Our economic ties with Viet Nam are very deep, and getting deeper ever year. Not only do they buy a lot of our stuff, but they are a huge source of cheap labor for our industry. Further trade and military cooperation with Vietnam means we not only drive a wedge between them and their major ally, Russia, but we offer both protection for them, and an advance bastion for us, against their traditional enemy, China.

Obama sees the Western Pacific as a theater of future rivalry and conflictw ith China, and is working very quietly, but deliberately, trying to establish an American NATO-type treaty organization in the Pacific Rim, anchored in Australia-New Zealand, and including Japan, the Phillipines, Singapore, South Korea, Indonesia and Viet Nam.

“…On the other hand, there are also hopes that the United States can help Vietnam more by lifting the arms embargo completely.

The Obama administration seems willing to do this. Its positive attitude toward Vietnam was also highlighted in the visit of U.S. Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter to Vietnam in 2015, and the U.S.-Vietnam Joint Vision Statement on Defense Relations. At the same time, Vietnam and the United States are negotiatiing on U.S. use of Cam Ranh Bay, considered the finest deepwater port in Southeast Asia. These moves are part of a general warming in Vietnam-U.S. relations.”

A return of the US Navy to Cam Ranh Bay will do much to frustrate Chinese ambitions in the South China Sea. We already have big bases in Japan, and the Phillipines and Korea. And we our stationing advance troop elements in Australia.

The Domino Theory and WMDs had one thing in common, they reflected fundamentally mistaken priorities on American interests: godless Russian Communism and a Clash of Civilizations with Islam. All that really matters is money, trade, and expansionist aggression.