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30 Years After the Vietnam War: China Remains a Threat
Looking back at the fall of Saigon, a former general in the
South Vietnamese Army says that the possibility of a free Vietnam is now
threatened by China's imperial ambitions. That's bringing Vietnam and the United
States closer together.
Commentary, Thi Q. Lam,
Pacific News Service
MILPITAS, Calif.-- April 14, 2005
- On the evening of April 29, 1975, I boarded one of the last
navy ships leaving Saigon, while enemy missiles were landing on the northern
outskirts of the city with deafening explosions. The next morning, as our ship
was leaving Vietnam territorial waters, I looked back at the receding Vietnamese
coastline and felt tears in my eyes.
General Thi visiting the U.S.
during the war.
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My heart went out to my comrades-in-arms and fellow countrymen left
behind. I also felt very pessimistic about the fate of our pro-Western
neighbors, countries that, I thought, might fall like dominoes in face
of seemingly unstoppable North Vietnamese Army divisions equipped with
the latest Russian and Chinese weaponry.
Thirty years later, no dominoes have fallen. Instead, the Soviet Empire
has collapsed and the very existence of Vietnam as a free country is
being threatened by its former allied and historical enemy to the north.
Although it doesn't publicly proclaim it, China -- as in the case of
Taiwan -- historically has considered Vietnam a renegade southern
province. They named it An Nam, or "the Pacified South."
China's killing of Vietnamese fishermen in the Vinh Bac Bo (Gulf of
Tonkin) in January, in fact, has added to a consistent pattern of
Chinese southern expansionism: conquest of the Paracel Islands in 1974;
invasion of the northern provinces of Vietnam in 1979 and subsequent
annexation of 8,000 square kilometers of borderland; occupation of the
Spratley archipelagoes the same year and acquisition of 12,000 square
kilometers of territorial waters in the Vinh Bac Bo conceded by Hanoi
under the 2000 Vinh Bac Bo Pact.
Not content with forcing territorial concessions from Hanoi, China is
also building up its naval force and setting up a string of naval bases
along the sea lanes in the Eastern Sea to protect oil shipments from the
Middle East. The Washington Times recently revealed that a previously
undisclosed internal report prepared for Defense Secretary Donald H.
Rumsfeld noted that "many Pentagon analysts believe China's military
buildup is taking place faster than earlier estimates, and that China
will use its power to project force and undermine U.S. and regional
security."
It is not surprising that the United States and Japan have joined forces
in the face of an emerging Chinese threat. In a demonstration of its
willingness to confront China's rapidly growing might, Japan, in a joint
agreement with the United States, declared last February that Taiwan is
a mutual security concern. "It would be wrong for us to send a signal to
China that the United States and Japan will watch and tolerate China's
military invasion of Taiwan," says Shinzo Abe, the acting secretary
general of Japan's ruling Liberal Democratic Party and a likely
successor to Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi.
Recent mass protests at the Japanese embassy in Beijing triggered by
Japan's inability to admit in newly approved school textbooks its past
war crimes further heightened tensions between the two emerging Asian
rivals.
Concerns about Beijing's new aggressiveness have sparked new military
re-alignments in the strategic Asia-Pacific region. Despite the Free
World's professed commitment to "constructive engagement" with China,
the post-World War II policy of "containment" remains a popular ploy in
today's global, political chess game. Vietnam has thus regained its
strategic value in U.S. eyes as a missing link in the containment scheme
and a counterbalance to the even graver threat of Chinese expansionism.
Vietnam appears only too willing to accommodate. The recent port of
calls of U.S. Navy vessels in Saigon and Danang, the Vietnamese Defense
Minister's visit to the Pentagon in 2003 and the planned Washington trip
by Prime Minister Phan Van Khai this summer signal a warm-up of military
relations between the former foes.
But an effective and lasting strategic cooperation, such as NATO or the
U.S.-Japan Alliance, requires that the partners share the same moral
values and political ideology. In other words, only a free and
democratic Vietnam, enjoying popular support and the support of the
community of free nations can stand up to China's aggression and
effectively contribute to regional security. In this regard, President
Bush's commitment to spreading democracy to the "darkest corners of the
world" should include Vietnam. That would benefit U.S. strategic
interests and at the same time liberate 80 million Vietnamese from
Communist oppression.
Thirty years almost to the day after I left Saigon, a young Vietnamese
American came home on another boat, cruising upstream on the muddy and
tortuous Saigon River. He was U.S. Lt-Cmdr. Quoc Bao Tran, and his ship
was the U.S.S. Gary. The U.S. naval vessel was making a port call in the
former capital city of South Vietnam.
Tran may feel he was a stranger in the country where he was born and
which he fled when he was only a child, but, by a strange twist of fate,
the future of Vietnam no doubt hinges on young Vietnamese-Americans like
him. They are bringing a message of hope to a people longing for
freedom.
Other Readings of Interest from the Archives
PNS contributor Thi Q. Lam is author of the memoir "The
25-Year Century: A South Vietnamese General Remembers the Vietnam War."
He resides in Milpitas, Calif., where he teaches high school. |
