Everyone has done at least one thing they regret or wish everyone would forget. The same applies to nations. Nations that have existed for centuries or millenniums are bound to have a few skeletons in the closet that they wish everyone would just ignore. But unfortunately, some things are easier to forget than others.
Whether these events are just too fresh in our minds or so horrific, we struggle to not think about them now and then. We can’t forget they happened, even if the nations responsible for these events want us to.
10. Afghan Withdrawal
One of the most recent historical events that various nations wish you would forget is the 2021 withdrawal from Afghanistan. While multiple countries were involved in the withdrawal, the United States has shouldered the highest burden for what’s been deemed a complete and utter failure.
The decision had been in 2020 to withdraw troops from the Middle Eastern country. However, things were complicated when administrations changed, reneging on the 2020 deal to give them more time to do it correctly. But, as we know, things didn’t go as planned. Intelligence had always predicted the Taliban would manage to win back power in the country; they just didn’t realize it would take a matter of days.
As soon as troops began withdrawing, the situation deteriorated instantaneously. The Taliban made tremendous ground in rural regions and began attacking key cities. While trained by the US military, Afghan forces could not stop the assault due to low morale, loss of US airstrikes, and internal distrust. When Kabul was attacked, Afghan president Ashraf Ghani fled the country. We’d soon see thousands of Afghan citizens trying to escape and taking drastic measures to achieve freedom. Some attempts were fatal, and who could forget the images of people hanging onto aircraft carriers as they departed the country?
The 20-year war was over, but it left behind a country in dire shape and on the verge of collapse. The US was severely bruised by a largely unsuccessful war and messy retreat.
9. Italy’s Involvement In World War II
When we think of World War II, it’s hard not to immediately focus on Germany for obvious reasons. However, we rarely talk about Italy’s involvement in the war, which lands on the wrong side of history.
In June 1940, Italy officially joined the war, but they were on Germany’s side. The prime minister, Benito Mussolini, sided with who was winning, hoping he’d get a slice of the conquered lands?. They immediately began fighting in Germany’s war, but the Franco-German armistice ended their efforts in the French Alps almost immediately. By October, Mussolini would invade Greece, which ended poorly after Germany had to bail out the Italian forces and take Greece by force themselves.
Italy’s involvement in World War II was abysmal. Mussolini’s war efforts were hampered by unfit generals, low morale, scarce supplies, lack of weapons, and the fury of the allies. Moreover, by aligning Italy with Adolf Hitler, Mussolini created the pretext for his own downfall. By 1943, Italy was in a dire position. They were being bombed constantly, morale had plummeted, and confidence in the regime was non-existent. The allies eventually invaded Sicily in July 1943, Mussolini was ousted on July 25, and Pietro Badoglio took over.
Citizens took to the streets, tearing down statues of Mussolini and other fascist symbols. Eventually, Badoglio joined the allies. However, Germany continued fighting, now taking Italy by force, resulting in a two-year-long campaign for power in Italy. The war ended in 1945, and while Germany bears the mark of war and will continue to bear it, Italy’s role in the early years of WWII hasn’t been forgotten.
8. Japan’s Attack on Pearl Harbor
Japan was another victim of choosing the wrong side of history during World War 2. Japan and the United States hadn’t been allies well before the war, and in some aspects, they were veering into war themselves. Japan was a belligerent nation at the time, unlike the Japan we know today. They sought to expand the empire, so they declared war on China in 1937. The US responded aggressively with economic sanctions, trade embargos, and other diplomatic measures. The thinking was that these efforts would force the Japanese to a ceasefire and give up their expansion ambitions; it had the opposite effect. It made the Japanese more determined to win.
The relationship between the two countries was ugly going into the war. Now it was at a breaking point. An early assumption was made that the likelihood of a Japanese attack was imminent, but where it might happen was debated. One location almost never considered was far from the US mainland in Hawaii: the Pearl Harbor naval base. The lack of consideration of Pearl Harbors’ potential attack meant the base was completely unprepared.
