A Vietnamese military band performed a rousing Star Spangled Banner as US Defense Secretary Ashton Carter arrived on Monday for talks at the defense ministry in Hanoi.
Once inconceivable, such amicable displays between the former wartime adversaries are increasingly common as Vietnam frets over its communist neighbor China.
Carter and his counterpart, Vietnam Defense Minister Phung Quang Thanh, later signed a “joint vision statement” pledging to expand defense trade—including possible co-production—and collaborate on maritime security.
“We’re both committed to deepening our defense relationship,” Carter said following the ceremony. “We had a very in-depth discussion that extended well over an hour and a half because there’s so much we’re doing together.”
Carter’s Vietnam stop, midway through a 10-day Asian swing, was a signal to China that its South China Sea island-building campaign is alienating its neighbors. But the first visit to Hanoi by a US defense secretary since 2012 was also a reminder of the limits of the burgeoning US-Vietnam relationship.
The new vision statement, which builds on an earlier 2011 accord, is legally nonbinding. New US arms sales have been slow to develop since the Obama administration last fall partially lifted a long-standing ban on military sales to Vietnam. Accustomed to buying from Russia, the Vietnamese have been baffled by Pentagon procedures.
In Washington, expanded arms sales are opposed by Human Rights Watch, which says Vietnam’s rights record “remains weak in all key areas.”
China reliance
Some older members of the Vietnamese Politburo, who recall the US as the enemy, are skeptical of a complete turnabout. And while Vietnam is wary of Chinese domination, China remains its top trading partner and an important source of capital.
“This is a piece of complex systems engineering,” said Dean Cheng, an Asian affairs specialist at the Heritage Foundation in Washington, D.C. “There are many, many moving parts, not just China and the US,” he said. “The whole area is very much in flux.”
The US-Vietnam rapprochement, 20 years after the normalization of relations, is occurring against the legacy of a long and bitter war. Carter alluded to the countries’ “shared past” as he returned to Vietnam a diary and belt taken from a dead Viet Cong guerrilla by an American in the early 1970s.
One day earlier, it was difficult to escape the past. As the Pentagon chief visited Vietnam’s naval headquarters in Haiphong, a giant portrait of the country’s revolutionary leader Ho Chi Minh shadowed his arrival. The city is best known in the US for President Richard Nixon’s 1972 decision to order the mining of Haiphong’s harbor in a controversial escalation of the conflict.
Oil rig
With 42 percent of Vietnamese no more than 24 years old, wartime memories are overshadowed by contemporary worries about China. Relations between the neighbors plummeted last year after a Chinese oil rig appeared in disputed waters off Vietnam’s coast.
As Vietnamese patrol boats played a cat-and-mouse game with the Chinese rig’s escort vessels, protesters attacked and burned factories in Vietnam mostly owned by Taiwanese companies.
One year later, the persistence of rival territorial claims and China’s recent decision to move two mobile artillery pieces to a reef within range of Vietnamese offshore installations has some analysts jittery.
‘Unmanaged escalation’
“There’s a lot of distrust there,” said Alex Neill, a senior fellow at the International Institute for Strategic Studies. “In the South China Sea [SCS] there’s a far greater chance of unmanaged escalation between China and Vietnam, and the Philippines, rather than the United States and China.”
To avoid transforming the South China Sea into a Sino-US showdown, the US is seeking to build what officials call a “regional architecture” with military and economic dimensions. Adm. Harry Harris, commander of US Pacific Command, says he is “very excited” about
prospects for greater cooperation with Vietnam’s navy.
Some US vessels already make pit stops in Vietnamese ports. The USS Fort Worth, a littoral combat ship that encountered a Chinese naval vessel last month in the SCS, visited Da Nang in April.
During his visit, Carter announced the US is providing Vietnam $18 million to help it buy two Metal Shark offshore patrol boats.
‘Throwing elbows’
President Barack Obama reinforced the message on Monday in Washington. He told a group of youth leaders from the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, who are concluding US-sponsored fellowships, that China must observe the same rules of conduct that have helped it grow into a world power. “What has allowed all of Asia to prosper over the last two, three decades, including China, is there’s been relative peace and stability, freedom of navigation, freedom of commerce,” Obama said. China shouldn’t try to stake out territory “based just on throwing elbows,” he said. “If, in fact, their claims are legitimate, then they’ll be recognized.”
Weapons sales
U.S. officials say the proposed Trans-Pacific Partnership is also essential. The trade deal, which would grant countries such as Vietnam broader access to the US market, would help its garment industry move beyond simple cut-and-sew operations to higher value-added manufacturing.
Image credits: AP