The John Batchelor Show

VIDEO: Return to Vietnam

September 08, 2016

Wednesday   7 September 2016 / Hour 1, Block A: Cleo Paskal, visiting Trudeau Fellow, University of Montreal, and associate Fellow, Chatham House, in re:  The Vietnam War taught my generation to doubt ad challenge. Two members of that generation are now running for the presidency.  Meanwhile, Vietnam’s leadership looks to a new day, new allies, in the Pacific, the Indian Ocean Basin, in Southeast Asia.  In the 1980s, India began drilling in the South China Sea; now, Modi goes there and feeds fish with Vietnamese leadership.  Then the just-past G20 in China.  India  has advanced $500 mil to Vietnam to buy Indian military apparatus.  India and Vietnam have Buddhist linkages and others that go back two thousand years.  Because India is cut off from most of the continental landmass by the Himalayas, most of its trade is seaborne.  Vietnam fought the US and France successfully, but is proudest of having beaten the pants off China in the 1980s – first-string PLA whipped by third-string Vietnamese forces. Is Vietnam renting its military to India, which is willing to fight to the last Vietnamese?   Vietnam wants the Indian state oil co. to drill in its waters since China is trying to claim Vietnam’s waters – and might attack Vietnam but will not fight India.  Modi has visited all over, incl Mongolia. 
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/India-Vietnam-ink-def-pacts-to-counter-China/articleshow/54000372.cms