FRIDAY February 3 marked an Asian historical milestone. The Stars and Stripes of the United States flag finally flew in the capital of a united and independent Vietnam, nearly 50 years after Vietnamese leaders took inspiration from the US Declaration of Independence as they sought to free themselves from Japanese occupation and French colonialism.
While the US flag is flying in Hanoi, and the Vietnamese flag in Washington DC, the US and Vietnam still do not recognise each other diplomatically. It could be several years before they do.
All that happened this week was that the US Liaison Office opened in Hanoi after the Vietnamese Tet holiday for the Lunar New Year. Technically the Liaison Office opened on January 28 when the two nations signed agreements in Hanoi.
The US flag-raising in Hanoi was a low-key occasion with no speeches or any of the euphoria that greeted the US signing of a similar agreement in 1973 setting up liaison offices with China.
The US flag ceased to fly in Hanoi at the end of the First Vietnam War in 1954, when the US closed its consulate there, following the end of French colonialism, and the takeover by the Vietnamese communists.
This move, while understandable in terms of the Cold War and the American crusade against communism, was ironic, given the fact the US had gone to war against Japan in 1941 because Tokyo had extended its efforts at imperial conquest from China to Indochina.
Operatives of the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), the forerunner of the Central Intelligence Agency, had supported the Vietnamese communists against the Japanese during World War II, thereby encouraging the Vietnamese to look towards America.
