ABSTRACT
The Democratic Republic of Vietnam and the National Liberation Front fought the Vietnam War against the background of the Sino-Soviet dispute. North Vietnam’s relations with the USSR were warm after 1965. However, China’s more pragmatic foreign policy, which emerged as a result of its changing perceptions of the Soviet Union and the US, encouraged it to accommodate a more flexible line on the Vietnam War. As American prestige had been wagered and Washington had pledged to uphold democracy in Vietnam, Saigon was sure that the US would not withdraw from Vietnam whatever it did, or rather failed to do. Despite long experience with its own truculent ally, Washington consistently presumed that Hanoi remained subservient to Moscow and Peking. The North Vietnamese government was never merely a puppet of the Soviet Union or China. It always remained independent and as far as the Sino-Soviet dispute was concerned, Hanoi pursued its own interests rather that adopting a neutral position.
