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Obama hosts Vietnam Communist Party chief at White House


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Obama hosts Vietnam Communist Party chief at White House

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Barack Obama said Tuesday that despite differences between the United States and Vietnam over "political philosophy," the two countries are deepening cooperation on health, climate and other issues.


Obama spoke following an Oval Office meeting with Nguyen Phu Trong, the head of Vietnam's Communist Party. Trong is the de facto leader of Vietnam despite holding no official government post.

Twenty years after normalizing diplomatic ties with its one-time foe, the U.S. is eager to improve relations with Vietnam. Officials see Vietnam as a country that could be a linchpin in Obama's Asia policy. As a front-line country nervous about Chinese expansionism in the South China Sea, Vietnam would also welcome the U.S. taking a tough line against Beijing.

Even as Obama and Trong emphasized areas of cooperation, the U.S. president said they spoke candidly about human rights and religious freedom in Vietnam.

Trong said he extended an invitation for Obama to visit Vietnam and the president had accepted. While Obama noted the invitation, he made no specific commitments to travel to Vietnam during his presidency.

Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush both visited Vietnam after diplomatic ties were established.

Obama is the first post-Vietnam War president who didn't come of age during that culturally searing conflict. The war remains a defining event in the lives of two of the nation's leading foreign policy voices — Secretary of State John Kerry and Sen. John McCain, Republican chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee.

Following the White House meeting, Vice President Joe Biden hosted Trong for a lunch at the State Department.

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-- (c) Associated Press 2015-07-08

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I like what Obama's doing...reaching out to countries who have a different form of gov't...like Cuba and Vietnam AND Thailand...it is better to have dialog and find common ground...than be secretive and suspicious of a former enemy...or a failed government...

If N. Korea ever gets a leader who appears to be sane...they should be included...

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Bird of a feather flock together...

Let's have a competition and see if we can name any president that hasn't at some stage met a leader from a communist country.

George Washington would be the first name to come to mind, followed by the vast majority of all succeeding Presidents.

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This Vietnam communist party guy is a reformer who in April departed his visit to Beijing after informing Xi Jinping that Hanoi no longer had any strategic trust or confidence in the CCP Boyz.

Vietnam is buying submarines from Russia and ordering up air and naval assets from France, Sweden, India in addition to military assistance from Washington. Vietnam has had it with the CCP Boyz in Beijing, especially after the Boyz last year put their huge oil rig in Vietnam's EEZ in the South China Sea and sank a couple of Vietnamese coastal vessels in the process, an act that drew global attention and shocked Asean neighbors.

thediplomat_2014-09-04_14-08-27-386x258.

Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Martin Dempsey

of the US Army at right, in Hanoi for strategic military talks

September 4, 2014.

It was significant to Hanoi that the CCP Boyz withdrew their rig after the US Senate voted unanimously to tell the Boyz to get it out, which Hanoi sees as the US political elites being united and unified in containing the CCP China.

As stated by Alexander L. Vuving, an associate professor at the Asia-Pacific Center for Security Studies in Honolulu, Hawaii....

The significance of Trong’s visit lies more in what it means than in what it says. For the United States, it means that the strategic gains from a close and strong relationship with Vietnam have outweighed the strategic costs of provoking China and the political costs of befriending a communist regime.

[T]hese changes in strategic outlook and domestic politics tell only one, albeit large, part of the story. To make Trong’s trip happen, the mutual trust between Hanoi and Washington had to be high enough to allay the fears of risks associated with any new venture – Trong is known to be fairly risk-averse.

Otto von Bismarck has once remarked, “Politics is the art of the possible.” But ambition can also bring the impossible into play. Beijing’s ambition to turn the South China Sea into a Chinese lake has taken some things that once seemed impossible and made them appear possible. Once archenemies, Vietnam and the United States are now poised to become informal strategic allies.

http://thediplomat.com/2015/07/a-tipping-point-in-the-u-s-china-vietnam-triangle/

The CCP Boyz in Beijing are a gang of hopeless klutzes. They have no more smarts than Putin does in his aggressions in Europe-Eurasia.

Edited by Publicus
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Bird of a feather flock together...

Let's have a competition and see if we can name any president that hasn't at some stage met a leader from a communist country.

George Washington would be the first name to come to mind, followed by the vast majority of all succeeding Presidents.

I guess since communism didn't really exist anywhere until the 1920's at least not as a government I guess we shouldn't be surprised that Washington didn't meet any communist leader. However I guess I should have phrased it so that even you would know that it meant since communism arrived on planet earth.

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The US isn't alone in trying to establish intelligent relations with Vietnam. The three nations who took in the Vietnamese refugees: Australia, Canada and the USA have large ethnic Vietnamese populations who still have a love for their homeland despite being forced out. These immigrants are the leading edge, the advantage the countries have, when it comes to expanding trade. Both Canada and Australia have had their naval vessels visit Vietnam. China has attacked Vietnam. China has also launched cyber attacks against Canada,

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