I didn’t expect to find much visible trace of the American war in Vietnam. The Vietnamese are too hard-bitten to dwell on it, and they’ve sanded away all but the outcroppings of history—the museums, the memorials. As one Vietnamese acquaintance pointed out, “The Americans weren’t here all that long.” Indeed, as many will tell you, their history is marked far more deeply by struggles with that other large country—China. This month marks an anniversary that most Americans have no reason to remember: On February 17, 1979, Vietnam had barely settled its war with America when China invaded, sparking a border war that claimed at least sixty thousand lives.
But China and Vietnam are pragmatic, and, since then, cross-border trade has boomed. In fact, it has flourished so well that some in Washington these days inevitably point to newly built Chinese-owned factories in the Vietnamese countryside, and Chinese cargo ships idling in Southeast Asian ports as reasons to counter China’s growing influence in Southeast Asia.
It’s more instructive, perhaps, to look at far older measures. Chinese footsteps are ancient and unmistakable in Vietnam: Chinese characters, which the Vietnamese used in government and education for nearly two thousand years (until the early twentieth century), are still etched into faded facades; gabled Chinese-style roofs still dot the horizon; a few pagodas even endure in downtown Hanoi. My point is that the Chinese were here long before we were, and, for better or worse, they have remained long after we left. The Vietnamese have lived with them as the dominant power in Southeast Asia for thousands of years, and, eventually, I expect, we must, too. This is not about ceding ground or values; it is about recognizing what Asian government officials usually describe to me as “natural spheres of influence.” A generation ago, American war planners made the mistake of believing that short-term Communist sympathies would unite China and Vietnam. We were wrong, and it tragically misshaped our policy in Vietnam. Today, we stand a better chance of promoting a peaceful balance of power in East Asia by acknowledging China’s natural advantages—and limitations.