Diplomacy: President Obama's three-day trek to Vietnam brought an end to the arms trade embargo the U.S. has imposed for decades. As a matter of realpolitik, it's not a bad idea. But we shouldn't forget who Vietnam's leaders really are.
Yes, as a matter of strategy, selling arms to Vietnam makes some sense.
After all, under Obama, the U.S. military has shrunk to its smallest size in decades, and military analysts say our ability to project U.S. power is at its weakest level since the Carter-era 1970s. At the same time, China has been flexing its muscles in the South China Sea, upsetting both Vietnam and the Philippines. Both nations are pushing hard for closer military and trade ties to the U.S. as a counterweight to an increasingly belligerent China.
The least we can do is sell arms to them.
And it's true that, like China, Vietnam has changed a lot since the U.S. left nearly 41 years ago. During that time, Vietnam has embraced many aspects of the market economy, which eventually could benefit the U.S.
U.S. Trade Representative Michael Froman has estimated that Vietnam's middle-class will double in size by 2020, and will be a prime market for high-end U.S. goods.
Vietnam would like nothing better than to gain access to the U.S. market through the Trans Pacific Partnership, in exchange for buying military and other high-end equipment from the U.S.
But it's important to remember that, even as Obama meets publicly with Vietnam's president and prime minister, both elected leaders, the real power in Vietnam is held by Nguyen Phu Trong -- the unelected communist party leader.
Vietnam is still very much a one-party state. The U.S. had originally premised the sale of arms to Vietnam on improvements in its human rights record. Well, in its parliamentary elections held just this Sunday, no independent candidates were allowed -- and there were reports that dissidents were beaten and put under house arrest before the vote.
And, as even the liberal British newspaper the Guardian has noted, "the one-party state still ruthlessly cracks down on protests, jails dissidents and bans trade unions."
So once again, Obama negotiated a one-sided deal with another nation, giving away everything and getting nothing in return, just as he did in Iran. He's getting pretty good at that.
Obama plainly went to communist Vietnam with no intention of trying to make that nation of 95 million improve its basic human rights, as he said he would. After all, Vietnam is part of Obama's "pivot to Asia" strategy, and the U.S. president seems more than a little panicked by China's recent aggressive behavior and thinks a rearmed Vietnam -- whose army mainly uses Vietnam War-era Russian weaponry -- could play a big role in the region in keeping China at bay.
But Obama consented to a photo op under a massive stature of Ho Chi Minh. Does he know that Ho was responsible for killing 1.7 million Cambodians, 2 million Vietnamese and hundreds of thousands of Laotians who were "murdered, starved to death and 'reeducated' to death," according to Vietnam Veterans For Factual History. Many of those who once enjoyed freedom in the South Vietnam ended up in Ho's repressive gulag and political re-education camps.
Amid all the happy talk and smiling photos, let's not be deceived about who's really in charge in Vietnam -- and what they did.
