North Point Advisors; INVESTMENT AND TAX ADVISORY

Here is the humiliation that nobody in Washington will say out loud. The United States fought a war in Vietnam for twenty years. Dropped more ordnance on it than all of World War II. Killed three million people. Deployed chemical weapons across generations. Lost 58,000 of its own soldiers. Spent billions. And lost. Then imposed an embargo for nineteen years to punish Vietnam for winning. Then normalized relations in 1995 because the economic logic eventually overwhelmed the wounded pride. Now the U.S. Navy sails into Da Nang, the same Da Nang where American Marines landed in 1965, and it is one of five navies from five different great powers that Vietnam has hosted this year. One of five. Not a special relationship. Not a privileged partner. Not the indispensable ally. One of five. Vietnam did not forgive America. Vietnam does not need to forgive America. Vietnam simply decided that the Americans, like the Russians and the Chinese and the Indians and the Japanese, are useful in specific, limited, carefully managed ways, and extended that usefulness on Vietnamese terms, for Vietnamese purposes, with Vietnamese interests as the only non-negotiable. The carrier that arrives in Da Nang arrives in a country it could not defeat. It is permitted to dock. Not because Vietnam needs it. Because Vietnam has decided, sovereignly, on its own terms, for its own reasons, that it is useful to allow it. The guest should remember who owns the house.