Charismatic and defiant, the Hollywood actress posed for photos alongside the military in Hanoi, capital of the Vietcong regime. Jane Fonda, at the height of her pacifist activism, angered and made her fellow countrymen proud, earned the labels of traitor and heroine. On July 13, 1972, one of the bloodiest and most dramatic moments of the iconic conflict of Cold War rivalries took place.
About 50 years later, in the second half of July, the aircraft carrier Ronald Reagan will arrive in a Vietnam ruled by the same Communist Party of the days of confrontation. In another reflection of the strategic alliance, Vice President Kamala Harris and Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin landed in Hanoi last year.
In the diplomatic turnaround, not even a shadow of the fractures in American society at the time of the Vietnam War, although there are still voices against the rapprochement with the former enemy. Kamala, a sign of the times, did not become the target of such intense criticism as the initiative of the actress, at the time nicknamed “Hanoi Jane”.
“During the war, despite its formidable economic and military might, the US could not defeat a nation like ours. Why? The nation was absolutely determined to fight for its national independence and freedom. has its limits”, pondered General Vo Nguyen Giap (1911-2013) in an interview with Sheetin 1995.
“The greatest power is in the man, in the nation,” continued the soldier, commander of victories over Japanese, French, American and Chinese troops. At the meeting in Hanoi, I asked the general if any country could challenge American military hegemony. “What’s that for? Why challenge the US?”, he replied.
The general, in his reply, defended the pragmatism of “doi moi”, renewal in Vietnamese and the name of the economic reforms started in 1986, with a clear reference: China. To inject doses of capitalism, without the Communist Party giving up its monopoly of political power. Hanoi started to follow the successful footsteps, from the point of view of economic growth, of its gigantic neighbor to the north, with whom it collects rivalries and border disputes. They went to war, for example, in 1979.
In an Asia increasingly cut by the growing weight of Xi Jinping’s country, Vietnam found a valuable ally in the US. It seeks, with the support of Washington, to face the increasing advances of Beijing in the South China Sea, a strategic corridor for international trade and whose waters are the stage of dispute between Vietnamese and Chinese.
Fear of China’s demands, therefore, leads the enemies of the 20th century to now build military ties, in a relationship still watered by interests in Vietnamese economic dynamism.
But historical, geopolitical and territorial rivalries do not prevent Hanoi from cultivating ties with China, especially in the economic area. The modern Viet Cong relaxed the ideological primer, resorted to pragmatism and expanded the diplomatic menu, without the sectarianism of the past.
Vietnam is, therefore, one of the answers on the global stage to the dilemma posed by the growing rivalry between the US and China. Instead of opting for just one side, Hanoi builds a diplomacy with faded ideological tones and strong pragmatic bias, imposed by a national agenda, in search of economic growth and the defense of its geopolitical interests.
