In 1993, I had the chance to visit Vietnam. I’d been doing a film in Thailand and with a few days off decided to head north heeding the advice of an experienced traveller to Hanoi “Before,” she said, “it was ruined.”

A quick hop and there I was, in Hanoi, a place for which I had plenty of references but in which I had no tangible experience.  I had after all lived through the Vietnam War. Sat bedside in Tokyo army hospital burn wards in my teens along with my class mates writing letters for bandaged soldiers barely older than we were.  My cousin had served two tours in ‘Nam, our local paper the Tokyo Stars and Stripes kept us abreast of the horrors, the Foreign Correspondents Club at which my folks were members was always full of seasoned, hard drinking journalists fresh off the fields. I had heard stories of the Hanoi Hilton, attended a talk given by Jane Fonda on the heels of her trip to Hanoi. Shell shocked soldiers on R&R often stayed in our home from 1967 to 1972.

Hanoi was nothing like what I had imagined…and nothing like it is today. 1995…streets were bustling with yaks, bicycles and the occasional car weaving through each other indiscriminately. Street vendors flourished, I stayed in the most posh accommodation of the time..a Soviet built hotel that had wax toilet paper. I remember feeling as if I was on two trips at the same time. One…to an exquisite new country filled with hard working farmers in a moment of great transition. The other, to the country that had been our enemy and to which too many young Americans had been sent never to return. In the sweltering heat, dressed as I was in flip flops and a sun dress, sweating profusely, I tried to imagine what the experience could have been for a young man from say Nebraska who had never been out of his own county and now half way around the world from everything he had ever known, stepping off his first plane ride, weighted down with gear, risking all to battle the ‘spread of communism’ whatever that meant.  Then after all that…to have lost the war. Waste upon tragedy upon lunacy.

On the heels of that mind bending trip, I was introduced to a Thai businessman, Stanford grad, man of the world who laughed at my depressed reaction to Hanoi. “Oh you Americans!” he laughed. “You always think you lost the Vietnam War. You didn’t! You won!”  A pretty astonishing declaration. His reasoning was that prior to the war, the Sino-Soviet pact was rock solid and eyeing India as a further frontier for business expansion. America, terrified to loose the wild west of opportunity, set about to break the pact…and that successfully done, exited Vietnam. History has gone on to prove my Thai friend right in the sense that in spite of the US having “lost the war”, Vietnam is anything but communist and a now a hot bed of commercial opportunities and growth for western entrepreneurs among others.   

I read in the news today that Putin is hosting Modi, Xi and Erdogan. Kim Jong-un is expected to attend as well, each with a posse of businessmen. Putin is looking to “consolidate solidarity” and build a “new type of international relation and business community away from an unreliable and punitive America.”

So…having “won” the Vietnam War 50 years ago it is possible that it will be un-won over these next few years.  China and Russia are united in looking to solve India’s recent tariff wound at the hands of the person occupying the White House. Looking to create partnerships in commerce and invention.  We are already collectively 80% behind China’s alternative energy industry. Reading of this extraordinary gathering I shudder to think where else we will soon be lagging.