It's also an internal issue. Like all of SE Asia, Vietnam has an "overseas Chinese" minority, concentrated on the coast and relatively prosperous, mainly in business / trading.
Thomas Sowell wrote on this in one of his books: Chinese in Vietnam (and elsewhere), Indians in South Africa, Jewish people all over the world: "middleman minorities" who play an important role in local economies but who also make a convenient target for them as want a convenient target when circumstances warrant.
During the 1950s-60s, observers of Vietnamese affairs commonly associated the Chinese community, centered in Saigon's Cholon district, with pro-Communist underground activity in the South.
Good. The thing is, from all I've heard, they bear Americans little ill will. And on a policy point of view, see DC is infinitely better than Peking. Freedom, step by step.
Every vet of the Vietnam War that I talked to who had visited Vietnam since the War, and there have been many over the decades, had positive things to say about their visit. Many were surprised, even shocked, at the lack of anger at Americans. Though I wore the uniform during that war, I was never sent there.
It's been going on for a long time. Doi Moi reforms in the 1980s paralleled Deng's changes in China.
KFC, McD's, Burger King, craft breweries and Irish pubs.
One of my favorite destinations. Hanoi better than Saigon in my opinion. I met a couple of Vietnam vets living there. I highly recommend a visit. No oppressive police presence or creepy criminal vibes there.
Every Vietnamese refugee family I've ever had any contact with was all about making money and successes. I wonder if the conquered South wound up being the conquerors after all?
Great article about reformation of Vietnam. The path of Vietnam is a great example that all countries in the world are at different stages of population management and have to morph at the proper time to either a republic or democracy. Ho Chi Minh was once an ally of the US, who helped him defeat the French. But he turned to Communist advocates and the US became lost in the domino theory. However, now as the Vietnamese people become more educated and more propserous through outright capitalism, the opportunity to morph the Communist regime from communism to an authoritarian capitalist dictatorship to eventually a republic/democracy has arrived. I expect the US to ink military treaties soon that may bring the US Navy back to Cam Ran Bay and even ground troops into bases hosted in Vietnam. A real turn of events to be sure. r/karl
"... and in 1920 was a founding member of the French Communist Party in Paris. After studying in Moscow, Hồ founded the Vietnamese Revolutionary Youth League in 1925, which he transformed into the Indochinese Communist Party in 1930. "
I think that every country has to chart its own course. Like trying to push a cat, or a string- it just doesn't work. Our record at playing kingmaker is abysmal. Our thinking that we know best for everyone else in the world is Hubris at its finest.
The genius of the ango-dutch-american system of personal liberty and individual freedom is that it does not need propaganda. Coupling individual initiative with the ability to profit from your faculties will always win out, in the long run.
Liberals value the individual over the government. Unleashing individuals from the constraints of government is the liberal ideology. America is a liberal nation.
While true in the "classical" liberal sense, modern usage has used the word to separate the "Liberal" left from the "Conservative" right where in truth neither current party is the US is very liberal and they have uniformly failed to conserve very much of our liberal Heritage.
I still call myself a liberal who wants to see America made great again by a return to the liberal ideals of our founding and conservation, restoration even, of our individual rights.
For the most part, a lot of us disagree about how to get there, or which players on our preferred Uniparty teams are least likely to do further damage at any time:)
We don't have the naval assets to meet our minimal National Security needs. We cannot successfully design, build, or maintain Naval Assets. Trump and Hegseth's plan to gut our current acquisition process and treat the Pentagon Bureaucracy as an enemy of America might allow us to return to Military/Naval greatness.
Bummer about the 58,000+ Americans who died in the feckless war of the ‘60s and ‘70s when all we had to do was wait for Vietnamese communism to collapse under its own weight.
