It might sound crazy to think that Washington’s political establishment would once again authorize the US military to invade Vietnam, but to Vietnamese officials in Hanoi, it’s not.  

According to the Associated Press (AP), 

“A year after Vietnam elevated its relations with Washington to the highest diplomatic level, an internal document shows its military was taking steps to prepare for a possible American “war of aggression” and considered the United States a “belligerent” power.”

So does Vietnam trust Washington? The simple answer is not, not at all and rightly so. Hanoi’s fear of a color revolution “like the 2004 Orange Revolution in Ukraine, or the 1986 Yellow Revolution in the Philippines” is real.  

Project 88, an organization focused on human rights in Vietnam are skeptical on what US motives in Vietnam are. They recently published an article on what Vietnamese officials are planning, ‘Hanoi is planning for a 2nd American invasion: US policy heightening tensions and fueling repression.’ They confirmed that 

“There’s a consensus here across the government and across different ministries,” said Ben Swanton, co-director of The 88 Project and the report’s author. “This isn’t just some kind of a fringe element or paranoid element within the party or within the government.”  

Who could blame Vietnam for preparing for another war scenario with the US especially since Washington is trying to isolate China which is something Hanoi is not interested in doing to one of their close neighbors:

The original Vietnamese document titled “The 2nd U.S. Invasion Plan” was completed by the Ministry of Defense in August 2024. It suggests that in seeking “its objective of strengthening deterrence against China, the U.S. and its allies are ready to apply unconventional forms of warfare and military intervention and even conduct large-scale invasions against countries and territories that ‘deviate from its orbit’”

While noting that “currently there is little risk of a war against Vietnam,” Vietnamese officials said that “due to the U.S. belligerent nature we need to be vigilant to prevent the U.S. and its allies from ‘creating a pretext’ to launch an invasion of our country.”

They see Washington especially under the current Trump Regime as threat given the fact that previous US regimes have been increasing tensions with Beijing as President Xi Jinping’s has promised to reunify China with Taiwan since they consider it a breakaway province. The US also imposed numerous sanctions and tariffs on China and has threatened its close allies with war as in the case with Iran: 

The Vietnamese military analysts outline what they see as a progression over three American administrations — from Barack Obama, through Donald Trump’s first term, and into Joe Biden’s presidency — with Washington increasingly pursuing military and other relationships with Asian nations to “form a front against China”

Vietnam is just taking precautions when dealing with Washington’s Hegemonic ideology. Project 88‘s article focuses on Vietnam’s plan to prepare for war if the US decided to invade their country once again. The plan was being formulated during a celebration for their 50th anniversary since the end of the Vietnam War,

“As Vietnam celebrated the 50th anniversary of national unification, its military planners were busy preparing for a second invasion by the United States and its allies. A Secret Vietnamese navy plan (the 2nd US Invasion Plan) obtained by Project88 reveals that, far from seeing the US as a partner on par with China and Russia, Hanoi views Washington as a ‘belligerent’ superpower that invades countries  which ‘deviate from its orbit.’

The plan states:

While there is currently little risk of a war against Vietnam, due to the US’s belligerent nature, we need to be vigilant to prevent the US and its allies from “creating a pretext” to launch a war of aggression against our country. The US and its allies could fully exploit the geographic and natural features of Vietnam’s vast seas and long coastlines, with the superior strength of its navy, to conduct military operations against our country

Vietnamese planners are preparing for the possibility that the US could use “biochemical and tactical nuclear weapons against Vietnam” and they also believe that they are “actively seeking regime change” if they don’t go along with Washington’s plan to isolate China:

The plan envisages a scenario where the US and its allies ‘invade or militarily intervene in Vietnam’, when Hanoi fails to join their ‘plan to encircle and contain China’ (p.6). It even speculates that, if this intervention fails, ‘the US may use biochemical and tactical nuclear weapons’ against Vietnam. The document concludes by calling for Vietnam’s military to revise its combat plans to prepare for such contingencies

The 2nd US Invasion Plan reveals that Vietnam does not trust whatever the official US proclamations are about respecting Vietnam’s political system. Instead, Vietnam’s military planners believe that the US is actively seeking regime change under the cloak of promoting human rights and democracy. According to the plan:

The US sees Vietnam as a partner and an important link in its Indo-Pacific strategy, as well as an ally in its plan to encircle and contain China from the East Sea. At the same time, the US wants to use increased cooperation with Vietnam to spread and impose its values regarding freedom, democracy, human rights, ethnicity, and religion, thereby gradually changing the socialist regime of our country. Thus, when the US fails to accomplish its aims, it may take advantage of these issues, alongside the use diplomatic and economic tricks, and above all invade or militarily intervene in Vietnam

Resistance Then and Now, the US War on Vietnam

In 1946, Vietnam had won their independence after the defeat of France (aka the French Union) in the first Indochina war. Vietnam was divided into North and South Vietnam at the 17th parallel. Revolutionary leader Ho Chi Minh led the Viet Minh in North Vietnam, while South Vietnam was led by Ngo Dinh Diem who was backed by Washington with financial and military support.

