South China Sea: 'neutral' Vietnam hedges against Beijing as US, Japan, India, South Korea seek to woo it militarily

Vietnam is increasingly being seen as a "geopolitical swing state" in the region, analysts say, as major powers make efforts to forge closer military cooperation with the Southeast Asian nation.

Late last month, a US aircraft carrier and two guided missile cruisers visited Vietnam on a rare port call - only the third such visit since bilateral relations were reestablished after the end of the Vietnam war.

The USS Ronald Reagan, a nuclear-powered Nimitz-class aircraft carrier, docked in the city of Da Nang for a six-day visit, which was described by the carrier strike group's commander, Rear Admiral Patrick Hannifin, as reinforcing the US-Vietnam partnership and "commitment to confronting shared challenges in the maritime domain".

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A week before, Japan's largest destroyer Izumo also made a port call at Cam Ranh Bay on Vietnam's central coast. Japanese Rear Admiral Nishiyama Takahiro said that Tokyo hoped to deepen exchanges with the Vietnamese navy on a regular basis and forge cooperative relations.

Around the same time, after a meeting between India's Defence Minister Rajnath Singh and his visiting Vietnamese counterpart General Phan Van Giang, New Delhi offered Hanoi an active-duty missile corvette of the Indian Navy as a gift.

The domestically built corvette INS Kirpan - the first active warship gifted by India to any country - is intended to strengthen Vietnam's naval capabilities.

Late last month, South Korean leader Yoon Suk-yeol made his first visit to Vietnam as president - after the two sides had elevated ties to a "comprehensive strategic partnership" in December - with both Seoul and Hanoi agreeing to boost security cooperation, citing North Korea's nuclear threat.

The two nations also agreed to boost defence industry relations and security cooperation in the South China Sea, where Hanoi has long been embroiled in a territorial dispute with Beijing.

Tam-Sang Huynh, an international-relations lecturer at the Ho Chi Minh City University of Social Sciences and Humanities, said Vietnam was being courted by regional powers due to its location in the centre of Southeast Asia and its status as "a geopolitical swing state".

"South Korea views Vietnam as the ideal location to diversify its commercial links and expand its defence market, while India needs Vietnam as a bridge to strengthen its ties with Asean," Huynh said, referring to the 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations.

"Southeast Asia will continue to bear a heavy burden of being a minefield for great-power competition," he added.

In recent years, South Korea has emerged as a major arms exporter in Asia - from 2017 to 2021, it shipped slightly less than US$2 billion worth of arms to Southeast Asian countries, mainly the Philippines and Indonesia.

The East Asian nation is also now said to be discussing possible arms sales to Vietnam as the latter seeks to modernise its arsenal.

But despite the "courting" of Vietnam militarily by major powers, Huynh said it would continue its hedging strategy and is in no hurry to upgrade its partnership with the United States.

"If it's not broken, why fix it?" he said, adding that the leadership in Hanoi needed China's political support to strengthen the Vietnamese Communist Party's "stature and legitimacy".

The US and Vietnam established their "comprehensive partnership" a decade ago, and are now rumoured to be looking into the possibility of upgrading this to a "strategic" one.

But Hanoi has so far remained cautious, mostly because of concerns that doing so might upset Beijing or lead to a Chinese reprisal.

Khang Vu, a PhD candidate in political science at Boston College in the US with a focus on East Asian security, said that while the wooing of Vietnam by major powers in recent weeks was a positive outcome of Hanoi's "diplomatic balancing", "Vietnam's number one priority is to maintain a stable relationship with China to lower the risks of a military conflict".

"Vietnam has largely stuck to a neutral foreign policy of diversification and multilateralisation to ensure it does not upset China while widening the scope of its diplomatic engagements with other powers," he said.

Vu added that as the weaker partner militarily, Vietnam has to "garner more support whenever China bullies it at sea" and seek out alternative security options in case relations with Beijing sharply deteriorate.

Hanoi accused China of violating its sovereignty when Chinese survey ship Xiang Yang Hong 10 entered Vietnam's exclusive economic zone, accompanied by coastguard ships, in May.

The Chinese research ship and its escort operated for nearly a month, conducting "normal research activities in maritime waters under China's jurisdiction", according to a Chinese foreign ministry statement, before returning to the island province of Hainan.

In 2020, a Vietnamese fishing boat with eight crew members on board sank after being hit by a Chinese ship near the disputed Paracel Islands. Beijing said the Vietnamese boat had refused to leave the area, "suddenly turned sharply" and hit the Chinese ship.

Carl Thayer, a Southeast Asia regional specialist and emeritus professor at The University of New South Wales, said Vietnam was using high-level diplomacy as leverage amid US-China tensions.

Vietnamese Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh met Chinese President Xi Jinping last month, while continuing negotiations with the US about forging a possible strategic partnership before the end of this year.

"Each of Hanoi's strategic partners has to evaluate the costs of not cooperating with Vietnam, such as conceding influence to a rival," Thayer said, adding that the Vietnamese initiative to engage major powers diplomatically was not just aimed at reducing regional tensions but also strengthening its role in regional security.

Prashanth Parameswaran, founder of the weekly Asean Wonk newsletter and a fellow at the US-based Wilson Centre think tank, said major powers see Vietnam as a militarily capable, diplomatically active, economically significant and politically stable country.

"Vietnam's strategy of cultivating diverse relationships helps it manage risks and maximise opportunities, but this multidirectional foreign policy approach also requires careful calibration which is more challenging to do when the geopolitical environment worsens," he said.

This article originally appeared on the South China Morning Post (SCMP).

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