Sadly we learned very little from the Vietnam experience, as readily demonstrated by the bungled 21st Century conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan. Our politicians are great cheerleaders for such dumb foreign entanglements until they find out that their constituents are sick of them. At that time, they merely cut and run leading to yet one more American humiliation. Having a phony macho man poseur like Hegseth as Secretary of Defense should be the cause of great alarm amongst Americans since he certainly has even less wisdom than Robert McNamara or Dick Cheney.
It has long been obvious that Americans only have an attention span of two or perhaps three years when it comes to winning a war, after which they lose interest with the politicians behaving accordingly to save their own political skins. This is all greatly magnified, of course, by the fact that almost no Americans from the top 5 or 10%, in terms of wealth and income, have sent their children to fight in these wars. We should immediately restart the military draft and ensure that at least 5% of those drafted for front line combatant roles come from the top 1% and at least 10% of those drafted come from the top 10%. Then we will find out how much real support for such wars exists. If those who are most privileged among us don’t support wars enough to see their own children put in harm’s way, we can be confident that those conflicts will not end in triumph.
I am not sure what you have against Hegseth. Thus far, he has not taken time off for an operation without notifying his staff.
I do not like the idea of a draft. Life on a ship is not easy. It’s hell on earth if you don’t want to be there and only makes things difficult for the chief and division officer.
Don’t get me started on Biden’s political appointees, who were all willing conspirators in the plot to deny all Dems in the U.S. the right to vote in primary elections.
But as someone who knows many retired flag and general officers in the U.S. military, rest assured that the National Guard major literally could not be held in lower esteem by those who have spent a lifetime defending g our country, with the wounds to prove it.
He was over his head reading his lines at Fox and he’s way out of his depth now.
Sorry. You’re wrong. POTUS cannot change the names of departments in the Executive Branch of the federal government simply because he had a brain fart one night as he daydreamed.
The executive summary issued by Trump’s own White House team admits as much. It says the move will restore “Department of War” as a “secondary” name for the department. The order authorizes Hegseth to use secondary titles such as “Secretary of War,” “Department of War,” and “Deputy Secretary of War” in official correspondence, public communications, ceremonial contexts and more, according to the White House. Oh boy. What a solution!
Under federal law, Trump cannot change the name unilaterally on his own through an executive order. The president must have approval from Congress.
Lawmakers formally rebranded the agency as the Defense Department in 1949 as a reorganization of our military branches brought them all under a single Executive Branch department.
It would take another act of Congress to change the name back to the Department of War.
Next up we can have a fulsome discussion on Trump’s Gulf of Mexico brain fart.
One can’t help but wonder if the President and his minions might be better off in serving all Americans by working on reducing deficit spending back to 2019 levels, adjusted for inflation and came forward with a plan to eliminate the growth in the national debt. But apparently that isn’t as fun as dreaming of name changes that are completely frivolous.
It seems unlikely that current SecWar would encourage behavior to puts American people on the ground for no reason, even though "he certainly has even less wisdom than Robert McNamara or Dick Cheney" who, by your own first sentence it appears that at least one of which did so.
Do you think Pete would create a new "McNamara's Morons" program to through unprepared and incapable men into the meat grinder?
Do you think he would throw young American men to their doom in order to increase his stock portfolio, or further some neocon fantasy of a new world order?
I don't know him and have no particular loyalty to him, but I've read one of his books, and thus far he has been true to his stated goal of improving the US military and treating our warriors with due care.
Read Rufus Phillips’ “Why Vietnam Matters: An Eyewitness Account of Lessons Not Learned” - he was there in 1954-56 and concluded that had we kept to our policies of that era there would never have been American boots on the ground.
Apparently I’ve struck a nerve among the community of patriots.
Just asking the question of a fellow patriot. How is that a ad hominem attack? There have been plenty of wars to fight in, after all. Doesn’t the answer to the question interest you? I sure you stepped up to fight for the country, as a patriot.
