U.S. and Vietnam Build Ties With an Eye on China
HANOI, Vietnam — A visit to Vietnam this week by Robert M. Gates, the United States defense secretary, is just the latest step in a bilateral relationship that is at its warmest since diplomatic ties were established 15 years ago.
A steady progression of careful gestures has eroded the enmities of the Vietnam War, built a basis of increasing trust and turned the two nations’ attention, in large part, from issues of the past to the present....
It is an issue with some historical paradox. While the United States sought during the war to contain an expansion of Chinese Communism into Vietnam, it is aligned with Vietnam today in concern over an escalation of China’s maritime claims.
China was an ally of North Vietnam in its war against South Vietnam and the United States in the 1960s and ’70s and is now a partner of a unified Vietnam in an uneasy relationship between Communist nations of vastly different size....
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A steady progression of careful gestures has eroded the enmities of the Vietnam War, built a basis of increasing trust and turned the two nations’ attention, in large part, from issues of the past to the present....
It is an issue with some historical paradox. While the United States sought during the war to contain an expansion of Chinese Communism into Vietnam, it is aligned with Vietnam today in concern over an escalation of China’s maritime claims.
China was an ally of North Vietnam in its war against South Vietnam and the United States in the 1960s and ’70s and is now a partner of a unified Vietnam in an uneasy relationship between Communist nations of vastly different size....