 Good afternoon. We are back with Think Tech. We are talking about Asia and today we're doing a continuation of a prior program that I started. My name is Mark Shclough. I am the host of Law Across the Sea and today we're reviewing and going back and talking a little bit more about Vietnam with Chuck Crumpton. Chuck is an attorney although he likes to be known more as a mediator and an arbitrator and he has spent a lot of time in Vietnam postgraduate and professionally and has made many contacts in Vietnam and has continued them to this day and has learned a lot about it, worked there, lived there and really has a passion for Vietnam and we're going to ask him, put him on the spot a little bit, ask him some questions about Vietnam and Chuck, good to see you again. Welcome. Mark, a pleasure. Good to be back with you. You know Vietnam has, it's in the news a lot now and last time we spoke about this about a month ago on Law Across the Sea seemed to me that Vietnam's kind of coming out of its shell and is having a little more relations with the outside world than during the times when we grew up. What's going on with Vietnam? What's happening over there politically and within the country, with its people? What's happening? A large and compound set of questions. I said I'd put you on the spot. Yeah, well I think it's kind of been evolving in the sense that Vietnam has always envisioned itself as having an important role, a constructive role and a different and very independent role in Southeast Asia. They recognize that with China that nearby and with the long history that Vietnam has with China including thousand years of Chinese occupation and some continuing tensions and strains politically and militarily and then things that have been going on in what Vietnam and other Southeast Asian countries call the East Sea, China calls South China Sea. There are just a lot of reasons for Vietnam to enable its relationships to become more public, more visible, and more connected on a larger and more international scale. So it's kind of a little bit like, they're not like a youth who's growing into adulthood because Vietnam has over 4,000 years of culture. They've dealt with the Chinese, the French, the Americans, the Russians, and many, many others. So they're certainly not unsophisticated, but they recognize their size, their history, their economic and political background and some of the things that may restrict or limit their ability to have influence internationally. And I think they're a very relationship building country, both at a personal level among the people and Vietnam itself as a country. And it's a very different approach to international politics than most Western countries use. It is, however, when you think about it, the approach to politics and economics and military relations that really makes the most sense for sustainability because when a country has independence, it is threatened. It depends upon and survives and thrives by those relationships with its allies, with its neighbors, with those who share core values that transcend some of the conflicts that may exist on more quantitatively measured labels like economic, political, and things like that. So I don't know, I'm not trying to beat around the bush, but it's saying in as few words as possible. I think Vietnam is sensing its time as a significant, although small, size role player coming. And they've prepared themselves for that literally since the end of the military activities during the American War in Vietnam. And that's 41 years now. So it is not a youth, it's not a teenager. This is a middle-aged, growing entity that's entering the stage with the experience and sophistication and history of someone who knows itself, who knows its neighbors, who reads people and other countries and organizations pretty well and is very well geared for survival and for sharing and teaching things that can be of huge benefit to younger countries, including the U.S. Well, you know, I sense that both the U.S. and China are focusing on Vietnam. I'm not sure why, and I kind of want to, I like you to tell me, because you say it's a small country. Now, you know, what little I know is that China has often been at war with Vietnam in the past. The U.S. was at war in Vietnam recently compared to China. And yet there seems to be, maybe that's the relationships that you were talking about, but there also seems to be some friendliness towards both and some caution towards both. What is the feeling, I mean, why, first of all, I guess I want to ask you, why is the U.S. and why are China both competing for Vietnam's attention? What's that about? Multipart, answer that. I mean, that's a really astute perception. And I think a very accurate one, recognizing that actually even after the end of the American War, military hostilities, China actually had some military incidents with Vietnam, some border incidents after that. So things have not been comfortable on the military front or very much on the political front. And yet at the same time, you're exactly right about the duality in that Chinese businesses are extremely active and influential and large in Vietnam. There are those who think that the primary objective for that of China is to wield a level of influence that