The U.S.-Vietnam Alliance Is 'Blossoming'

US President Donald Trump waves a Vietnamese flag as he is greeted by students during a meeting with Vietnamese Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc in Hanoi in February.

Richard Heydarian, SCMP: How US-Vietnam alliance blossomed as rivalry between China and the West intensified

* The two former arch-enemies have been brought together by a combination of greed and a shared fear of emerging threats in the post-American era, Richard Heydarian writes

“The enemy of my enemy is my friend.”

So goes an ancient Middle Eastern proverb, which has reverberated across millennia with strategic pungency. In many ways, the same logic is driving one of the unlikeliest alliances of the 21st century, namely between the United States and Vietnam.

What has brought these two former arch-enemies together is a combination of greed, in the form of booming bilateral trade, and a shared fear of emerging threats in the post-American era, especially in Asia.

And it’s precisely China where these two impulses have intersected in a singular strategic focus. The upshot is a blossoming silent alliance which has grown in proportion to an intensified strategic rivalry between China and the West.

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WNU Editor: I do not know where this alliance may end up, but for the moment ....  “The enemy of my enemy is my friend.”

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