Vietnam

After yesterday’s meeting between top Communist Party leader Nguyen Phu Trong and President Obama and Vice President Joseph Biden, the United States-Vietnam relationship seems poised to reach a new level. As the Washington Post noted, it is rare for the president to welcome at the White House a foreign leader who is not the head of state or head of government. But an exception was made for the Vietnamese leader, since Hanoi is becoming increasingly important to U.S. strategic interests in Asia, and since Nguyen may well wield as much power as Vietnam’s president or prime minister within Hanoi’s opaque leadership structure. In a speech today at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, Nguyen is expected to call for a series of steps to move the bilateral relationship forward, and he will find his ideas reciprocated in Washington. As I noted in a working paper earlier this year, the U.S. relationship with Vietnam is well on its way toward becoming the United States’ closest strategic partnership in Southeast Asia, other than with Singapore. It is not impossible to imagine, in a decade or so, that Hanoi and Washington would become treaty allies. The joint vision statement issued just after Nguyen’s visit to the White House is but one sign of the new level of U.S.-Vietnam ties. Although Thailand is a U.S. treaty ally, Thailand’s decade-plus domestic turmoil has made it an unsteady, often distracted partner. The United States’ other treaty ally in Southeast Asia, the Philippines, is a vibrant democracy with close economic and cultural ties to the United States, but its regular (not reserve) armed forces are about half the size of Vietnam’s, and it remains tied down by its own ongoing insurgencies. Vietnam, meanwhile, not only has an armed forces employing, overall, over 400,000 people but also an increasingly sophisticated navy. Hanoi also has slowly moved away from the strategy it has pursued since the 1990s of balancing relations between China, the United States, and other regional powers; the May/June 2014 South China Sea standoff between Hanoi and Beijing sped up Vietnam’s shift. As Alexander Vuving notes, “After the [South China Sea] incident, some members of the Vietnamese National Assembly called China an invader and an enemy, breaking a taboo that had been in place for more than two decades since the renormalization of Sino-Vietnamese relations in 1991.” It is possible that, in the next decade, Vietnam will formally abandon the “three nos” of national defense policy---no military alliances, no foreign military bases on Vietnamese soil, and no reliance on external powers for Vietnamese defense---that has underpinned Hanoi’s strategy for decades. Vietnamese leaders have become so worried about China’s growing regional power that they have formed strategic partnerships, in the past five years, with the Philippines, Singapore, and Japan, among others. (The U.S.-Vietnam partnership is formally called a comprehensive partnership.) The partnership with the Philippines, which along with Vietnam is the most aggressive Southeast Asian claimant to the South China Sea, appears to have angered Beijing significantly---in some ways more than Vietnam’s ties with the United States. By the end of President Obama’s second term, the U.S.-Vietnam relationship will likely become stronger in several ways. Vietnam’s willingness to join the TPP, despite being the poorest and, in many ways, most closed economy involved in the TPP, sends an important signal of Hanoi’s commitment to economic reform. Although Vietnam was already an important destination for U.S. investment, joining the TPP is likely to bring a new flow of investment from U.S. and Japanese firms, among others. In addition, U.S. arms sales to Vietnam, allowed last year, are likely to be expanded. Although Vietnam’s human rights climate has not improved in the past five years---Freedom House notes that “in 2014, Vietnam continued to suppress freedom of expression online, in print, and through public demonstrations"---congressional opposition to arming Vietnam has waned, though a group of congresspeople did write the president expressing concern about human rights before Nguyen’s visit. On the eve of Nguyen’s visit, Human Rights Watch urged the United States and other countries to “press the Vietnamese government to end abusive policies and practices,” and used op-eds and other forums to remind Congress and other opinion leaders of Vietnam’s repressive rights record. But the lobbying appeared to have only a limited effect. Obama administration officials specifically told reporters that “there was no promise from Vietnam to release prisoners or amend free speech laws in exchange for [Nguyen’s] meeting with Obama,” according to the Washington Post. Ten years ago, concerns about Vietnam’s rights record might have led Congress to seriously criticize, and try to block, an invite to Washington for the Party chief. But with the Republicans in control of the Senate for now, and Senator John McCain chairing the Armed Services Committee, the most influential congressional advocate of arming Hanoi and building closer ties wields significant power. Obama also probably will visit Vietnam in the fall---he told Nguyen only that he would visit the country soon, but the visit will likely take place during Obama’s already-scheduled autumn trip to Asia. The presidential trip would highlight Hanoi and Washington’s closeness, provide a measure of support to pro-U.S. leaders within Vietnam’s ruling party, and potentially set the stage for the next U.S. president to consider a treaty alliance with the country.

