Vietnam and the U.S.: 100 Years of Missed Opportunities
December 12, 2007
On Nov. 29, 1907, Jacob Elon Conner arrived in Saigon as the first American consul to Vietnam. To mark the centennial, Kenneth Fairfax, the current consul general in Ho Chi Minh City, compared the 100-year relationship between the countries to the effects of a snowball: it started small, but as it rolls downhill, it grows and gathers strength.
Fairfax was right on the image, but he omitted the impact of a snowball: it can bury anyone standing at the bottom. Vietnam today runs that precise risk.
If the past is prologue to the future, Vietnamese should not take too much comfort in the current American embrace. The 100-year history of this relationship has proved utterly detrimental to Vietnam, a litany of missed opportunities, compounded by miscalculations, aggravated by perennial misunderstanding and occasional misdeeds, mostly at the expense of the Vietnamese. And this new century doesn’t bode much better.
In the spring of 1919, a young Vietnamese patriot named Nguyen Tat Thanh, better known later as Ho Chi Minh, petitioned U.S. President Woodrow Wilson for the independence of Vietnam from its colonial master, France. Other leaders from colonized Asia and Africa made the same requests. Wilson, who preached the “self determination” of all peoples, ignored them.
Following the Japanese defeat in August 1945, Ho Chi Minh jumped at the opportunity to declare independence. He also sent multiple telegrams to President Truman, begging for recognition; as in 1919, they were never answered.
Instead, the U.S., under both Truman and Eisenhower, supported the French in their re-colonization of Indochina. It took the Vietnamese until 1954 to defeat France. The Geneva Conventions that followed provided a temporary partition of the country for two years and a national referendum in 1956 to unify Vietnam. Knowing that Ho Chi Minh would have won, the U.S. supported then South Vietnamese President Ngo Dinh Diem to scuttle the referendum, thus setting the stage for the final phase of the war.
Another two decades of instability, miseries and killing followed. Vietnam lost between two and three million people on both sides, and a couple million more are still suffering the consequences of Agent Orange.
In April 1975, Communist forces, under the leadership of Ho Chi Minh since 1930, finally achieved what they set out for: an independent and unified Vietnam. But at what price? And what if the United States had been a little smarter, a little more empathetic and a little more “American”?
Next week: U.S.-Vietnam in the 21st century
Vu-Duc Vuong is a teacher and writer in the Bay Area (vuduc.vuong@gmail.com).
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5 Responses to “Vietnam and the U.S.: 100 Years of Missed Opportunities”
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Thank you for this well-written “alternative” viewpoint to the colonial occupations in Vietnam. Too often the war’s history has been marred by biased and ignorant perceptions perpetuated by South Vietnamese refugees living overseas. As an American-born child of a refugee family, I’ve struggled to learn the precise truth behind the United States’ involvement in Vietnam and the subsequent crutch it became to an unwittingly proselytized peoples. I find it ironic how the refugee community adamantly preaches freedom, yet any objectionable viewpoints to established refugee beliefs are automatically labeled as “communist” and therefore silenced. Thank you, Mr. Vuong, for being that rare voice. And now I wait for the protests to start.
Congratulations and felicitations to Mr. Vuong and Mr. Nguyen, above.
While “ladder-climbing” and “house-slave” types eager to feed at the Establishment trough, especially the political aspirants, will no doubt vocalize their “anti-Commie” chants, it is encouraging that “refugee” Vietnamese include the above gentlemen.
Yes, indeed, THREE millions, including two of civilians?, not to mention 50-thou of “our own” in the idiot pursuit of perceived realpolitiks.
America has been “backing the wrong horse” from Banana Republic days, and appears to be nearing the zenith of stupidity with the Bush/neocon insistence that Iran needs “nuking,” in the face of that recent NIE report.
God help the APA majority if a minority of said refugees turn out to be an “Asian” version of the anti-Castro mob in Florida.
Frank Eng
P.S.: Congrats to AsianWeek too for publishing such as the above.
Thank you so much Mr. Vu-Duc Vuong. I am in my mid- 40s, still trying to learn from the older folks and also trying to teach the younger ones as well, but sometimes it is hard to put the pieces together. You have documented important information which in “Vietnam, A History” the author also mentions. Currently, the US military Pacific chief of staff is visiting VN to discuss regional security, etc.; and although the two events are not related, China is forming its local administration to run Paracel Islands and may be Spratly Islands will be next, the later event makes me wonder. What will happen? Will it be a war between VN and China? If so, should I go back and put my differences on a side and join the current government? Who will be the foreign supper power that VN can lean on?
Thank you for the alternative perspective. Too many young Vietnamese don’t know this part of history and have been fooled by the “truth” we were taught in school.
[…] you for the alternative perspective (“Vietnam and the U.S.: 100 Years of Missed Opportunities,” Giang Ho, Dec. 7). Too many young Vietnamese don’t know this part of history and have been […]