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VIETNAM IS NOT, REPEAT NOT MIGHTY MOUSE: SOL SANDERS

Posted By Ruth King on August 25th, 2010

http://www.freepressers.com/2010/08/vietnam-is-not-repeat-not-mighty-mouse/ Vietnam is not repeat not Mighty Mouse
Posted by Freepressers
China, Correspondents, East Asia, Sol W. Sanders
By Sol W. Sanders, WorldTribune.com

The setting was hardly a geopolitical forum. There was tea — but no crumpets — in my tiny, then less than fashionable, Hudson Street West Village studio. It was 1951. I had just been cashiered for Voice of America scriptwriting, in part for ferociously advocating Vietnam independence. My guest — a first meeting — was an unknown refugee living off Maryknoll Fathers charity. I had sought him out, told by various Vietnamese friends his c.v. could match Ho Chi Minh’s agitprop-acquired reputation.

That afternoon the future martyred Saigon president, Ngo Dinh Diem, among other things, lectured me on Vietnam-China. Diem posited only when there was an intervening third force was independence possible from a cyclically reunified, powerful China. In his long lament on why the then virtually unqualified American support for the French would fail, he nailed the new threat of Chinese Communism. It had appeared a few months earlier at Vietnam’s three northern border passes.

In fact, just weeks before I had abandoned a year’s reporting “The French War”, convinced stalemate between the French and the Vietminh guerillas anticipated Chinese intervention. Diem endorsed my hypothesis.   Only now, decades later, with defectors having unmasked Paris’ cover-up in pursuit of continuing commercial ambitions in China, do we know that, indeed, Beijing played a critical role in France’s final defeat at Dien Bien Phu three years later.

As it says on the transom over the U.S. National Archives, “History is prologue”. Repeatedly, the Vietnamese have scored temporary victories over the Chinese. In 1979 Beijing tried “to teach the Vietnamese a lesson” when, with the approval of the rest of the world, Hanoi’s Communists invaded a Chinese ally, Cambodia, usurping its monstrous Khmer Rogue with their “killing fields”.   But despite legendary leaders such as the Ha Bai Trung — two Joans of Arc princesses — who beat back the Chinese some 2,000 years ago, today’s Beijing is another matter. Not only is it pouring billions upon billions into its military, overwhelming northern Vietnam’s industries with imports and illegals. But it has moved down the Mekong River into neighboring Laos, remedying the logistics failure which created its 1979 debacle. [It was, of course, unable to block the Ho Chi Minh Trail through Laos which contributed mightily to Washington’s defeat.]

Vietnam’s ambiguous relations with China, even though just as Korea and Japan, it shares Chinese culture, are reflected even in its pro-Beijing, pro-Moscow Communist Party wings. [The Party newspaper editor was recently sacked for an “anti-Chinese” editorial.]   Secretary of State Hillary Clinton ploughed into all this during the recent Association of South East Asian Nations [ASEAN] and high level U.S.-Vietnam talks in Hanoi. She threw an unexpected zinger at Beijing on behalf of Vietnam — and the rest of ASEAN. Clinton denounced China’s absurd claim the South China Sea — including islets 1800 miles from the Chinese Mainland — is as much theirs as Tibet or Singkiang.

Not only is it a pivotal world sea-lane, but increasingly a source of oil and gas with China increasingly dependent on imports.   Beijing’s response was instantaneous, lambasting U.S. imperialism, arguing for bilateral resolution between China and ASEAN. That’s a good line what with ASEAN having unsettled claims with one another. [In fact, the Philippines foreign minister — Manila has signed various “agreements” with Beijing – quickly said the U.S. should butt out.]   U.S. military vessels have just made ostentatious port visits to enhance Washington-Hanoi relations. But that hasn’t stopped Hanoi soliciting military hardware from Moscow. What is being played out is Vietnamese Communists’ old game, pitting major powers against one another — as it did so successfully to Beijing and Moscow for more aid during The American War.

The same trap was sprung on Senators John McCain and John Kerry when they pushed U.S. recognition and aid — without major concessions — at a moment Hanoi was desperate for Washington ties.   Nearing 100 million, Vietnamese attempts to clone The China Model have not been successful. Even higher than China’s corruption levels, bureaucratic incompetence blocks investors from employing its eminently educable labor as an alternative to rising China export costs. The Greater Saigon complex, its origins in The American War, still overwhelmingly dominates the economy. But after a relative brief spurt, Hanoi’s economy — with the help of world recession — again has sagged. The third devaluation in nine months signals that. It’s another lame attempt to boost exports and discourage a black market stoked with more than $7 billion annually in remittances from Vietnamese Kieu [expatriates] in North America, Australia and France — its largest foreign exchange earner, about 10 percent of gross national product. [They fell by about $1 billion last year.]

Bottom line: much of Asia, correctly or not, perceives an Obama Administration retreating step by step before growing Chinese strength. [The latest is Washington’s apparent withdrawing the Okinawa Reversion agreements umbrella over troublesome islets between Japan and China.]   In that atmosphere how reliable an ally would Communist Vietnam make?   A Vietnamese alliance is perhaps a building bloc. But it will not compensate for an effective American overall China strategy still gone begging.

Sol W. Sanders, (solsanders@cox.net), writes the ‘Follow the Money’ column for The Washington Times on the convergence of international politics, business and economics. He is also a contributing editor for WorldTribune.com and EAST-ASIA-INTEL.com.
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