One way to understand the shifts in East Asia's relations with China and the US is to examine Vietnam's 'guerilla diplomacy'.
With their ill-fitting uniforms, brusque manners and suspicious minds, Vietnam's military chiefs have never been seen as nature's diplomats. Yet they have sprung from the shadows in recent months to drive the South China Sea dispute onto the regional agenda, creating both headaches for China and opportunities for the US as it looks to buttress its status in the region.
The ironies lay heavily this week as the generals masterminded their latest diplomatic ambush of Beijing as hosts of the inaugural 'Asean Plus Eight' meeting of regional defence ministers - the most high-powered security meeting held in Asia.
Washington's war machine may have been forced by Hanoi's warriors to flee Saigon in humiliation and defeat 35 years ago, yet here was US Defence Secretary Dr Robert Gates repeatedly reassuring Vietnam that the US was in the region for the long haul.
When asked by a student at Hanoi's National University on Monday how Vietnam could be sure that the US would stay engaged in Asia, Gates said: 'I think all Asia can be confident that the US intends to remain active in Asia as we have been for so many scores of years before ... we have never turned our back on Asia.'
Vietnam, having moved so fast and so far towards a strategic partnership with its bitter foe of old, fears abandonment after provoking China, a nation about which Hanoi is as obsessed as it is paranoid. That provocation was all too clear this week as a grim-faced General Liang Guanglie, China's defence minister, sat through speech after speech by his regional counterparts mentioning the need to resolve territorial disputes over the South China Sea through regional discussions.