The benefit pays up to $1,209 per month ($14,507 per year), tax free, for home or facility care. Vietnam Veterans The Vietnam War took place in Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia. It began in November of 1955 and ended with the Fall of Saigon in 1975. Approximately 2.7 million Americans served in Vietnam. Bruce 'Caitlyn' Jenner is now in a 'lesbian' relationship with another transgender and they want to have a baby. Aug. 1, 2019 9:39 am Nov. 25, 2019 11:17 am by The Right Scoop. Two men, who now are living as women, are now living together as a lesbian couple, and want to have a baby through a surrogate and one of them is one of them United States involvement in the Persian Gulf War, also known as Operation Desert Storm, began in August 1990 and ended the following March. According to the United States Department of Veterans Affairs (VA), 697,000 servicemen and women served in the conflict, and all U.S. troops serving in the ground war were back home by June, 1991. US knew there was oil in vietnam. PLANET'S BIGGEST OIL FIELD (in Vietnam) is BEING split between world powers! NOW WE SEE the REASON FOR that WAR! In the mid-70's, Anthony Sampson wrote in the original edition of his book "THE SEVEN SISTERS" i .e. the seven, major oil companies --that the hush hush, exceedingly RICH OIL FIELDS of VIETNAM were 6. Robbery. Robbery happens everywhere in Vietnam, and the most common cases are robbing your phones/ bags. Imagine that you are riding your bike/ motorcycle or walking on the street with your phone/ bag, and in 1 second, it's gone. You only see two guys on a motorbike going fast, and you don't see their faces. 5l0oiT. Powered by continued investments in its manufacturing sector, dynamic foreign direct investment, and rising productivity, Vietnam has been a consistent outperformer in Asia. GDP has increased at a compound annual rate of 5 percent in real terms over the past 20 years, which was times faster than the global Even in 2020, when the COVID-19 pandemic was causing deep disruption in the global economy, Vietnam posted GDP growth of The country continues battling the resurgence of COVID-19 cases and navigating through this crisis. However, consumption is expected to expand and define the future as incomes rise. Swift demographic and technological changes will result in trailblazing consumer behaviors that offer new sources of growth to companies informed and agile enough to capture them. In this article, we focus on how these trends are shaping the future of Vietnamese consumers and what companies can do to win their hearts. Vietnamese consumers enter the middle class and put midsize cities on the radar Asia is the world’s consumption growth engine miss Asia and you could miss half the global picture—a $10 trillion consumption growth opportunity over the next decade, according to recent McKinsey Global Institute research. Vietnam is well positioned to be a significant driver of the next chapter of Asia’s consumption story. Over the next decade, 36 million more consumers may join Vietnam’s consuming class, defined as consumers who spend at least $11 a day in purchasing power parity PPP This is a major change. In 2000, less than 10 percent of Vietnam’s population were members of the consuming class, which has risen to 40 percent today. By 2030, this figure may be close to 75 percent Exhibit 1. New consumption power is emerging not only from those who have entered the consuming class for the first time, but from the consuming class’s sharp rise within the income pyramid. The two highest tiers of the consuming class those spending $30 or more per day are growing the fastest and may account for 20 percent of Vietnam’s population by 2030. Urbanization is an important contributor to income growth. Vietnam’s urban population is projected to surge by 10 million over the next decade as the share of the country’s urban population rises from 37 percent in 2020 to 44 percent by Cities are likely to be Vietnam’s engine of growth, contributing roughly 90 percent of all consumption growth over the next The story of Vietnam’s urbanization has often been centered around the populous cities of Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City HCMC, where each city is home to more than 10 million people and most of Vietnam’s middle However, our analysis finds that over the next decade, sources of urban consumption are likely to spread to smaller cities, including Can Tho, Da Nang, and Hai Phong, where the middle classes are set to grow. Five demographic shifts transforming the consuming class Although the rising consuming class and urbanization are large drivers of Vietnam’s growth, a new chapter is being written that goes beyond scale and rising incomes. Significant demographic change and the penetration of digital technologies are likely to reinforce the diversity of Vietnam’s consumer markets, prompting sometimes surprising changes in consumer preferences and behavior. To thrive in Vietnam’s consumer markets, companies will have to consider trends that reflect the country’s evolving socioeconomic realities and those that will influence consumption shrinking households, more spending by seniors, greater market participation by digital natives, economic empowerment of women, and wider geographic distribution of spending. Households are getting smaller Across Asia, households are shrinking. The size of the average Vietnamese household has decreased by around 20 percent over the past two decades, from people per household in 1999 to people per household in A large contributor of this change has been Vietnam’s declining total fertility rate, from births per woman during the 1995–2000 period to an estimated between 2015 and At the same time, new lifestyles and ways of working especially as women make continued progress in economic empowerment may lead to fewer multigenerational families living under one roof. This trend toward smaller households is reinforced by urbanization, for two reasons. Firstly, the total fertility rate in cities is even lower than in the country as a whole; for instance, the fertility rate in HCMC was around in 2020. Secondly, urban centers tend to attract young people who move away from their parents and extended families. If the experience of other Asian markets holds true in Vietnam, the declining size of households may lead to new types of demands, including smaller homes, increased ownership of pets, and new forms of entertainment. Seniors are accounting for an increasing share of consumption Vietnam remains a young country overall, with a median age of 32 in 2020. However, the number of people aged 60 and over is projected to increase by five million; seniors could account for more than 17 percent of Vietnam’s population by 