Bob51
Seaman
Joined: 13 Jan 2005
Posts: 156
Location: Belfast
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 Posted: Wed Apr 20, 2005 10:18 am Post subject: Vietnam military partners with U.S. to contain China |
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I suppose that's what is meant by "realpolitik". Must be a strange development for veterans on both sides.
Bob51
| Quote: | Wednesday, April 20, 2005
SOUTHEAST ASIA
Can Vietnam stand up to China?
THI Q. LAM
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On the evening of April 29, 1975, I boarded one of the last navy ships leaving Saigon, while enemy missiles were landing on the northern outskirts of the city with deafening explosions. The next morning, as our ship was leaving Vietnamese territorial waters, I looked back at the receding coastline and felt tears in my eyes.
My heart went out to my comrades-in-arms and fellow countrymen left behind. I also felt very pessimistic about the fate of our pro-western neighbours, countries that, I thought, might fall like dominoes in the face of seemingly unstoppable North Vietnamese Army divisions equipped with the latest Russian and Chinese weaponry.
Thirty years later, no dominoes have fallen. Instead, the Soviet empire has collapsed and the very existence of Vietnam as a free country is being threatened by its former ally and historical enemy to the north. Although it does not publicly proclaim it, China - as in the case of Taiwan - historically has considered Vietnam a renegade province. They named it An Nam, or "the pacified south".
China's killing of Vietnamese fishermen in the Vinh Bac Bo (the Gulf of Tonkin) in January, in fact, has added to a consistent pattern of Chinese southern expansionism: the conquest of the Paracel Islands in 1974; invasion of the northern provinces of Vietnam in 1979 and the subsequent annexation of 8,000 square km of border land; occupation of the Spratley archipelagoes the same year; and the acquisition of 12,000 sq km of territorial waters in the Vinh Bac Bo, conceded by Hanoi under a pact in 2000.
Not content with forcing territorial concessions from Hanoi, China is also building up its naval force and setting up a string of bases along the sea lanes in the Eastern Sea to protect oil shipments from the Middle East.
The Washington Times recently revealed that a previously undisclosed internal report prepared for US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld noted that "many Pentagon analysts believe China's military build-up is taking place faster than earlier estimates, and that China will use its power to project force and undermine US and regional security".
It is not surprising that the US and Japan have joined forces in the face of an emerging Chinese threat. In a demonstration of its willingness to confront China's rapidly growing might, Japan, in a joint agreement with the US, declared in February that Taiwan is a mutual security concern.
Despite the free world's professed commitment to "constructive engagement" with China, the post-second-world-war policy of "containment" remains a popular ploy in today's global, political chess game. Vietnam has thus regained its strategic value in US eyes as a counterbalance to the even graver threat of Chinese expansionism.
Vietnam appears only too willing to accommodate. The recent port calls of US navy vessels to Saigon and Danang, Vietnamese Defence Minister Lieutenant-General Pham Van Tra's visit to the Pentagon in 2003 and the planned Washington trip by Prime Minister Phan Van Khai this summer signal a warming of military relations between the former foes.
But only a free and democratic Vietnam can stand up to China's aggression and effectively contribute to regional security. In this regard, US President George W. Bush's commitment to spreading democracy to the "darkest corners of the world" should include Vietnam. That would benefit US strategic interests and, at the same time, liberate 80 million Vietnamese from communist oppression.
Thi Q. Lam, author of the memoir, The 25-year Century: A South Vietnamese General Remembers the Vietnam War, lives in California, where he is a high-school teacher. |
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