{"id":60135,"date":"2015-06-01T10:27:18","date_gmt":"2015-06-01T14:27:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/?p=60135"},"modified":"2015-06-01T10:27:18","modified_gmt":"2015-06-01T14:27:18","slug":"arms-deals-with-vietnam","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/?p=60135","title":{"rendered":"Arms deals with Vietnam"},"content":{"rendered":"

China is claiming much more of the South China Sea by building artificial islands and placing weapons systems on them. That has spurred other nations in the area to do the same, including Vietnam. It looks like Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter is visiting our former adversary to finalize some arms deals for defensive weapons in light of the Chinese expansion, according to the Associated Press<\/a>. <\/p>\n

Last October the U.S. partially lifted its ban on weapons sales to Vietnam to boost the country’s ability to defend itself in the South China Sea. Only the sale of lethal maritime security and surveillance capabilities are allowed on a case-by-case basis, including boats and air assets based on an evaluation of Vietnam’s needs. But to date no weapons have flowed to Vietnam.<\/p>\n

U.S. Sen. John McCain said Saturday that the U.S. should gradually lift the weapons ban on Vietnam, amid heightened tensions with China over the reclamation projects.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

It’s almost funny that it was Nixon’s relations with China that brought North Vietnam to the negotiation table to end US involvement in the war in Vietnam, and now we’re arming Vietnam to get some control over Chinese expansion, and it was Chinese troops that bled to stop Vietnamese incursions into Laos in the late 70s and put an end to the “Domino Effect” that US troops went to Vietnam to stop in the 60s.<\/p>\n

So, are you confused? You’re not the only one. From Bloomberg<\/a>;<\/p>\n

Some older members of the Vietnamese Politburo, who recall the U.S. as the enemy, are skeptical of a complete turnabout. And while Vietnam is wary of Chinese domination, China remains its top trading partner and an important source of capital.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is a piece of complex systems engineering,\u201d said Dean Cheng, an Asian affairs specialist at the Heritage Foundation in Washington, D.C. \u201cThere are many, many moving parts, not just China and the U.S.,\u201d he said. \u201cThe whole area is very much in flux.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Neither the White House, nor John McCain, are keen on tying humans rights issues to the arms deals with Vietnam, unlike Jimmy Carter or Ronald Reagan who would have made it a key point instead.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

China is claiming much more of the South China Sea by building artificial islands and placing … Arms deals with Vietnam<\/span>Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":60136,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[237,9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-60135","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-big-pentagon","category-foreign-policy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60135","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=60135"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60135\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/60136"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=60135"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=60135"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=60135"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}