Time To Go Back To Vietnam-- But Only As Tourists And Trading Partners

I'm planning a trip to Vietnam. I haven't been there in a long time and I've never been to the northern part of the country. So when someone on twitter recommended a NY Times piece, I grabbed it and saved it for when I'd have some free time to read it. What I eventually started reading was Tuong Lai's OpEd from last week, Vietnam's Overdue Alliance With America, and man, did he sound like a warlike dick! Within two paragraphs I said to myself, "self, if this guy is gay, he's the Vietnamese Lindsey Graham and if he's straight and senile, he's the Vietnamese John McCain. Oh, yeah… John McCain-- that reminded me where I found the tweet.

Tuong Lai's real name is Nguyen Phuoc Tuong and he was an advisor to two Vietnamese prime ministers, Vo Van Kiet and Phan Van Khai (1990-2006). Nearly 80, he's a prominent sociologist in Ho Chi Minh City. There's nothing else I could find out about him… but I suspect he probably has an interesting biography, just as McCain does. "Ours," he wrote, "is a small country. We Vietnamese cannot and must not entrust our future to anyone, but we urgently need strategic allies at a moment in history when our priority is to defeat our present-day enemy: China." Good luck with defeating whomever you want, fella-- you guys are good at it-- but leave us out of it.

China’s move in May, to place an offshore oil rig on the Vietnamese continental shelf, and its arrogant statements in June, at an Asian security summit meeting known as the Shangri-La Dialogue, exposed China’s sea piracy to the world. These developments should alarm anyone in Vietnam who still clings to the myth of brotherly love between our nation and China.

We cannot fight Chinese encroachment alone. Political isolation in a globalized world is tantamount to committing political suicide for Vietnam. And the key ally for Vietnam today is the United States-- an alliance that the Vietnamese liberation hero Ho Chi Minh ironically always wanted.

The Vietnamese people have fought for thousands of years to maintain our culture and independence, in the shadow of a giant neighbor. But continuing blindness and stupidity have poisoned generations of Vietnamese leaders, even when their Chinese “comrades” blatantly started a border war in 1979 and invaded and occupied the Paracel Islands in 1974 and the Spratly Islands in 1988-- which for centuries both belonged to Vietnam. After the revolutions in Eastern Europe in 1989, Vietnamese leaders tried to protect Communism from an embarrassing demise in Southeast Asia. At a now-infamous meeting in Chengdu, China, in 1990, Vietnamese leaders signed agreements that made our country even more dependent on China-- a betrayal of our interests and a national shame.

For personal gain, some Vietnamese have even become traitors, blindly toeing the Chinese line. They are reminiscent of the reviled 18th-century king Le Chieu Thong, the last ruler of the Le Dynasty, who died in exile in China. But the cowardice of Vietnamese leaders has never been so blatant as in the past 25 years. Vietnam’s government has put a so-called communist-socialist bond with China above national interests and the well-being of its citizens. Our leaders have regarded invaders as friends.

Because of China’s recent territorial grabs at sea and its complete disregard for international law, we are now back to square one. Without a major strategic realignment, Vietnam’s island territories will simply be gobbled up by China. Our country must dispose of the myth of friendship with China and return to what Ho Chi Minh passionately advocated after World War II: an American-Vietnamese alliance in Asia.

…The Chinese government’s hypocrisy and double-dealing are well known and well documented. As our prime minister, Nguyen Tan Dung, recently put it bluntly: “Vietnam has always wanted peace and friendship with China. However, we cannot trade our sacred independence and sovereignty for some elusive peace or any type of dependence.” His strong words heralded a new way of dealing with China. But much more is needed.

Vietnamese leaders need to move decisively by taking claims against China before international courts and once and for all relegating the idea of an ideological bond with China to the dustbin of history. Vietnam must fully implement and follow the true spirit of Ho’s Declaration of Independence in 1945. And that means finally establishing the sort of close economic and military relations with the United States that Ho had wanted after World War II.

That is the only way to defeat the new Chinese expansionism propelled by its president, Xi Jinping, and for Vietnam to join the rest of the civilized world, with its ideals of democracy, freedom and justice for all.

I think we have enough problems fighting our own oil wars without getting between China and Vietnam, regardless of what kind of sabre-ratting crap McCain is peddling this week.