2030. Spending by seniors is expected to triple in the next decade, growing at more than double the rate for the population as a whole during the same period. The expansion of relatively well-off seniors is likely to have significant impact on several sectors. For example, over the past decade, there has already been rapid growth of investments in healthcare. Local players, such as Vinmec, which runs hospitals, and Pharmacity, a retail pharmacy company founded in 2011, are growing rapidly. High-quality nursing homes are spreading, as well as assisted-living accommodations. Beyond healthcare, the housing market is seeing growth in real estate development that is increasingly focused on suburban areas where the air quality is better and there is more space for seniors and retirees. Digital natives are becoming an increasing force in Vietnam’s consumption So-called digital natives born between 1980 and 2012, including members of Generation Z and millennials, are expected to account for around 40 percent of Vietnam’s consumption by 2030. Members of this digitally savvy generation live online and on their mobiles. Almost 70 percent of Vietnam’s population in 2020 are internet users. Rapid digitization is changing the daily channels and communication methods used by Vietnamese people, particularly in e-commerce, where regional players, such as Shopee and Lazada, and local players, such as Tiki, are active. The rapid emergence of digital consumers has fueled innovation in retail and purchasing behavior. For example, local social network Zalo is among the most used applications in Vietnam, with 52 million monthly active users, and has become a significant marketing channel. An estimated 55 percent of Vietnamese Gen Zers now use TikTok, driving intense competition, as evidenced in the launch of YouTube shorts and Instagram reels. Social commerce sites, such as Mio, and live-streaming platforms are reinventing consumption methods by creating new channels that attract new and often younger shoppers to a category or a brand. These new behavioral trends have forced companies to rethink the allocation of their marketing budget. Marketers are realizing the increased importance and pervasiveness of online channels. In 2021, online ad spending is expected to hit almost $1 billion in Vietnam and to grow by about 22 percent a year until 2025. Women’s economic empowerment presents a large opportunity Vietnam has historically been ahead of other countries on women’s participation in the labor force. In 2019, Vietnam’s ratio of female-to-male labor-force participation was 88 percent, one of the highest in the Vietnamese consumers are accustomed to seeing female executives in leading roles at large Vietnamese companies, including PNJ, Sovico, Vinamilk, and Vingroup. Other forms of empowerment—including increased financial and digital inclusion, opportunities to raise skills and therefore transition into higher-income jobs, and a greater say in household purchasing decisions—could unleash even more female consumption. According to MGI research on the estimated GDP growth potential from narrowing gender gaps, women’s empowerment could add an additional $80 billion to Vietnam’s GDP in the period to 2030. The rise of the small-city and suburban consumers Consumption power has become more distributed over the past decade. While consumption had largely resided in the nation’s two major economic and financial hubs, Hanoi and HCMC, other cities are also developing into economic forces. In 2020, Hanoi and HCMC accounted for 37 percent of all Vietnamese households with income of more than $22,000 a year in 2011 PPP terms, but this share could drop to 31 percent in 2030 Exhibit 2. Our analysis notes that growth in the number of middle-class households in smaller cities and even rural areas is outpacing those in Hanoi and HCMC—a compound annual rate of about 8 percent, compared with 5 Moreover, the Mekong and Red River Deltas, densely populated but not fully urbanized, are becoming significant consumption pools, attracting the attention of consumer-goods companies and modern retailers. Behavioral shifts modernizing and diversifying the consumer environment Beyond demographic shifts, Vietnam’s consumer markets are experiencing significant changes in behaviors as incomes rise and as innovation in business models and technology accelerates. Five shifts are notable digitization’s impact on distribution channels, increasing use of consumer-facing ecosystems, a growing preference for domestic brands, greater interest in “conscious lifestyle” products, and a lessening of geographic differentiation. New channel mix In most consumer markets, traditional grocery stores are being replaced by modern stores, especially supermarkets and convenience stores larger hypermarket formats are still present but growing less rapidly. But in Vietnam, beyond the traditional narrative of retail modernization, digitization is rapidly changing the way Vietnamese shop. As in several other Asian markets, leapfrogging in two arenas are under way. First, e-commerce is developing so rapidly that it is conceivably bypassing the usual development from traditional to modern store-based retail. By 2025, e-commerce in Vietnam could be almost as large as offline modern grocery Second, traditional trade is digitizing rapidly too. Vietnam has more than 680,000 offline outlets selling basic food and fast-moving consumer goods FCMG. Local players like Telio and Vinshop are offering digital ordering and digital payments options to these traditional food and FMCG outlets. As those digital players gradually compete with traditional business-to-business B2B players such as wholesalers and cash-and-carry stores, traditional trade can become increasingly connected. The process could disintermediate traditional distributors and wholesalers, which could lead to greater efficiency. A big convergence Consumer demand is being reshaped by a “big convergence” in which digital ecosystems are aggregating many consumer needs and serving them with varying degrees of integration. At the most integrated end of the spectrum are super apps, which offer a one-stop digital shop for customers through multiple uses, functions and complementary services. As consumer-facing ecosystems have emerged and grown rapidly, players in consumer packaged goods CPGs and retail have had to rethink their stance on partnerships. There is still headroom for growth in Vietnam’s digital ecosystems. In many economies around the world, the disruption associated with the COVID-19 pandemic accelerated digital adoption across categories, including in groceries, entertainment, digital healthcare, real estate, and education. This acceleration is evident in Vietnam. From online school classes