For Nguyen Thanh Hai, it is a struggle to complete tasks others take for granted: buttoning the blue shirt he wears to a special school, practicing the alphabet, drawing shapes or forming simple sentences. Mr. Hai was born in Vietnam with severe developmental challenges linked to Agent Orange.

The Vietnam War ended on April 30, 1975, when the South Vietnamese capital of Saigon fell to Communist forces. But millions of people still face daily battles with its chemical legacy.

Mr. Hai, now 34, grew up in Da Nang, where a former U.S. air base left behind large amounts of Agent Orange that leached into food and water, affecting generations of residents. Across the country, U.S. forces sprayed 19 million gallons of defoliants to strip the enemy’s cover. More than half was Agent Orange, a blend of herbicides.

This deadly substance was laced with dioxin, a type of chemical linked to cancer, birth defects and environmental damage. Today, 3 million people, including many children, still suffer serious health issues from it.

By the time Saigon fell in April 1975, over 58,000 Americans had died, an estimated 2 to 3 million Vietnamese soldiers and civilians had been killed, and the U.S. had spent billions without achieving its goals. Vietnam was left under Communist rule.

Agent Orange and its long-lasting effects symbolize the Vietnam War’s legacy as a whole. The moral and societal damage from the conflict still lingers five decades later.

Yet as bad as Agent Orange is, an even deadlier substance was at the heart of the war. It also has long-term effects, and unlike the chemical, there is an unlimited supply.

In the New Testament book of Romans, God describes the ugliness within people: “There is none righteous, no, not one…Their throat is an open sepulcher [a tomb]; with their tongues they have used deceit; the poison of asps is under their lips” (3:10, 13).

This poison is human nature.

The chapter goes on to describe the record of humanity: “Destruction and misery are in their ways: and the way of peace have they not known” (vs. 16-17).

Human nature is what allows toxins like Agent Orange to be developed and used. Man’s sinful tendency to harm, injure and kill other human beings is toxic.

The Vietnam War’s legacy lays bare the far worse poison of human nature. Its effects have impacted every generation, harming lives in unfixable ways.

Poison in Policy and Perception

After the war ended, the U.S. distanced itself from Vietnam, eager to turn the page on a painful chapter in its history. But the Asian nation was left with dozens of dioxin hotspots spread across 58 of its 63 provinces.

Vietnamese officials and advocacy groups say the health impacts last generations, threatening the children, grandchildren and even great-grandchildren of people exposed to the chemicals, with health complications ranging from cancer to birth defects that affect the spine and nervous system.

The science about the human health impact—both to those exposed to Agent Orange and the generations that follow—remains unsettled. This is partly because when the two countries finally started working together in 2006, they focused on finding dioxin in the environment and clearing it instead of studying the still-contentious topic of its impact on human health, said Charles Bailey, co-author of the book “From Enemies to Partners: Vietnam, the U.S. and Agent Orange.”

Vietnam identifies Agent Orange victims by checking family history, where they lived, and a list of health problems linked to the poison.

It is hard to believe that such long-lasting consequences stemmed from what began as a Cold War-era effort to contain communism in Southeast Asia.

Following the division of Vietnam in 1954, America increasingly backed South Vietnam against the communist North, eventually deploying more than half a million troops at the war’s peak.

The Gulf of Tonkin incident in 1964—later revealed to be misrepresented—served as the catalyst for full-scale military intervention. U.S. officials claimed that North Vietnamese boats had attacked two American destroyers in international waters, prompting Congress to pass a resolution granting sweeping war powers to President Lyndon B. Johnson.

These efforts were doomed to fail. For all its firepower, Washington never clearly defined victory or how it would be achieved.

The war sowed deep unrest in the U.S. As the first televised conflict, American citizens watched nightly footage of jungle warfare and flag-draped coffins. Trust in government waned. Military leaders insisted progress was being made, but the 1968 Tet Offensive shattered that narrative. During a supposed holiday ceasefire, North Vietnamese and Viet Cong forces launched surprise attacks across South Vietnam. The offensive, though repelled, showed the enemy was far from defeat.

By the time Saigon fell in April 1975, tens of thousands of Americans had died and Vietnam was reunified under communist control.

Proverbs 14:12 reveals this about human nature: “There is a way which seems right unto a man, but the end thereof are the ways of death.” U.S. involvement in Vietnam seemed like the right fight at the time. But in the end, it brought only death and destruction.

