For many, the Vietnam War takes the cake as the most disastrous foreign intervention of the 20th century. It was a conflict that witnessed brutal guerrilla warfare, civilian casualties, the destruction of villages, the liberal use of incendiary napalm bombs and the forced conscription of fighting-age American males, many of whom famously fled to Canada to dodge the draft.
Less well-known, the Guinea Bissau War of Independence, which raged simultaneously between 1963 to 1974, witnessed all of this and more. Concluding with the overthrow of the Portuguese government and the collapse of the Portuguese empire in Africa, it can be argued that this obscure West African revolutionary struggle was far more disastrous than even the Vietnam War.
