SINOGRAPH Vietnam's Dr Strangelove
at war with the
Mandarins By Francesco Sisci
BEIJING - After the recent publication of
a Chinese document [1], many people sent new ones.
Most were not interesting; one, however, caught my
attention. The person who gave it to me is a
Westerner who had just come back from Hanoi.
There, after a business meeting, a junior
official fumbled around his desk, took some
papers, made them into a ball, and threw them in
the wastebasket whispering "nonsense". He missed,
and the ball rolled onto my friend's feet. He
picked it up and pocketed it while the official
turned to look out the window. He then kindly
translated it from Vietnamese for me.
They
are apparently the outbursts of an old Vietnamese
war veteran, possibly just released from some
mental institution. It is
a raving mind, a Doctor
Strangelove, like many around the world at all
times. It is impossible to take the arguments
seriously, but they make a nice joke, and in this
spirit I wanted to present it - for a laugh after
a long day's work.
Here they are,
reproduced in full:
You, youngsters, must
not waver, not release your grip, and most of all
not be scared by China. The contrast between our
relative sizes makes it the perfect occasion and
time for our vendetta. The Chinese have forgotten
the basics of strategy despite their pride in
their strategic tradition. They are trapped in the
South China Sea, and they are going to lose anyway
while we are going to win. It is only ours to
lose, so you do not have to give up. You have to
insist, and press ahead - then we can get our
revenge for their 1979 invasion.
China's
decision to organize military drills in the South
China Sea and step up the level of confrontation
in the region guarantees their failure, provided
we do not give in and respond in kind. We have, in
fact, to aim for a military clash with them, the
larger the better, and then we will win in any
scenario. The general situation has dramatically
changed in the past couple of months since the
Philippines decided to challenge China's role at
sea. The Philippines is a former American colony,
still close to the US heart. And, unlike us, its
people are not considered quarrelsome. If they
react, this may be proof enough to the Western
world that the Chinese have gone too far. Then
this is our moment to step in and stop being
pushed around by the Chinese navy, which captures
our fishing vessels and holds our sailors for
ransom.
If our navy loses a clash with
them, we will have a political victory anyway.
China's aggressive and bellicose behavior will
scare everybody in the world. It will prove that
their theory of "Peaceful Development" is a ruse
for gullible foreigners; both domestic and foreign
capital will start to flee China; suspicion will
grow surrounding China; and the economic and trade
atmosphere with China will worsen. It is clear
that China, being the bigger country, has greater
responsibility to maintain peace around its
borders. If it doesn't manage to do so with us,
small Vietnam, what can it do with Japan, India,
or Russia? Everybody will see they are the
warmongers, they will be scared, and we will be
the victims to be comforted and helped by
everybody.
If we win the clash, we will
prove that they are just a paper tiger. We will
still have a political victory - plus a military
success. We will be the David who has triumphed
over the ferocious Goliath, and the consequences
for China will be pretty much the same as if we
lose.
This is the strategy we adopted
against America during our war of resistance
against them. We knew they would inevitably
politically lose the war, despite any military
victory, as long as we managed to show the people
of the world - and the American people as well -
that we were fighting for the liberation of our
country and nothing else. Similarly, now we can
show that we are fighting for a part of the sea
very close to our coasts and far from Chinese
shores. This geographical proximity, reinforced by
our small size, may prove to the world our right
to that sea.
In sum, we will win in any
case and get the benefits China enjoyed with their
invasion against us in 1979. After that Chinese
attack, conducted at the behest of the Americans,
China proved it was squarely in the Western camp.
China showed to be ready to take concrete actions
to stem the Soviet penetration in Asia by trying
to stymie us while we were involved in our effort
to liberate Cambodia from the hands of the
nefarious and pro-China Khmer Rouge. China was
rewarded for that attack with a political green
light from the US for investment and the sale of
technology. The following flow of investments
enabled China's early phase of development. The
support for investment basically never stopped,
not even after the 1989 Tiananmen crackdown.
China's growth and development would have been
impossible without that early go-ahead.
In
other words, the 1979 war opened the gates for
China's development. Without that war, development
would have been impossible or very difficult.
The lesson was: fight with the US and you
will be rewarded; go against the US and you will
be politically punished. Yet, the Chinese seem to
have forgotten that lesson or simply do not
understand the new general political atmosphere
around China. Everybody in Asia is scared about
China's growth. China's economy is now bigger than
Japan's, and this is a warning sign for the whole
world - including America. There are growing
voices calling for a coordinated effort to contain
China. Yet there is no decision on what to do, as
there is still doubt about China's real intentions
and strategy. A clash with tiny Vietnam would show
the world that China is truly aggressive and can't
be trusted.
All of this would be to our
advantage: Before the world, we would be the ones
who stopped mighty China - just like 40 years ago
we stopped the Asian expansion of imperialistic
America.
The time is ripe for this.
In recent days, even the Philippines came
out arguing against China's encroachment in the
area. It started calling that sea the West
Philippine Sea and called for US involvement the
area. After a clash, the US will have to decide to
take sides, and it certainly can't side against
its former colony, the Philippines; nor can it
side with the gigantic rising local bully, China,
which is intimidating its small neighbors with
military drills, as if its massive size or its
fast economic growth were not scary enough.
If the US will then side with us, the
momentum of China's fast economic growth will have
to halt as very few people in the world will want
to do business with a country bullying its
neighbors - especially before it has the largest
economy in the world. The message will be: What
will China do to its neighbors, business partners,
and really anybody when becomes even more
powerful? It will be a worse bully than America
without even the veneer or pretense of human
rights. Who would want this kind of future for the
world? Then global investment will move somewhere
else, and we shall be rewarded for our pivotal
role in stopping the growth of the ugly giant.
This future is within our grasp.
To prevent this future, China should
organize a large regional initiative to solve the
South China Sea problems and do it modestly,
without a sense of wounded pride. It should also
move its claim from historical to legal grounds,
which are more understandable to the world.
China's leaders should beg the Americans to stop
us, or anybody stirring trouble with provocative
actions. But by doing this, they would have
everybody, including the US, officially involved
in an area they claim as theirs. This is something
they are unwilling to do because it would increase
foreign involvement in what they believe to be
internal affairs.
In fact, by renouncing
this strategy and remaining basically hostage to
different domestic constituencies vying for
political turf, they fail to grasp the essence of
modern politics. Here the old divide between
internal and international affairs grows smaller
by the day for everybody - especially for larger
players like America or China. By trying to keep
domestic something that is objectively
international, they fall into a trap from which
there is no way out.
Moreover, China
misses another important point. All countries are
looking for American protection against the rise
of a new and still mysterious China. Despite all
qualms and doubts one might have about America,
the US is still the old, known power - everybody
is acquainted with it. Therefore, everybody will
seek the US protection against secretive newcomer
China. Then the US, despite all the possible
goodwill it might feel toward China, cannot just
cast away all other countries' interests and fears
in order to defend Beijing. If some small,
peaceful country - one formerly part of America
itself, as a colony - shouts out against China,
how can the US ignore it and stay aloof, just
because, say, in this controversy old friend
Taiwan sides with Beijing?
For this
reason, we have a unique chance to change the
world and even become the driving player in the
region. We only have to be determined and brave,
and we will be rewarded just as we managed to
defeat the French and the Americans.
(Please do not believe for one minute
there is a gram of truth in all of this - it is
just a hoax.)
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Office: Unit B, 16/F, Li Dong Building, No. 9 Li Yuen Street East,
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