to food ordering, Vietnamese consumers have increased the pace of their digital adoption and use. One study found that 41 percent of all digital consumers in Vietnam are new consumers, and 91 percent of these new consumers said they intend to continue their use of digital tools after the pandemic. Greater preference for homegrown brands Asian brands are maintaining a strong position in many consumer-facing categories across Asia, including in Vietnam. In FMCG, for instance, Asian brands increased revenue at 9 percent a year, compared with 5 percent for global non-Asian Conventional wisdom has held that the emerging middle class in Asia tends to favor buying global Western brands, but this does not hold true—or at least not in every category. Local players have built successful brands in Vietnam, including VinFast in the automotive sector and Masan, Nutifood, and Vinamilk in FMCG. Local players have also been successful in modern retail. Foreign retailers were amongst the pioneers of modern trade in Vietnam, but most of the fastest-growing brands of retail chains today are local players, such as Bach Hoa Xanh, Coop Mart, and VinMart. Conscious lifestyle choices Consumer lifestyle and behaviors that take into consideration other people, the environment, and society are often associated with more developed economies. However, surveys suggest that many Vietnamese consumers are emulating this behavior. Reusable straws and mugs in coffee shops, tote bags at supermarkets, and eco-friendly fashion brands are now common sights in cities throughout Vietnam. In one consumer survey, 91 percent of Vietnamese respondents said they were aware of and were participating in a conscious lifestyle. In contrast, 86 percent of respondents in Indonesia, 73 percent in Thailand, and 75 percent in Malaysia said the same. Notably, 84 percent of Vietnamese respondents said they were willing to pay a premium for conscious-lifestyle products. This suggests potential for premiumization in the market. Of course, what consumers say may not predict what they actually do. Indeed, there is ample evidence that willingness to pay premiums for eco-conscious products is not yet sufficient in most Asian markets. Nevertheless, Vietnamese consumers are clearly paying more attention to sustainability, social responsibility, and labor conditions, and many are willing to take action through their wallets. Less emphasis on geographic differentiation, including the traditional north–south divide Vietnam has a very distinct geography and history. It has two large cities of roughly equal size, separated by more than 1,100 kilometers. These cities are Vietnam’s largest consumption centers but have very different climates and therefore different fashion and histories, leading to significant variations in consumer behavior and preferences. Therefore, the traditional marketing approach was to deploy tailored communications to reach the specific preferences of customers in the north, south, and cities in between. Such large differences in the consumer landscape within Vietnam could be a hurdle for brands, especially those of players who are unfamiliar with local context. Paradoxically, however, while Vietnamese consumers are segmenting and diversifying, cultural differentiation by geography appears to be diminishing. Domestic travel is increasing and connecting Vietnam more than ever before. The flight route from Hanoi to HCMC is the second busiest in the world, with close to a million seats. Consumers across the country’s regions are becoming more affluent. Digital media are harmonizing brand communication; brands that have established a regional stronghold are now capturing other regional markets. In short, different parts of the country and different types of consumers are converging. A telling example of this convergence is the beer industry. In 2015, brands distributed nationally without a local stronghold had about 32 percent of economy-wide volume, with 37 percent for brands focused on the south, such as Saigon Beer, and 24 percent for northern or central-focused brands such as Hanoi Beer or Carlsberg’s portfolio. However, by 2020, the share of national brands had risen to about 40 percent, while the share of northern and central brands had Thus, even as Vietnam’s consumer market is diversifying, geographical stereotypes about Vietnamese consumers could become obsolete. Implications for companies wooing Vietnam’s consumers Vietnam’s consumer markets are changing rapidly—diversifying, modernizing, and digitizing. Companies can find considerable momentum to tap into, but to position themselves in a way that can win the hearts and minds of Vietnamese consumers, they need to answer questions about which markets to enter, how to communicate with consumers, and how to maintain a combination of localization and agility. Where to play? Companies in Vietnam need to take a broader view of where to compete than sufficed in the past. Success today requires moving beyond the two-city approach and considering new channels in light of changing technology. In more than two cities. Except in a few sectors such as high-end luxury, the era of focusing exclusively on Hanoi and HCMC is over. Competitive local consumer-facing industries are already pursuing rural consumers over a broad geographic area. Companies that have confined themselves to serving consumers in Vietnam’s two leading cities will need to broaden their approach. To reach around 50 percent of the population with incomes of more than $22,000 per year, companies typically need to plan distribution to the top 15 cities. Major retail players are seeking to capture new opportunities by investing not only in key cities but also in a broad swath of nonurban areas whose overall population is large Exhibit 3. In more than traditional channels. Companies in Vietnam also should take a flexible distribution approach to embrace the changes occurring in channel mix. Vietnam’s hybrid and fast-changing channel mix will pose challenges. Companies need to be agile in positioning themselves for a combination of a large share of fragmented traditional trade, a rapidly growing but still unpredictable online B2B sector, a constantly recomposing modern retail landscape, and relatively new e-commerce that is one of the fastest growing in Southeast Asia. In this context, competing in Vietnam requires not only the right strategy, but also capabilities in channel management, key account management, pricing, and promotions optimization. How to communicate with Vietnam’s new consumers? Businesses that succeed in Vietnam will have to upgrade their messages and channels of communication to reach today’s consumers. More often than not, this involves digital channels, as well as an awareness of new