would enable them to exert a lot of pressure on Vietnam's choices and directions politically, economically. My personal response, I'm kind of biased. Good luck with that. They tried for a thousand years and then they left. They've had some military skirmishes and that hasn't gone so well for them. They're doing what they're doing in the South China Sea and they're getting away with a lot over there, which is interesting because the countries that have the political and military force to exert some counter influence to that are decidedly and consciously and intentionally not doing so. First and foremost among those, the US. There are those who say the US is so intimidated by and afraid of China and offending China that it doesn't want to do anything to put them off. I don't think we can totally discredit that. If you look at the conduct of China in the East Sea, the territorial acquisition, what has now been found by the International Court as utterly lacking in legal or historical basis, we haven't seen that kind of legally unjustified and historically unjustified expansion since World War II with Hitler and some occasions by Japan. But to simply, and it's not even turning the other cheek, I mean it's literally intentionally standing back and not taking a position. Why would the US not support the Philippines in the arbitration given the common interest between the US and the Philippines and certainly common interest that the US shares with other Asian countries? With respect to Vietnam specifically, they have an interest. I think it's, what is the Paracels, is that correct? Right. And the Spratlys. Spratlys. Right. And others. Those are islands off Vietnam and I guess there's there may be oil-rich areas and that may that have something to do with all of this. And by the way, from what I've read about Vietnam, they've never been afraid of the Chinese per se. That's true. They've always fought and they never been afraid of the United States. That's true too. The French or the Russians. They've always fought. They might have been outgunned, but they never back down. Right. From what I could see. Right. And so unlike us, the Vietnamese don't invade. Right. They protect their own people, their land, their country. If somebody comes in and attempts to assert control in ways that are not supportive of the best interests of the people and country of Vietnam, Vietnam will resist in whatever ways it finds effective. Sometimes it will just outlast them. Sometimes it will actually militarily defeat them as they did France. Sometimes they will outlast them culturally as they do with the Chinese over a thousand-year period. Develop their own language and some of those things. I want to talk a little bit about the the South China Sea or the EC or whatever it's called. But before I go there, so we have China trying to continue our art to get great influence in Vietnam of some sort. Perhaps. And the U.S. has this pivot towards Asia as it's called and maybe they're trying to get trade or in some way have more influence and that mostly seems to be from Obama and maybe his his background with Asia seems to be pushing towards that from what I can see. So you have them those two great powers competing for influence and trade perhaps and and I think that I can understand that. Now what what does Vietnam want from China and the U.S. What what is I mean is it just playing them off against each other or is there more to it what what's that that is another astute perception. We need to remember historically that Ho Chi Minh's plan at the end of the American war was to essentially play the Chinese off against the Russians to ally with the Americans and to rebuild and redevelop the country with the Americans participation and support not as dominant one way or the other but as partners. And people forget that Vietnam's Declaration of Vietnam's Constitution and essentially Bill of Rights Declaration of Independence draw very heavily from ours and that Ho Chi Minh during his time in France in Paris was extremely strongly influenced by Hamilton and Franklin and Payne and the American thinkers of the 18th century and their thoughts about the connection between equality and independence as the source of sustainability of a country. And Ho Chi Minh was wise enough to see the common ground with socialism and the ability to use that common ground to coexist even with Russian communism for a sufficient period of time to become free of it and to wave goodbye to the Russians as they had to the French the Americans and the Chinese before. So your perception about sort of playing off and striving for their own independence I think is spot on from the history of Vietnam from the leadership that has been given and from the things that have worked for them in the past. What's interesting about that is the flip side of that coin is that I believe Vietnam being a relationship building oriented country culturally and hopefully not politically as well is recognizing that in order to do that it needs to build the best relations possible with its own neighbors and through that build to the larger connections to the Western powers U.S. Europe Australia some of the others. And it's it's a step process. And so you see Vietnam for the last 10 15 or more