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Vietnam is a better example here. They are continually afraid of Chinese invasion based on nearly a millenia of war preceding the wars with western colonizers.
by kingkawn 5y ago
Vietnam is a better example here. They are continually afraid of Chinese invasion based on nearly a millenia of war preceding the wars with western colonizers. They are at huge disadvantage economically and technologically to China. So every single high school student and college student is trained in guerilla warfare tactics, the entire country is outfitted with secret military installations, and they are ready to resist any invader so intensely that there is no hope of a meaningful occupation no matter the seeming military asymmetry. This has protected them for the last 50 years other than a brief border war with China in the late 70s and some ocean territory incursions by the Chinese navy. Most of those were fought off by swarming them with fishing boats.
- dragonwriter 5y ago> They are continually afraid of Chinese invasion based on nearly a millenia of war preceding the wars with western colonizers And, more to the point, because of the most recent invasion by China, after the wars with western colonizers.
- kingkawn 5y agoReferenced in my original comment as the war that took place in the late 70s…
- refurb 5y agoNope. Military training as a part of the basic high school curriculum went away a whole ago. Vietnamese youth are about making money now. I don’t disagree the govt is prepared to counter China but they are also investing in a lot of other things.
- kingkawn 5y agoI have been to Vietnam right before the pandemic and witnessed with my own eyes active training of high school and college students using mock AK-47s. The cultural focus of the students of course is their economic future in peace time, but the foundation of that peace for a small and otherwise vulnerable nation is the maintenance of their strategic deterrence, which continues to this day.
- refurb 5y agoMaybe it’s more regional then. My sister-in-law grew up there and said they dropped it back in the 1990’s, but I suppose that’s just where she grew up.