They both have a bit in common. They’re both communist Asian states that the US went to war with during the Cold War and did not win. But the messaging regarding the two states is a lot different. DPRK is treated like the worst dictatorship ever, that kills you and your family for even thinking that the Kims are less than gods, whilst also starving. But Vietnam, they say… nothing.
Why isn’t Vietnam demonized like DPRK?
Tens of thousands dead on both sides. An invasion of Vietnam. Because that nation violently opposed the US and Chinese backed Khmer Rogue which had been slaughtering ethnic Vietnamese and conducting cross boarder raids, among countless other horrors.
I will happily defend China against any and all western propaganda. But to pretend the Vietnamese state has no reason to be suspicious of China is ahistorical.
Of course Vietnam is well aware of the brutality of the second Indochina war. You don’t need you to remind them. They are also well aware of the brutality of American and Chinese backed groups during the third Indochina war. Moreover, they are aware of the material conditions they find themselves in.
To describe the Vietnamese people as pathetic because they dare not conform to your simplistic ideas of foreign policy, is one of the most disgusting things I have seen on this site. To think that you know better than they do, reeks of chauvinism.
stop pretending one month-long border war is equivalent to a decades long invasion and occupation that killed millions. Vietnam (and China) cozying up with Americans is their most shameful moments in their entire histories. In fact, China’s invasion was a result of them siding with the Khmer Rouge against the USSR and alongside America. This deeply shameful act of China’s was due to their failure to uphold anti-imperialist solidarity, and now we are risking repeating the same thing. Failure begets more failure. Nationalist resentments are used as wedges by the colonizers.
No investigation. No right to speak.
You are profoundly ignorant of the history involved here, and as a result of that ignorance you are coming to simplistic and childish conclusions.
You will owe an apology to the people of Vietnam for calling them Pathetic. You will owe an apology to yourself, for letting your arrogance and your ignorance make you look like a fool.
Vietnamese people have a higher approval rating of America than Americans do. There is a deep brain disease, intellectual capture and failure to educate happening here.
Yes I’m sure not accepting your simple equivocating that genocidal imperialist occupation and war is equal to (or worse than) one short-lived border skirmish is due to my ignorance. We have to use thought terminating cliches and failures of logic or we are being “ignorant”
Well thank God some presumably white dude on an English-speaking website is here to explain to The Savage Asian what their opinions are supposed to be.
I’m Arab and I’m repeating the position of the DPRK, which I admire greatly for their principles. The two nations are a stark black-and-white example of the dangers of revisionism and working alongside imperialists
Being Arab does not preclude you from being profoundly ignorant of the 100,000 dead Vietnamese troops of the third Indochina war. It does not Grant you special insight into a regional conflict that only ended in 1991.
To call the country pathetic because they do not align with your simplistic prescriptions is chauvinist. You can quote the dprk, and I could just as easily dig up Soviet quotes. The fact remains that the only people in a position to criticize Vietnamese foreign policy, or Chinese economic policy, are the citizens within those socialist States.
To assume that you, from thousands of miles away, have the right to sit in judgment of an actually existing socialist state, is at best arrogant.
So goes internationalist anti-imperialism into the grave of squabbling nations
It wasn’t a border skirmish, it was an explicitly punitive invasion, but the larger issue is China backing the Khmer Rouge, who did much worse violence to Vietnam.
Bad news for you, that’s a wash because Americans and the CIA also backed the Khmer Rouge. This was a huge failure and mistake on China’s part, a crime even, one they have apologized for. It’s still nothing in comparison to the American invasion, and I’m tired of pretending they are equal things on two sides of a scale and they wash each other out. They don’t.
Of more importance, the errors of the sino-soviet split are being repeated here between Vietnam and China. They both run to America when spurned, which is the exact problem. Their failure of solidarity and to stand together is the problem. They need to advance ideologically to the point where they stop doing this and stand together against imperialism.
DPRK and Cuba fight in solidarity with other struggles against the capitalists and imperialists. They get it. Vietnam and China squabbling is an indication and warning that there’s something rotten in these state departments (liberalism) and they don’t get it. They need to become as deeply ideologically advanced as the DPRK :)
Let’s not forget, the sino-soviet split happened because of ideological failures of both parties. It was first the Kruschevite revisionism and liberalization that angered Mao, and then Mao’s failure by cozying up with the American imperialists and squabbling with the USSR in geopolitical struggles, often backing really terrible people like the Mujahideen. One side made a failure of principles, and then the other, in response made an even bigger one. This is repeated if China’s unprincipled invasion of Vietnam actually creates animosity akin or greater than that against Americans, enough that there’s questions about who they would side with in a conflict and if they could be part of America’s containment strategy. There needs to be solidarity here.
There’s no need to be smarmy
Obviously I’m aware the US backed the Khmer Rouge, my point isn’t to demonstrate some kind of even scorecard between the US and China, no such thing exists, but simply that China also acted with incredible malice toward Vietnam in the past and it makes sense that Vietnam would begrudge them for that.
Could you show me their apology?
Regardless, I do agree that both countries should be more dedicated to anti-imperial solidarity. I’m not saying Vietnam is right, just that their reaction makes sense.
There is a scoreboard, it’s zero sum. Vietnam will either support China or support America (or remain neutral, tacitly support America) in the upcoming cold or hot wars between the two. That is the scoreboard, and apparently for a lot of people in Vietnam and the leadership of the Vietnamese communist party it’s a pretty close thing, or Americans are even ahead. That it’s up in question at all is a problem for me and shows some pretty high level failures of leadership and education, and it’s pretty insulting to the millions who were killed by the Americans to just give into many of the conditions the Americans wanted and lose the peace, to allow American media and money to manipulate your economy and society and warp it into a pro-American outlook.
I was wrong about China apologizing actually, they have downplayed it and tried to make diplomatic amends in general with Vietnam but they haven’t specifically made an apologetic statement on that war that I can find. I think China should do so, it would benefit them to admit they were wrong in that instance and try to pay reparations. They shouldn’t leave open gaps that the colonizers can wedge and exploit.
Sorry for being smarmy. I don’t really mean it it’s just how I talk.