years having spent a great deal of concerted subtle under the radar effort building relationships in ASEAN the Association of Southeast Asian Nations and one of the hopeful objectives of that would be to balance the approach to allocating responsibilities territories resources in the East Sea. One of the things standing in the way of that at this point in time and part of it simply timing but part of it is clearly Chinese strategy in ASEAN right now Laos has the chairmanship and while Vietnam really wanted to be able to come into the last ASEAN meeting and come out with a fairly strong statement in support of the ASEAN nation's rights and interests in the E.C. because China has such huge influence and control over Laos and Cambodia in ASEAN they were able to block that they did not get the unanimity they needed and therefore the consensus that they needed to be able to achieve that. So the competition is going on at a political level through China's influence and power over Laos and Cambodia in which their economic interests are so powerful that those countries and their leadership really don't legitimately feel they have much choice but to go along. And what I what I've learned here is that Vietnam may be following Ho Chi Minh's vision in all of this and there is a perhaps a cultural as well as a political need for independence and this is a and that's what this strategy is all about and that makes a lot of sense to me and we'll talk a little bit more about this after the next break. Okay all right. Hello and I'm Patrick Bratton please join me for Global Connections every Thursday at 1 p.m. where we talk with a variety of guests about various international issues historical issues both here in Hawaii and abroad range from security human rights ethics and all sorts of other things so please join me I look forward to talking with you and seeing some of my guests. Aloha I'm Kaui Lucas host of Hawaii is my mainland every Friday here on Think Tech Hawaii. I also have a blog of the same name at kauilukas.com where you can see all of my past shows. Join me this Friday and every Friday at 3 p.m. Aloha. Aloha How you doing? Welcome to Iwachi Talk. I'm here at Gordo the Texar on Think Tech Hawaii and I'm here with my good old buddy Andrew the security guy. Hey everybody how you doing? Aloha. Thanks for watching. Good to have Andrew here in the house. Please join us every Friday from 1 to 1.30 and follow us up on YouTube and remember as we say at the end of every show. How you doing? How you doing? Okay you know I learned something today about Ho Chi Minh and I always knew that he was influenced by American patriots and yet I didn't know what you've just told us about his ideas about keeping independent and maintaining the independence of Vietnam and that's enlightening. Now how does you know you can be independent but you are on the mainland of Asia surrounded by China, Laos, Cambodia and I mean then you got Taiwan, Thailand and we'll talk about the the sea in a minute but how does all that independence work with those countries? I think one of the most important things to understand to me about Vietnam is the independence and the interdependence are yin and yang. Within the independence is interdependence. Within the interdependence is independence. An example is Ho Chi Minh himself in his strategy. He not only wanted to maintain Vietnam's independence from both Russia and China despite being considered a communist country. He wanted to at the same time ally and partner with the least communist country in the Western world which is the U.S. That takes relationship building skills that are at a consonant level. That's the kind of person and kind of leader he was and the other things remember about him. What president and leader of his country has ever been thought of by his people as Uncle Ho? It is a familial relationship. He is a friend in and within the family of every single person in Vietnam. He's Uncle Ho. Whether you deride it or believe in it and revere it, Uncle Ho is Uncle Ho. He's family. Right. And I also hear you saying without saying is that this conscious strategy of Ho Chi Minh wasn't seen by the West or was ignored or not taken advantage of because here we have the French fighting in Vietnam and then the U.S. and blunders really when you come down to it. Perhaps there would have been another route here. Am I reading you correctly? No you are. People forget that at the end of the French being militarily vanquished in Vietnam and getting out. De Gaulle immediately after that gave a speech in Nampen directed specifically at the Americans saying don't make this same mistake. We are not good at listening to other people at paying attention to them at respecting their cultures. We have been for many, many decades viewed by many countries if not most in the world as the ugly Americans because when we come to their countries we don't learn their language, we don't learn their culture, we don't respect their language or their culture. We expect them to cater to ours. We want things in English, we want McDonald's burgers and Starbucks. Why go? I mean why have those things even here but much less? Let me go back now to the East China Sea or the South China Sea or East Sea or whatever you want to call it depending