To win the contest for influence in the Asia-Pacific, the U.S. military must move beyond boots on the ground. Smart use of the Air Force is a cost effect tool that could fit the bill.
The United States has refocused its strategic priorities in an oft-talked about “Pivot to Asia” and has made a deliberate decision in new defense strategic guidance not to size the military for large scale counter-insurgency operations, but instead to posture to deter conflict in Asia where there is a clear anti-access, area-denial threat. Such a shift has implications and raises questions about the appropriateness of retaining force structure and concepts developed for operations in Iraq and Afghanistan across all the military services.
Since fiscal reality dictates that the United States must downsize its military and focus on a more limited set of priorities, is it appropriate for the United States Air Force to create and sustain an institutional irregular warfare capability?
If the key strategic pre-occupation of the United States in the forthcoming decades is maintaining a force posture credible to defeating aggression on the high-end of the spectrum in Asia, what is the place of irregular warfare?
And what are the changes required to make the fundamental components of Air Force irregular warfare – air advising, air diplomacy and aviation enterprise development – more aligned with larger U.S. strategies?
An institutional Air Force irregular warfare capability directly supports U.S. foreign policy objectives in the Asia-Pacific and represents an asymmetric strength the envy of our competitors. Institutionalization of USAF irregular warfare capability is important, because it supplies exactly the sort of “low-cost, innovative” strategies called for in the defense strategic guidance and provides a tool to address the larger deeper problem: shaping the conditions for continued advantage.
America’s problem in Asia is more than just maintaining a favorable balance of military power. Such a balance is certainly critical to regional stability and global security. Asia is, after all, the heart of the global economic engine of growth, and it is U.S. military strength that ensures customary freedom of navigation in the global commons and deters newly powerful states from using force to settle conflicting claims. Asian states appreciate the positive historic role the United States has played over the past 50 years, but some hand wring about the ability of the U.S. to continue to play that role. While the importance of maintaining military balance is undeniable, the larger challenge is a competition for leadership, legitimacy and influence. Legitimacy is dependent on the actions available to the U.S. to continue to be perceived as present, committed and the security partner of choice.
The great military theorist Carl von Clausewitz enjoined that “war is politics by other means.” But the strategic competition in Asia, if well managed, is likely to be one of posture and deterrence rather than war. Rather, the United States might instead consider the rejoinder of China’s first premier, Zhou Enlai, that “All diplomacy is a continuation of war by other means,” and realize that the strategic competition between great powers takes place against a backdrop where competing interests struggle for influence and legitimacy within their own states; the realm of irregular warfare.
According to Joint Publication 1, Doctrine of the Armed Forces of the United States, irregular warfare is a “struggle among state and non-state actors for legitimacy and influence over the relevant population(s). IW favors indirect and asymmetric approaches, though it may employ the full range of military and other capacities in order to erode an adversary’s power, influence, and will.”
And Asia – Southeast Asia, South Asia, North Asia, and Central Asia – all feature non-state actors who seek to erode the legitimacy of various states. Each of those should be considered dangers and opportunities to U.S. and global security. Any such conflict could flare into a crisis, triggering instability that undermines the global economic system or presenting the threat of a failed state with all its attendant costs to blood and treasure. Such internal conflicts can be used by one power against another to distract, entangle and undermine the stability of their partners. Each internal conflict creates an opportunity for a “preferred security partner” to fill a vacuum, and provide critical opportunities that build sympathy and lay the groundwork for access.
All the great powers seem to understand that the game in Asia is about more than just deterrence, but influence. Take for example the recent piece by Yan Xuetong titled “How China Can Defeat America” where he the author states:
“To shape a friendly international environment for its rise, Beijing needs to develop more high-quality diplomatic and military relationships than Washington. No leading power is able to have friendly relations with every country in the world, thus the core of competition between China and the United States will be to see who has more high-quality friends. And in order to achieve that goal, China has to provide higher-quality moral leadership than the United States. China must also recognize that it is a rising power and assume the responsibilities that come with that status. For example, when it comes to providing protection for weaker powers, as the United States has done in Europe and the Persian Gulf, China needs to create additional regional security arrangements.”
Of course it isn’t a zero-sum game, and the U.S. welcomes a China that assumes the responsibilities with status. But the U.S. shouldn’t remove itself from the competition to remain the security partner of choice, and it doesn’t have to. This form of competition plays to America’s asymmetric strength, and Yan himself acknowledges: “America enjoys much better relations with the rest of the world than China in terms of both quantity and quality. America has more than 50 formal military allies, while China has none. North Korea and Pakistan are only quasi-allies of China.
