Vietnam has marked a generation, or rather two. The one that remained below us in time; that which has been drugged with images since the 80 years, when the cinema transformed it into a legend.
Few countries in the world are as evocative as the land of the Viet, associated by force and pain to one of the most dirty, forgotten and at the same time important wars of the 20th century.
Like all the others, however, he has updated himself to the new equilibriums born with the retirement of ideologies and the end of the '900. At first calmly, with the slow times of a Tropic socialism; then gradually faster, with the mercantile frenzy that only the Asian peoples of Southeast Asia in particular manage to interpret at their best.
The Hanoi reforms begin in the mid-90, when the consortium of global socialism begins to loosen in parallel with the closure of the Soviet subsidy tap. Cuba, Angola, Mozambique, Ethiopia, Mongolia, South Yemen ... then Vietnam. It implodes the USSR and the world adapts, dragging with it geography and politics.
Step by step, the transformation of the country continues unabated. Ho Chi Minh City returns to resemble the old Saigon, each day further away from the image of Communist prey and closer to the Indochinese model of nightlife, built on tourism and whores. To understand Vietnam today, just take a trip to Nha Trang: an American base during the war, today it has become the Rimini of the South China Sea, between happy western tourists and hot toc (barbers ...) which imply brothels.
In this context, Obama's visit to Hanoi sends a clear signal to the whole world: Vietnam is back because Vietnam is needed.
If with the restoration of diplomatic relations the American embassy in Saigon (today it is a consulate; the new embassy is in Hanoi) from a national monument it became a page of history, with the visit of the outgoing US president, a new section of the geopolitical frameworks is marked Asian.
The decisive step in this sense is the end of the American embargo that dislocates Hanoi from the Purgatory of the Damned.
Going around and taking away the decades-long embargoes seems to be a peculiarity of Obama, but behind the curtain of good-natured statements, the motivations are other. To understand the meaning of the rapprochement of Cuba, destined to return a sleepy lupanarica of the Caribbean, commercial reason may suffice; for Vietnam, on the other hand, the American embrace has a more technical, decidedly strategic value. 
When the Americans moved from the 50 councilors to the 65 escalation, the growing doubt in the corridors of Washington was only one: "Is it worth dying for a tropical agricultural village, devoid of resources?"
Then the geopolitical weight of the East was relative: China was a continent of bicycles; the "Asian tigers" of the Far east they had not yet been born and the Indian subcontinent had not closed its path of independence. The fear of red Asia, however, weighed more than possible risks and America remained mired in a war that started badly and ended worse. The only stake that was played then was a piece in the Cold War mosaic; specifically the loss of South Vietnam, a western bastion in a context that is not too hostile. America was about to replicate with Ho Chi Minh the mistake made by Fidel Castro: he would have passed on to the Soviet front what he could take with a handshake.
Today, however, Asia is different. No continent has grown so much in the last 40 years. And in Asia the matches of the future will be played.
In particular, the South China Sea is at the center of a political vortex, the future site of clash of planetary geopolitical plates: on the one hand the USA; on the other, China; in the middle of Russia.
How is Vietnam positioned?
Hanoi has copied the political-economic model introduced by Deng Xiaoping's reforms in Beijing. It was he who created the "double system" by mixing the theories of socialism and capitalism to create a new model: a red dictatorship on the one hand, and a market economy on the other. The change in living standards and the new generations have done the rest.
Vietnam and China thus find themselves on the same horizon ready for the challenges of the new century, but they find themselves looking at each other as glaringly as in the times of the 79 war.
This is where the States fit in, never so interested in recovering Hanoi as in the past two years.
At stake this time there is supremacy in an economically strong and strategic area for energy issues.
What is Washington pointing to?
There are two fundamental points:
- avoid a rapprochement between China and Vietnam that makes China omnipotent in the region;
- to prevent the Russian influence from returning to weight like 40 in Vietnam years ago.
Unlike other continents, Asia is not covered by major supranational conventions or organizations. With the exception of ASEAN (of which China is not a part), the bulk of the cooperation, especially from a political-military point of view, is established with bilateral agreements. In other words, the quickest to move does loot. The US knows this and the fear of being left out has stirred the East Asian Pacific Affairs of the State Department.
To avoid that China and Vietnam take a day by the hand, in reality there is not much to do. The mutual distrust is enormous. It is enough to feed the litigation opened by the Chinese occupation of the Paracel Islands in the '74 and the increasingly bitter diatribe for the not distant Spratly, rich in oil. The increase in the American presence in the area sounds like a flea in the ear of Vietnam, whose economic cooperation with Washington is growing year by year.
The mutual provocations between US and Chinese navies in recent months are part of this attempt to enter the United States.
However, in the match between the US and China, we have to deal with the historic friendship between Vietnam and Russia.
In a Cold War climate in the South China Sea, Moscow will not stand by.
(photo: by the author e Hải quân Nhân dân Việt Nam)
Continue in The return of Vietnam changes Southeast Asia. Chapter 2: Hanoi regional power
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