US warship to visit Vietnam for first time since war’s end

THE US navy is to dock in Vietnam for the first time since the end of the war there in 1975.

The aircraft carrier USS Carl Vinson will arrive at the Vietnamese coastal city of Danang in March as part of the navy’s multinational disaster response exercises in the Indo-pacific region.

Its presence is also widely perceived as an attempt to counter China’s military influence in Asian waters, the scenes of escalating territorial disputes.

Vietnam, which borders China, has long resisted its power and influence, but Beijing’s insistence that it controls most of the South China Sea threatens territorial claims, including Hanoi’s.

China’s assertion also challenges US naval supremacy in the western Pacific, prompting Washington to woo Asian allies with closer military ties.

US aircraft carriers were a common sight off Vietnam in the 17-year-long war. Relations were normalised in 1995 and Washington lifted an embargo on weapons sales to Hanoi in 2016.

The news comes as Japan is reportedly considering deploying surface-toship missile units across southern Okinawa to counter China’s rising maritime power.

Officials are exploring plans to deploy a unit on the main Okinawa island and other smaller islands nearby, with a view to bolstering its defences against Chinese vessels, government sources told Japanese media.

The Miyako Strait in the East China Sea has emerged as a regional hotspot of tension, with Chinese naval vessels regularly fuelling disquiet by passing through its waters every year over the past decade.