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Originally Posted by hawkeyesvn
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.
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Abit a brutal honesty here, so bear with me.
The Vietnamese army had always been bankrolled by the Russians, and since the collapse of the Soviet Union, they are unable to do anything on their own. No indigenious tech development, no espionage - they are too reliant on "bigger states" to help them. China is seeing this as an opportunity to usurp and make Vietnam their puppet state.
The Vietnamese army may not be able to fight a war and win, but it still can make life living hell for any occupier.
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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 ).
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The US had their presence here going as far back as World War 2 (and if official business suffices, it is the Taiwan crisis). It isn't meddling - it is maintaining their presence.
Going further back in history, they would be filling the void the British left behind, who took it over from the various sultanates and Chinese dynasties and pre-Meiji Japan who carved the biggest ocean in the world up in the 1700s and 1800s.