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Originally Posted by risingstar3110
1_I will beg to be different here. Not sure if you know, as most didn't. But Vietnam had a very long lasting skirmish against China from 1979 up to 1990 over the border issues, including those islands. Yes, it was after Vietnam War and maybe that's why not much US media attention looked at the region then
2_I agree that they likely will stick to a more diplomatic solution through. But actually because both wary at the cost each side will take once a fight break out. Yeah the skirmish that i mentioned earlier actually had 50k-60k casualties for each side not counting civilians. China was literally bringing in 1 millions men into that fight and move the border by couple of km. And yes, they literally used the zerg run tactic that they did during Korean war, and it was nullified, and the reason why they has been modernizing their army since. And it will only get worse if another break out now, because China have been heavily invested in military, and Vietnam now won't have to fight off two fronts against Khmer Rogue (and Thailand also actually).
Saying that through. I believe these whole noises over the South China Sea were sparked up by the US. China probably want to do the opposite, keep it quiet, isolate and deal with each independent nation separately as they had their leverage against each of them. The US in this case however actually was trying to keep everything on the surface so each SEA nations can't really backstab each other.
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1_Yeah, I'm sure I know about those battle since my dad fought in the 1979 Border war ( Or the Sino - Vietnamese war as you know it ). It cost him a leg and from what he said, I know it's horribly brutal when he told that his comrades kept overheating their machine guns by shooting at endless Chinese infantry waves. But that the past, 1979 is just 4 years after Vietnam War, our army had high morale back then and our equipment is the best of SEA ( US left behind quite a lot ). Now is a totally different matter, people has been living in peace for more than 20 years ( 40 for Southern people ), the economy is getting stable, our military tech is lagging behind and 2/3 of our top political leaders want nothing but maintaining a strong connection with China. ATM, our country just don't have what it take to participate in a war ( small or large scale doesn't matter ). The strongest response from us would just be "ramming/interfering with China armed ship" like what you have seen in the "Hanyan mobile oil platform incident" last year.
2_As long as most of SEA nations understand that China will not stop at eating the whole South China Sea ( SCS ) then there's still hope for diplomatic measurements. Despite how much of a "bullies" China is, It's still a single country and need to maintain its image of "rising in peace". About US, to be honest,IMO their meddling in SCS has been nothing but making the whole thing more complicated. And I think they actually prefer the dispute to remain like this ( At least until they completely get out of the economy crisis and Afghanistan ).