Vietnam’s PM Visits Mr. Bush

Vietnam still has a hold over the American political psyche, remaining a war in the minds of most and not a country. It was 30 years ago that the helicopters left the embassy after the greatest military power in the world got beat by peasants in black pajamas – or more accurately, after the US let the South Vietnamese do their own fighting and the North took over. So when the Prime Minister of Communist Vietnam came to visit President Bush this week, the conversation was about human rights, US soldiers’ remains and trade. In short, it proved that Vietnam really wasn’t very important strategically ever, and that after the French lost, the US should have ignored Indochina.

Hardline Cold Warriors will dispute that point, noting that by standing up to the Communists, America’s allies were reassured of America’s commitment to their defense. This is largely to misread history but even more to misread completely the grand strategy of the Cold War. Many places during the Cold War were not targets of Communist aggression because they held no strategic value. Ireland, East Pakistan/Bangladesh and Morocco are all perfect examples of places the Reds didn’t try to take over because (apart from the desires of local Trotskyites) they had no value to the USSR or the People’s Republic of China. General Custer stood up to the Indians, but at Little Big Horn, he shouldn’t have bothered. And by standing by its South Vietnamese allies and losing, the US did far more harm to its reputation than cutting the Saigon government loose ever could have done.

In a nutshell, the French had misruled the area for years, and they were resented by most of the population. Thanks to Germany and Japan, the Vietnamese didn’t have to worry about the French for a few years, and when Indochina was re-occupied by the successors of Marshal Petain, Ho Chi Minh and the gang wouldn’t let them come back. It was, at its core, a nationalist, and perhaps ethnic, conflict. As Uncle Ho said in his speech of independence, “A people who have courageously opposed French domination for more than eighty years, a people who have fought side by side with the Allies against the Fascists during these last few years - such a people must be free and independent." Tom Jefferson might have written “are and of right ought to be free and independent,” but Uncle Ho’s “must” is pretty powerful in its direct simplicity.

This does not excuse the Viet Cong victors from betraying their revolution on behalf of the people. Nor should it be forgotten that the winners of the war committed huge crimes against their own people and continue to do so – that is the definition of communist. However, the point is that the VC [which here doesn’t mean Venture Capitalists, although there is little real difference] fought initially not over which class should control the means of production, but whether the Vietnamese would govern themselves. It might be a bit much to suggest that America fought on the wrong side, but it doesn’t take much to see that after Dien Bien Phu, America should have left well enough alone.

This week, Prime Minister Phan Van Khai turned up at the White House, and his visit was important only for historical reasons. Two-way trade is $6.4 billion, making it a roudning error in comparison to America's $11.75 trillion GDP [CIA Factbook, 2004 estimate]. There are no security threats to America that Vietnam can pose or dispel. Which leaves cultural exchanges -- a case of two nations who swap dance troupes. The Kensington Review is very much in favor of cultural exchanges; in the case of Vietnam, though, it is hard to reconcile a US tour of the Hanoi Ballet with 58,169 names on the wall and 1 million or so dead Vietnamese. A beautiful country, currently run by gangsters, Vietnam is not strategically important – and never was. At least in Iraq, there is oil even if the same stench of futility exists.



© Copyright 2005 by The Kensington Review, J. Myhre, Editor. No part of this publication may be reproduced without written consent.
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