Be careful on this one.. This looks at first blush as another attempt to demoralize the Viet Nam Vets. They are constantly attacked. And plenty of lefties are really mad at their part in skerry's loss.
And the plot thickens. It was a very "interesting" sequence of events. Most Western analyses of the sequence take the "Sino-Soviet Split" which was still "officially" the party line at the time in both Beijing and Moscow, as an article of faith. But let us imagine that, secretly, there still may have been some degree of coordination between the two. Bear with me here. Now, with that small bit of framing out of the way, let us examine the following sequence of events, all the while, keeping in the back of our minds, the geopolitical consequences of them:
1. The US pulls out of Indochina (1975)
2. The Mayaguez Incident, off the Cambodian coast (1975)
3. The Communist insurgency in Thailand is legitimated, amnestied and allowed to return to Bangkok (1976)
4. Pol Pot goes wild in Cambodia (1977)
5. With an apparent nod of Moscow, Vietnam invades Cambodia (1978).
6. Thailand, bereft of SEATO since the US withdrawl, gets nervous, especially after a few small Vietnamese incursions. Themselves believing in the "Sino - Soviet Split," they ask Beijing for regional support and security (1978)
7. The PRC invades Vietnam (1979)
8. Thailand further embraces Beijing and subtly moves further away from the US.
There is a term: "Scissors strategy." One might wonder about just what all these events were meant to accomplish, on the chess board. Was the real objective, to make Thailand blind to future PRC expansionism? To wit, within less than one year, a new superhighway, perfect for PLA tanks, TELs and other vehicles, will be completed, connecting Kunming (PRC), via Laos, with the current northern terminus of the Thai motorway system. Very interesting.