This is John Batchel, conversation with General Blaine Holt, U.S. Air Force retired,

who's traveled the world, once is deputy director of NATO, and then, of course, he flies airplanes.

Spent time in Vietnam, commenting on Vietnam as a bulwark of the American defense of East Asia from the Chinese depredations.

You will recall that the People's Republic of China's PLA Navy and Army took on Vietnam in the late 70s.

Vietnam had just ejected the U.S. and its allies from South Vietnam.

And the Vietnamese won that battle, as I recall, very handily.

So the Vietnamese are, as Blaine reminds us, not to be taken lightly.

Here's Blaine, hold on. Vietnam, understood as a communist country,

but then again, well, listen to Blaine. More of this later.

You know, historically, I would never want to pick a fight if you didn't have to with the Vietnamese people.

They are steeped in a culture of asymmetric and guerrilla warfare. They have very competent military leaders.

But like you see in Ukraine with Russia versus Ukraine, innovation has a real hard time against

quantity. Quantity is a quality all unto itself. That said, if there is a hope in that region, it is with Vietnam. Vietnam

likes to call itself communist. It is anything but. Even Ho Chi Minh was just looking for the

best deal. They're not dogmatically communist. In fact, the times that I've spent there,

I haven't found, I found

entrepreneurial spirit there like you find it in Taiwan. So what does that mean for the region? It means

Vietnam's probably going to strengthen over time economically as we watch all these factories

and the flight of capital from mainland China go into Vietnam.

What you want to watch is, is that the pervasive instruments of the intelligence arm of the CCP doesn't do to Vietnam what we see happening in Singapore and other countries like Thailand.