My middle son married a Vietnamese woman and I visited Vietnam for their engagement ceremony (more like their wedding in Vietnam. This was during Trump I. I was highly impressed with the Vietnamese people. It seemed everyone had two jobs, the day job and a side hustle. Most capitalistic folks I ever met.
Moreover they like Americans. I can't tell you how many of them, when they learned I was American gave me a thumbs-up and said "Trump!" even those who knew no English. Those that did speak English told me they would likely be fighting China soon, and this time they (the Vietnamese - even the communist Vietnamese) want the US on their side.
Why? "Because you fight hard. We'd rather fight alongside you this time than against you." Kind of like watching Union and Confederate veterans mingling with each other in the 1900s after Merritt Wesley and Joe Wheeler fought together in the Spanish-American War.
Visited Vietnam on a cruise (4 ports for 6 days) in February of this year. We absolutely loved Vietnam, the beauty of the country, the people, and their hardworking attitude. Wishing the best for the country and their citizens.
Vietnam is now led by To Lam while America is falling into the clutches of Mamdani, AOC, and Bernie. What did they learn that we forgot?
Unfortunately, Marxism in America is not limited to the kooks in the faculty lounge or Hollywood. Trump only beat Kamala by about 2% and the incoming governor of New Jersey who makes Kamala look like Einstein won decisively.
Why? I can’t explain it. The MSM bashing of Trump since he rode down the escalator is partly to blame.
Have many friends from Viet Nam, PI, Indonesia and Korea. Education is big where business is flourishing. Know the least about Viet Nam. Have to wonder how the Communists lost control of the schools. As we are learning to our massive regret, if your K-12 and universities are Marxist indoctrination camps, the majority of the young are easily convinced to hate their country. Especially if they don't see any upward mobility available to them in the current system. See election results in NYC, VA and NJ. Tough times ahead.
The difference between communism and socialism is that under socialism central planning ends with a gun in your face, whereas under communism central planning begins with a gun in you face.
Remember kids, we dislike the Chinese; the Vietnamese hate them.
It's also an internal issue. Like all of SE Asia, Vietnam has an "overseas Chinese" minority, concentrated on the coast and relatively prosperous, mainly in business / trading.
Some level of racial conflict as a result...
Many of them had left when the South fell. Their current connection with the South Vietnam is the thing to watch here.
Thomas Sowell wrote on this in one of his books: Chinese in Vietnam (and elsewhere), Indians in South Africa, Jewish people all over the world: "middleman minorities" who play an important role in local economies but who also make a convenient target for them as want a convenient target when circumstances warrant.
During the 1950s-60s, observers of Vietnamese affairs commonly associated the Chinese community, centered in Saigon's Cholon district, with pro-Communist underground activity in the South.
Something about fighting the Americans being a hobby, fighting the French being business, and fighting the Chinese being tradition.
At any rate, your name made me do a double-take.
Centuries of invasion, with accompanying pillage and rape, will do that for you.
They most definitely do. My Vietnamese in-laws, after getting liquored up, are always trying to recruit me to go back and fight the Chinese with them.
No thanks, 2 previous combat tours there is enough for me.
Are they watching Type 56: The Story of China's Army on YouTube? Lots of info on the 1979 Chinese invasion.
Good. The thing is, from all I've heard, they bear Americans little ill will. And on a policy point of view, see DC is infinitely better than Peking. Freedom, step by step.
Every vet of the Vietnam War that I talked to who had visited Vietnam since the War, and there have been many over the decades, had positive things to say about their visit. Many were surprised, even shocked, at the lack of anger at Americans. Though I wore the uniform during that war, I was never sent there.
As a U. S. veteran of the Vietnam war, all I can say is "Amen, and God bless Vietnam's trajectory away from communism."
It's been going on for a long time. Doi Moi reforms in the 1980s paralleled Deng's changes in China.
KFC, McD's, Burger King, craft breweries and Irish pubs.
