I don't believe in letting other fight our wars. VN has no experience fighting along side other countries, furthermore if there is a war, it will be on our land, fought by our people. VN never expect anyone to send troops here fighting. To train troops, to advise strategy is okay, but to fight, at least this current govt won't do it. We expect Japan, Philippine to speak up against China action, supply VN with military and non-military aids (which will be returned after the war, we did that even to China in VN war). I am talking in the case a VN-China war happens, which certainly will be a long war.
Advise strategy won't work, aside from the fact ASEAN or rest of Asia has no experience fighting, US has no experience fighting with such terrible equipment.
As to sending supplies, any ships sending supplies to an enemy is an enemy and thus could be sunk according to international norm.
It will be a short war, navy batle will be short and decisive, while on land, the Vietnamese peasants that would die for the cause already died, and today they won't do it again.
Also recent Chinese moderization efforts has found, a well equipped army with old ideas of war will lose badly to a new army. The last ocunt was one platoon destroys one battalion.
Now Vietnam has far worse eqipments than us, so it's far more likely one regiment of Vietnamese army can't touch one platoon.
It is you who should respect life and hope for a short war, not mix in with civilians and make us shoot at civilians.
To the world, VN is insignificant. To ASEAN, VN is just a member. But to China "Moving Southward" strategy, VN is the first big stone that China either breaks it and passes or goes around it. And being a giant, China doesn't like taking the long way. Understand what I am saying?
Vietnam isn't a stone, just like when Japan defeated China it didn't mean much internationally, only Russo Japanese war propelled Japan to world power. Us fighting Vietnam is a waste of time and resources, it is a already established power that we need to knock down a peg, right now only Japan fits that bill.
You are overrestimating the importance of Vietnam. Certainly you can be important, but today at less than 2000 per capita, you are nothing but a sub Saharan African nation in east Asia.
I know that China just wants to restore its former glory, but that former glory has already been divided and taken by many countries. To restore it, China will have to take it from others, starting with neighbouring countries. And they will not give up without a fight. And when a fight starts, it's hard to know if China will be satisfied with its original glory alone.
At least some sense, yes, we don't know where China will stop, but the thing is, the world will be multipolar, so we will need to stop at some point, no one force can dominate the world for sometime when the Rise of China is complete.
A sign that I want to point out is China developing more nuke, while US and Russia are cutting theirs down.
Yea right, US already has thousands as does Russia, even if they cut and we build it still won't be close in 30 years, but it's enough, we just need to destroy the world one time, 10 times seems useless.