With Tuesday’s vote in the U.S. Senate to give President Obama fast track negotiating authority on trade deals, the president is likely to be able to help complete the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), with the United States in the deal, by the end of the year. With fast track authority completed, the United States will be positioned to resolve remaining bilateral hurdles with Japan, the key to moving forward with the TPP. Four Southeast Asian nations—Brunei, Singapore, Vietnam, and Malaysia—currently are negotiating to be part of the TPP. (The Philippines has expressed interest in joining the negotiations.) Singapore and Brunei were two of the founders of the predecessor to the TPP, long before the agreement was enlarged and the United States decided to join negotiations, and Vietnam decided to participate in TPP negotiations very early on. These four countries’ economies are extremely varied. Unlike a potential free trade deal involving the United States and countries in Europe, the TPP contains both developed and developing nations, including Vietnam, which has a GDP per capita of less than US$2,000. For Singapore and Brunei, joining the TPP negotiations was a no-brainer. These are countries with miniscule domestic markets, no significant agricultural sectors, and highly open economies. Singapore in particular is one of the most trade-dependent economies in the world; when the 2008-9 global financial crisis hit, Singapore’s economy suffered one of the worst contractions of any developed nation, though it eventually bounced back. And although the Singaporean population has in recent years become more skeptical of high immigration into the city-state, most Singaporeans understand that the city is dependent on trade, and there is little antitrade rhetoric in Singapore. Yet because Singapore is already so open, having been at the forefront of regional and bilateral Asian trade deals, it has less to gain from the TPP than a more closed economy like Vietnam. In fact, according to some analyses, Vietnam would benefit the most from the deal of any of the countries currently involved in negotiations. Vietnam would gain tariff-free access to U.S. and Japanese markets for its rice, seafood, textiles, and low-end manufactured goods. Vietnamese officials and academics also are convinced that more liberal members of the leadership in Hanoi see the TPP as a way to force the reduction of loss-making state enterprises and to open sectors of the Vietnamese economy. Hanoi used WTO accession in a similar fashion, to help push forward economic reforms. Although Vietnam has recovered from the slowdown in growth that began in the late 2000s, it has not returned to the same turbocharged growth rates it posted in the early 2000s, and bloated state enterprises remain a major drag on the economy. Because Vietnam is run by a highly repressive regime, it is very difficult to gauge public sentiment on any important issue. However, from anecdotal conversations with Vietnamese opinion leaders, there seems to be less of the sentiment that state enterprises must be preserved as national champions than exists among Chinese opinion leaders; Vietnam’s state companies, with a few exceptions, are not global giants like China’s biggest state firms. In addition, a recent Pew poll of Vietnamese suggests that the Vietnamese population views the TPP more favorably than people in any other country negotiating the deal—far more favorably than Americans view the TPP. Malaysian leaders, of all the four Southeast Asian nations, face the toughest test in negotiating the TPP and then convincing the Malaysian public to accept it. Vietnam is an authoritarian regime, as is tiny Brunei; in Singapore there is significant public support for trade. But Malaysia is a hybrid regime, and the Malaysian government has sold TPP to members of the ruling coalition—and conservative Malay supporters—in part by repeatedly assuring them that the government will essentially protect certain state enterprises and programs to support ethnic Malays, even if these protections violate the norms and rules of a free trade deal. With the ruling coalition having gained a relatively narrow victory in the 2013 elections, and now splintering amidst a public fight between Prime Minister Najib tun Razak and former Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad, it will be very difficult for Malaysian negotiators to return from TPP talks without securing these protections—which they are unlikely to obtain. Fortunately for Najib, the opposition also is in disarray, its unwieldy coalition split apart at the federal level over differences around religious and social issues. However, the opposition, and Malaysia’s vibrant online media, has raised questions about whether Malaysia has done a comprehensive cost-benefit analysis of the deal before joining TPP negotiations. So, in addition to a group of conservative Malays skeptical of the TPP because of fears it will endanger pro-Malay affirmative action policies, the agreement may not have strong support among urban, liberal Malaysians—the bastion of the opposition. In the Pew poll, a large percentage of Malaysians simply said they did not know enough about the TPP to have an opinion, but the percentage of Malaysians who viewed the TPP favorably also was lower than in most other TPP nations. Perhaps unsurprisingly, Prime Minister Najib, fighting for his political life, has gone from voicing staunch support for the TPP to announcing that the government’s trade negotiators will only accept a deal “on our terms.”

After this week’s Shangri-La dialogue in Singapore, which featured the U.S.-China war of words that has come to characterize the security meeting, Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter traveled on to Vietnam to meet with Hanoi’s defense minister. Carter visited Vietnam’s Naval Command and the city of Haiphong, becoming the first U.S. Defense Secretary to do so. Haiphong harbor famously---or infamously---was mined by the U.S., in 1972, during the Vietnam War. Given China’s threats this past week to establish an air defense zone in the South China Sea, as well as Vietnam’s broader concerns about Beijing’s regional strategy, it is almost certain that the U.S.-Vietnam relationship will grow closer by the end of Obama’s presidency. Concerns in Congress about Hanoi’s poor human rights record---Hanoi’s record has actually worsened in the past five years, according to Freedom House---have not stopped Congress from being generally supportive of closer U.S.-Vietnam ties. (I have served as a consultant for Freedom House’s Freedom in the World chapters on Southeast Asia.) According to a recent Associated Press report, “Rep. Christopher Smith (R-New Jersey), has authored a bill, the Vietnam Human Rights Act of 2015, that would, if enacted, cap financial assistance to Vietnam at fiscal-year 2014 levels, require that easing the prohibition on selling military equipment to Vietnam happen only if steps are taken to improve human rights, and mandate that the U.S. try to overcome the jamming of Radio Free Asia.” But the bill is unlikely to pass. And Senator John McCain is reportedly planning to introduce legislation in the Senate that would further remove restrictions on arms sales to Hanoi. Building on the Secretary of Defense’s visit to Vietnam, the two countries should take several steps to further entrench the bilateral relationship. These should include: Integrating Vietnamese Forces into Annual U.S.-Philippines Joint Exercises The U.S.-Philippines Balikatan joint exercises have grown in size in recent years, as Manila and Washington have become more concerned about China’s assertive behavior in the South China Sea. In addition, Manila and Hanoi, which had little history of close strategic ties, have in the past five years begun building a military and strategic relationship. The two countries formally signed a statement of strategic partnership earlier this year. The Obama administration already has promised to start conducting military exercises with Vietnam, and it should broaden those exercises to make them U.S.-Vietnam-Philippines maneuvers. Such a step would help improve the three forces’ interoperability, and also would help solidify Manila’s ties to Hanoi. Boosting Arms Sales The Obama administration should push for the full removal of restrictions on arms sales to Vietnam. As I wrote in a working paper on the pivot in Southeast Asia, the administration could set up an interagency working group to approve the first year or two years of arms sales to Vietnam, monitoring the sales to make sure that the weapons are not being used against Vietnamese civilians. If they were used against Vietnamese civilians, the arms sales could be stopped. Although Vietnam is a highly repressive, one-party state, its military is actually far more professional, and less abusive, than those of many other nations in Southeast Asia. The armed forces are under civilian control, unlike those of neighboring nations like Thailand and Myanmar. In addition, Vietnam offers such significant strategic advantages for the United States (unlike, say, Myanmar) that, on balance, arms sales to Vietnam are worth the possibility that the sales will, in some way, be helping to support an authoritarian government. Building Upon the U.S.-Vietnam Comprehensive Partnership The United States should build upon its comprehensive partnership with Vietnam. In building closer ties, the U.S. government should not only expand the sale of lethal arms to Vietnam but also expand access for American naval vessels at Cam Ranh Bay and increase the number of training programs for senior Vietnamese officers.