One of my favorite destinations. Hanoi better than Saigon in my opinion. I met a couple of Vietnam vets living there. I highly recommend a visit. No oppressive police presence or creepy criminal vibes there.
Every Vietnamese refugee family I've ever had any contact with was all about making money and successes. I wonder if the conquered South wound up being the conquerors after all?
Many of the refugees have Chinese ethnicity.
Like Athens conquering her Roman conquerors.
I am wondering, at long last, if Vietnam veterans can now say, "Hey...we won?". Even if we can't take full credit, an assist would be nice.
Not won, but the influence of the G.I.'s on the population was remembered. Not the war part, but general interaction.
I would argue that in the PRC the communist party has morphed into its cousin: Fascism.
But then, no one has done Communism “the way it’s supposed to be done”, according to the American Left. </sarc>
But that's because they didn't let the smartest men into the room, Alan.
That's because the smartest "men" will never get it done, old boy. They need to put the "smartest women" in charge!
God save us all
Great article about reformation of Vietnam. The path of Vietnam is a great example that all countries in the world are at different stages of population management and have to morph at the proper time to either a republic or democracy. Ho Chi Minh was once an ally of the US, who helped him defeat the French. But he turned to Communist advocates and the US became lost in the domino theory. However, now as the Vietnamese people become more educated and more propserous through outright capitalism, the opportunity to morph the Communist regime from communism to an authoritarian capitalist dictatorship to eventually a republic/democracy has arrived. I expect the US to ink military treaties soon that may bring the US Navy back to Cam Ran Bay and even ground troops into bases hosted in Vietnam. A real turn of events to be sure. r/karl
"... and in 1920 was a founding member of the French Communist Party in Paris. After studying in Moscow, Hồ founded the Vietnamese Revolutionary Youth League in 1925, which he transformed into the Indochinese Communist Party in 1930. "
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ho_Chi_Minh
Yeah, I think we were happy enough to work with old Ho against the Japanese in the 40s, but far less so in the 50s.
I think that every country has to chart its own course. Like trying to push a cat, or a string- it just doesn't work. Our record at playing kingmaker is abysmal. Our thinking that we know best for everyone else in the world is Hubris at its finest.
So ,at last, we finally won the Vietnamese War.
Our propaganda just took an extra 50 years to work.
Yep,
Here's hoping...
The genius of the ango-dutch-american system of personal liberty and individual freedom is that it does not need propaganda. Coupling individual initiative with the ability to profit from your faculties will always win out, in the long run.
Are you sure? Weren’t Sam Adam’s Patrick Henry and Tom Paine engaging in propaganda?
Yes, but just for a different flavor of the mentioned “system.” In the big picture it was an internal family argument.
These ARE the times that try men’s souls.
Are there any such that are not? One might be happy for a vacation once in a while, but that is not the nature of our journey.
Every generation thinks the same thing, and that their experience is historically unique.
“Every generation throws a hero up the pop charts.” Paul Simon.
Wait, what? I could have said that myself, Tom, despite our occasional excursions to seemingly opposite corners of the ideological ring!
Liberals value the individual over the government. Unleashing individuals from the constraints of government is the liberal ideology. America is a liberal nation.
While true in the "classical" liberal sense, modern usage has used the word to separate the "Liberal" left from the "Conservative" right where in truth neither current party is the US is very liberal and they have uniformly failed to conserve very much of our liberal Heritage.
I still call myself a liberal who wants to see America made great again by a return to the liberal ideals of our founding and conservation, restoration even, of our individual rights.
For the most part, a lot of us disagree about how to get there, or which players on our preferred Uniparty teams are least likely to do further damage at any time:)
Let's not engage in historical revisionism.
If we had spare naval assets, we could do worse than help the Viets defend their EEC from the CCP -9 grift
Weren't they looking at some Maritime Patrol C-130s a couple years ago?