norms and values. Double down on digital engagement. Vietnamese consumers across age groups and regions are digitally connected. While online retail is just taking off, marketing and brands will need to make full use of social media, user reviews, social commerce, live streams, and online ecosystems to gain early traction. Build relatable brands with a conscience and, if possible, a local vibe. Vietnamese consumers are adopting the kind of conscious consumption that is more prevalent in economies further down their development path. To capture their attention and their wallet, companies may consider localizing brands that “fit” the new zeitgeist. Approaches that could make brands relatable include using icons and champions of local culture and designing products that focus on local heritage. To some extent, Asian rather than Vietnamese brand image and ambassadors have also sometimes proven suitable; some brands recruit Korean and Japanese ambassadors with a local audience. Importantly, adopting the norms and values of the modern, socially conscious consumer is a must. How to operate? Talent localization and agility have become critical. In the face of rapid change, companies in Vietnam will also likely need to reinvent their operating models around four axioms Recruit, train, and promote local talent. Talent management grows in importance as capabilities needed to compete become increasingly complex for example, to digitize businesses. Update the operating model. Shape an operating model that favors the speed of local innovation and personalization, in response to the fast development of Vietnamese consumers’ behavior. Reallocate resources rapidly. As conditions in the market change, companies need to move resources rapidly between product lines or distribution channels. Build the ability to enter cross-sector partnerships. In an increasingly interconnected world, such partnerships are likely to become a source of performance. In short, beyond building an effective entry strategy, companies will need to double down on forming more robust Vietnamese organizations to compete successfully. Vietnam’s dynamic consumer markets have had strong momentum for a while, and they are now becoming more complex. The consuming class is diversifying geographically, socially, demographically, and technologically. As consumers become more diverse and demanding, companies wishing to serve them will need to refine their strategy to take account not only of income levels, but also of new channels, strategy, marketing allocation, and behavior even within their established customer bases. Download the article in Vietnamese PDF-10 pages. In February and March 1979, China fought a bloody three-week war with its smaller neighbor, Vietnam. China is considered to have underperformed in that conflict, and while China's military is much different today, the Sino-Vietnamese War still has implications. Loading Something is loading. Thanks for signing up! Access your favorite topics in a personalized feed while you're on the go. On February 17, 1979, a massive 30-minute artillery barrage rocked the China-Vietnam border. They were the first of 880,000 shells that China's People's Liberation Army PLA would fire at its neighbor over the next three and a half hours, some 200,000 Chinese soldiers crossed the border into Vietnam. They were supported by an additional 400,000 troops, hundreds of tanks, and 7,000 artillery mission was to seize provincial capitals and obliterate any Vietnamese Army PVA forces in the areas between them. Despite initial breakthroughs, progress slowed, and the PLA found itself bogged down in a costly war in which it drastically to "teach Vietnam a lesson," as Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping claimed, the invasion was China's first large-scale military action since the Korean War in 1953, and it remains the PLA's last full-scale war to this day. Inevitable conflict Vietnamese artillery fires on Chinese troops in the Lang Son province along the border with China, February 23, 1979. STR/AFP via Getty Images The invasion surprised some in the West because China had been a steadfast supporter of Vietnam during its wars with France and the US. More than 300,000 PLA troops served in Vietnam between 1965 and 1969, with some 1,100 killed and 4,300 wounded. China also sent billions in aid to their communist tensions between the two communist "brothers" had been boiling for decades. Chinese domination in previous centuries left a general distrust of China in Vietnam, and border battles between China and the Soviet Union in 1969, during the Sino-Soviet split, made it clear to Vietnam that it would soon have to pick between its two also faced rising tension and increasing border clashes with the murderous China-backed Khmer Rouge regime in neighboring Cambodia. That, along with Beijing's reluctance to send more aid to Hanoi, led Vietnam to side with the Soviets. Workers in Hanoi demonstrate against China. February 19, 1979. Sovfoto/Universal Images Group via Getty Images On November 3, 1978, Vietnam signed the Treaty of Friendship and Cooperation with the USSR. It wasn't an outright mutual-defense treaty, but it did include some security promises. Tensions escalated to the point where up to 150,000 Chinese living in Vietnam left for China. All this was outrageous to Deng and the Chinese Communist Party CCP, which viewed Vietnam as unappreciative and importantly, as the USSR already had a similar treaty with Mongolia, China felt at risk of being surrounded by the December 7, China's Central Military Commission had decided to launch a limited war along the border. At the end of that month, Vietnam invaded Cambodia to oust the Khmer underperformance A captured Chinese tank crewman under guard, February 1979. Bettmann via Getty Images Despite a two-to-one advantage in forces and the eventual completion of its military objectives, the PLA severely underperformed. With very little overall training and virtually no combined-arms training, many PLA attacks were uncoordinated human-wave assaults, leading to high casualties and prolonging the soldiers were so undertrained that there were reports of infantrymen tying themselves to tanks with ropes to avoid falling off, sealing their fate when they were some tank units didn't know how to communicate with infantry at all, leading to them going into battle alone or with little coordination, which allowed experienced Vietnamese tank-killing teams to pick them off. The Vietnamese later claimed to have destroyed or damaged at least 280 tanks and armored vehicles during the for the PLA, Deng had forbidden the use of the Air Force and Navy so as to not risk escalation with the Soviets. The PLA was especially worried its Air Force would