Forty years ago this spring, the world witnessed one of the turning points of the Cold War: the closing of the U.S. Embassy in South Vietnam, followed quickly by the panicked evacuation of Americans and their allies from the region and then the tragedy of hundreds of thousands of so-called Boat People fleeing from Vietnam into the South China Sea. I witnessed this painful denouement as a young Foreign Service officer assigned to the U.S.’s Embassy in Bangui, Central Africa Republic, and, like people everywhere, I was horrified by the tales of poor men, women and children risking everything in rickety crafts.