In the competition for security cooperation and building partnerships, the U.S. has another asymmetric advantage: It’s an air-faring nation with an Air Force than can bring constructive effects. While understood by few, “boots on the ground” is not the only opportunity to help friendly governments in irregular warfare. The last decade of sustained warfare has given the United States Air Force (USAF) a tremendous opportunity to collect important lessons on how Airpower – both military and civil – can enhance the legitimacy of partner states. What is required now is to take the lessons, processes, education, training and guidance learned in contingency operations, and institutionalize them as part of how the USAF interacts in the pre-conflict phase (“Phase 0”) of building partnership capabilities and capacities. This form of engagement doesn’t require large numbers of boots on the ground, armed and visible to the populace, but it does require a few “brains on the ground” who are properly prepared to interface with their host nation counterparts.
Using air forces in this manner is a surprisingly effective strategy. The nation gains significant access and influence via its engagements abroad, yet the entire “building partnerships” portfolio amounts to less than half a percent of the USAF budget.
USAF involvement in irregular warfare operations has long conjured up images of long-loitering drones firing missiles at insurgents among external audiences. But such an image betrays a deep lack of understanding of the breadth of how airpower contributes to influence and legitimacy, and even more so about how Airmen understand irregular warfare. Particularly under conditions where fiscal or political constraints limit the introduction of U.S. ground forces, USAF advice and assistance can empower a legitimate government to employ the benefits of airpower to control its skies, diagnose the situation on the ground and respond to situations on the ground with the unparalleled speed aircraft provide. That response could be the rapid movement of indigenous forces to protect a village or reinforce a town. But equally likely is the movement of government officials or aid workers or humanitarian assistance, extending the services and legitimacy of government.
When airmen look through the lens of irregular warfare, they seek to consciously use airpower in the service of legitimacy – at the tactical, operational and strategic levels: to enhance the legitimacy of partner nations, to bolster U.S. legitimacy in alliance relationships and to advance U.S. legitimacy on the field of global strategic competition. The irregular airpower strategist recognizes that the strength of airpower isn’t only in its responsiveness, but in its long-term contribution to a nation’s integrity, thus the contribution of airpower isn’t only in the kinetic realm, but in the moral sphere as well. What’s distinctive about this outlook is that it fundamentally recognizes the elements of time and relationship building, and the centrality of building partnerships and building partners’ capacities, not as an afterthought, but as a fundamental element to strategy at all levels.
Every friendly state whose capacity can be advanced to where they can provide for their own internal defense, patrol their own skies and coasts, defend their own airspace is one less opportunity to be a failed state or an easy target of aggression, and one less potential crisis that would cost America its sons and daughters. Every friendly state which can provide for its own security can become a net security provider, and contribute capabilities for regional response that allows burden sharing. By proving ourselves to be a reliable security partner in the Asia-Pacific, we enhance our own access; thus, edging out strategic competitors and complicating their anti-access strategies. But being the security partner of choice goes beyond deployments that just prove our presence and resolve to defend our partners’ security to include meaningful planning to enhance our partners’ capacity for self-help.
Central to this mindset of using airpower as a constructive tool of foreign policy in developing nations are the concepts of aviation enterprise development and air diplomacy.
Adam Lowther defines air diplomacy as “a concept broadly understood to encompass the use of airpower for diplomatic purposes…Ranging from humanitarian relief operations to ‘train, advise, and equip’ programs, the U.S. Air Force offers the President options for the conduct of American diplomacy that are rarely duplicated elsewhere in government,” and notes that “Because airpower is characterized by speed, range and flexibility, policy makers frequently call on the Air Force to conduct ad hoc and permanent diplomatic missions.” The required change is to make the deliberate use of air diplomacy more purposeful, and more aligned to our larger strategies. The Air Force must not just figure out how “innovative low-cost approaches” can accomplish rotational presence to reduce costs, but how such rotations can be used to deliberately advance long term U.S. foreign policy objectives.
A key expression of air diplomacy in developing nations is the deliberate use of air forces to conduct aviation enterprise development, which the 2012 Air Advising Operating Concept defines as “the sum total of all air domain resources, processes, and culture, including personnel, equipment, infrastructure, operations, sustainment, and air-mindedness.” What does that mean? Simply this: you can build 6,000 feet of asphalt at the end of a road, and you’ve gone a mile down the road. Build 6,000 feet of runway, and you have connected yourself to a global network of commerce.
