Posted on 08/07/2014 9:50:11 PM PDT by wetphoenix
HANOI, Vietnam — Anger over Vietnam's handling of a territorial dispute with China has prompted a group of senior communist party members to call on the government to jettison communism for democracy and "get out of China's orbit."
Sixty-one prominent members of Vietnam's Communist Party, including a former ambassador to Beijing, urged Vietnam's leadership in an open letter to change its political system, "develop a truly democratic, law-abiding state," allow for greater freedom of political speech and "escape" from its reliance on China.
"The Party needs to get rid of Marxism-Leninism and get out of China's orbit," Chu Hao, former vice minister of science and technology and one of the letter's three co-authors, said in a phone interview. "It is very high time for the party to make a thorough transformation.
The July 28 letter adds pressure to the government after China's moving of an oil rig into contested territorial waters set off a wave of Vietnamese nationalism and deadly anti-Chinese riots in May. The dispute has deepened the wedge between the two communist countries at a time when Vietnam's economy has become more dependent on Chinese investment and trade.
Any move away from China could provide an opening for the U.S. to serve as an economic and security hedge against Chinese influence in Vietnam, said Scott Harold, an analyst in Washington with Santa Monica-based Rand Corp. whose doctorate from Columbia University focused on China's foreign policy.
"If Vietnam were to decide the strategic future of Vietnam requires a political opening to the West akin to what Myanmar has passed through in the past three, four years, a genuine opening up -- not full democracy -- if Vietnam were to do something like that, it would be an enormous strategic loss for China," Harold said.
(Excerpt) Read more at chicagotribune.com ...
Eventually, all eyes are opened. I expect Cuba to do the same after the Castro brothers are in Hell.
So Vietnamese Communists are calling for more Communism? After all, democracy is the road to socialism, and the goal of socialism is communism.
Imagine the poor guys in hue, Da Nang, the Ia Drang and Khe Sanh knowing this in advance some 50 years ago. Sheesh
and whose orbit will they join?
Well, this is really good news to me.
I have been waiting for this for some time. Frankly I assumed the Communist ideology, which was never really a Vietnamese goal to begin with, would have failed a bit earlier after the fall of the USSR.
But the Chinese probably would not let it, and now, after these incursions, the Chinese are not feared as they were.
We could correct a mistake that we made a long time ago when we refused to help Chang in the late 1930s and early 40s. in his revolt against the French. So he turned to Communism and Russia and China.
They had a small war during my first tour in Korea back around 1979, IIRC.
I will be interested to see. I will be in Hanoi on Tuesday.
French Indochina, now Vietnam, was going through the same sort of things that prompted the revolts in India with Gandi.
Both of them were trying to rid themselves of a oppressive controlling statist Empire, being the British and the French.
Chiang Kai-shek tried on several occasions to get us to help them with arms or aid, indirectly of course..But we would not even entertain it until it war too late.
Neither of these turned out well, with the Vietnam war precipitating as a result in one, with the aid of some crappy border drawing by the UN, and in the other some more crappy border drawing left US with the Pakistan/India conflicts and not to forget Afghanistan, and Iraq with the Kurdish mess, and all the rest. Most of which might have been avoided with some more thoughtful borders or even a few less countries.
But it's easy to look at it now and say, if only...
“Vietnam wants democracy”
1954, Geneva Peace accords call for free elections.
Seventy years later, Vietnam finally agrees.
All that time and all those lives and all that loss.
I bet the First Lady that I could get you to say more than two words, Mr. President!
“You lose.” Calvin Coolidge
Yeah, that’s what makes me sad about it..
I can imagine what todays soldiers think and feel about Iraq.
Just .... WOW.
I’m not even sure of what to say.
So we can betray them again?
Now they get it...yeesh
You mean Ho? I think the mistake was the coup against Ngo Dinh Diem.
yeah but we’re going the other direction
Yeah, I apologized for the blunder up the thread a bit.
Yeah that coup was a error of judgment as well. One of several actually. he was not supposed to be killed, but how they expected to control that is beyond me.
“You fools! Don’t you realize what it means if the Chinese remain? Don’t you remember your history? The last time the Chinese came, they stayed a thousand years. The French are foreigners. They are weak. Colonialism is dying. The white man is finished in Asia. But if the Chinese stay now, they will never go. As for me, I prefer to sniff French shit for five years than to eat Chinese shit for the rest of my life.” - Ho Chi Minh
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