I am a Viet Nam veteran-68-69 with TDYs back until summer 70. I feel absolutely zero of this bitterness the NYT is selling. America has no better friend than the Vietnamese people. The government and the nation are up against the Chinese Wall and it is very much in American interests to keep China from making a no-access lake out of the East Sea. It is in all western nations’ interest to prevent that. Viet Nam, because it is a bureaucratic authoritarian system, which we are rapidly becoming in the USA without the Communist label,it maintains a huge army of men. We need that army there and we need that army to be well equipped. We need Cam Ranh which Viet Nam has been trying to lure us back to for 20 years. There is no better port and base from which to oppose China’s ambitions in SEA. The government is nominally Communist and is organized in that way but the Vietnamese, even the Party people are practical people, unlike the Russians a few decades back. They need the USA and the USA needs Viet Nam. They look also to Australia but Australia doesn’t really have the economy to support the role in SEA that is needed. Letting China do its will in the East Sea will make international trade much more expensive because a very large portion of the world’s shipping goes through there or very near there. China could shut all that off or charge exorbitant prices for passage if we let them have it. President Obama doesn’t like VN because VN keeps trying to be a friend of America, a protectorate of sorts even. Obama doesn’t like countries that see anything good in America. He has cut off most of the influence for reform that accomplished a lot in the Clinton and Bush years. Yes Bill Clinton did some good there. I think he thought he was sticking his thumb in Republican eyes but his opening to VN was a good move. He and Bush leaned on Ha Noi to reform and VN back off its heavy handed approaches to a lot of things. There has been some backsliding because those reforms were of a sort that Obama abhors and he has not kept up the pressure at all.
I agree, this is a positive step.