The Spread of War’s Poison

From the start, the Vietnam War suffered from unclear objectives and divided leadership. Political interference from Washington often overruled military judgment, undermining battlefield effectiveness and morale.

The desperate evacuations of rooftops near the U.S. embassy in Saigon at the war’s end in April 1975 became a lasting image of defeat. With helicopters frantically lifting off from rooftops as crowds pleaded for escape, the scene captured the chaos and final unraveling of years of military effort. For viewers around the world, it exposed the gap between American intentions and outcomes—a superpower reduced to a rushed exit.

This perception of failure prompted what became known as “Vietnam Syndrome”—a deep-seated public skepticism toward foreign military engagements. Decades later, the U.S. no longer embraces its role as world policeman as it once did.

Vietnamese citizens were not the only ones to pay a price. For American soldiers, the battlefield may have been half a world away, but the poison of war—this time moral, not chemical—followed many home. They had difficulty accepting their own actions in the heat of battle and those of the U.S., and faced challenges reintegrating into a society that was unhappy with how things went in Vietnam.

For George Bennett, the road to recovery and mental health continued long after flying home through San Francisco in 1968, where “sneering” protesters met returning soldiers in the terminal. Someone yelled out “baby killer.” Another spit at them. He and his fellow soldiers were turned away from one airport restaurant. Only later did he realize how much Vietnam had changed him because the war went against the strict sense of values instilled by his parents.

“I would go get my beer and come home…just drink beer and do nothing,” Mr. Bennett, a member of Alaska’s Tlingit tribe, said. “I think part of it was the fact that I was ashamed and guilty because I was part of the atrocity that occurred in Vietnam. I feel that I violated the value and some of our cultural norms, and it made me want to run.”

And he did, from bar to bar and job to job. Finally, he wound up receiving help for alcoholism and post-traumatic stress disorder.

Mr. Bennett’s story is only a small snapshot of thousands that could be told. War is not just a societal problem—at its core, it is spiritual.

Jeremiah 10:23 sums up what many felt coming out of the war: “…the way of man is not in himself: it is not in man that walks to direct his steps.” People do not instinctively know which way to go. They struggle with the effects of war because God never intended for people to go through war.

Verse 24 records Jeremiah crying out to God for His guidance: “O Lord, correct me, but with judgment.”

People and nations need divine guidance to navigate life. Only God can wipe away the poison of our human nature.

Lingering Toxins

In the decades after the war ended, Vietnam fenced off heavily contaminated sites like Da Nang airport and began providing support to impacted families. The U.S. largely ignored growing evidence of health impacts—including on its own veterans—until the mid-2000s, when it began funding cleanup in Vietnam. In 1991, the U.S. recognized that certain diseases could be related to exposure to Agent Orange and made veterans who had them eligible for benefits.

Since 1991, America has spent over $155 million to aid people with disabilities in areas affected by Agent Orange or littered by unexploded bombs, according to the U.S. State Department. The two countries have also cooperated to recover war dead, with the U.S. aiding Vietnam’s search for its own missing.

Cleaning up Agent Orange is expensive and often dangerous. Heavily polluted soil needs to be unearthed and heated in large ovens to very high temperatures, while less contaminated soil can be buried in secure landfills.

Cooperation on war legacy issues also laid a foundation for growing U.S.-Vietnam ties, culminating in 2023 when Vietnam elevated the U.S. to its highest diplomatic status of comprehensive strategic partner.

“The United States considers Vietnam a key partner in advancing a free and open Indo-Pacific,” former U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said in Vietnam in 2023.

But U.S. budget cuts during the Trump administration stalled key USAID-backed projects in Vietnam, and while many have resumed, doubts remain about U.S. reliability.

Vietnam now must negotiate a new reality where Washington says the U.S. can no longer afford to help other countries.

The country cannot handle the toxic chemicals that still persist without help, said Nguyen Van An, the chairman of Association for Victims of Agent Orange in Danang. “We always believe that the U.S. government and the manufacturers of this toxic chemical must have the responsibility to support the victims,” he said.

Insufficient data means that experts cannot say when the risk to human health will end. But the more urgent problem is if those cleanup efforts are interrupted, the now-exposed contaminated soil could get into waterways and harm more people.

Chuck Searcy, an American Vietnam War veteran who has worked on humanitarian programs in the country since 1995, said he worries that trust built over years could erode very rapidly. He pointed out that those who benefit from U.S.-funded projects to address war legacies are “innocent victims.”

