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Vietnam Invites US Army to Return
Four decades ago, US forces left Vietnam after a bruising defeat to China- and Soviet-backed communists. Today, Vietnam has asked the US Army to return:
The Army plans to stockpile equipment in Vietnam, Cambodia, and other Pacific countries yet unnamed that will allow US forces to deploy there more rapidly, because key supplies and gear will already be in place. The new caches will be well inside what China considers its sphere of influence.
Army Materiel Command chief Gen. Dennis Via emphasized they will contain equipment for Humanitarian and Disaster Relief operations (HADR), not heavy armored vehicles that fill the rapidly growing European Activity Set. Still, the presence of an American Army cache in Vietnam would be dramatic. Americans best remember our defeat there 42 years ago, but Vietnam has fought a land war and multiple naval clashes with China. Beijing will not be pleased.
During the Cold War, the US contained Russia and China — “encircled” them, from the Communists’ point of view — with large forces forward-stationed at permanent bases on allied territory around the world. Today, such permanent US presence is politically unpalatable, both to the American public and the publics of many otherwise friendly foreign nations. (Our bases in Korea and Japan often inspire local resentment). So American units are mostly US-based and deploy temporarily abroad.
If need be, though, these temporary tours can become a practically permanent presence by rotating a new unit in as soon as the previous one leaves, which is the current practice with brigade combat teams in both Korea and Europe. Such back-to-back rotations require heavy logistical support on the ground, but even occasional small deployments go a lot easier with supplies and equipment already in position.
Oh, how times change. Vietnam and Cambodia are situated well inside of Beijing’s self-defined sphere of influence, so China will no doubt interpret this force projection as provocative. With their territorial claims in the South China Sea, which borders the entire coastline of Vietnam, Beijing will closely monitor several US Navy ships delivering material to their southern neighbor.
How do you think China will deal with our incursion into their backyard and, given China’s ambitions, does the US have any choice but to expand our presence in southeast Asia?
Published in Foreign Policy, Military
How times change indeed.
I’d love to ask my Dad about this. He flew F-4s in Vietnam, and we had friends who lived on our street whose Dads were shot down and died in the conflict (I was young but remember this all too well).
My Dad was one of the smartest men I’ve known, and he would likely take a philosophical view of things. But it would be interesting to hear his thoughts.
Given that it’s just HADR, I would be surprised it the Chinese elected to make an issue out of it.
Boy, that is something, though.
They’ll ship us fewer happy meal toys?
Vietnam, Cambodia, the PI. All these countries showed us the door via one way or another. Let them face China on their own.
We should trade the HADR buildup for the Spratly Islands buildup.
I think enough time has passed and there has been enough change in the leadership of these countries that this is an acceptable idea. This isn’t like the sudden change in our Cuba policy, where the regime is still run by the same anti-american folks, and we get nothing for our overtures.
If anything, America abandoned us. And there is no anti-American sentiment in Cambodia.
I wish Christopher Hitchens was alive to comment on this. He was always adamant that Ho Chi Minh was really a nationalist rather than a communist.
We have requested rights to use Cam Ranh Bay. The Russians were leasing CRB since 1975 and it was their largest foreign base. The Russians lost their lease in 2oo2. Vietnam said no foreigners could use the base. Then in 2010 an agreement with Russia was renegotiated. In return, Russia is building a fleet of submarines to counter the Chinese. The Russians are building for cash and upgrading CRB facilities. They have been granted liberal docking rights or privileges. The US has been allowed to make one navy ship visit to Danang, but not the all important CRB just to the south. In 2012, Leon Panetta wanted to gain full acces to CRB as a base to counter Chinese expansion in the S. China Sea. Vietnam flirted on the topic, but nothing happened.
Russia remains the largest supplier of arms to Vietnam. A year ago the Russians sent bombers to circle our base at Guam. The US learned they were refueled by tankers flying from CRB. So, the US protested strongly. I believe Vietnam is now trying to make a gesture to the US.
Vietnam is very careful to resist China, but not provoke China. Vietnam does not want to get between two superpowers. Which is why they are buying Kilo class diesel submarines and weapons from Russia and not Germany who makes the best (quietest) diesel subs. The Russians were their principal supplier of weapons and pose less threat to the Chinese. China is not please, bu they do not see Vietanm as a long term problem.
This is a small matter that will cause no alarm, but shows the US a tiny amount of goodwill, or nothing.
Why does your story worry me, given this headline the same week?
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_CONGRESS_ARMY_READINESS?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2016-03-16-13-29-14
This is a very poor way to characterize the fall of Vietnam. Try this:
“Four decades ago, after a decade of propping up South Vietnam against China- and Soviet- backed North Vietnam, America decided to throw away costly victories and abandon our allies, leaving them to a brutal annexation by the Communists.”
America was never defeated in Vietnam. American-trained Army of the Republic of South Vietnam did not lose, either, so long as we provided support. It was only after a spiteful Democrat Congress overrode a Gerald Ford veto that we removed all of the support for Vietnam that they lost. The North Vietnamese simply waited until South Vietnam had run out of gasoline, and then they rolled in with Soviet tanks (the first time they ever used tanks).
This history needs to be told and re-told by conservatives at every opportunity, to try to un-do the damage done by the Leftist professors of twisted “history.”
Yes, sometimes I think the editors here at Ricochet are “center-right” because they get most of their information from the left.