But to operate that runway and the airplanes that advance a society sustainably, aviation know-how is required. Over the past decade of experience in Iraq and Afghanistan, the USAF has built extensive expertise on how to properly mate technical and cultural expertise through air advisors to develop real and lasting capability. That’s a capability we need to adapt to purposefully serve our new grand strategy in Asia. Properly done, there are an extensive array of capabilities and benefits from aviation enterprise development and the associated air advising that enhance a partner nation’s security, trade, education, development and set the conditions for broader cooperation and commerce. Properly tuning the USAF’s production of Air Advisors will require USPACOM and other combatant commands to consider and communicate a “demand signal” for aviation enterprise development and air advisors in their country plans.
Advocates of institutionalizing irregular warfare in the Air Force are less concerned with advocating for an alternate force structure than they are about a broader understanding of how to employ airpower. Irregular warfare strategy is less about buying platforms than it is about using existing platforms and capabilities in unique ways. Institutionalizing it means educating, enabling, and organizing airmen as enduring capabilities to assist developing nations’ air forces in a way that supports maximum U.S. whole-of-government contribution to enhance foreign policy freedom of action and security. Advocates want to see the necessary guidance, schools, processes and incentives put in place that will enable the USAF to play this role in a purposeful, deliberate manner.
Such a purposeful, deliberate effort will require a small but meaningful number of institutional changes to ensure the United States Air Force is properly postured to prevail in the contest for influence in Asia-Pacific. While the air diplomacy and aviation enterprise development are executed by the respective combatant command, their success depends on the adequacy of the airmen and forces presented to them and how successfully they have been organized trained and equipped, and that requires leadership and policy from the headquarters of the Air Force.
USAF professional military education will have to adapt if it is to enable both the general purpose airman and career air advisors with regional expertise. There’s a need to create content and courses for planning long-term (5, 10 and 20 years) “phase 0” operations that emphasize a range of options beyond mere foreign military sales. Such courses need to target Regional Affairs Specialists (RAS) and planners in the Combatant Commands (USPACOM, etc.) and component air staffs (PACAF) to ensure those options are captured in regional and country plans. The USAF will need to begin planning to create regional affairs specialists and area-focused PhD-level education not purely on existing slots to fill, but upon a global strategy that anticipates where such capacities might be needed at least a full decade in the future. The USAF will also have to change how it tracks and understands its airmen’s capabilities – choosing to value air advisory skills enough to track them and manage the career development of select airmen to make them available for these roles.
As the USAF revises its Air Expeditionary Force, it will have to make certain changes to its incentive structures – removing the systemic disincentives from forming long-lasting relationships with foreign military members and the overly strict rules for permissive temporary duty and creating new incentives. Such new incentives might involve establishing a compensation system for unique skill sets (such as flying and maintaining light aircraft) that are necessary to assist developing air forces, and perhaps, creating a web-based “market” that allows us to match individual interests to needs. Lastly, it will mean a decision to create planning tools that allow the USAF to understand and plan effects against influence networks in the same way it can plan kinetic effects against industrial webs.
If the U.S. Air Force is willing to institutionalize the necessary mindset and incentive structures, it will provide the nation with a difficult-to-beat foreign policy tool.
Rather than distract from the new defense priorities, an effort to institutionalize irregular warfare capabilities into the Air Force supports it. In an age of fiscal austerity, airpower can be a powerful tool to advance U.S. foreign policy, enhancing legitimacy of the U.S. as a security partner and empowering our partners to provide security to their own populations. An air force so configured is just what the nation requires to prevail in the contest for influence and access in Asia-Pacific.
Peter Garretson is a Lieutenant Colonel in the U.S. Air Force and the Division Chief, Strategy, Plans & Policy for Irregular Warfare at HQ USAF. The views expressed are his own and do not necessarily reflect those of the U.S. military.
Photo Credit: U.S. Air Force
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America is better at PR. One of the main points the Russians made after the cold war was won by the America is that for them it was very personal but for the Americans, it was Tuesday. IE, the Americans have very short memories–or better they were acting hostile to encourage hostility.
I think you will find that letting everybody else overplay your card is going to cost China in the long run. They are effectively being sanctioned without outright saying it.
discount Labor for America in-turn for access to naval trade lanes is not equality or freedom. 21st century slavery.
