My, my, how things change:
Vietnam has called on the US and other nations to help resolve the escalating territorial disputes in the resource-rich South China Sea, in a move likely to anger Beijing, which opposes what it sees as outside interference.
Tensions between China and Vietnam continued to rise over the weekend, ahead of live-fire drills planned by Vietnam's navy on Monday on an islet around 20 miles from the coast of central Vietnam, which Hanoi described as “routine”.
Enemies today, friends tomorrow. It's always been that way in war, even when there was a strong ideological basis unerpinning the conflicts. Whenever land or resources are in dispute, you get your allies where you can find them. It's harder to imagine such shifts when the wars are based only on ideolgy. Can Islamist jihadists and Western democracies ever really have a truce?
