Coping with the United States: Hanoi’s Search for an Effective Strategy

During the twenty years since the end of the Vietnamese War against the United States, fundamental changes have occurred in Vietnam, especially after Vietnam adopted a policy of renovation and the cold war came to an end. These developments, together with recent historical research on the war and access to formerly secret documents, have bettered conditions for more comprehensive studies of a war which, in the history of both the US and Vietnam was long, severe and traumatic. Still, the legacy and the memory of the suffering of several generations of Vietnamese people continue to influence their thinking about the history of the war. It has therefore been difficult to develop an unbiased assessment in Vietnam of relations with the US, which, in the eyes of many Vietnamese people, was always hostile to their nationalist aspirations.