We don't have the naval assets to meet our minimal National Security needs. We cannot successfully design, build, or maintain Naval Assets. Trump and Hegseth's plan to gut our current acquisition process and treat the Pentagon Bureaucracy as an enemy of America might allow us to return to Military/Naval greatness.
Now, if the Chinese KMT is any smart, they will reach out to the Vietnamese party.
Bummer about the 58,000+ Americans who died in the feckless war of the ‘60s and ‘70s when all we had to do was wait for Vietnamese communism to collapse under its own weight.
Hindsight is 20/20.
In the 1970s it looked like America was going downhill and Russia was the future.
Sadly we learned very little from the Vietnam experience, as readily demonstrated by the bungled 21st Century conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan. Our politicians are great cheerleaders for such dumb foreign entanglements until they find out that their constituents are sick of them. At that time, they merely cut and run leading to yet one more American humiliation. Having a phony macho man poseur like Hegseth as Secretary of Defense should be the cause of great alarm amongst Americans since he certainly has even less wisdom than Robert McNamara or Dick Cheney.
It has long been obvious that Americans only have an attention span of two or perhaps three years when it comes to winning a war, after which they lose interest with the politicians behaving accordingly to save their own political skins. This is all greatly magnified, of course, by the fact that almost no Americans from the top 5 or 10%, in terms of wealth and income, have sent their children to fight in these wars. We should immediately restart the military draft and ensure that at least 5% of those drafted for front line combatant roles come from the top 1% and at least 10% of those drafted come from the top 10%. Then we will find out how much real support for such wars exists. If those who are most privileged among us don’t support wars enough to see their own children put in harm’s way, we can be confident that those conflicts will not end in triumph.
I am not sure what you have against Hegseth. Thus far, he has not taken time off for an operation without notifying his staff.
I do not like the idea of a draft. Life on a ship is not easy. It’s hell on earth if you don’t want to be there and only makes things difficult for the chief and division officer.
You're not sure? The man is an empty suit.
Why do you say that? True, Hegseth is no Robert McNamara for which I am grateful.
I am also happy he’a not Donald Rumsfeld or Dick Cheney either.
Don’t get me started on Biden’s political appointees, who were all willing conspirators in the plot to deny all Dems in the U.S. the right to vote in primary elections.
But as someone who knows many retired flag and general officers in the U.S. military, rest assured that the National Guard major literally could not be held in lower esteem by those who have spent a lifetime defending g our country, with the wounds to prove it.
He was over his head reading his lines at Fox and he’s way out of his depth now.
Have you read any of his books? He has some legitimate criticisms of our perfumed princesses.
BTW, Hegseth is the Secretary of War.
Sorry. You’re wrong. POTUS cannot change the names of departments in the Executive Branch of the federal government simply because he had a brain fart one night as he daydreamed.
The executive summary issued by Trump’s own White House team admits as much. It says the move will restore “Department of War” as a “secondary” name for the department. The order authorizes Hegseth to use secondary titles such as “Secretary of War,” “Department of War,” and “Deputy Secretary of War” in official correspondence, public communications, ceremonial contexts and more, according to the White House. Oh boy. What a solution!
Under federal law, Trump cannot change the name unilaterally on his own through an executive order. The president must have approval from Congress.
Lawmakers formally rebranded the agency as the Defense Department in 1949 as a reorganization of our military branches brought them all under a single Executive Branch department.
It would take another act of Congress to change the name back to the Department of War.
Next up we can have a fulsome discussion on Trump’s Gulf of Mexico brain fart.
One can’t help but wonder if the President and his minions might be better off in serving all Americans by working on reducing deficit spending back to 2019 levels, adjusted for inflation and came forward with a plan to eliminate the growth in the national debt. But apparently that isn’t as fun as dreaming of name changes that are completely frivolous.
I will take it up with the Secretary of War when I see him.
Don’t waste your time. Take it up with Congress.