Bierstadt
This is a good plug for the USAF’s strengthening relevance in US outreach goals. To those who imagine that this article is some sort of representation of America in decline: it isn’t, and we’re not. I leave a more detailed correction of such nonsense to those with more time to spend on correcting foolishness.
Oro Invictus
@ Bierstadt
Ian Bremmer actually wrote a fairly good piece along those lines just recently:
http://blogs.reuters.com/ian-bremmer/2012/05/09/an-unstable-world-doesnt-necessarily-mean-a-declining-america/
Generally, Dr. Bremmer is quite accurate in his various predictive analysis, though I find his pieces to be too simplistic at times (in that, I mean he focuses primarily on economic matters rather than sociological ones, not that his pieces lack thought).
In any case, I’d caution becoming defensive when others claim your nation is in decline, both out of a desire to prevent malice and out of what such aspersions really indicate; such exhortations are far more indicative of fears on said others’ parts for their own futures (or, in the case of the more raving individuals, frustration that their basal and childish desire to see others “fall” is not coming to pass). That’s not to say that America will not face hardships nor that it is immune to perdition by some inherent virtue (indeed, the course of history demands it will end though, barring some cataclysmic event, I suspect this will be the result of “evolution” and/or incorporation into a superior model rather than outright collapse), but the US needs worry about decline and/or collapse far less than most other nations, including all of the other “major players” at this time.
venkat s kanakamedala
I PERSONALLY FEEL THAT CHINA IS A THREAT TO INDIA AND FREE NATIONS IN ASIA.IT IS ALSO THREAT TO AMERICA AND NATO.CHINA IS HAVING NEXUS WITH PAKISTAN,NORTH KOREA,IRAN AND TO CERTAIN EXTENT WITH RUSSIA.IT HAS BEEN VIOLATING WITH INDIAN BORDER .CHINA IS HAVING AGGRESSIVE NATURE.THIS NATURE CAN BE A THREAT TO SOUTH KOREA,TAIWAN,JAPAN,INDIA AND FEW SOUTH EAST ASIAN COUNTRIES.I WANT TO SEE THAT AMERICA AND NATO TO DISCUSS THIS ISSUE AT CHICAGO SUMMIT.AMERICA AND NATO SHOULD HAVE A DETERRENCE FORCE IN PACIFIC AND IN ASIA.INDIA AND AMERICA WITH NATO SHOULD ENTER IN TO A STRATEGIC ALLIANCE TO COUNTER THE CHINA.BETTER AMERICA AND NATO SHOULD ESTABLISH A BIGGEST BASE IN INDIA BORDERING WITH CHINA.THERE SHOULD BE A REINFORCEMENT OF PACIFIC FLEET.THE THEATER MISSILE SYSTEM WITH 5000 MX NUKES AND DEFENSE MISSILE SYSTEM SHOULD BE INSTALLED IN INDIA TO COUNTER THE CHINA AND TO PROTECT INDIA AND INDIANS.THERE SHOULD BE MODERNIZATION OF ARMED FORCES OF INDIA.AMERICA AND NATO SHOULD DECLARE IN CHICAGO SUMMIT THAT AMERICA AND NATO WILL BACK ALL FREE NATIONS IN ASIA AND IT WILL RETALIATE IF THERE IS ANY VIOLATION OF TERRITORY OF ANY NATION LIKE INDIA ,SOUTH KOREA,JAPAN AND TAIWAN.NATO SUMMIT SHOULD GIVE A CLEAR MESSAGE THAT PEACE IN ASIA IS IMPORTANT.THIS WILL COME BY TOLERANCE AND CONTAINMENT OF CHINA CURTAILING ITS MILITARY MUSCLE POWER AND AND GIVING UP ITS AGGRESSIVE NATURE AGAINST ITS NEIGHBORS.THERE SHOULD BE MORE NATO FLEETS IN PACIFIC OCEAN AND ALSO MORE LAND BASES FOR ARMY AND AIR FORCE IN ASIA. 10,000 ADVANCED JET FIGHTERS AND A TEN MILLION ARMY IS REQUIRED TO COUNTER CHINA WITH A REQUIRED FIRE POWER.CHINA CAN TRANSFORM TO A RESPONSIBLE FREE NATION WITH OUT ANY EVIL THOUGHTS.IT IS ANNEXED WITH PAKISTAN,IRAN,NORTH KOREA AND RUSSIA FOR ITS FUTURE STRATEGIES.
vec
@venkat,
India is the biggest threat to itself.Please read below.