Last month, I did a series of posts commemorating the fiftieth anniversary of the arrival of U.S. combat troops in Vietnam on March 8, 1965. Today marks another significant date in the Vietnam War: the fortieth anniversary of the Fall of Saigon. To mark that anniversary, here are forty quotes that tell the story of the Vietnam War. “All men are created equal; they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights; among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.”—The first lines of the Vietnamese Declaration of Independence, issued on September 2, 1945, quoting the American Declaration of Independence. “You can kill ten of my men for every one I kill of yours. But even at those odds, you will lose and I will win.” —Viet Minh leader Ho Chi Minh in a warning to French colonialists in 1946. “Our long-term objectives are… to see installed a self-governing nationalist state which will be friendly to the US… We have an immediate interest in maintaining in power a friendly French Government, to assist in the furtherance of our aims in Europe. This immediate and vital interest has in consequence taken precedence over active steps looking toward the realization of our objectives in Indochina.” —Department of State, “Policy Statement on Indochina,” issued on September 27, 1948, explaining why the United States supported French policy in Vietnam even though U.S. officials believed it ran counter to their long-term objectives for the region. “You have a row of dominoes set up; you knock over the first one, and what will happen to the last one is that it will go over very quickly.” —President Dwight D. Eisenhower speaking at a press conference on April 7, 1954. “Well, Lyndon, they may be every bit as intelligent as you say, but I’d feel a whole lot better if just one of them had run for sheriff once.” —House Speaker Sam Rayburn (D-TX) speaking to Lyndon B. Johnson in January 1961 after the newly inaugurated vice president extolled the brilliance of the members of President John F. Kennedy’s new cabinet. “Now we have a problem in trying to make our power credible, and Vietnam looks like the place.” —President John Kennedy in a June 1961 interview with the New York Times reporter James Reston. “If the Buddhists wish to have another barbecue, I’ll gladly supply the gasoline and a match.” —Tran Le Xuan, better known as Madame Nhu or “the Dragon Lady,” dismissing the fact that Buddhist monks had set themselves on fire in the summer of 1963 to protest the rule of her brother-in-law, South Vietnamese President Ngo Dinh Diem, for whom she acted as an unofficial first lady. “I don’t think that unless a greater effort is made by the government to win popular support that the war can be won out there. In the final analysis, it is their war. They are the ones who have to win it or lose it. We can help them, we can give them equipment, we can send our men out there as advisors, but they have to win it, the people of Vietnam, against the communists.” —President John Kennedy in a televised interview with Walter Cronkite on September 2, 1963. “I am not going to lose Vietnam. I am not going to be the president who saw Southeast Asia go the way China went.” —Newly inaugurated President Lyndon Johnson at a White House meeting on November 24, 1963 responding to U.S. ambassador to South Vietnam Henry Cabot Lodge, Jr. telling him that Vietnam “would go under any day if we don’t do something.” “There is nothing in the resolution, as I read it, that contemplates [sending American armies to Vietnam]. I agree with the Senator that that is the last thing we would want to do. However, the language of the resolution would not prevent it. It would authorize whatever the Commander in Chief feels is necessary.” —Senator William Fulbright (D-AR) during the Senate debate on August 6, 1964 over the passage of the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution. “I believe this resolution to be a historic mistake. I believe that within the next century, future generations will look with dismay and great disappointment upon a Congress which is now about to mistake such a historic mistake.”—Senator Wayne Morse (D-OR) on the Senate’s impending vote to adopt the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution on August 7, 1964. “We are not about to send American boys nine or ten thousand miles away from home to do what Asian boys ought to be doing for themselves.” —President Lyndon Johnson in a speech at Akron University on October 21, 1964, two weeks before the presidential election. “We do this [escalating U.S. military involvement in Vietnam] in order to slow down aggression. We do this to increase the confidence of the brave people of South Vietnam who have bravely born this brutal battle for so many years with so many casualties. And we do this to convince the leaders of North Vietnam—and all who seek to share their conquest—of a simple fact: We will not be defeated. We will not grow tired. We will not withdraw either openly or under the cloak of a meaningless agreement.”—President Lyndon Johnson, speaking to the nation on April 7, 1965 explaining his decision to send U.S. combat troops to Vietnam. “My solution to the problem would be to tell them frankly that they’ve got to draw in their horns and stop their aggression or we’re going to bomb them back into the Stone Ages.” —General Curtis E. LeMay, in his book Mission With LeMay, 1965. “I think we have all underestimated the seriousness of this situation. Like giving cobalt treatment to a terminal cancer case. I think a long protracted war will disclose our weakness, not our strength.”—Deputy Secretary of State George W. Ball answering President Lyndon Johnson’s questionat a White House meeting on July 21, 1965 about whether the United States could win a war in the “jungle rice-paddies” of Vietnam. “It’s silly talking about how many years we will have to spend in the jungles of Vietnam when we could pave the whole country and put parking stripes on it and still be home for Christmas.” —Ronald Reagan, October 10, 1965, interview with the Fresno Bee during his California gubernatorial campaign. “Declare the United States the winner and begin de-escalation.”—Senator George Aiken (R-VT) offering advice to President Lyndon Johnson on October 19, 1966 on how to handle the politics of reducing the U.S. commitment in Vietnam. “We seem bent upon saving the Vietnamese from Ho Chi Minh, even if we have to kill them and demolish their country to do it. I do not intend to remain silent in the face of what I regard as a policy of madness which, sooner or later, will envelop my son and American youth by the millions for years to come.” —Senator George McGovern (D-SD) speaking on the Senate floor on April 25, 1967. “We are fighting a war with no front lines, since the enemy hides among the people, in the jungles and mountains, and uses covertly border areas of neutral countries. One cannot measure [our] progress by lines on a map.”