It seems unlikely that current SecWar would encourage behavior to puts American people on the ground for no reason, even though "he certainly has even less wisdom than Robert McNamara or Dick Cheney" who, by your own first sentence it appears that at least one of which did so.
Do you think Pete would create a new "McNamara's Morons" program to through unprepared and incapable men into the meat grinder?
Do you think he would throw young American men to their doom in order to increase his stock portfolio, or further some neocon fantasy of a new world order?
I don't know him and have no particular loyalty to him, but I've read one of his books, and thus far he has been true to his stated goal of improving the US military and treating our warriors with due care.
We shall see. I hope you’re right. Maybe he’ll learn to learn the basics of protecting classified material and how to be a faithful husband.
Read Rufus Phillips’ “Why Vietnam Matters: An Eyewitness Account of Lessons Not Learned” - he was there in 1954-56 and concluded that had we kept to our policies of that era there would never have been American boots on the ground.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rufus_Phillips
Apparently I’ve struck a nerve among the community of patriots.
Just asking the question of a fellow patriot. How is that a ad hominem attack? There have been plenty of wars to fight in, after all. Doesn’t the answer to the question interest you? I sure you stepped up to fight for the country, as a patriot.
My middle son married a Vietnamese woman and I visited Vietnam for their engagement ceremony (more like their wedding in Vietnam. This was during Trump I. I was highly impressed with the Vietnamese people. It seemed everyone had two jobs, the day job and a side hustle. Most capitalistic folks I ever met.
Moreover they like Americans. I can't tell you how many of them, when they learned I was American gave me a thumbs-up and said "Trump!" even those who knew no English. Those that did speak English told me they would likely be fighting China soon, and this time they (the Vietnamese - even the communist Vietnamese) want the US on their side.
Why? "Because you fight hard. We'd rather fight alongside you this time than against you." Kind of like watching Union and Confederate veterans mingling with each other in the 1900s after Merritt Wesley and Joe Wheeler fought together in the Spanish-American War.
One of the most disgraceful things the Left tries to do is wipe out any memory of the CSA. They are never interested in reconciliation.
Vietnam is returning to its roots. Ho Chi Min tried to get support from the US for Vietnam independence. Our support of French Colonialism led us down a blind alley. see my blog at https://dataonautomobiles.blogspot.com/2025/11/vietnam-abandons-marxism.html
A lot of people are surprised to learn we saved Ho's life, and that the OSS wanted to dump arms in to support kicking out the French.
Visited Vietnam on a cruise (4 ports for 6 days) in February of this year. We absolutely loved Vietnam, the beauty of the country, the people, and their hardworking attitude. Wishing the best for the country and their citizens.
Vietnam is now led by To Lam while America is falling into the clutches of Mamdani, AOC, and Bernie. What did they learn that we forgot?
Unfortunately, Marxism in America is not limited to the kooks in the faculty lounge or Hollywood. Trump only beat Kamala by about 2% and the incoming governor of New Jersey who makes Kamala look like Einstein won decisively.
Why? I can’t explain it. The MSM bashing of Trump since he rode down the escalator is partly to blame.
I think the lamps are going out in America.
Have many friends from Viet Nam, PI, Indonesia and Korea. Education is big where business is flourishing. Know the least about Viet Nam. Have to wonder how the Communists lost control of the schools. As we are learning to our massive regret, if your K-12 and universities are Marxist indoctrination camps, the majority of the young are easily convinced to hate their country. Especially if they don't see any upward mobility available to them in the current system. See election results in NYC, VA and NJ. Tough times ahead.
Words are important. There is a huge difference between socialism and communism.
Sometimes.
The difference between communism and socialism is that under socialism central planning ends with a gun in your face, whereas under communism central planning begins with a gun in you face.
Kevin D. Williamson
Is there? Can it be expressed in a sentence or two? If not, it may not be "huge."
What is the value of individual sovereignty in each, and how does it differ? What are the limits of state power in each, and how does that differ?