BACK IN ‘NAM

One of the first things George W. Bush did as his presidency was getting off the ground in 2001was to sign a bilateral trade agreement with Vietnam.  Since then, trade between the US and Vietnam has grown 400% to $7.8 billion last year.  Last week, the US and Vietnam signed an agreement that paves the way for Vietnam to join the WTO, the World Trade Organization.

And yesterday, Monday, June 5, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld was in Hanoi meeting Vietnam's Defense Minister Pham Van Tra and Prime Minister Phan Van Khai.  Noting that a US Navy ship will soon be visiting a Vietnamese port for the fourth time in four years, a reporter asked Rummy if the US was seeking basing rights in Vietnam.

"We have no plans for access to military facilities in Vietnam," was Rummy's reply.  When diplomacy requires it, Rumsfeld can lie with the best of them.

For the very purpose of his Hanoi sojourn was to discuss just such access.  His meetings, and all the cooperation that proceeded it have been in preparation for one announcement.

This November, President Bush will go on a state visit to Vietnam.  On November 18, he will address the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit hosted by Vietnam in Hanoi.  During this visit, it will be announced that the United States Navy will once again have an operating base at Cam Ranh Bay.

Cam Ranh Bay was the major port facility of the US Armed Forces during the Vietnam War.  It is one of the finest seaports in the world.  After communist North Vietnam conquered South Vietnam in 1975, the Soviets moved in to establish there the largest Soviet naval base in the world outside the Warsaw Pact. 

In a little noticed prelude for this November's announcement, Hanoi kicked the Russians out of Cam Ranh Bay in 2002.  Now we're going back in.

The Left may still be stuck in ‘Nam, but GW isn't.  Our loss there is history and he doesn't dwell on it.  He knows that war with America is a short blip on Vietnam's historical screen – a war that lasted a few short years while for over a thousand years Vietnam fought to gain its freedom from China.

Various tribes known as Viet had established a kingdom in the Red River delta back in the 6^th century BC.  In 111 BC, Han Chinese troops invaded and conquered the Viet kingdom.  Over the centuries, the Viets refused assimilation and periodically rebelled against Chinese colonial rule.  Finally, at the battle of Bach Dang in 937 AD, the Chinese were defeated and Vietnam became free once again.

After 1,048 years of colonial enslavement, the Vietnamese have hated the Chinese ever since.  Today they are far more worried about Chinese imperialism than American imperialism – especially since Red China claims their entire front yard, the South China Sea, as Chinese territorial waters.

Cam Ranh Bay looks out upon the South China Sea.  The US Navy based in Cam Ranh Bay along with the increasingly powerful Indian Navy is what Vietnam needs to protect itself from China.

I first gave you a heads-up on this a year ago last June in The Indo-China Con.  It will give you all the background, plus the appropriate maps.

GW has been planning this for a long time.  It's a good example of his geopolitical genius.  In our anger over his seemingly inexplicable faults regarding our borders, government spending and the like, we can blind ourselves to his virtues.  This we must not do.

Bush had a containment plan for China from the beginning of his presidency, a series of military alliances surrounding China.  It's working with Japan and India, it hasn't worked with Putin's Russia.  Now it seems that an alliance with Vietnam is falling into place.

If there is ever a military confrontation between China and the US, it will be somewhere between the Formosa Strait and the Spratly Islands (see the map in The Indo-China Con).

The best way to head off such a confrontation is a strong US Navy presence in the region at the ready.  The place to have it is Cam Ranh Bay.  Such a base is the best way to prevent war, not provoke it.

Is America ready to accept a military alliance with Vietnam, still governed by the Ho Chi Minh Commies?  If you react in disgust, still bitter about our loss to them, then just think about how much this will mind-screw the Left.

The Vietnamese Commies in an alliance with America against Red China?  It will rattle the Left's cage like you can't believe.  Bush will have turned the Left's great victory over America in Vietnam into a victory for America.  The Left won't be able to use the trauma of defeat in ‘Nam as a weapon any more.  The Vietnam War will at last finally be over, and the Left will have lost it.

George Bush understands all of this, and is doing all of this on slow methodical purpose.  Even the timing of the announcement is on purpose – after the November elections.  It will take a little while for the brilliance of this to sink in, and he's not about to startle the voter-horses before Election Day.

So now's a good time to begin our reassessment of George W. Bush.  We've had our winter of discontent with him and winter's long gone.  We're deep into spring and it's time to start thinking anew.  Time to bury past traumas.  Time to appreciate GW.  Time to go back to ‘Nam.

Ps:  For those with any lingering doubts, recall the words of Henry John Temple (1784-1865), better known to history as Lord Palmerston, who observed while Prime Minister of England in the late 1850s: "Nations have no permanent friends and no permanent enemies. Only permanent interests."