As an international matter, it comes to the same thing–won the war, lost the peace. But of course, most opportunities should not be squandered & it is at least here opportune to point out that liberalism, leftism, & Dems, & scurrilous, slavish celebrities like Walter Cronkite were as close to treason as even the most generous laws allow.
Completely uncalled for!
Point to you on Cambodia.
Oh Lord. Which part of the CoC did I violate this time?
In military terms, you’re right, but it’s still very much missing the forest for the trees. We won the battles, and yes, guys like Cronkite lied his tail off. But the population north of Saigon was still generally more favorable to the Communists than not, and saw us as an invader. Our men fought nobly, but it was a lost cause from the start. We never had the support of the great mass of Vietnamese, and we were never going to turn South Vietnam into a stable, non-corrupt modern nation that could take care of itself. Their leaders were a parade of one kleptocrat after another, all the way down to the local level. Life sucked under both SV and NV leaders, but NV gave them national pride. Saigon and the surrounding areas liked us (and it seems like that’s where the bulk of boat people came from), but most of the rest chose the Marxist path. Let them live with that choice.
China and Vietnam have hated each other longer than the United States has existed.
And BTW, the last time China invaded Vietnam, they got a post-graduate level seminar on guerrilla warfare.
Yep, seems few people even know about the 79′ war.
As China’s wealth and military power continue to rise, the US will focus laser-like on containing this great rival. This is simply what great powers do. The main strategy for this will be to build an alliance consisting of the US, Japan, South Korea, the Philippines, Singapore, Vietnam, India and… wait for it… Russia! Yes, the US and Russia will be buds again.
The good news about all this is that our foreign policy attention will finally be very much focused on one clear threat, and we will be free from the fog of confusion that arrived in 1991.
The bad news is that China will be a much, much more formidable foe than the Soviet Union.
Another thing, and I’m not sure if it’s good or bad, is that US and European interests will seriously diverge with respect to China. China does not threaten the Europeans, who will bend over backwards to continue trading with the Chinese. But this will annoy us to no end.
What would President Trump say?
“Deploy assets to defend and form alliance with Vietnam! What kind of losers are we? They Fight us in World War and we are now buddies. So they take our jobs with their cheap clothes and now we want to be in a military alliance with them? That’s loser talk.”
And, despite our base abandonment of them, the Vietnamese don’t hate us. In fact, they are among the most pro-American people in the world.
God help them. They may have to learn again how we treat our friends.
Even though your criticisms of the government of South Vietnam are true, I do not agree that your statements I have highlighted are true.
We had stabilized the situation on the ground, reformed the army, rebuilt much infrastructure, turned the fighting over to ARVn troops and ended our draft. That lasted just fine until the Democrats voted “not one nickel” for support of our allies.
This is patently false.
The Vietnam war ended, on terms the US demanded, in the Paris Peace Accords of 1973. It reestablished the line of demarcation established after WW2 and ended US military involvement in Vietnam.
Remember, everything you know about the 20th Century is wrong.
I’m not flagging anything nor calling a violation: But it was a gratuitously nasty thing to say.
Just fine is not a good answer. America would have had to do more for South Vietnam: But it was doable, at manageable costs–it wasn’t going to keep getting worse, it was getting better!
What America did not do was punish the North far worse tan the stuff that brought them to the table & that ridiculous accord in Paris.
Which is the point made earlier. We had a mutual defence treaty with the south. Pres Ford went to congress to get the money for the military action. The Democrat controlled Congress denied the funds.
As an American who has lived in Cambodia for over 2 years now, I can attest that there appears to be no genuine anti-American feelings expressed by the average Cambodian.
It is interesting that Cambodia is allowing this because the Prime Minister has made the occasional public comment complaining about the criticism of Cambodia that the US & other western nations sometimes offer.
Chinese money, however, comes with no “human rights” strings attached. When the Chinese “offer assistance,” they do not give with one hand and criticize Cambodian corruption with the other. The criticism is justified, if sometimes hypocritical, but the Chinese have no such concerns.
I view this development as a good thing, a strengthening of US influence in an area of the world that needs it.
America was giving financial aid to South Vietnam, which under Nixon was $1 billion/year. The South Vietnamese had been doing all their own fighting for nearly two years. North Vietnam was clearly violating the peace agreement. Gerald Ford took over when Nixon resigned, and the ’74 Democratic congress cut the funds, and then eliminated the funds, twice overriding Ford vetos.
We must keep telling the truth about the way the Democrats took a stabilized situation after hard-won victories, and kicked the props out from under our allies, betrayed our friends, sold out the Vietnamese people for the sake of petty domestic political demagoguery, and allowed the chaos that had been predicted to consume Southeast Asia.
Over five million people were murdered as the dominoes fell.
Do you see the parallel? We let the self-congratulatory anti-war baby boomers in the Leftist mass media and Lefty faculties teach that “America lost” the Vietnam War. So, we repeated that sad history.
Team Obama congratulated themselves for “ending the war” in Iraq.
What they really did was to pull out, removing the supports that Team Bush left in place after the situation was stabilized and the Iraqis had a real chance for democracy and liberty. The ensuing chaos allowed the rise of Islamic State. A million murdered and millions of refugees are the result. Iraqi friends of America who were cooperating, helping, working for and collaborating with America were deliberately targeted for assassinations and we did nothing to protect them.
Shameful.