be soundly beaten by experienced Vietnamese pilots, who had dogfighting experience against the best in the world, the US Air Force. Casualties and lessons An official Chinese news agency photo said to show Chinese militiamen who formed a stretcher brigade to aid Chinese troops fighting in Vietnam, February 21, 1979. AP Photo/Hsinhua After about two weeks of fighting, the PLA began its March 16, its forces had crossed back into China, but not before enacting a scorched-earth campaign in Vietnam, thoroughly destroying or looting anything of value, including factories, bridges, mines, farms, vehicles, and even China nor Vietnam, known for keeping battlefield losses secret, ever officially disclosed their casualties, though each claimed to have inflicted large numbers of casualties on the other. China said its forces killed or wounded up 57,000 Vietnamese troops, while Vietnam claimed over 60,000 PLA killed or reliable estimates for Chinese losses range from 7,900 to as many as 26,000 troops killed, with about 23,000 to 37,000 wounded. Estimates for Vietnam range from 20,000 to 50,000 soldiers and civilians killed and wounded. The high number of casualties in such a short period is staggering, especially since Vietnam's militia and second-tier troops did most of the fighting, as many elite Vietnamese forces were fighting in to Deng Xiaoping, the high casualties were not entirely surprising. One of Deng's motivations for the war was so the PLA could gain badly needed himself had a low opinion of the PLA, calling it "swollen, slack, arrogant, extravagant and lazy." He used the poor performance as a lesson and justification for massive reforms and modernization of the and future Vietnamese in border town of Lang Son, Vietnam, flee fighting between Chinese and Vietnamese troops, February 21, 1979. AP Photo/MTI/POOL The war is largely unacknowledged by the Chinese public today. "The main reason is that the CCP is reluctant to talk about that conflict," Timothy Heath, a senior international and defense researcher at the Rand Corporation think tank, told the conflict is awkward for the CCP, especially as Beijing tries to reduce its neighbors' suspicions about its fact that China was the aggressor "goes against the message that the CCP tries to promote — that China is always a peaceful power, never initiates attacks, and only responds defensively," Heath said. The PLA's poor performance would also put a damper on any the PLA today is different in virtually every aspect, and because China's Air Force and Navy were forbidden from fighting, the war does not really provide a good example for how the PLA may perform on the modern battlefield. But the political motivations and implications of the war are still very relevant. The wreckage of a Chinese F-9 that crashed in the village of Truc Phu on March 19, 1979, seen at a military museum in Hanoi. AP Photo/Seth Mydans "China was willing to carry out aggression against this country, this neighbor, to send a message that alliances with an outside power that China regards as threatening is something that China is willing to fight over," Heath said."That is a message to bear in mind as the US builds its alliances and partnerships around Asia, and competition between China intensifies," he Soviets did send high-ranking military officials to help organize Vietnam's defense and deployed additional ships into the South China Sea, but they did not enter the conflict. Years later, the Soviets pressured Vietnam to engage with China diplomatically, leading to Vietnam pulling out of Cambodia in 1989. The limits of superpower support is extremely important for Taiwan, which the CCP routinely threatens to reabsorb, potentially by force. If Taiwan were attacked and the US sat it out, as the Soviets did in Vietnam in 1979, it may prove fatal for the island it avoids discussing its experience in Vietnam, Beijing remains acutely aware of its performance."My suspicion is that the ghosts of those battlefield failures still haunt the PLA, and they still must have some degree of anxiety about how will they perform on the battlefield." Heath said. "Everybody has a right to be skeptical about how well the PLA can possibly perform on the battlefield given their last known demonstration was pretty dismal." ASEAN Beat Security Southeast Asia The South China Sea matters to Vietnam’s economic development, but its land borders are the key to its long-term security. The border gate between Vietnam and Laos at Lao Bao, Vietnam. Credit DepositphotosWhere should the focus of Vietnam’s national security strategy lie in an age of rising Chinese power? In 2019, Vietnam’s Ministry of National Defense released a defense white paper that put much emphasis on the South China Sea SCS. Vietnam made clear that it was unhappy with China’s destabilizing behaviors in the SCS, referencing its “actions to unilaterally impose based on force disregarding international laws and militarization activities that change the status quo, violate Vietnam’s sovereignty.” The white paper also cautioned that “great-power competition is getting increasingly tense, making the East Sea [SCS] become flashpoint’ at one point, which increases the risks of conflict.”Since the 1990s, the SCS has been the focus of Vietnam’s national security strategy, with the goal of constraining Chinese expansion. Indeed, the bulk of Vietnam’s military modernization efforts since the early 2000s has focused on the navy and air force in order to boost their ability to protect the country’s maritime interests in a context of high-tech warfare and growing uncertainty in the SCS. Scholars have also noted the importance of the SCS in the overall China-Vietnam relationship and the ways in which China’s rise has shifted the regional maritime balance of power with great implications for settling the SCS disputes in a peaceful such an emphasis on the SCS as the potential flashpoint of Vietnam’s future conflicts with China is misplaced for two reasons. First, China’s rise has shifted the power balance not only at sea but also on the land. Beijing’s attempts to woo Vietnam’s neighbors, Cambodia and Laos, with economic rewards are as dangerous to Hanoi as its destabilizing actions in the SCS. Second, such an emphasis cannot explain Hanoi’s shift to maritime security in the 1990s and overstates the importance of the SCS in its long-term strategic outlook at the expense of other more important priorities, such as the alignment of Cambodia and Laos. Vietnam’s post-Cold War reorientation toward the SCS is based on the premise that its land borders are already secured. But China’s moves to win Laos and Cambodia to its side should shift its focus back generally prioritize land security over maritime security, and only after they have