Summing up:
The Soviets had initially instructed “commie” China to help the Vietcong resist the US allied invasion. After it defeated the US allied force, China was then asked by the Soviet Union to help rebuild Vietnam.
However, when the expansionist Soviet Union soured its relationship with China, the Soviets tried to leapfrog China using Vietnam as a proxy to expand into the south. So it signed a 25-yr Mutual Defense Pact with Vietnam to prepare for an ASEAN invasion.
After defeating the US and its allies, there was no one who could stop the war-hardened victorious Vietnam backed by the Soviet Union. Lee Kuan Yew (LKY, the first Prime Minister of Singapore) said in his memoir that all the ASEAN armies were sent to defend the Thai border, but were barely able to resist for a few weeks. So he visited Deng to beg for help. The only answer he got was “to give [him] a few weeks.” Then Deng swiftly delivered a punitive incursion into Vietnam, against the Soviet military threat, in order to save ASEAN. LKY was very impressed.
After Deng visited the US, China-backed Cambodia and its Khmer Rouge under Pol Pot were asked to launch a full counter attack on Vietnam to lure its main army into Cambodia. With the expiry of the 1950 Sino-Soviet Treaty, China announced its plan to punish Vietnam. Then China launched a punitive invasion to destroy Vietnam’s war capacity through a scorched earth policy, and China’s army went all the way to the outskirts of Hanoi. The Soviet Union failed to defend Vietnam, so Deng openly denounced its alliance with the Soviets and called out the Soviets’ inability to honor a defense treaty with Vietnam.
As a good strategist Deng had actually amassed a million troops at the Sino-Russia border before punishing Vietnam. The Soviet Union knew very well that any intervention to clash with China would be disastrous and result in a massive war that would weaken it, while anticipating that the US and the Western world would back China to stop any Soviet expansion. So the Soviet-Vietnam expansionary grand plan was forestalled with Chinese blood and Deng’s steely will, farsightedness and strategy.
It’s no accident that LKY had been giving China every help Singapore could since the Deng era, training numerous China cadres, transferring all kinds of management skills and experience, giving generous scholarships for its people to study in S’pore, transfering high technologies including Chartered Semiconductor 0.18um fab that was sanctioned by the West-Japan, providing one of highest foreign direct investments to China, etc.
But the ultra-corrupt Jiang Zemin blunted many projects like the S’pore-Suzhou Industrial Park and damaged China’s core interests for a few decades. LKY probably perceived that a rising China under the corrupt and lawless Jiang would be a great menace to ASEAN, so he advocated for the US to balance China, leading to Obama’s unexpected, militarily aggressive, “pivot” to the South China Sea, intending to make ASEAN its cannon fodder in clashing with China to keep its hegemon role. But Prez Xi worked to overhaul China and successfully resisted ZUS aggression in the SCS to keep peace within ASEAN.
The chief architect of S’pore’s every success, DPM Dr Goh Keng Swee, was the only one LKY highly praised in his memoir for performing all the miraculous feats, well beyond LKY’s ability to achieve. Up to today, all of S’pore’s core policies remained largely unchanged as formulated by GKS decades ago, yet still working very well.
While still in his prime, DPM Goh KS was invited by Deng to China as a special advisor for the last 40 years to help China rise, likely a reciprocal repayment for China’s saving of ASEAN. GKS returned only to die of old age a few years ago. At LKY’s behest, GKS was given an exceptional state funeral reserved for the Prez as a recognition of his exceptional contribution.
LKY exercised rigorous restrictions on the mainstream media – in particular from the US – inside of Singapore. He played a pivotal role in actively balancing the global geopolitical situation for ASEAN peace and prosperity, esp between US and China. But installing his idiotic son LHL as PM turned the S’pore MSM into a FUKUS-India mouthpiece and it became a stooge of ZUS-India. This nepotism is LKY’s worst failure and it destroyed his own legacy and the country he nurtured.
We only allow the US papers into Singapore so that we can figure out what the US writes about us. And what their perception of us is. We cannot allow them to assume a role in Singapore that the American media plays in America : That of invigilator, adversary, and inquisitor of the administration.
