50 years after key Vietnam battles, Mattis seeks closer ties

WASHINGTON – A half-century after the Tet Offensive punctured American hopes of victory in Vietnam, Defense Secretary Jim Mattis is visiting the former enemy in search of a different kind of win: incremental progress as partners in a part of the world the Pentagon has identified as vital for the United States to compete with China and Russia.

Mattis, a retired general who entered the Marine Corps during Vietnam but did not serve there, arrived in Indonesia on Monday where he’ll spend two days before visiting Hanoi for talks with senior government and military leaders.

By coincidence, Mattis will be in Vietnam just days before the 50th anniversary of the communist offensive on Jan. 30-31, 1968, when North Vietnam attacked an array of key objectives in the South, including the city of Hue, a former imperial capital and cultural icon on the Perfume River. At the time, Mattis was a senior at Columbia High School in Richland, Washington. The following year he joined the Marine Corps Reserves.

The former enemies gradually have set aside their wartime differences, in part out of shared concern about China’s growing military power and more assertive position in the South China Sea. The Trump administration sees Vietnam as a partner in opposing China’s assertion of territorial claims in the South China Sea, including the Spratlys, an island chain where Taiwan, Malaysia, the Philippines, Vietnam and Brunei also have claims.

The countries didn’t normalize relations until 1995. It took another two decades before Washington fully lifted a ban on selling weapons to Vietnam.

The Vietnamese have largely embraced the new partnership as they’ve sought to diversify diplomatic and security relations in the region, fearing Chinese primacy.

Vietnam fought a border war with China in 1979, and bitterness runs deep.