When Donald Trump lays out his long-awaited vision for a new US strategy to engage with Asia later this week he will be doing so in a place replete with lessons about American misadventures.
Da Nang, host to this year’s Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation summit, today serves as a beach playground complete with the sort of $700 per night tropical resorts and lush palm-lined golf courses that Mr Trump might prize for his own property empire. But in March 1965 it was where 3,500 marines became the first regular US combat troops to land on Vietnamese soil, entering a conflict that a decade later would end with an ignominious retreat for a defeated and divided America.
Nowadays, the war in Asia that often consumes Mr Trump’s White House is an economic one. The strategy he will unveil in Da Nang on Friday hinges on developing stronger bilateral trade and investment ties with like-minded regional allies such as India and Japan. Behind it, much like his predecessor’s “pivot to Asia”, lies a desire to find a hard-nosed way to respond to a rising China. Many of Mr Trump’s top advisers view Beijing as a predatory economic rival that has, for too long, gamed an international system ill-equipped to cope with its brand of state-subsidised mercantilism.