According to Lord Palmerston, nations have no permanent allies or enemies, only permanent interests. That maxim contains a warning the Bush Administration should heed as it deals with the Socialist Republic of Viet Nam.
It has been more than 14 years since the last Americans were lifted off the embassy roof in Saigon, a televised vignette of ignominy that is still replayed in the U.S.'s memory. Now Viet Nam has suffered its own setback: after more than a decade of trying to defeat a rural insurgency in Cambodia, a Vietnamese expeditionary force has given up and gone home.
For years the...
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