on where you're standing I suppose. What's it about and what's going to happen there? Vietnam is protested and yet they also are talking with China about other things and as well as with the U.S. What's going to happen with those islands? Is China going to maintain or try to maintain its bases there and is Vietnam going to try to get those back or did they ever have them? What do you foresee from Vietnam as a position going forward or will it change and depend on the relationships? It absolutely will depend on the relationships. There was an incident a few years ago where a Vietnamese fishing boat that was in waters that China had decided they were going to take control over, was seized by the Chinese and was held for a number of weeks and then eventually it was negotiated and released and the story in Vietnam of course which does not make the national press and which amused me and I can certainly identify with is the Chinese grab them because they're just better fishermen and so they learned more about how to fish then they let them go because they didn't need them there now they knew how to fish. So Vietnamese and I take that from a little bit of a play onwards Vietnamese are willing to teach people to fish they're willing to teach other countries and their leadership the relationship building skills that will enable alliances so that resources and territories and rights and interests can be negotiated based on relationships to strengthen the relationships not to break them down that's not our approach. We export war because we are combative and competitive and because our military industrial complex is served together with the financial and other industries that derive their money benefit from it and their political strength from it by exporting war if we ever figure out I think it was Mark Twain that may have said maybe Woody Guthrie hey that if we ever figure out what the effects of war really are by experiencing them in those cells them ourselves and we probably won't want to do that anymore. And you know I I when you were talking I thought about this you mentioned that 4,000 years Vietnam history and background and culture a couple thousand with China directly involved one plus yeah Vietnamese are patient oh absolutely you know and that's what I learned from from culture yeah the longer you culture the more patient you are maybe they're willing to wait this out maybe they're there they've not retracted their claim to these islands of these small little islands that everybody wonders why they're so important and China is you know developing that bases on them they haven't given those up but they they're not taking action they're waiting perhaps is that is that well true I mean what why get yourself shot you know why jump into the ring with a 300 pound WDOMF wrestler hey if you're a skinny little 110 pound guy there are different ways to approach the situation and I think you're exactly right and that's spot-on perception the Vietnamese are extremely patient what we need to remember and those who have been fortunate enough to have sustainable relationships in your family and your marriages whatever if there is a greater virtue foundational virtue than patience in enabling a relationship to be sustainable I haven't seen it and the Vietnamese know that and they live that they won the war that the Americans participated in by simply outlasting them and by taking control of their homeland in a way that enable them to maintain the connections to their land and their people and we never were able to break that connection we we wanted to mediate gratification and Vietnamese were we're saying we'll wait a thousand years now let me ask you true that's what we do to to to close off here we have to look at the current leadership in Vietnam are they following Ho Chi Minh are they following that strategy and vision what are they what are their plans going forward for Vietnam yeah that's a great question and probably one that's worth leading into another show with because leadership evolution in Vietnam has become much more complex it's not straight party driven anymore the party is still the primary influence right but look how young Vietnam's president is look how internationally he has connected not only with President Obama but with others who are not at all communists about as anti-communist as you'd ever want to get they're really comfortable with that they are relationship builders they are able to be comfortable in the WTO in the United Nations with people of any background because they're open to people because they are patient because they recognize everybody brings value to the table and because they're round table negotiators not square table negotiators everybody sits at the table with equal spiritual value whether they may have more political economic leverage is another matter over which they have no control but spiritually their value is worth respecting and honoring that's who they are I kind of sense that maybe your desire to be an arbitrator and a mediator flows from that philosophy that perhaps it helped me become a reformed attorney yes indeed all right well thanks Chuck Mark I love to learn about Vietnam and I learned a lot today from you thank you very much thank you pleasure as always