On December 7, 1941, Pearl Harbor was attacked by the Japanese at 7:55 a.m. It took the entire area by surprise. There had been concerns about a fleet of planes heading toward Pearl Harbor. Still, those concerns were quelled when commanders believed it was likely just US B-17 bombers flying in the area, making it nothing to be concerned about.
The attack on Pearl Harbor only lasted an hour and fifteen minutes. Nevertheless, it was enough time for 353 Japanese aircrafts to kill 2,403 US personnel and some civilians, wound an additional 1,178, damage or destroy 19 US Navy ships (with three being completely destroyed), and shake the nation to its core. The flagrant attack prompted retaliation from the US. While things are far different today, December 7 remains a day that lives in infamy.
7. Chernobyl
In 1986, former soviet state Ukraine experienced the worst nuclear power disaster in history. It was on April 25 when technicians attempted a safety test to validate the plant’s emergency water cooling systems. The test aimed to determine if the emergency water cooling systems would work in the event of a power outage. Unfortunately, the situation deteriorated rapidly.
Preparations for the safety test began in the early hours of April 25. At 2:00 p.m., they disabled reactor 4’s emergency core cooling system. Due to delays, they were eventually granted permission to continue the safety test. However, this delay meant it left the safety test in the hands of an inexperienced night shift.
Once they started the test, they further reduced power creating unstable conditions. An hour later, this resulted in reactor 4’s core exploding. The fire caused by the explosion resulted in uranium fuel overheating and melting through protective barriers. The operators of the safety test ignored automatic safety systems assuming the system didn’t understand the safety test.
The disaster began at 1:23 a.m. Immediately officials misled or downplayed the disaster. The fires were extinguished by 6:35, except for the reactor core blaze, which continued for days following the disaster. Soviet officials began evacuating Pripyat on April 27. It was eventually internationally recognized that 31 people died. This does not include the estimated 125,000 who died due to the effects of Chornobyl radiation.
Chornobyl was a disaster caused by flawed reactor designs and inadequately trained personnel. At a time when the USSR was in dire shape, this was a financial blow to the regime and what Gorbachev credits as the catalyst to the USSR’s collapse.
6. The Fall of Saigon
When the Afghanistan Withdrawal in 2021 was unfolding, many began drawing comparisons to another hasty exit from a failed war: Saigon. The Vietnam War had a long history in the US and was ongoing for decades over the course of four separate presidents. However, a fifth president laid the foundation for US involvement. Harry Truman wasn’t the president to send an entire infantry into war during the fall of French colonial control, but he was heavily funding their efforts. However, the fall of colonial rule and the rise of communism in Asia prompted Eisenhower to throw his full support on South Vietnam, even if their leaders ambitions would eventually contradict America’s values.
For decades the US sent troops, military aid, intelligence, and training capabilities to Vietnam. President Kennedy had increased these measures to ensure Vietnam wouldn’t fall, fearing the domino effect of countries falling to communism. In the 1950s, troop presence was less than 800 troops; by 1962, that number shot up to 9000.
President after president would deal with the Vietnam war more out of fear of failure than a belief that they’d win. Nobody wanted the blame, and so it kept going. When Nixon was president, he oversaw some of the most devastating aspects of the war. While he was reducing troops, he was dropping an unprecedented amount of bombs all over Northern Vietnam and Cambodia.
As Nixon’s presidency was crumbling under the weight of Watergate, the US would negotiate and sign a peace treaty for all sides of the war. However, after US troops left in March 1973, the communist broke the treaty seeing cracks in the United State’s ability to respond. As a result, they took over the country. The US left the world with a harrowing and infamous image of US personnel making a hasty retreat as a country fell to communism after decades of war.