— General William C. Westmoreland, the commander of all U.S. military forces in Vietnam, in a speech to a joint session of Congress on April 28, 1967. “There may be a limit beyond which many Americans and much of the world will not permit the United States to go. The picture of the world’s greatest superpower killing or seriously injuring 1,000 non-combatants a week, while trying to pound a tiny, backward nation into submission on an issue whose merits are hotly disputed, is not a pretty one.” —Robert McNamara in a memo to President Lyndon Johnson on May 19, 1967. “Hey, Hey LBJ, How many kids did you kill today?” —A protest chant that first became popular in late 1967. “We have reached an important point where the end begins to come into view.” —General William C. Westmoreland speaking to the National Press Club on November 21, 1967 as part of a Johnson administration effort to shore up sagging public support for the war. “It became necessary to destroy the town to save it.” —AP correspondent Peter Arnett quoting a U.S. major on the decision to bomb and shell Ben Tre on February 7, 1968 after Viet Cong forces overran the city in the Mekong Delta forty-five miles south of Saigon during the Tet Offensive. “For it seems now more certain than ever, that the bloody experience of Vietnam is to end in a stalemate. To say that we are closer to victory today is to believe in the face of the evidence, the optimists who have been wrong in the past.” —Walter Cronkite in an editorial at the close of the CBS Evening News broadcast on February 27, 1968 reporting on what he had learned on a trip to Vietnam in the aftermath of the Tet Offensive. “Our objective in South Vietnam has never been the annihilation of the enemy. It has been to bring about a recognition in Hanoi that its objective—taking over the South by force—could not be achieved.” —President Lyndon Johnson in a nationwide address on March 31, 1968 explaining his decision to halt the bombing of North Vietnam. “I shall not seek and I will not accept the nomination of my party as your President.” —President Lyndon Johnson telling the nation on March 31, 1968 that he would not seek reelection. “The commitment of five hundred thousand Americans has settled the issue of the importance of Vietnam. For what is involved now is confidence in American promises.”—Incoming National Security Adviser Henry Kissinger writing in the January 1969 issue of Foreign Affairs. “The time has come when the United States, in our relations with all of our Asian friends, be quite emphatic on two points: One, that we will keep our treaty commitments… but, two, that as far as the problems of internal security are concerned, as far as the problems of military defense, except for the threat of a major power involving nuclear weapons, that the United States is going to encourage and has a right to expect that this problem will be increasingly handled by, and the responsibility for it taken by, the Asian nations themselves.”—President Richard M. Nixon speaking at an informal press conference on Guam on July 25, 1969 setting forth what becomes known as the Nixon Doctrine. "I refuse to believe that a little fourth-rate power like North Vietnam doesn’t have a breaking point." —National Security Adviser Henry Kissinger speaking in July 1969 to NSC aides as he charged them with developing a punitive military strategy that would coerce North Vietnam into negotiating on American terms. “And so tonight—to you, the great silent majority of my fellow Americans—I ask for your support.” —President Richard Nixon in his address to the nation on the war in Vietnam on November 3, 1969. “Let us understand: North Vietnam cannot defeat or humiliate the United States. Only Americans can do that.”—President Richard Nixon in his address to the nation on the war in Vietnam on November 3, 1969. "If, when the chips are down, the world’s most powerful nation, the United States of America, acts like a pitiful, helpless giant, the forces of totalitarianism and anarchy will threaten free nations and free institutions throughout the world.”—President Richard Nixon in a nationwide address on April 30, 1970 explaining his decision to invade Cambodia. “This war has already stretched the generation gap so wide that it threatens to pull the country apart.” —Senator Frank Church (D-ID) speaking on the Senate floor on May 13, 1970. “The United States, which brought these actions to enjoin publication in the New York Times and in the Washington Post of certain classified material, has not met the ‘heavy burden of showing justification for the enforcement of such a [prior] restraint.’" —U.S. Supreme Court ruling on June 30, 1971 overturning the injunction barring the New York Times and the Washington Post from publishing the Pentagon Papers. "The bastards have never been bombed like they’re going to be bombed this time." —President Richard Nixon to White House Chief of Staff H.R. "Bob" Haldeman and Attorney General John Mitchell on April 4, 1972 in deciding to launch what would become known as Operation Linebacker,a massive escalation in the war effort that that included mining Haiphong harbor, blockading the North Vietnamese coast, and launching a massive new bombing campaign against North Vietnam. “Come home to the affirmation that we have a dream. Come home to the conviction that we can move our country forward.”—Senator George McGovern (D-SD) in his address accepting the presidential nomination at the Democratic National Convention on July 14, 1972. “We believe that peace is at hand.” —National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger speaking at a White House press conference about the Paris Peace negotiations on October 26, 1972, two weeks before the presidential election. “I have asked for this radio and television time tonight for the purpose of announcing that we today have concluded an agreement to end the war and bring peace with honor in Vietnam and in Southeast Asia.”—Richard Nixon informing the American public in a nationwide address on January 23, 1973 that the United States had reached agreement with North Vietnam on the Paris Peace Accords. “Today, America can regain the sense of pride that existed before Vietnam. But it cannot be achieved by refighting a war that is finished as far as America is concerned. As I see it, the time has come to look forward to an agenda for the future, to unify, to bind up the Nation’s wounds, and to restore its health and its optimistic self-confidence…. We, of course, are saddened indeed by the events in Indochina. But these events, tragic as they are, portend neither the end of the world nor of America’s leadership in the world.” —President Gerald R. Ford in a speech at Tulane University on April 23, 1975. “During the day on Monday, Washington time, the airport at Saigon came under persistent rocket as well as artillery fire and was effectively closed. The military situation in the area deteriorated rapidly. I therefore ordered the evacuation of all American personnel remaining in South Vietnam.” —President Gerald Ford’s statement announcing the evacuation of United States personnel from the Republic of Vietnam on April 29, 1975. Rachael Kauss and Alex Laplaza assisted in the preparation of this post.