“Tibetans are much better off than these people: Telangana, Assam (Independence), AFSPA in India’s North East States, South Indians States, Kashmir, Tripura, Meghalaya, Mizoram (Independence), Manipur, Maharashtra & Nagaland; Khalistan, Gujarat, Tamil Nadu, Arunachal Pradesh, Shimla & Punjab (Sikhs Independence); Hyderabad and Pundicherry (Pakistan),; Jammu and Kashmir, Darjeeling’s Gorkhaland movement, Sikkim, Goa, Naxals & the plight of the Dalits. Dowry deaths, the burning of young Indian brides, one every hour (TOI 1/27/12); 6,400 sub-Caste groups struggling in India (WSJ 12/9/11) Most dangerous place in the World for baby girls is India (TOI 2/1/12), 600 million Indians defecate in the open (TOI 2/7/12).. ”
Please start with building more clean toilets and settling with the naxalites to provide more social equality instead of dreams of grandeur?
ballance is good
Russian state will shut total O-shaped ring by the U.S. after China had dropped by the Americans, as well as to confine India in the form of a ring C while Americans had occupied China, and the world will be controlled by a dominant power to push other countries one by one to defecate in his pants.
make the best move that this world is not unipolar power but bipolar power, so there is night and day (that day continue to be able to damage your eyes, if the night continues, you can not see), there are up there sleeping (if you can keep up continue to be tired and night continue to be weak), there are men there are women (if only men is bad , if only women is bad too ), the best is balanced , because that form a defense pact with russia, china, india to offset American pact, NATO, ANZUS etc. , so that the world is balanced, once there is a balance there will be a lasting peace for all human life on earth and there will be no war maybe only cold war
If America and its allies in alliance with China is also not good because it is not balanced for fellowship russia india
If America and its allies in alliance with India is also not good because it is not balanced by china russia alliance
If America and its allies in alliance with Russia is also not good because it is not balanced by china india alliance
This world needs a balance of two forces power for the sake of peace, most also kind of cold war era Soviet Union and Warsawa alliance versus NATO and united states , if only one power, just get ready to push the country one by one until the stools by the dominant power
vec
Excuses and rationalisaion for a declining and debtor america.The bullying of the world and Asia is going to be over soon.Get use to being a regional power.Air power will not soothe your delusion to mantain credible power even with the unmanned drones.Hallucination and delusion from declining Pax Americana is the last stage of decline.
300 years of genocide and dominance starting with the natives of America whose remaining survivors are packed into reservations now is over.
Having lost the will and/or unable to fight on the ground it propounds air and naval power when its technological base is also declining.
Mark Thomason
We have heard this argument many times before. We were going to defend the Philippines and its area against Japan with some B-17 bombers at Clark Air Base. Victory Through Air Power. There was a book too, with that title, for winning all of WW2 by bombing. That didn’t work out either. Boots on the ground always becomes necessary.
Charles Norrie
It is late imperial delusion that air power, which the US is already not deficient in will enable the US to keep that role alone.
You’ve got to win the heart and minds battle as well.
In the run down of the old British Empire, HM Government thought it has a perfect answer, air technology. It was the usual pattern of wayward hill tribes in the Afghan border area, the Pathans want to engage in their traditional pastimes in the dry season of cattle raiding, woman stealing and causing mayhem to settled agricultural tribes. The British argued that the RAF could easily drop a few bombs as punishment on a tribe thaat broke the Pax Imperia, which if not sanctioned by God was by Delhi, the British Indian capital, Whitehall and Westminster.
So the planes went out, an offending tribe identified and bombed, all without the use of GPS and drones. And the effect practically nil the hillsmen simply coming straight back wit temporary alliances, treaties of kinship support.
The Pathans area were never conquered and the British never attempted the sort of aerial genocide the Americans practised in Vietnam, which incidentally also failed.
So India gots its independence and Paksitan the old NW frontier and is still ineffectively fighting those wars.
Generl Westmoreland said once a year in the Redaers’ Digest that “the enemy is beaten” in Vietnam but he was long gone when the last helicopter left the US Embassy roof in Saigon, a war the they could have won if only they that Ho Chi Minh did not at first hate them, but the French, and he wanted independence from France which tended to impose a culturally superior system (or at least they thought so), and was resented by a minority of patriots, many of whom received their education and radicalisation in France.
