Revisiting the Environmental Legacies of the Vietnam War

The 50th anniversary of the end of the Vietnam War provides an opportunity to reflect on the conflict’s enduring scars, from severe ecological damages to lingering human health impacts. In particular, the US military’s use of environmentally destructive technologies, ranging from herbicide campaigns to weather modification, followed by a lack of adequate postwar restoration efforts, left the country struggling to recover for decades. Vietnam’s experience reveals the inadequacy of existing legal and scientific responses to environmental harm during wartime. Revisiting lessons from Vietnam offers insights into how ongoing and future conflicts will require better integration of ecological considerations into international law and post-conflict reconstruction.