5. Weapons of Mass Destruction In Iraq
It was March 19, 2003 when the US and a smattering of allies entered into war with Iraq. Then-President George W. Bush had made his intentions in the Middle Eastern country public for months. On February 5 of the same year, Secretary of State Colin Powell was at the UN giving a speech that outlined the US objectives and reasoning for invading Iraq. There was only one problem, a lot of what he was saying was either misleading or just an outright lie.
The Bush administration had an internal effort led by Vice President Dick Cheney and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld to remove Iraqi president Saddam Hussein. Granted, the international community didn’t view Hussein fondly, but that didn’t necessarily justify the invasion efforts. Instead, Bush was using the 9/11 attacks to embark on the ‘War on Terror.’ In the case of Iraq, he was also using incomplete or inconsistent evidence or poorly backed-up assumptions of a ‘ massive stockpile of biological weapons’ to justify the forthcoming invasion. With this lie, many more would be piled on over the next half a decade.
While the war in Iraq ended in 2011, less than a decade after it began, questions and criticism linger. In 2016, The UK government released The Chilcot Report. This was a report seven years in the making and examined the decision, necessity, and consequences of the invasion. The evidence all pointed to an obvious truth, it was not only a complete disaster, but if anything, it potentially made the region more unstable. At the end of the day, the evidence is hard to deny; the war wasn’t necessary, and the end results were disastrous. In many cases, the last two decades of foreign policy decisions made by the US have been some of their worst.
4. USSR Failed Afghanistan Invasion
While we focus squarely on the more recent attempts to invade Afghanistan, we often don’t talk much about how it’s been attempted several times before by both the British and the USSR. All attempts to invade and conquer Afghanistan have ultimately failed.
In 1979, under the pretext of upholding the Soviet-Afghan Friendship Treaty, the USSR invaded Afghanistan. They invaded in the dead of night, arriving in Kabul at midnight via a military airlift. They brought an estimated three divisions of 8,500 men each and 280 transport aircraft. Initially, the Soviets had some early success when they secured Kabul, ridding the country of its government and installing a puppet leader. However, over the course of a near-decade invasion, they’d ultimately fail spectacularly in the middle eastern country.
The Afghan people, particularly resistance fighters known as mujahideen, were not interested in Soviet rule and saw it as a defilement of Islam. The mujahideen used guerilla tactics against the Soviets by attacking quickly before disappearing into the mountains. This made the conflict far more complicated and drawn out for the Soviets, who’d hoped it would be a swift takeover.
The war would continue into the late 80s with the United States arming the resistance, which aligned with their anti-soviet position. Finally, when Mikhail Gorbachev was announced as the new Soviet leader, he pulled out of the conflict realizing its futile nature. By 1988 they began withdrawing, with the last Soviet soldier leaving on February 15 1989. This failed war’s results were catastrophic for the USSR’s public relations and finances. In large part, it was the pretext for the USSR’s collapse. Still, worst of all, it was the catalyst for the breeding ground of terrorism that Afghanistan became with the Rise of Osama bin Laden.
3. The US Drops Nuclear Bombs on Japan
In modern times, the United States and Japan are allies, but during World War 2, their relationship wasn’t nearly as friendly. Obviously, this was made obvious by Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor. So, of course, we could view the dropping of the nuclear bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki as retaliation for Pearl Harbor. Still, it was more complicated than just revenge.
The US had been working on nuclear weapons long before the attack on Pearl Harbor due to Ally’s concerns about Nazi Germany’s research in the field. When the Allied powers defeated Nazi Germany, Japan vowed to fight until the bitter end. While Japan had been confronted with demands to end the war, they rejected the notion of surrender. President Harry Truman decided that in the face of stiff opposition from the Japanese, he chose to use a nuclear bomb in hopes it might end the war once and for all. His secretary of war, General Eisenhower, and scientists of the infamous Manhattan Project opposed this idea.