The Afghan War will do the same way and the whipped cur of America will pull out and go into one of periodic isolationist sulks and this time it is to be hoped for good.
Meanwhile the people of the Republican Right will try to think about new war dreams.
Why not go and bring liberation, democracy and th American dream to the Antarctic tribes sitting on those barren icy-shelfs suppressed by the wicked Icebergs
John Chan
American did not practise aerial genocide in Vietnam alone, it practised aerial genocide over Cambodia and Laos as well, two of the totally innocent and hapless nations. About one million of Cambodians and Laotians were killed by the American aerial genocide, but the American counted that body count as Pol Pot’s atrocity; the American and its western partners said Pol Pot killed two millions of Cambodians, actually half of them was the result of American serial genocide.
The bomblets dropped by the American cluster bombs half century ago in Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam are still killing and maiming the Indochina young, adults and olds, but American and its westerner partners have never shown remorse about the war crimes they committed against innocent civilians in Cambodia, Lao and Vietnam.
Hao Tran
@John Chan
How can you so sure about a war you have never been though? I have 4 of my family’s member killed by Pol Pots (on my own homeland, Viet Nam), non of my relatives was killed by the Americans even we live in the VietCong’s occupied zone. And please notice that Vietnamese people are no friends to Chinese goverment! Chinese Goverment are full of murderers!
Bharateeya
What exactly is your point?
Anjaan
@ Bharayeeya,
The point raised by John Chan is quite clear and relevant. If you do not get it, just don’t bother.
@ John Chan,
There is no doubt, the Americans would like to see a large scale war in Asia in order to save their sagging economy. But the Asian nations realize this American design and would avoid being the canon fodder. China, on the other hand would not mind settling for the second position behind the US, as long as they are allowed to remain unchallenged in Asia. So, it come down to US-China deal making in the future.
John Chan
@Anjaan,
After 200 years of mistreatment in the hands of the imperialist Westpac, China knows it is wrong to behave like the imperialist Westpac. Therefore China follows the principle of non-interference, it treats nations large and small as equal and with respect.
China would not sell out its principle in order to make deals with the USA, therefore USA is viewing China as virus, and it doing all it can to contain China with the aim to crash China, even though China has been supporting USA financially and subsidizing American living standard with all possible good nature.
papa john
@my little john chan,
“After 200 years of mistreatment in the hands of the imperialist Westpac, China knows it is wrong to behave like the imperialist Westpac. Therefore China follows the principle of non-interference, it treats nations large and small as equal and with respect.”
Oh boy! you are a shameless liar! Just look at what China is bullying the Phil right now. It is happening in front of the world.
thanh dang
after a-thousand-year continuously failed efforts to invade and occupy Vietnam ,China still shamefully can not hide its desire of Vietnamese territories, namely Hoang Sa and Truong Sa in the East Sea.
The Vietnamese people would never forget the facts that, without our consistent resistances, she might have been a mere Chinese province as of Tibet today .
John Chan
@p John,
This is a site to debate with reasons, not for you to huff and puff controllably. You need to realize when truth does not match imperialist Westpac’s manufactured consent, it is not a lie, it is reminding you that it is fallacy for the imperialist Westpac to expect everybody has to take their words as given truth.
John Chan
@thanh dang,
Nobody is invading Vietnam, therefore it is puzzling why you are accusing China has any desire of Vietnam territories.
Please remember it is the French, the American, Japanese, S. Korean, Australian, ASEAN and NATO nations who had bombed and killed the Vietnamese by the millions in the last 200 years, as well as it is the French committed culture genocide again the Vietnamese people; China was the one always on the Vietnamese side to fight against those murderers.
Cambe
@ John Chan
‘China was the one always on the Vietnamese side to fight against those murderers’
John Chan, of the selective memory, are you forgetting (the many times through history) when China invaded Vietnam? Most recently in 1979, 10 000 Vietnamese casualties in a border spat started by a Chinese invasion based on dubious grounds and followed by ongoing skirmishing around the border up until 1989. Not what I would think of as a very friendly neighbour or ally.
Hao Tran
You’re right. but the casualties number is wrong. Arcording to my uncle, who fought that 1979 “border conflict” as our goverment said, there was atlest 50000 people was killed by chinese troops and artillery. Most of the casualties was civilians because my uncle’s divison was fighting the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia and when they returned, it was too late!