secured their land borders do they look to the ocean. This is simply because it is costly to build and maintain an army and a navy at the same time, especially when the rival is a peer or a more powerful state. China only began to expand its maritime capabilities in the 1980s after its land borders were secured and it became the sole great power in mainland Northeast Asia, reducing its need for a large army. Even now, China has little fear for its land security, given that most of its neighbors are much weaker. In the case of India, the Himalayas serve as a natural buffer to prevent both sides from fighting a large war that can threaten China’s survival. Thanks to the favorable power balance on the land, Beijing has shifted its focus to the maritime domain to contest the United States’ maritime same thing can be said about Vietnam. Hanoi only looked to the sea in the 1990s after it had defeated South Vietnam, resolved its border conflicts and normalized relations with China, and addressed the security threats in Laos and Cambodia in the aftermath of the Third Indochina War. Hanoi’s protests against China’s occupations of the Paracel islands in 1974 and the Johnson South Reef in 1988 were weak for a good reason it was distracted by other more pressing security threats on land and it did not have the capability to field a strong army and navy at the same prioritization of land over the sea was understandable. Compared to mainland Indochina, the SCS lacks the strategic importance that matters to Vietnam’s survival. Both the Paracel and Spratly island groups are far from Vietnam’s shore, meaning that losing them, while harmful to Vietnam’s economic interests, does not hurt Vietnam’s survival in any way. Remarkably, South Vietnam’s loss of the Paracel islands in 1974 to China did not spell its doom – the North Vietnamese army was responsible for that – while Vietnam’s loss of Johnson South Reef to China in 1988 did not threaten Hanoi’s survival as much as China’s 1979 ground both China’s and Vietnam’s land features are too small to defend in the event of war. And apart from using them as a way to assert sovereignty, those features have limited military use without external maritime surveillance capability and have little impact on freedom of navigation. On the other hand, Hanoi is fully aware of the significance of Laos and Cambodia to its survival, which has been demonstrated by its use of the Ho Chi Minh Trail to launch attacks on South Vietnam and its ambition to keep the two countries under an Indochinese Federation and out of the orbit of other rivals after key point is that China now poses a comprehensive threat to Vietnam, on both land and sea, as it presses forward with its Belt and Road Initiative and militarization of islands in the South China Sea, as well as the modernization of its navy. As a weaker power, Vietnam has little choice but to adjust its calculations accordingly and prioritize wisely. China’s occupation of SCS features claimed by Vietnam does not offer it more leverage on land. However, China’s ability to attack Vietnam on land does offer it more leverage on the sea because the stakes are much higher for Vietnam’s security. And this suggests that Vietnam should look west for its has little hope in the east; it cannot fight and win a naval war against China because the maritime balance of power is heavily skewed against it no matter how much it spends on modernizing its navy and air force in the aftermath of major purchases from Russia. It also cannot expect the to come to its defense, given that Washington has maintained its neutrality with regard to the territorial disputes in the SCS and is not bound by a treaty to defend Vietnam, as in the case of the the balance of power on land works more in Vietnam’s favor and it is this that will determine its survival. Vietnam has experience fighting major ground wars against superior enemies and has a better chance of neutralizing China’s qualitative and quantitative military advantages than at sea. The war in Ukraine has shown that a small power can forestall a large power’s attacks by employing a porcupine strategy. Instead of deploying modern military equipment, Vietnam can simply procure cheap and mass-produced weapon systems that are easy to hide and use to significantly increase the costs of Chinese ground mountainous topography of northern Vietnam and Laos should also complement Hanoi’s “porcupine” strategy. During China’s invasion in 1979, Vietnam successfully relied on militia and special operatives, who used tunnels and jungle warfare to stop Chinese assaults along the border while the regular army waited behind the front line to confront the exhausted Chinese Vietnam to successfully deter China, it needs to ensure that China does not establish any military outposts in Laos and Cambodia that allow Beijing to launch a multi-front invasion in addition to the China-Vietnam border. This explains why Hanoi is wary of China’s involvement in the refurbishment of a naval base in Cambodia and Chinese investments in debt-crippled Laos. Sri Lanka accepting to host a Chinese research vessel despite India’s objections should caution Vietnam that Beijing can similarly leverage its economic power to security ends in Laos. Vietnam thus should put more effort into courting these two countries with economic rewards and political partners in the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue – the Australia, Japan, and India – should not only support its efforts to balance against China in the SCS but also in Laos and Cambodia. And the support does not have to be military. The Quad can provide economic and infrastructure support to weaken the appeal of China’s economic rewards, a task that Vietnam alone cannot achieve. Importantly, Vietnam needs to maintain good relations with China by committing to a diplomatic solution of the SCS disputes in line with international law. History has shown that if the overall Vietnam-China relationship is good, both sides will be willing to settle their disputes South China Sea surely matters to Vietnam’s economic development, but it will be Laos and Cambodia that determine its survival over the long term. And importantly, protecting Vietnam’s land security first and foremost is the best way for it to protect its sovereignty in the SCS. Continuing to balance against China at sea via naval and air force modernization is a step in the wrong direction if China increasingly poses a threat on land. Vietnam therefore needs to strengthen its army and put Laos and Cambodia back at the center of its national security strategy. A grand strategy for Vietnam should start with a simple question is Vietnam secure enough on land to expand to the sea? If China ever decides to test Vietnam