I have been an admirer of Vietnam since 1954. My admiration originated from that country’s military prowess. Then I came to admire Vietnam for its success in the arena of economic development. More recently, my positive attitude toward Vietnam was enhanced by its achievements in the field of foreign relations.
1954 was the year in which, as stated, my admiration for Vietnam was born. The largest of the three territories that comprised the colonial era’s French Indochina—Cambodia and Laos were the other two—Vietnam had long sought a release from France’s colonial stranglehold and a return to its proud history as a free nation. When Paris would not budge on the independence issue, Ho Chi Minh and his band of nationalists began a long and bloody war; that war lasted from 1945, when the Japanese invaders were defeated, and ended thirty years later.
The war for independence from France ended in the middle of 1954 with the French Army’s ignominious defeat. The Vietnamese fighters, led by the brilliant General Vo Dinh Giap, trapped their adversary in the Dien Buen Phu valley and forced the mighty French forces—these included French Foreign Legion Troops—under Gen. Christian de Castries to surrender. In military annals Gen. Giap is now regarded as an iconic figure and Dien Bien Phu has become a symbol of military ineptitude.
The withdrawal of France from Indochina and the creation under the subsequent Geneva accords of the communist state of North Vietnam left a military void in the Indochinese Peninsula that the US considered dangerous. The US Congress then authorized a massive increase in the American presence in democratic South Korea. Thus began the conflict that history has come to know as the Korean War.
American marines dramatically waded ashore along South Vietnam’s coast in 1965; exactly ten years later the US withdrew all its personnel from South Vietnam’s capital, Saigon in manifestation of Washington’s realization that America’s might could not beat the black-pajamas-clad Vietcong. After defeating France, North Vietnam had now defeated another major power.
But the US and France were not the only powers that the Vietnamese had successfully challenged. Historically the Chinese Empire had coveted Vietnam’s northernmost provinces, and China and Vietnam had fought each other from time to time over those areas. The last skirmish between the two countries, which took place in 1979, ended in a standoff.
The Vietnamese-Chinese antagonism has shifted from land to sea, and Vietnam is one of the oppositors of China’s nine-dash-line claim, which in 2016 was declared void by the UN-supported Permanent Court of Administration. A clash between the Chinese and Vietnamese navies took place several years ago on the issue of Vietnam’s claim.
Vietnam’s achievements in the field of economics are no less deserving of admiration. After the cessation of US support for the erstwhile government of South Vietnam, the victorious forces of Ho Chi Minh realized that they had an enormous reconstruction and economic-development job to do, and they quickly embarked on a program designed to create a strong modern Vietnamese state. Ho Chi Minh and the Vietnamese communist party moved to minimize corruption, improve the bureaucracy, rebuild the nation’s infrastructure, open the door to investments, encourage entrepreneurship and provide support to agriculture.
Today Vietnam is arguably the rising star of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN). With a population of 94 million and a per capita income of $6,925, it has one of ASEAN’s highest growth rates and is one of the largest ASEAN recipients of FDI (foreign direct investment). Not at all bad for a country that was almost bombed to hell four decades earlier.
A further Vietnamese achievement that is worthy of admiration came into being only recently. Towards the close of the 50th ASEAN anniversary meeting, Vietnam, against the opposition of all the other ASEAN members—except, possibly, Singapore —insisted on the inclusion in the final communiqué of references to China’s “militarization of the South China Sea” and China’s land reclamation activity in that highly controversial body of water. One of the foremost oppositors was the Philippines, ironically, the anniversary host, which under the Duterte administration, has been highly fearful of offending China. Vietnam was adamant on the inclusion of its suggested wording, and it got its way.
For all these reasons, I say, Bravo, Vietnam.
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