On August 6, 1945, Little Boy was dropped on Hiroshima. It was the first city to ever be hit with a nuclear bomb. It took 45 seconds to descend and caused widespread devastation to the industrial city. 70,000 citizens were killed instantly, while more succumbed to radiation poisoning.
A few days later, on August 9 1945, another bomb was dropped, titled ‘Fat Man.’ It was dropped in Nagasaki, an urban area divided into two coastal valleys. 40,000 people died instantly, while an additional 30,000 more were estimated to succumb to injuries and radiation poisoning.
On August 14, 1945, the Japanese surrendered soon after Nagasaki was hit. However, the US was left with a controversial scar of using the first iterations of this weapon of mass destruction on what is now an ally.
2. Armenian Genocide of 1915
In 2021, US President Joe Biden called the 1915 slaughter of about 600,000 Armenians a genocide carried out by the Ottoman Empire, which is now Turkey. No president had ever called it a genocide. Doing so was unexpected, considering Turkey’s NATO status and the already fractured relationship between the two allies. Turkey was quick to respond, rejecting the US President’s proclamation. Still, this story got a lot of attention. It brought attention to a horrific aspect of the waning days of the Ottoman Empire during World War I.
In 1915, about 2.5 million Armenians lived in the Ottoman Empire. They were concentrated around six provinces in Eastern Anatolia. The Armenians were no strangers to ill-treatment by their Muslim neighbors and countrymen. They were often subjected to violence and land, property, or livestock seizure.
This imbalance in the Ottoman Empire between Muslims and Armenians eventually resulted in separate factions calling for different solutions. Young Armenian activists sought an independent state, while a coalition of reform groups known as the Young Turks led a revolution against the Ottoman authoritarian regime. They ended up taking power, and while looking to change the Ottoman Empire for the better, they soon slipped into authoritarianism.
In March 1914, the Young Turks sided with Germany in the war and attacked to the east in what would be a brutal failed attack against the Russian forces in Caucuses. The blame was shifted to the Armenians, which started a campaign against them, resulting in genocide. The death toll is still debated to this day. Some estimates are in the 600,000s, some as high as 1.2 million. The Ottoman Empire fell in 1922, but this stain has stuck with an independent Turkey for over a century.
1. The Collapse of the USSR
The Fall of the USSR is considered an embarrassment by many Russians, including its current president, Vladimir Putin. The Soviet Union began in the 1920s with Marxist revolutionary Vladimir Lenin. It was born out of revolution against the Romanov monarchy and, in the coming decades, would become a powerful Marxist-communist state occupying nearly a sixth of the globe’s land surface.
When Lenin died in 1924, a new leader took his place: Joseph Stalin. He’d control the USSR for just shy of three decades before his death in 1953. His time in power saw the USSR becoming a military and industrial superpower. However, it also saw the consolidation of critical industries, leading to food shortages and widespread famine and death. This was all happening against the backdrop of an international feud.
At the end of WW2, the USSR denigrated its alliance with the US and Great Britain. With the formation of NATO in 1949, tensions only intensified. Democracies feared the spread of communism, and the threat of nuclear disaster was ever-present. When the USSR consolidated power amongst the eastern bloc countries, it set off the Cold War and decades of tensions between the superpowers.
Come 1985, Mikhail Gorbachev became the figurehead of the USSR. He sought to reform a flailing nation that had lost its way. Many of Gorbachev’s policy changes took the USSR away from its deep communist roots and undid much of Stalin’s legacy.
It was becoming clear that the Soviet Union was falling apart, and Gorbachev knew rejoining the international community was the only way to save it. But this admission led to an attempted military coup against Gorbachev in 1991. During this period, the parliament leader, Boris Yeltsin, was instrumental in preventing a coup. He eventually allowed Ukraine and Belarus to seek independence from the Soviet Union. Not long after, the nine remaining republics also declared independence. On Christmas Day 1991, Gorbachev resigned, and the Soviet Union had officially fallen.