The Vietnam War was basically, a war of National Liberation and part of a ‘proxy’ war of the Cold War Era which began in 1955 when armed conflicts developed in Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos. North Vietnam (Democratic Republic of Vietnam) was backed by the Soviet Union and China while South Vietnam (Republic of Vietnam) was backed by the US, South Korea, Australia and other anti-Communist nations.

US President, John F. Kennedy was committed to a Cold War foreign policy which he inherited from the Truman and Eisenhower regimes. By 1961, the US had deployed around 50,000 troops that were based in South Korea during the Cuban Missile Crisis and other developments the US was directly involved in around the world.

JFK was assassinated on November 22nd, 1963 and his Vice President, Lyndon B. Johnson (LBJ) had assumed the position of the US presidency. Then on November 24th, LBJ said that, “the battle against communism … must be joined … with strength and determination.”

And then on August 2nd, 1964, the USS Maddox was on an intelligence gathering mission along the North Vietnam coast and was attacked by damaged North Vietnamese PT torpedo boats since they were supposedly fired upon by the USS Maddox in the Gulf of Tonkin. Then a second attack two days later when North Vietnamese PT boats allegedly launched a “deliberate attack” on two U.S. destroyers, the USS Turner Joy and once again, the USS Maddox. 

In an interesting note, The NSA publication was declassified in 2005 and it revealed that there was no attack of any US Naval ships in the Gulf of Tonkin which basically confirmed that it was a False-Flag operation led by the US government so that they can declare war on Vietnam. 

The second “attack” led to retaliatory airstrikes and then on August 7th, the US Congress approved the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution giving LBJ full authority “to take all necessary measures to repel any armed attack against the forces of the United States and to prevent further aggression.”  

By 1965, the US government decided to get directly involved in Vietnam’s war and eventually found themselves in the midst of civil wars taking place in Cambodia and Laos between 1965 until 1973.

In February of that same year, LBJ ordered the carpet bombing of North Vietnam in Operation Rolling Thunder after an attack on a US army base which was the start of an aerial bombing campaign. It is estimated that the US military used over 7 million tons of explosives that lasted for more than three years killing millions of people throughout Vietnam. The US military used more bombs on Vietnam than in Europe and Asia combined. The bombing campaign was supposed to boost morale of the South Vietnamese forces since they were losing the war.

Officials in Hanoi knew that sooner or later that they were going to face US troops and so they expanded the Viet Cong (VC) and the People’s Army of Vietnam (PAVN) to the south in preparation for a bloody war. By 1964, Vietnam’s Army’s grew to roughly 1 million strong. By June 1965, the VC fought at the battle of Đồng Xoài against South Vietnamese forces and eventually won.  

However, during Operation Rolling Thunder, the US ground war was already in effect. By March 1965, more than 3,500 U.S. Marines landed near Da Nang, South Vietnam to defend Da Nang Air Base which was a major US military base. Then another 200,000 US marines had arrived by December of that year.   

As the war progressed, Vietnamese officials initiated the Tet Offensive which began in January 1968 that resulted in the attacks on over 100 cities by more than 85,000 VC and PAVN forces. The targets were US and South Vietnamese military installations, government buildings and of course, the US Embassy in Saigon. The US considered it an intelligence failure. The end result of the Tet offensive was that the majority of the cities were under VC and PAVN control. The Tet offensive proved that it was the beginning of the end of the US military and its objectives in Vietnam.   

The aftermath of the Vietnam War which lasted for about 10 years resulting in the deaths of more than 58,000 US soldiers which does not include the countless veterans who committed suicide or those who ended up homeless while being addicted to drugs and alcohol. There were roughly 3 million Vietnamese including men, women and children who were killed in the war.  The civil wars in Cambodia killed over 300,000 people and in Laos killed over 60,000 people with the help from one of the most infamous war criminals in history, Henry Kissinger, the US National Security Advisor and Secretary of State at the time. Kissinger was behind the secret U.S. bombing campaigns in Cambodia (that led to the rise of the Khmer Rouge) and Laos between 1969 and 1973 in an effort to dismantle North Vietnam’s supply lines which killed many civilians in the process.

So why would Vietnam trust the United States today especially when you have a regime in Washington that just kidnapped a sitting Venezuelan president, who sanctions the world by using the US dollar as a weapon and has threatened Cuba, Mexico, Venezuela, Nicaragua, Canada, Greenland, Iran, Lebanon (Hezbollah), Yemen, Russia and China? 

If I were sitting in Hanoi and observing US actions around the world, I wouldn’t trust them either.    

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Timothy Alexander Guzman writes on his own blog site, Silent Crow News, where this article was originally published.

He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG).

Featured image is from the author

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