Until the past five years, the Philippines and Vietnam had minimal strategic ties other than working together, through ASEAN initiatives, on a range of nontraditional security issues. The two countries had very different styles of leadership---the Philippines is a vibrant democracy with one of the freest media markets in the world, while Vietnam remains run by a highly opaque Party---and Hanoi remained wary of diverging from its strategy of hedging close ties with China with increasingly close relations with the United States. By contrast, the Philippines, despite a very mixed historical relationship with the United States, was (and is) a U.S. treaty ally and one of Washington’s closest partners in Southeast Asia. Vietnam and the Philippines did not hold joint military exercises, rarely had high-level bilateral interactions between senior political and military leaders, and also had only modest two-way trade. But since 2010, as China’s posture in the South China Sea has become increasingly assertive, and Vietnam and the Philippines have pushed back harder against Beijing than any other Southeast Asian nations, the two ASEAN countries have moved much closer together. At first, the closeness was informal---Philippine and Vietnamese sailors mingling on disputed rocks in the South China Sea to drink beers and play sports, top leaders from the two countries holding unannounced bilateral meetings on the sidelines of ASEAN meetings to discuss possible joint responses to Chinese actions like dredging and reported Chinese building of what appears to be a military-use airstrip on an atoll in the Spratly Islands. Now, Hanoi and Manila appear willing to formalize their cooperation, which should be a worrying thought for Beijing, since this cooperation signals that Southeast Asian nations are now becoming more unified in their opposition to Beijing’s South China Sea policies. Manila and Hanoi will formalize a strategic partnership in the coming weeks, according to Philippine media. The strategic partnership likely will include a commitment to work together to resolve maritime disputes in the South China Sea, a commitment to holding joint naval exercises, and an agreement to conduct joint scientific studies in the South China Sea---studies that could potentially relate to hydrocarbons or fisheries, the Sea’s two most valuable resources. The strategic partnership still needs to be signed, and its details could still change. But just the fact that Hanoi and Manila are likely to begin holding joint military exercises, a vast shift from their lukewarm bilateral relations in the 2000s, should demonstrate to Beijing that its South China Sea policy is backfiring badly.

Ashlyn Anderson, Lauren Dickey, Darcie Draudt, William Piekos, and Ariella Rotenberg look at the top stories in Asia today. 1. Thailand lifts martial law and puts in place a “new security order.” Thailand’s King Bhumibol Adulyadej approved a request from the country’s junta to lift martial law on Wednesday and trade it for a so-called new security order. Most experts agree this choice was a cosmetic one, not substantive, that was an attempt to improve the appearance of Thailand to the outside world while maintaining absolute power for the junta. In the place of martial law, the new security order invokes Article Forty-Four of the military-imposed interim constitution, which grants General Prayuth Chan-ocha, head of the junta, expansive powers in over the Thai government. Human Rights Watch described the change as an indication of “Thailand’s deepening descent into dictatorship.” The article effectively grants General Prayuth the power of all three branches of government: executive, legislative, and judicial. 2. South Korea issues settlement to Sewol Ferry students’ families. The South Korean government on Wednesday announced it would pay about US$380,000 to each family of students who died when the local tour ferry Sewol capsized nearly a year ago, on April 16, 2014. The official death toll was 295. In November, the Sewol’s captain was sentenced to thirty-six years in prison for gross negligence, after a judge acquitted him for homicide (for which prosecutors sought the death penalty). Victims’ relatives have sought an independent inquiry into the cause of and response to the sinking; several of them have shaved their heads in protest (a symbolic act common in protests in Korea) over the decision to forgo investigation for the monetary compensation. The incident has called into question not only national safety standards and practices, but also the government’s ability and choices made during the rescue operations. Civil society groups continue to lead protests throughout the country, including in Seoul’s central Gwanghwamun Square near the president’s house. 3. Cyberattack targets anti-censorship forum. Github, a coding site that also hosts tools to bypass China’s Great Firewall, experienced a large distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack that started last Thursday. DDoS attacks flood a site with traffic in an attempt to take it offline. A number of security researchers have alleged that international web traffic to sites that use analytics tools from Baidu, China’s largest search engine, was hijacked and redirected toward Github’s site; some analysts have suggested that the Chinese government was behind the attack. A Baidu spokesman said the firm found no security breaches and was working find the source of the issue; meanwhile, a spokeswoman for the Chinese Foreign Ministry stated that “it is quite odd” that whenever a website is attacked elsewhere in the world, Chinese hackers are to blame. Github provides access within China to a mirror of GreatFire.org, a website that monitors blocked websites and keywords, and the Chinese-language version of the New York Times, both of which are censored in China. 4. Vietnamese factory workers on strike over new pension law. Thousands of workers occupied the factory compound of Taiwanese-owned Pou Yuen, a supplier for Nike and Adidas, in Ho Chi Minh City this week. New pension rules slated to come into effect next year will stop many workers from being eligible for lump-sum social insurance payments when they leave a company, delaying payouts until retirement. The strikes—a rare challenge in a country where large, unsanctioned gatherings are prohibited—ended peacefully after the Vietnamese government agreed to amend the law, allowing laborers to choose when they receive retirement payouts. 5. Deadline to join AIIB passes, with forty-six founding members, including some surprises. Beijing had set March 31 as the deadline to join the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) as a founding member; committed countries include Great Britain, France, Germany, Italy, India, Indonesia, and Malaysia. Norway also applied to join, considered a surprise since in 2010 it awarded a Nobel Peace prize to a dissident Chinese writer, causing a rift in Sino-Norwegian relations. Taiwan’s announcement that it would seek to join also comes as a surprise; Beijing responded it would include Taiwan should they join “under an appropriate name.” Protests over the prospect of submitting to the name change have ignited protests in Taipei. Noticeably absent was regional economic powerhouse and U.S. ally Japan, which—along with the United States—dominates international financial institutions such as the World Bank and Asian Development Bank. Other strong U.S. allies in the region, including Australia and South Korea, have pledged to join. The United States has viewed the AIIB with wariness, raising questions about its transparency and governance. Bonus: Australia triumphs over New Zealand in the cricket World Cup final. In what was considered a one-sided and anticlimactic match, Australia dominated to bring home their fifth World Cup title. New Zealand came into the match on a wave of eight successive wins, but couldn’t pull off a first World Cup victory. Despite their win, the Australian team was met with some disapproving eyes for its poor sportsmanship and how it chose to celebrate the victory.

