Viet-Sino feud erupts

I never had an inkling that the deep-seated feud between the Vietnamese and the Chinese could erupt once more shortly after Vietnam trounced the Americans from the Asian mainland.

But not long after the Americans had fled Vietnam with their tails between their legs, the thing which had been predicted to me by American CIA personnel soon flared up.

For a while I suspected that the Americans withdrew from Vietnam but with the US forces assuring that their weapons and sophisticated war stocks were left in the hands of the veterans of the Vietnam war. To be sure for use by their erstwhile traditional rivals.

Soon after, the traditional rivalry between Vietnam and China surged up and called China to invade Vietnam with an armed force of some 400,000 men.

Now, that was not just a military exercise. Vietnamese leaders were just as curious as those of other countries which had their eyes trained on the overall concept of the mainland by China in the east. That’s the history between the two countries.

Combat-trained, the Vietnamese army retreated into the jungle vastness of their country and resorted to the same tradition as they had employed against the Americans, hidden roadways as well as underground places.

That is why, even if Filipinos entertain the idea that China can steamroll its way into the Asian scene without a second thought and grab what they want, they would have a second thought about the whole enterprise.

The Vietnamese military threw back the legions of China and restored their drive over their frontier with the Chinese.

It was a bloody encounter which China had not tried again. Remember they involved a 400,000 military force of the Chinese Liberation Army.

So, it was not just an ordinary skirmish. It was a full-scale war masked from public view by the crushing defeat of the US military and the 38th that it was before it finally succumbed to the combined Vietnam and the Vietnamese Army.

Of course, Gen. Giapp had authored the signal victory of the Vietnamese Army. But the is no gainsaying that Gnugen Giap is the sole military strategist of the Vietnamese military.

In short, although reportedly surrounded by weak states, still I think that the geopolitical realistic indicate that the Chinese may find themselves confronted by the pinpricks of the many weak states around its periphery.

So I suppose one must be more forward-looking than what we are now – comfronting the prospects of a crushing defeat by the Chinese military might.*

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