We could look at the two most famous examples of communist countries and see that that is very much not the case. Ask how the countries on the periphery of the Soviet Union felt. Ask how Tibet and Xinjiang feel about China today.
Vietnam’s history has more to do with their own self-interest at each turn, rather than a systemic anti-imperialist ideology. Like yeah, when France, China, and America are doing imperialism on your country of course you’re going to fight against imperialism. They overturned the Khmer Rouge due to a combination of: the fact that the Khmer Rouge regime was invading their territory, the fact that Cambodia at the time was siding with China in the Sino-Soviet split while Vietnam sided with the USSR, a general desire for stability in their region, and the humanitarian concerns. Imperialism, for or anti-, didn’t factor into it. In fact, a reasonable argument could be made that that “Vietnamese territory” the Khmer Rouge was attempting to take only became Vietnamese because of how French Indochina borders were drawn (i.e., because of imperialism), and that historically it was Khmer territory. It’s not a bulletproof argument—discussions about historical borders and land claims rarely are—but it’s not unreasonable.
I mean…
We could look at the two most famous examples of communist countries and see that that is very much not the case. Ask how the countries on the periphery of the Soviet Union felt. Ask how Tibet and Xinjiang feel about China today.
Vietnam’s history has more to do with their own self-interest at each turn, rather than a systemic anti-imperialist ideology. Like yeah, when France, China, and America are doing imperialism on your country of course you’re going to fight against imperialism. They overturned the Khmer Rouge due to a combination of: the fact that the Khmer Rouge regime was invading their territory, the fact that Cambodia at the time was siding with China in the Sino-Soviet split while Vietnam sided with the USSR, a general desire for stability in their region, and the humanitarian concerns. Imperialism, for or anti-, didn’t factor into it. In fact, a reasonable argument could be made that that “Vietnamese territory” the Khmer Rouge was attempting to take only became Vietnamese because of how French Indochina borders were drawn (i.e., because of imperialism), and that historically it was Khmer territory. It’s not a bulletproof argument—discussions about historical borders and land claims rarely are—but it’s not unreasonable.