‘for God’s sake, you know Nixon is obsessed about Communism. We can’t restrain him when he’s angry—and he has his hand on the nuclear button’—and Ho Chi Minh himself will be in Paris in two days begging for peace.”

But the strategy failed. The Soviets either could not or would not pressure the North Vietnamese strongly enough to make them accept a settlement, the communists neither collapsed nor blinked, and the war dragged on.

By the fall of 1969, the administration was back to where it had begun, except that U.S. troop withdrawals had already started, whetting the American public’s desire for more and giving Hanoi an incentive to wait Washington out. Frustration in the White House mounted. Kissinger ordered his staff to prepare plans for a “savage, punishing blow” against the enemy. “I can’t believe,” he told them, “that a fourth-rate power like North Vietnam doesn’t have a breaking point.” Before attacking, administration officials gave an ultimatum to the Soviets and the North Vietnamese to make concessions—or else. But when they ignored the ultimatum, Washington didn’t follow through on its threats.

Eventually, Nixon and Kissinger settled on a second strategy of extrication, combining a gradual U.S. withdrawal, increased aid to the Thieu regime in Saigon, and an intense pursuit of a negotiated settlement. In 1973, this yielded an agreement that allowed the United States to stop fighting and bring home its prisoners of war, without formally betraying an ally. But the fine print of the agreement allowed communist forces to remain in place in the parts of the south they controlled, enabling them to restart operations once the United States withdrew. That stipulation, along with congressional restrictions on renewed U.S. involvement, led to the fall of South Vietnam two years later.

As Johnson had done in Vietnam, President Donald Trump went into Iran to head off worrisome trends. Israeli and U.S. airstrikes in June 2025 had caused major damage to Iran’s nuclear program. But afterward, the Islamic Republic started rebuilding its conventional military capabilities, and Israel and the United States feared that this would eventually create a powerful shield behind which Tehran could continue to pursue its nuclear ambitions. Trump bought Israeli assurances that a powerful decapitation strike would topple the Iranian regime and solve the problem once and for all, and he approved a joint attack by American and Israeli forces in late February. The airstrikes destroyed much of Iran’s military capacity and killed many Iranian officials, including Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei. But Khamenei’s son Mojtaba succeeded his father, and the deeply rooted Iranian regime continued to function. Worse, it struck back against its neighbors in the Gulf and caused a global energy crisis by putting restrictions on shipping through the Strait of Hormuz.

In April, a frustrated Trump shifted from playing Johnson to playing Nixon, trying a new strategy of increased pressure, ultimatums and threats, and offers to negotiate. This revival of the “madman” approach led to a cease-fire on April 8 and direct talks between American and Iranian officials brokered by Pakistan, but it didn’t produce the desired concessions. The Strait of Hormuz remained closed, and the two sides’ demands remained far apart. Having never planned for a long war, and with costs mounting and domestic support plummeting, Trump is now clearly looking for some face-saving way out, just like Nixon and Kissinger were in the early 1970s. But the Iranians, like the North Vietnamese, are proving stubbornly uncooperative, betting they can win a contest of suffering. What comes next is likely to be an agreement that stops the fighting, allows shipping to resume, and fudges or postpones the resolution of many other points in dispute. Like the fate of South Vietnam, the ultimate fate of the Iranian nuclear program, along with that of the Iranian regime itself, will end up being decided another day.

DRAW POKER In Ukraine, meanwhile, the North Korean troops fighting alongside Russia must be experiencing déjà vu as they reenact their grandfathers’ nightmare, serving as human sacrifices in a stalemated bloodbath. In late June 1950, North Korean forces surged across the 38th parallel in a surprise attack designed to place the entire Korean Peninsula under communist control. Truman administration officials interpreted the move as a major salvo in the increasingly intense Cold War and committed the United States to the defense of South Korea, arranging for UN sponsorship of the effort.

The North Koreans pushed forward during the summer, eventually pinning UN forces into a small area around the southeastern port of Busan. In September, U.S. General Douglas MacArthur’s successful amphibious landing at the port of Inchon behi