An Ally in Asia. Since the end of the war, Vietnam has been “one of China’s
major headaches. There have been border skirmishes and
battles for influence in Cambodia, and the two have settled into
a state of not-very-neighborly mutual disgruntlement.” There are hints that, despite the recent granting of more favorable trade terms, Chinese military doctrine increasingly views the U.S. as an adversary to its Asian goals, including “reunification” with Taiwan. We may need Vietnam as a more important ally in the containment of China than conventional wisdom dictates, writes Anne Applebaum in Slate.

Is that why Clinton went to Vietnam? I doubt it: According to
one cynical American diplomat, he went because he knew that,
as a former opponent of the war, he would get a hero’s
welcome. But although that may be part of the explanation for
the mobs who turned out to wave American flags at his
motorcade, I suspect it doesn’t account for all the crowds. They
were partly there, as they would be anywhere, because the
American president is just about the most famous person in the
world, after Michael Jackson. And perhaps they were partly
there because some are already beginning to see that the
United States is not Vietnam’s past but its future.