> Not necessarily; the U. S. "lost" the Vietnam war, and now Vietnam
> diligently provides cheap labor to enrich U. S. based multinationals.
Not at all, Vietnam won the peace as well as the war. It built one of the world's canniest developmental states, invested heavily in infrastructure and education, and has had one of the world's fastest-growing economies for the past two decades.
I'd also point out that the US defeat in Vietnam created the key geopolitical window of opportunity for China's long boom: after the US left, there was no reason to continue Mao's costly and wasteful Third Line policy of constructing military industries in Western China -- Deng Xiaoping scrapped the Third Line and launched rural reforms, and the rest is, as they say, history.
-- DRR