Forum… Or Against ’em

Those who know me, and even some people who don’t, recognize I am a fervent anti-communist. I have seen in my time enough of the world to know that the reality of communism as it was perpetrated in places like the Soviet Union, China, Hungary, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Rumania, Yugoslavia, Albania and the like never lived up to the Marxist utopian ideal outlined in Das Kapital. I took some risks and sacrificed some of my own personal treasure in what we used to refer to as the Cold War. Those are stories for another time and another column I may or may not write. I bring this up because Vietnam has lately made its way into our consciousness here in the West…
The youngsters of today are probably scratching their heads, but not really all that long ago, before they were born to be sure, but not all that long ago, Vietnam was a major focus for many of us Americans. Despite my anti-communist bona fides, I will herein confess that I was not convinced of the wisdom of Lyndon Johnson’s decision to get into that conflict. My reasoning at the time was this: Ho Chi Minh was more of a nationalist than an ideologue and my understanding of both human and governmental nature led me to believe there was tremendous opportunity – actually more probability than simple opportunity – for their to be a falling out between Red China and Vietnam, between Ho and Mao Tse-tung, if outside influences could be reasonably taken out of the equation. Over the long march of time, it seemed to me, if the United States just stayed out of it, the natural geographic rivalry between those two countries – a product of their proximity – would flourish. There was no need to fear, I reasoned, the growth of a consolidated communist power in Asia if nature was allowed to take its course and no one on the outside, such as the United States or others in the West, presented itself as a common enemy to both to give China and Vietnam cause to unite…
There now emerges, a half century on, vindication of my perception. Word now comes that at the request of the Vietnam People’s Navy — which is incidentally a wing of the communist party in Vietnam – the Obama Administration has acceded to a request to lift the embargo on the sale of arms to Vietnam. Our president signed an order to do just that under the proviso that the weapons be used for “maritime-related” defense. The Pentagon has earmarked just under $21 million in military assistance for Vietnam that will come in the form of equipment and machinery that will vastly uprate Vietnam’s intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance capabilities at sea. And already a number of American defense contractors are moving to fill orders for products on order from the Vietnam People’s Navy…
This sudden coziness between the U.S. and Vietnamese military forces is a direct outgrowth of a common objective: thwarting China’s effort to achieve dominance in the South China Sea. China is doing that by either seizing islands there, militarizing others or constructing ones from coral and sand and concrete where none existed before, while aggressively laying claim to vast portions of the South China Sea, which under international law is held to belong to no nation. For more information on this, I would commend my readers to consult one of my earlier columns, which ran in the Sentinel on December 4 this just past year…
Even though the hammer-and-sickle banner still flutters in the breeze of Hanoi and its leaders take seeming pride in their country’s existence as a single-party authoritarian state, change is afoot and its once-intransigent Marxist-Leninist rulers have consented to sitting down cheek-to-jowl with us capitalists. Am I fantasizing too much to think that before I take my leave of this planet, which cannot be all that far off given my advanced age, Vietnam’s leadership will see the value of allowing at least some of its industries, which are now entirely government-owned and run, being entrusted to private owners so their creativity will no longer be stifled and the profit incentive can be harnessed for that country’s citizens’ benefit?

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