on land, Hanoi should be able to pass the test, as it has successfully done so many times over the past 2,000 years. HANOI, Sept 23 Reuters - Vietnam said on Thursday it is willing to share its experience and information with China for the world's second largest economy's bid to join the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership CPTPP."The CPTPP is an open free trade agreement," Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Le Thi Thu Hang said at a regular press is a member of the CPTPP, which is a free trade agreement that also links Canada, Australia, Brunei, Chile, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru and Singapore."Vietnam will consult with other CPTPP members on the recent requests to join this agreement," Hang said in her comment on a request to join the trade pact from by Giles ElgoodOur Standards The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles. Photograph Source Air Force – Public Domain As its forces mobilized on the borders of Ukraine, reports of substantial numbers of Russia’s draft-vulnerable men fleeing into exile flooded the US news media. Of particular relevance to the recent publication of my documentary memoir, Safe Return Inside the Amnesty Movement for Vietnam War Deserters, are the accounts of battlefield desertions by Russian soldiers following the invasion and now publicized as well with increasing frequency. Far from being despised in the US, these acts of resistance– not just the draft evasions, but the desertions as well – have been held in high esteem as expression of legitimate opposition to the Russian invasion . How, on the other hand, do we suppose the mass of Russian public opinion responds to accounts of Russian soldiers abandoning the battlefield? I suspect that the majority have viewed these acts much the way the US political and military establishments conflated resistance to an unjust war like Vietnam, over the course of which the incidents of desertion numbered in the hundreds of thousands, with how one would have expected those same deserting soldiers to act if their own land, their own homes were being attacked. Instead, in the conflated paradigm, the distinction between aggressive and defensive wars is collapsed, and American deserters were in the main denounced as misfits, shirkers, cowards or even traitors; Russians deserters are likely to be tarred with the same charges. In the meantime, we await how the outcome of the former Wagner commando’s – now a deserter – appeal for asylum in Norway will echo among his comrades in the trenches of Ukraine. The comparison here is imperfect, of course, since the Vietnam War ended five decades ago, and the war in Ukraine drags on, its outcome far from certain. It is likely to be some time before we learn the fates of those who deserted the Russian ranks or fled to foreign soil to evade conscription. We do know something about what befell those who evaded the draft or deserted active service during the long decade of the Vietnam/American War. A movement for amnesty was organized in the US demanding their reintegration and repatriation without penalty. I tell that story in part in my account of the activities of the Safe Return Amnesty Committee. I say in part, because Safe Return occupied one corner, albeit a prominent one, within the larger confines of the amnesty movement, and primarily concentrated its efforts on defending the deserters who had less support than the draft resisters among members of the public not militantly opposed to the war. Still, over the course of the roughly six years that the amnesty movement was active, late 1971 to early 1977, a good deal of public sympathy was eventually stirred for the American deserters. But when President Carter came to pardon draft resisters shortly after his inauguration in 1977, he left the resolution of those still in the active status of desertion to the whims of the military. The same solution was applied to all the dissident GIs already herded through the inquisitions of military justice and turned out with discharges that were less than honorable. Even congenitally centrist observers like the editors of the New Republic were wide eyed in acknowledging something fishy when reporting that those with “bad paper” numbered in the hundreds of thousands. To compound this stigma, a significant sector of legal and journalistic opinion, by no means entirely radical, held that the overwhelming majority of bad discharges involved offenses that would not be criminal in civilian society. Put it this way, that tainted label is not something you want on your resume when you go job hunting. The Vietnam antiwar movement was a qualified success in aiding to end the land war in Southeast Asia, an outcome the dysfunctional state of our own fighting forces – aka the GI Resistance – contributed to significantly. But the scope of antiwar movement’s influence was anything but socially transformative, and thus impotent to power a post-war amnesty movement, albeit partially vindicated in the case of the draft evaders, to transcend the taboos that virtually every society associates with desertion. Not even when the war the deserters fled from was almost universally held to have been at the very least a mistake, and in many minds a war of aggression, no less than the invasion of Ukraine by Russia. The explosive rates of discontent in the ranks during the Vietnam-fueled fiasco did effect at least one obvious consequence. Shortly after the Peace Accords with Vietnam were signed in January 1973, the conscript US Army was replaced with an All-Volunteer Force, an even less democratic, some would say mercenary, arrangement for sharing the burden of military service than the draft. I expand on many of these themes in Safe Return an excerpt of which follows below. The book may be purchased from McFarland Books. Safe Return An Excerpt By late December 1971 I was already calling myself a revolutionary. A whole generation of New Leftists consumed by their opposition to the Vietnam War had come to define themselves in similarly provocative terms. As a state of mind this pretense was not entirely delusional. Only those activists most unhinged from material reality believed the United States was living a genuinely revolutionary moment. But revolutionary zeal had become rampant throughout the politicized youth culture. The axiomatic beliefs shared by many – perhaps most – radicals within this loosely knit, endlessly factious collectivity called the Movement held that the American political system was a sham, and that capitalism as a viable engine to achieve social and economic justice had been totally discredited. Equally in disrepute was liberalism, the idea that the system could be reformed at a steady and gradual