By Li Kaisheng Source:Global Times Published: 2015-7-13 23:58:01
Illustration: Liu Rui/GT
As the first-ever general secretary of the Communist Party of Vietnam (CPV) to visit the US, Nguyen Phu Trong was received by the White House with a high-profile welcome.
Though Trong is not a head of state, US President Barack Obama hosted him in his Oval Office. They released the US-Vietnam Joint Vision Statement, which seems like a press stunt since few concrete achievements were made. They also downplayed the human rights issue that the US always finds it necessary to talk about.
In the South China Sea issue, the US pointed fingers at China's reef construction activities, but adopted an unsurprisingly mild attitude toward Vietnam which had taken up the most islands and relentlessly conducted activities on these islands. In the joint statement, the two shared concerns about "recent developments in the South China Sea that have increased tensions."
Some analysts believe that Washington and Hanoi are getting closer or even forming an alliance. But the Vietnamese government announced its "Three-Nos" defense and diplomatic policy long ago: no military alliances, no foreign military bases on Vietnamese territory, and no reliance on any country to combat others.
Vietnam will definitely not reject US courtship, and Vietnamese leaders would like to see the US give the stamp of approval to Vietnam's political system, manifested in the visit of the general secretary of the CPV.
Before Trong's visit, he publicly stated, "Currently, the US and China are both leading economic partners of Vietnam. Therefore, promoting friendship and mutually beneficial cooperation with both the US and China is one of the top priorities in our foreign policy." During his US trip, he stressed that Vietnam sticks to a foreign policy of independence and cooperation. He was apparently drawing a line between Washington and Hanoi.
In general, the foreign policy of Vietnam is striking a balance between major powers and it will not pick a side between China and the US. But this balance will not remain still. Vietnam will move between the two, the pace of which is determined by the following three factors.
The first is the balance between ideological interests and interests related to disputes over the South China Sea sovereignty. Vietnam is well aware that US intentions to spur "peaceful evolution" in the country will not change given ideological differences. If tensions over South China Sea disputes with China intensify, Vietnam will lean toward the US. But if the situation does not favor Vietnam ideologically, it will seek China's help.
The second factor concerns the balance among different factions within the Vietnamese leadership. Outsiders believe that within the CPV there are pro-China conservatives and pro-US reformists. The belief in such a division may not be that accurate and exaggerates conflicts within the party. But different opinions within a party are normal. For Vietnam, such discrepancies and rivalries will be reflected in its foreign policies.
The balance between the government and society also needs to be taken into consideration. Within the government, no matter which faction is in power, it has to consider ideological interests, which set the foundation for Beijing-Hanoi ties. But at the societal level, people lack such considerations. Meanwhile, due to the South China Sea disputes, many people hold an anti-China mentality.
The CPV's 12th Congress will convene in 2016 and the distribution of power within the party will affect the country's diplomacy. The next one or two years are a key period to watch for Vietnam's changing strategies.
Other major countries can be more than bystanders. China can adjust its own South China Sea policy to affect Vietnam's foreign strategies.
One thing for sure, which Vietnam itself admits, is that China is a neighbor that cannot be moved away. This determines the bottom line of Vietnam's foreign policy: It cannot form an alliance with the US, unless both Sino-US ties and Sino-Vietnamese ties worsen severely, just as the worsening relations between China and the Soviet Union and between China and Vietnam led to the alliance between the Soviet Union and Vietnam during the Cold War era.
But there is little chance of this.
The author is an associate research fellow at the Institute of International Relations, Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences. opinion@globaltimes.com.cn
