Obama and American Arms for Vietnam

President Obama has already caused a stir in the news this week when he made American weapons available to Vietnam.

On Secure Freedom Radio, Frank Gaffney discussed the issue with Dr. Peter Brookes, the Senior Fellow in National Security Affairs at the Heritage Foundation and an expert in foreign policy with a focus on Asia.  Gaffney noted that Obama’s decision could have been influenced by the threat posed to Vietnam and the United States by China. Brookes agreed:

“The president keeps insisting Frank, that it’s not about China but I think it’s like one of those situations when somebody says “It’s not about money” but it really is about money and I think that’s the case here. Now there’s reasons to be concerned about Vietnam, I mean this relationship is driven a lot by necessity and that’s the growth of China’s military capability and its assertiveness in the South China Sea. And of course, Vietnam has  trouble with human rights issues and we should have trouble with that as well. The decision to lift arms sales of course has to go through the congress. The president can make this decision but any arms that are sold overseas under the division of labor in the U.S. government, checks and balance, has to go through congress. Congress will get a say but I think, yeah, I’m supportive of this.”

Brookes mentioned that there is still pain for some Americans when it comes to Vietnam but pointed out that they have helped to locate our MIA soldiers and suggests that it’s important for us to move forward.

Gaffney made a fascinating point about how this arrangement with Vietnam bears a striking resemblance to America’s relationship with China during the Cold War and asked Brookes if the same rules should now apply to Taiwan. Brookes responded:

“Well, of course Taiwan is a very important partner of the United States and has been so for a long time and I think, you know, the Taiwan Relations Act which is, I guess, one of the gold standards of foreign policy legislation – we don’t have too many pieces of foreign policy legislation that would stand the tests of time – but Taiwan is very important to us and we should be selling arms to Taiwan for its self-defense.”

Both men then acknowledged the irony that unlike Vietnam, Taiwan is a thriving democracy without a record of human rights violations.

Gaffney then turned the conversation to Obama’s plan to visit Hiroshima and the assumption that he will apologize for America during his visit. He asked Brookes what kind of message that would send:

“Well, it’s controversial and the White House insisted he would not make an apology. I think Frank, it’s going to be part of his no nukes theme. The president has been an advocate of no nukes and this goes back to New Start, I think it goes back to his college days, I think he wrote a paper about this in college at Columbia if I recall correctly. So I think that’s what it’s going to be about and you know, he’s had nuclear security summits and he’s tried to be what I call a proliferation Pied Piper – the idea that if we draw down our nuclear forces as he started to under New Start and had hoped to continue to do, this is, with Russia, under the reset policy which has gone from reset to regret – he’s thought that if we lead the way, others will follow us by drawing down. Iran, North Korea and things like that, so I think we’re going to get a no nukes message and the White House has insisted for a while now that there won’t be any apology.”

Gaffney also asked Brookes for his thoughts on the recent killing of Taliban leader in Pakistan and wondered if someone worse would step into his shoes, possibly one of the combatants Obama has released. Brookes speculated that someone more radical could step in and noted that the Taliban is essentially playing the long game in the region and just waiting for America to leave.

Finally, Gaffney asked Brookes to comment on recent military provocations from Russia:

“There are obviously tremendous concerns about a resurgent Russia under Vladimir Putin. Obviously very active in the Baltics, I mean everybody saw the video of the plane buzzing the American ship. We’ve heard about the stories about Russian planes thumping American reconnaissance planes, we’ve seen an arms buildup in Kaliningrad, this small slice of land between Poland and Lithuania, we’re seeing snap exercises which violate, to my mind anyway, the conventional forces in Europe agreement that goes back to the Cold War days… they’ve also complicated things in Syria.”

Brookes also suggests that Russia presents a bigger threat to America for cyber attacks than China.

That’s certainly a big deal.