Today marks the fiftieth anniversary of the arrival of the first American combat troops in Vietnam. On March 8, 1965, 3,500 Marines of the 9th Marine Expeditionary Brigade arrived in Da Nang to protect the U.S. airbase there from Viet Cong attacks. Despite advance warning they were about to be deployed, many of the Marines were surprised when their deployment orders came down on Sunday, March 7. Based at Okinawa at the time, more than a few of them had been, in the words of Philip Caputo, the author of the acclaimed A Rumor of War and one of those 3,500 marines, “enjoying a weekend of I and I—intercourse and intoxication.” Less than twenty-four hours later they were in a combat zone. The arrival at Da Nang was uneventful. One of the planes was slightly damaged by anti-aircraft fire. But none of the marines were hurt. The 3rd Battalion, 9th Marines had an unusual introduction to Vietnam. As Caputo tells it: Their entrance into the war zone had been the stuff of which comic operas are made. Like the marines in World War II newsreels, they had charged up the beach and were met, not by machine guns and shells, but by the mayor of Danang and a crowd of schoolgirls. The mayor made a brief welcoming speech and the girls placed flowered wreaths around the marines’ necks. Garlanded like ancient heroes, they then marched off to seize Hill 327, which turned out to be occupied only by rock apes—gorillas instead of guerrillas, as the joke went—who did not contest the intrusion of their upright and heavily armed cousins. The idyllic part of their tour in Vietnam would not last long. The arrival of the 9th Marine Expeditionary Brigade provides as good a marker as any for the beginning of the Americanization of the Vietnam War. But it hardly marks the beginning of U.S. military involvement in the country. That had been going on for a decade. The United States took responsibility for training the South Vietnamese army after the Geneva Accords were signed in 1954. An initial 352 U.S. military advisers grew to 3,200 by the end of 1961, 9,000 at the end of 1962, and some 23,000 by early 1965. Along the way the dividing line between training South Vietnamese soldiers and leading them in battle had eroded. The first military advisers killed in action died in 1959. By the time Lt. Caputo and his comrades landed at Da Nang, more than 400 U.S. servicemen had fallen. Not all U.S. officials favored the decision to dispatch the 9th Marine Expeditionary Brigade. Maxwell Taylor, the U.S. ambassador to Vietnam at the time and a former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, expressed grave reservations. He predicted that the demand for more combat troops would become irresistible and the United States would rush head long into the same trap that had doomed the French. Events proved him right. The marines who landed in Da Nang amidst garlands and speeches probably didn’t realize that the very nature of the war in Vietnam was changing. Caputo recalls a commanding officer telling his men at a pre-departure briefing: “We’re going there to provide security and that’s all. We’re not going in to fight, but to free the ARVNs [South Vietnamese soldiers] to fight. It’s their war.” But it no longer was South Vietnam’s war. By the end of 1965, 185,000 U.S. troops were in Vietnam. The number would peak in 1968 at nearly 550,000. More than 2.6 million servicemen and women eventually served in Vietnam. More than 58,000 of them died there. Their names are inscribed on the wall of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial. For suggested resources on the Vietnam War, check out the other posts in this series: • The Best Histories of the Vietnam War • The Ten Best Memoirs of the Vietnam War • Top Ten Vietnam War Movies • The Twenty Best Vietnam Protest Songs • Ten Vietnam War Novels to Read • Iconic Images of the Vietnam War

A list of novels giving insight into Vietnam. 

A collection of protest songs providing a window into the mood of the anti-Vietnam War movement. 

The Water's Edge picks for the best films about the Vietnam War. 

