Did america getting its ass kicked mean friendship? I hear alot that vietnam likes america more than china which doesnt sit right with me is that actually true, also they like america but hate the french? I heard vietnam be called the mexico of asia. Maybe its my own personal left wing bias but I literally cannot see any reason why vietnam would respect america and hate china.
The government is more pragmatic but the population adores America and worships them on levels close to the Philippines. Soft power goes a long way.
We embargoed Vietnam until 1994, IMO we changed strategy and improved our relationship with them primarily as a hedge against China (you know this is the case because Joe Biden recently said that it’s not lmao). In South Korea and Japan we hedge against China by forcing a bunch of military bases onto them, but since Vietnam isn’t a vassal state we had to take a different approach, and bear in mind that 1994 was the Clinton administration, when our country’s global credibility wasn’t completely in the toilet as it is now, so we were able to make deals and actually build something, in this case US-Vietnamese relations.
Vietnam had sided with the USSR during the Sino-Soviet split for a lot of reasons, and without the USSR they were looking for a new non-Chinese friend and major trading partner, a role which we gladly took on. Vietnamese people generally have positive interactions with Americans, since most Americans who visit are older tourists or military members who spend a lot of money but don’t actually live in the country long enough to commit a bunch of crimes (not that crimes don’t happen, it’s just fewer than what SK and JP have to deal with). Combine that with the Vietnamese-Americans who maintain relations with their families in the mother country (the fact that many of them fled the South because they were afraid of the Communists redistributing their land is water under the bridge by now), and you have a recipe for a lot of soft power to build up in a very short amount of time.
war hero, but he lives in LA.
If that’s not a flex on America then I don’t know what is.
America is now out of their space and is a trading partner whereas they share a border with China and have South China Sea disputes. China and America are rivals so it makes some sort of sense for the Vietnamese to pick the one not too close to annoy the other.
In what way does it make sense for Vietnam to annoy its largest trading partner, with which it shares a border?
They have always had a poor relationship with China over border issues even during the Vietnam war. They probably just make it clear that the Chinese don’t intimidate them.
“Vietnam is closer to the US than China” is just Western cope like how Putler would run out of missiles. In truth, Vietnam try to be neutral to both countries, which means de facto being closer to China than US because they shares a land border with China while the US is separated from Vietnam by an ocean.
I wonder if the friendship is still reciprocated in Russia? You never hear about the two together.
China was at war with Vietnam more recently than the US, and they have a number of border disputes.
