Michael W. Michalak Quotes

We can choose our friends, but we can't choose our neighbors.

In the South China Sea and underneath the South China Sea, of course, there's a lot of raw materials. There are very rich fishing grounds there, so there are some economic concerns in the South China Sea as well.

From the United States, Vietnam is looking for two things. One of them is a very stable and continuing to expand economic relationship. Secondly, they would like to see the United States remain in the - Southeast Asia, acting as a balancing power to balance out China.

We have this rising nation China. And one of the things we want to do is make sure that China's neighbors are actually bound to us, bound to the United States.

Vietnam is no longer a war, it's a country. I think that that's very important to understand. And the Vietnamese - last time a poll was taken, somewhere above 80 percent of Vietnamese people have a very positive outlook towards the United States.

And I think that Vietnameese see the United States as a source of markets, as a source of technology and as a source of this balancing power relationship with - against China. They - the Chinese and the Vietnamese have always had a very suspicious relationship of each other.

For a thousand years, Vietnam was a part of China. And that thousand years is punctuated throughout by rebellions from Vietnam.