Yesterday, I posted my picks for the best histories of the Vietnam War. While those books all provide excellent analyses of the war, another way to understand U.S. involvement in Vietnam is through the personal stories of those who lived it, whether on the battlefields or in the halls of power back in Washington. Here are my picks for the ten best memoirs of the Vietnam War: Philip Caputo, A Rumor of War (1977). Caputo was a young U.S. Marine Corps lieutenant who landed on the beach near Da Nang on March 8, 1965 as part of the first U.S. combat unit to serve in South Vietnam. He spent two years in the country, and in A Rumor of War he explains "the things men do in war and the things war does to men." Daniel Ellsberg, Secrets: A Memoir of Vietnam and the Pentagon Papers(2002). Ellsberg explains why he leaked the Pentagon Papers, the secret history of U.S. involvement in Vietnam commissioned at the request of Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara. The publication of the papers led the U.S. Supreme Court to hand down an historic ruling on the First Amendment and provided ample evidence that the Johnson administration had misled the American public on the course of the Vietnam War. Michael Herr, Dispatches (1977). Herr draws on his experiences covering Vietnam for Esquire to paint a picture of a futile war that left men looking for ways to combat their fear and hopelessness. Time magazine named Dispatches one of the one hundred best non-fiction books of all-time. Herr co-wrote the screenplay for Full Metal Jacket, one of the great movies about the Vietnam War. Henry Kissinger, The White House Years (1979), Years of Upheaval (1982), and Years of Renewal (1999). Kissinger’s three-volume memoir covers far more than events in Vietnam. But his recounting of his time first as national security advisor and then as secretary of state is essential for understanding the strategy the Nixon administration pursued in trying to achieve “peace with honor.” Karl Marlantes, What It Is Like to Go to War (2011). In 1968, Marlantes gave up his Rhodes Scholarship to enlist in the U.S. Marine Corps. He wrote What It Is Like to Go to War “primarily to come to terms with my own experience of combat.” The New Yorker named it one of its favorite books for 2011. Robert S. McNamara (with Brian VanDeMark), In Retrospect: The Tragedy and Lessons of Vietnam (1995). As secretary of defense, McNamara had a greater impact on America’s entry into the Vietnam War than any U.S. official other than President Lyndon Johnson. In Retrospect is his attempt to explain what we can learn from the mistakes of the Vietnam War. His confession of his own errors hardly satisfied his critics, of which there are many. Wallace Terry, Bloods: Black Veterans of the Vietnam War: An Oral History(1984). Terry covered the Vietnam War for Time magazine. But Bloods isn’t his story. It is instead an oral history of twenty black men who served in the Vietnam, shining light on the particular challenges black soldiers and marines faced during the war. William C. Westmoreland, A Soldier Reports(1976). Westmoreland, who commanded U.S. forces in Vietnam from 1964 to 1968, argues that the war was lost, not because of his failures, but because Washington failed to give him the resources he needed. The New York Times wrote that A Soldier Reports “does not explore the moral aspects of the war and displays virtually no understanding of the struggle as seen from the United States. But therein lies much of the book’s value; this is the view from inside the whale.” Tobias Wolff, In Pharaoh’s Army: Memories of the Lost War(1994). Wolff joined the U.S. Army at the age of 19 and was sent to Vietnam. Unlike most war memoirs, his does not recount harrowing experiences on the battlefield. His time in South Vietnam was surprisingly uneventful. Elmo Zumwalt Jr. and Elmo Zumwalt III, My Father, My Son(1986). As Chief of Naval Operations in the early 1970s, Admiral Elmo Zumwalt Jr. ordered the use of Agent Orange, a defoliant, to clear river banks in the Mekong Delta. A decade later, his son, Elmo Zumwalt III, who patrolled the delta’s rivers as a young lieutenant, contracted cancer, in all likelihood because of his exposure to Agent Orange. The admiral and his son, who died in 1988 at the age of forty-two, tell their story in My Father, My Son. These ten books are by no means the only Vietnam memoirs worth reading. I could easily suggest another ten great memoirs. Plus, there are memoirs like those of President Johnson (Vantage Point, 1971) and President Richard Nixon (The Memoirs of Richard Nixon, 1978) that aren’t devoted to Vietnam but have a lot to say about the war. So if you don’t see one of your favorites listed here, please mention it in the comments. For more suggested resources on the Vietnam War, check out the other posts in this series: • “The Best Histories of the Vietnam War” • “Top Ten Vietnam War Movies” • “The Twenty Best Vietnam Protest Songs” • “Ten Vietnam War Novels to Read” • “Iconic Images of the Vietnam War” • “TWE Remembers: The First U.S. Combat Troops Arrive in Vietnam”

Next Sunday marks the fiftieth anniversary of the arrival of the first American combat troops in Vietnam. It wasn’t a decision that President Lyndon Johnson had planned on making. True, the previous August had seen the Gulf of Tonkin Incident, which prompted a near unanimous Congress to pass the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution supporting Johnson’s determination ”to take all necessary measures to repel any armed attack against the forces of the United States and to prevent further aggression. But three months later Johnson was still insisting: “We are not about to send American boys 9 or 10,000 miles away from home to do what Asian boys ought to be doing for themselves.” What changed Johnson’s mind was Viet Cong attacks on U.S. military advisors in South Vietnam in February 1965. He decided to retaliate by launching Operation Rolling Thunder, an air war on North Vietnam that would last until 1968. With large numbers of U.S. aircraft and personnel on the ground in South Vietnam, General William Westmoreland, the commander of U.S. Military Assistance Command in the country, wanted the protection of U.S. combat troops. On March 8, 1965, two Marine battalions landed on the beach near the U.S. air base at Da Nang. They were welcomed by Vietnamese girls handing out leis. Johnson was confident the United States would prevail. In April 1965 he told the nation: “We will not be defeated. We will not grow tired. We will not withdraw either openly or under the cloak of a meaningless agreement.” He was wrong. Although he didn’t know it at the time, he had set in motion a war that would destroy his presidency, divide the country, and reshape American foreign policy for a generation. All this week, I will be marking the fiftieth anniversary of