Vietnam Calls for US Help vis-a-vis China

Once again, the Vietnamese government is fighting the Chinese attempt to dominate the resource rich South China Sea. As in 1979 with the border clashes between the two countries, nationalist feelings are running high.

When I was learning Vietnamese language skills at the Vietnam Training Center in Arlington in 1970-71, I read a lot about the previous history of Vietnam, and their intense nationalist drive for freedom from the Chinese. I came across the famous meeting between Sun Yat Sen, the initiator of Chinese freedom in 1912, and Ho Chi Minh. Sun was of Viet ethnic origin, and congratulated Ho for his people's 16th century migration southward to free themselves from the Chinese tyrannical Han dictatorship. Vietnam actually means "The South Viet People" as opposed to the North Viet who stayed in S. China and were conquered and assimilated into the Chinese mainstream.

When the foolish simpleton Dean Rusk preached that the Vietnamese Communists were just the cat's paw of the PRC, he was lying.

Perhaps I digress when I note that Dean was the most colossally dishonest diplomat in US history, and arguably also among the most stupid. Rusk was the Asst. SecState for E. Asia in 1950 when he wrote the speech Dean Acheson gave naming the countries that the US would go to war to save. Inexplicably, S. Korea was left off the list and when Stalin heard this, he thought it was a symptom of US "softness." It was only Rusk's stupidity and Acheson's carelessness not to vet the speech and see the glaring omission. Fifty thousand Americans died because Demonrats are stupid traitors. Obama hasn't reached that level of perfidy yet, but we can't give him four more years to mess up.

You won't read this in American histories of that era, as historians are mostly of the left and don't want their icons tarnished beyond repair.

Hopefully, this time the US & Vietnam can work in tandem to oppose the real menace to Asia & the rest of the planet. Stopping Chinese expansionism is just the beginning of a long struggle to keep Asia in some sort of economic equilibrium.
UPDATE
The Financial Times reports that US naval basing privileges are now being considered by the Vietnamese government in Cam Ranh Bay [built by the USA back in the day].
The FT notes that Russia has sold Vietnam six Sukhoi-class subs which may mean that Russian ships will be allowed some basing and docking privileges in Cam Ranh....

...changing dynamics of global security mean that, in a twist of fate, American and Russian ships may soon be back at Cam Ranh Bay, this time working alongside each other and the Vietnamese to counterbalance an ever stronger China.

Isn't foreign policy aptly named "The Great Game?"