President Barack Obama’s lifting of the arms embargo in Vietnam signifies another step toward war, particularly in the South China Sea against the Chinese bosses, one of two major threats to the U.S. imperialists.
For the working class, this strategic move by the U.S. rulers reflects the longstanding sellout politics of the Vietnamese national bosses. It also underscores the need for a worldwide revolutionary movement fighting directly for communism.
The China Factor
Lifting the embargo allows Vietnam to acquire lethal weapons from the biggest arms merchant in the world. The murderous U.S. imperialists quickly set aside their phony concerns over their new client’s “disregard for human rights.” On the one hand, halting the embargo will wean Vietnam away from its arms dependence on Russia, the other main imperialist rival to the U.S. On the other, the new flow of weapons will fortify Vietnam as a regional counterweight to China: “The increasingly tense situation in the South China Sea, and Vietnam’s growing strategic and economic importance, outweigh U.S. concerns about Hanoi’s admittedly terrible human rights record” (Council on Foreign Relations, 5/24).
For U.S. and Chinese bosses, the South China Sea represents a typical capitalist flashpoint. Both sides are attempting to justify their imperialist aggression with treaties that favor their respective empires. China’s ambitious development strategy, “One Belt, One Road,” seeks to expand sea and land military installations throughout Asia and the Middle East. Vietnam, a regional power and target since the Chinese first conquered it in the 1st century BC, represents a potential impediment to some of China’s grand plans.
Both China and Vietnam, for example, lay claim to the Paracel Islands. In 2014, when China temporarily deployed an oil rig (a structure to drill and service oil wells) in the South China Sea, it led to multiple collisions between the two countries’ ships.
Deep-Water Ports and Choke Points
The lifting of the embargo is the latest U.S. action to exploit historic tensions between Vietnam and China for its own benefit: “Above all, Washington wants greater access to Cam Ranh Bay and other strategic ports on the South China Sea” (Stratfor, 5/27). The Vietnamese port, considered the best deep-water shelter in all of Southeast Asia, has well-established strategic importance. In 1975, it was a U.S. military base during the Vietnam War. In 1979, it was an important Cold War naval base for the Russian fleet. Today, the U.S. hopes Cam Ranh Bay will provide reliable access to the South China Sea, countering China and opening the door for more military coordination with Vietnam.
In fact, Vietnam is one of several smaller countries caught up in the region’s big-power conflict. Through the Trans-Pacific Partnership (a regional trade agreement excluding China), along with a recent military buildup, the U.S. is challenging China in Indonesia, the Philippines, Japan, Malaysia and Brunei.
Indonesia, by proxy of the United States military, controls the Malacca Strait between the Malay Peninsula and the Indonesian island of Sumatra—the transit choke point for 80 percent of China’s oil imports (Business Insider, 2/6). All imperialists understand that whoever controls the oil transit choke points controls the world.
The ‘Final Normalization’ of Imperialism
The lifting of the U.S. arms embargo represents the “final normalization” of relations between two groups of capitalist bosses that began decades ago. It’s also the latest betrayal of the millions of Vietnamese workers who fought and died, in the jungles and the streets, against U.S. imperialists in the 1960s and ‘70s. Vietnam has pursued a capitalist market economy since 1987, when its rulers opened the country to foreign investment. In 1994, the U.S. trade embargo against Vietnam was lifted. Since 1995, when President Bill Clinton restored diplomatic relations, rulers in the two countries have grown steadily closer, with a series of trade agreements and, more recently, a nuclear fuel and technology pact. In 2014, Obama began to relax the arms embargo, a move completed last month. As U.S. companies—from Chevron and Coca-Cola to Intel and Microsoft—pour money into Vietnamese factories and sweatshops, and McDonald’s and Dunkin’ Donuts franchises sprout like weeds in Ho Chi Minh City, business is booming.  In 1975, the U.S. ruling class lost the battle in Vietnam and had to beat a humiliating retreat. But today it appears to have won the imperialist war there, at least for now.
The American War
The imperialists knew they weren’t fighting any ordinary enemy. A working class that arms itself with revolutionary politics and guns, with mass backing from the international masses, is more dangerous to the bosses than any imperialist rival. The U.S. bosses responded with genocide: “By the end of the war, 7 million tons of bombs had been dropped on Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia—more than twice the amount of bombs dropped on Europe and Asia in World War II” (Howard Zinn).
The Vietnam War (or what Vietnamese workers call “the American War”) was an example of how a committed, communist-led army can defeat the largest, technology-driven imperialist army. For all of the Vietnamese communists’ political weaknesses, reflecting the decay of the Soviet Union and, later, the defeat of the Cultural Revolution in China, Vietnam represented a revolutionary class war.
The leadership shown by the working class in Vietnam over decades of resistance to French, Japanese, and U.S. imperialism, inspired millions worldwide. Black soldiers shot and fragged their commanders; some joined the workers’ army in Vietnam.
Back in the U.S., inner-city rebellions by Black workers were challenging the capitalists. Muhammad Ali, heavyweight boxing champion of the world, said, “I ain’t got no quarrel with the Viet Cong. No Viet Cong ever called me n-----.”  In 1964, a fledging group called Progressive Labor Movement, later to develop into the international Progressive Labor Party, initiated and gave leadership to what became the anti-racist movement against the Vietnam War. On May 2, thousands of workers and students marched and rallied in cities nationwide. In New York City, more than a thousand people heard PL speeches about the necessity to smash capitalism. They broke a police ban on demonstrations in midtown Manhattan, winding their way through Times Square to the United Nations, demanding: “U.S. Get Out of Vietnam Now!” It was the first national demonstration against the U.S. imperialist invasion and the forerunner of countless protests in the years ahead.
The result was the Vietnam Syndrome, the working masses’ anti-imperialist sentiment resulting from fightback and anger over working-class casualties in a failed ground war. U.S. bosses have yet to recover. To this day, they’ve been unable to reestablish the military draft they need for the next big ground war.
The bosses are learning that military might doesn’t win wars. Class commitment wins wars. If the U.S. rulers expect to counter China in the South China Sea, a possible step toward a global conflict, they must overcome the Vietnam Syndrome by feeding nationalist, racist propaganda to prepare the working class for perpetual war.
In 1968, after Ho Chi Minh and his forces first agreed to negotiations with the imperialists, the three-year-old PLP made an intensely unpopular criticism of the Vietnamese communist leaders. We said they had taken the reformist, nationalist route, selling out the international working class and any potential for communist revolution.
Nearly five decades later, history has handed down its verdict. Our Party was correct. Fighting imperialism is not enough; we must smash capitalism for all time. No longer a young organization, PLP is now an international party spanning five continents and 27 countries. We still hold high the red flag where the Vietnamese communist leadership dropped it. Soldiers, let’s turn the guns around and join the fight for communism!