those Marines going ashore at Da Nang by posting my favorite Vietnam War books, memoirs, novels, movies, photos, and songs. To start off, here are a baker’s dozen of the best histories of the Vietnam War: Rick Atkinson, The Long Gray Line: The American Journey of West Point’s Class of 1966 (1989). Atkinson, at the time a Washington Post reporter, recounts the experiences of the West Point class of 1966 over a quarter century. By telling the story of their training as cadets, their years in Vietnam, and what they experienced when they returned (for those who did) from the battlefield, Atkinson paints a vivid portrait of the consequences that Vietnam had not just on individual soldiers but also on the U.S. Army. Bernard Fall, Hell in a Very Small Place: The Siege of Dien Bien Phu (1966). President Johnson wasn’t the first Western leader confident his country could suppress insurgents in Vietnam. The French took on the same task fifteen years earlier and met an ignominious end at the battle for Dien Bien Phu. Fall, an acclaimed war correspondent, tells the story of the French forces who fell to the Viet Minh. Fall, who also wrote Street Without Joy about the French experience in Indochina, was killed in 1967 by a mine planted on the very street he used as a book title. Frances FitzGerald, Fire in the Lake: The Vietnamese and the Americans in Vietnam(1972). FitzGerald won the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award by highlighting American misconceptions about Vietnam and arguing that the U.S. intervention was doomed from the start. The National Review described Fire in the Lake as “gospel for the anti-war movement.” David Halberstam, The Best and the Brightest (1972). Halberstam, a New York Times correspondent who won a Pulitzer Prize for his reporting from Vietnam, gave the English language a new catchphrase with his portrayal of how America’s “best and brightest” got it wrong in Vietnam. The book paints a picture of hubris and self-deception as policymakers refused to learn from the past and produced an epic disaster that split a nation. George Herring, America’s Longest War: The United States and Vietnam 1950-1975(2001). Herring, a professor of history at the University of Kentucky, provides a concise yet thorough history of U.S. involvement in Vietnam. He traces the military, diplomatic, and political factors behind the Vietnam War and America’s failure to win it. Stanley Karnow, Vietnam: A History(1983). Karnow draws on his experience covering the war for Time, the Washington Post, and NBC News to provide what may be the most comprehensive history thus far written of the war. PBS produced an Emmy-winning television series, Vietnam: A Television History, to accompany the book’s release. Andrew F. Krepinevich, Jr., The Army and Vietnam (1988). Krepinevich argues that the U.S. Army was grossly unprepared to fight the enemy it encountered in Vietnam. Intent on using the warfighting methods they had honed in Europe in World War II, U.S. generals stubbornly failed to change their tactics to defeat a different kind of enemy. Fredrik Logevall, Embers of War: The Fall of an Empire and the Making of America’s Vietnam (2012). Logevall won the Pulitzer Prize for history with his magisterial telling of the backstory to America’s war in Vietnam. He begins in 1919 with the Paris Peace Conference’s rejection of Ho Chi Minh’s petition for Vietnam’s independence and ends in 1959 with a Viet Cong raid that killed Master Sergeant Chester Ovnand of Copperas Cove, Texas and Major Dale Buis of Imperial Beach, California. Theirs are the first two names listed on the Vietnam Veterans Memorial. H.R. McMaster, Dereliction of Duty: Johnson, McNamara, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the Lies that Led to Vietnam (1997). McMaster’s argument is straightforward: “The war in Vietnam was not lost in the field, nor was it lost on the front pages of the New York Times or the college campuses. It was lost in Washington, DC.” While McMaster faults President Johnson and his advisors, he has equally sharp things to say about the willingness of senior military leaders to go along with a deeply flawed policy. Harold G. Moore and Joseph L. Galloway, We Were Soldiers Once....And Young: Ia Drang—the Battle That Changed the War in Vietnam (1992). Moore, then a colonel in the army, and Galloway, a reporter on the ground in Vietnam, vividly reconstruct the bloody fighting they both witnessed at Battle of Ia Drang Valley, the first major battle of the war. The heavy casualties that U.S. forces suffered there led Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara to write a secret memo to President Johnson predicting that the U.S. casualty rate in Vietnam was about to increase sharply and that the dispatch of more troops “will not guarantee success.” Neil Sheehan, A Bright Shining Lie: John Paul Vann and America in Vietnam(1988). Sheehan, who covered the Vietnam War for the New York Times, won the Pulitzer Prize for chronicling the unusual story of John Paul Vann. Vann retired from the army in 1963 after failing to persuade his superiors to change U.S. strategy in South Vietnam, only to return to the country two years later as a civilian U.S. official. He eventually accumulated enough power and respect that he effectively became a “civilian general.” Vann died in 1972 in a helicopter crash shortly after helping lead South Vietnamese forces to victory at the Battle of Kontum Harry G. Summers, On Strategy: A Critical Analysis of the Vietnam War (1982). Summers, a U.S. army colonel who fought in Vietnam, applies the insights of Germany strategist Claus von Clausewitz to analyze why the United States failed in Vietnam. He contends that the United States erred in targeting the Viet Cong rather than the real enemy, the North Vietnamese Army. Robert Timberg, The Nightingale’s Song (1998). Timberg, a graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy who was badly wounded in Vietnam and eventually became a reporter for the Baltimore Sun, tells the story of five of his fellow Naval Academy graduates: John McCain, Robert “Bud” McFarlane, Oliver North, John Poindexter, and Jim Webb. The result is a fascinating look at the consequences the Vietnam War had not just on the men who fought it, but also on American society and politics. These thirteen books are by no means the only Vietnam histories worth reading. Many, many books and articles have been written on the topic. If you don’t see one of your favorites listed here, please mention it in the comments. For more suggested resources on the Vietnam War, check out the other posts in this series: • “The Ten Best Memoirs of the Vietnam War” • “Top Ten Vietnam War Movies” • “The Twenty Best Vietnam Protest Songs” • “Ten Vietnam War Novels to Read” • “Iconic Images of the Vietnam War” • “TWE Remembers: The First U.S. Combat Troops Arrive in Vietnam”