“They’ve been victimized twice, once by the war and the consequences that they’ve suffered. And now by having the rug pulled out from under them,” he said.

The Source of All Wars

The Vietnam War was just another chapter in mankind’s long record of trying to govern without God, always with the same results.

Isaiah 59, which was quoted by Paul in Romans 3, sums this up: “The way of peace they know not; and there is no judgment in their goings: they have made them crooked paths: whosoever goes therein shall not know peace” (vs. 8).

When people do not know how to guide their steps, they continue down the familiar “crooked paths” of war.

Ecclesiastes 8:9 adds, “one man rules over another to his own hurt.” Every war involves a group of men exerting authority over another. But despite the intentions, it always leads to “hurt” for both parties.

The book of James explains more about why peace is so elusive: “What is the source of the wars and the fights among you? Don’t they come from the cravings that are at war within you? You desire and do not have. You murder and covet and cannot obtain. You fight and war. You do not have because you do not ask” (4:1-2, Holman Christian Standard Bible).

While America had noble reasons for getting involved in Vietnam, this passage plainly shows that people go to war because they do not trust God to provide for their needs. They do not ask Him to provide for them, instead taking matters into their own hands.

Deciding for ourselves what is right instead of submitting to God’s will always ends in misery. Isaiah also wrote, “Behold, the Lord’s hand is not shortened, that it cannot save; neither His ear heavy, that it cannot hear: but your iniquities [sins] have separated between you and your God, and your sins have hid His face from you, that He will not hear” (59:1-2).

To get off the crooked paths of human nature, society must fundamentally change.

The Only Antidote

On the 50th anniversary of the war’s conclusion, thousands camped overnight on the streets of the former South Vietnamese capital, which was renamed Ho Chi Minh City after it fell to North Vietnamese and Viet Cong troops, to get the best vantage point for the parade.

Many lingered on the streets later in the afternoon and had picnics while waiting for drone and fireworks shows scheduled for the evening. The red and yellow of Vietnam’s national flag was everywhere—on buildings, shirts and waving hands.

“Now it’s time for peace,” said spectator Nguyen Thi Hue, a city resident. “Peace is the dream that everyone in the world wants.”

Everyone wants lasting peace—an end to the lingering effects of past wars and ongoing wars like those raging in Gaza, Ukraine and Sudan today. But there is only one government that can bring it. The Bible describes it vividly.

Later in Romans, the same God that described human nature as poisonous gives us a glimpse of His own nature. He calls Himself the “God of peace” (15:33; 16:20).

II Peter 1 shows that God wants people to move from their own corrupt human nature to develop His “divine nature” (vs. 4).

God is only doing this in the lives of individuals now, not in the world at large. While we do not have space to explain how to overcome human nature here, read our free booklet Did God Create Human Nature? to learn how you can identify it in yourself and defeat it.

But soon, when prophecy is fulfilled, God will work with all people of the Earth—in Vietnam, the United States and everywhere else—spreading peace and leading people to overcome their toxic nature. This can only be carried out by God’s government—the ruling Kingdom of God.

Isaiah 9 describes it: “For unto us a Child is born, unto us a Son is given [Jesus Christ]: and the government shall be upon His shoulder…of the increase of His government and peace there shall be no end…” (vs. 6-7).

This Kingdom will spread peace without end. The Hebrew word for government can also be translated empire. This will be a peaceful world-ruling empire. There will be no opportunity for individual nations to attack one another under God’s watchful loving care.

Micah 4:3 says, “He [God] shall judge among many people, and rebuke strong nations afar off; and they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruninghooks: nation shall not lift up a sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more.”

No longer will nations have massive defense departments and budgets. People will unlearn warfare and rededicate their time and resources to productive pursuits.

Those serving in this divine government are told: “And they that shall be of you shall build the old waste places: you shall raise up the foundations of many generations; and you shall be called, The repairer of the breach, The restorer of paths to dwell in” (Isa. 58:12).

Building waste places and restoring paths would involve eliminating the lingering scourge of Agent Orange in Vietnam, as well as fixing all the other damage and hurt caused by war through history.

Fifty years on, Agent Orange still poisons Vietnam’s soil. Human nature still poisons human society. Only God—whose government will bring peace without end—has the power to heal both.

This article contains information from The Associated Press.