pace, an ideological wolf in sheep’s clothing presenting a more comforting appearance for maintaining the status quo. Aim the first blow at the liberals Chairman Mao had advised his own revolutionary cadres; our group wasn’t Maoist, but we certainly had our issues about liberals. In the Movement we were known as CCI, short for Citizens Commission of Inquiry on War Crimes in Vietnam. Founded in the wake of public dismay over the revelation of the My Lai massacre in November 1969, CCI’s goal was to elevate popular awareness to the much greater scope of American atrocities in the war zone. Over the ensuing two years we’d had an amazingly good run, terrific coverage in the press and electronic media, with our two major accomplishments, a National Veterans Inquiry, and the rump Dellums War Crimes hearings on Capitol Hill, both subjects of books from mainstream publishers. We never did convince most Americans beyond radical veteran and Movement circles that war crimes committed by our troops were both widespread and a de facto consequence of the manner in which the war was being conducted, primarily against South Vietnamese civilians. CCI had claimed that American war crimes were a matter of policy inherent in tactics saturation bombing, free fire zones, forced removal of non-combatant civilians and destruction of their villages, and the systematic use of torture in the interrogation of detainees and prisoners. Looking back, I suppose that the most important contribution CCI made to the collective antiwar effort was to provide a forum for disaffected GIs like me who’d had their heads turned around in Vietnam and were inclined to tell that story to anyone on the home front willing to listen. By late 1971 the war crimes issue was a dead letter. Nixon had temporarily succeeded in demobilizing the antiwar movement with his policy of Vietnamization, the gradual withdrawal of American ground forces which, because victory now depended on the backed Saigon regime to battle on without American infantry, the press gruesomely described as “changing the color of the corpses.” It was a savvy political move. Clearly what had come to bother most Americans about the Vietnam War was its utter endlessness, not least the interminable images on the nightly news of GIs being stuffed into body bags and brought home in flag draped coffins. And still the war raged on with a full complement of American air and naval firepower at an intensity that was virtually undiminished despite the overall reduction in troops. Moreover, the field of hostilities would actually expand when both Laos and Cambodia, where covert war had been carried out for years, were openly invaded by American forces or their Army of South Vietnam surrogates. Far from “winding down,” from the Movement perspective the war had merely shifted into a phase that was likely to confuse, if not palliate, the mounting opposition among many so-called Middle Americans whose exhaustion with Vietnam had become a political obstacle to the Nixon administration’s hallucinatory dreams of “keeping” Indochina and sustaining the puppet regime in Saigon. It was in this atmosphere that in late 1971, Tod Ensign and I created Safe Return and entered the lists of the emerging Amnesty Movement. What most disturbed Tod and me, and many others in the not yet depleted ranks of the antiwar movement, was that, behind President Richard Nixon’s smokescreen of troop withdrawals, the public was being lured into a comfortable fiction that the role in the war was – or would soon be – over. Those informed feared worse. Tens of thousands of American troops still engaged in Vietnam combat in the early seventies, but the violence had now expanded openly throughout all of Indochina, with the relentless use of American air power as lethal to local populations as it had ever been. Looking for a new issue to prolong our own antiwar activism, Tod and I quickly shifted our attention to amnesty. We reasoned that a campaign positioned to anticipate a post-war political climate might become an adaptable vehicle for addressing a war vanishing from the headlines, but still far from over. If we had not yet come to see that advocating on behalf of veterans and GIs would define our political work in the years ahead, that trajectory was already evident when we created Safe Return. Thus, our orientation in this emerging movement would not be on behalf of those who’d refused to serve, but those who’d come to resist the war as a result of entering the armed forces. Once in uniform, many would run afoul of a draconian system of command dominated military justice and institutionalized racism, and in epidemic numbers deserted, some to foreign exile. On a wider political canvas, we demanded a universal amnesty without conditions for all those who resisted and were victimized by what we understood as an illegal war. We were certainly unambiguous in our public backing of resistance to the draft in any form, religious, philosophical, political or plain old self-interest. And while we acknowledged the sincerity of those who became conscientious objectors, we were arguing a unique position that would extend the blanket of amnesty over those who didn’t learn what was wrong with the Vietnam War until it was too late to avoid it. This was a class of men not schooled in religious argumentation or moral abstraction; a class of men who found no ready path to evade service through deferments, doctor’s letters, or informed political understanding; a class of men who would do the fighting and dying for 90% of their draft aged peers. There seems little doubt that, among the 10% of the draft age population who served, and the even smaller cohort who did the actual fighting in Vietnam, a majority of them, by any fair measure, came from the lower and marginalized strata of the working class. To the degree the politics we espoused at Safe Return had a consistent ideological edge, it was our espousal of class over moral politics. Over Safe Return’s lifetime, whatever the unique character and content of each campaign or action, our pitch for amnesty possessed a singular and consistent message to portray these many individual acts of defiance to military authority as a collective form of resistance. And such it was, we believed, in the temper of the times. Exactly how we fashioned that story line evolved with each successive episode of our trademark action, the voluntary surrender of a representative deserter under attention-getting circumstances tailored to each returnee an escapade in Paris, a surrender on the floor of a presidential convention, a caper on Capitol Hill, a Welcome Home Christmas Party under the nose of the FBI at a Greenwich Village jazz club.

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