US, Vietnam forge new strategic relationship
Alliance comes as China’s ambition continues to grow
HANOI — President Biden cemented a new strategic relationship with Vietnam on Sunday, bringing two historical foes closer than they have ever been and putting the ghosts of the past behind them out of shared worry over China’s mounting ambitions in the region.
During a landmark visit to Hanoi by the American president, Vietnam’s Communist Party leadership formally raised the country’s ties to the United States to the highest level in Hanoi’s diplomatic hierarchy, equivalent to those it has with Russia and China. Biden said the breakthrough was “the beginning of even a greater era of cooperation” a half-century after US troops withdrew.
“Today, we can trace a 50year arc of progress in the relationship between our nations, from conflict to normalization,” Biden said at a news conference after a meeting with Nguyen Phu Trong, the general secretary of the Communist Party of Vietnam. “This is a new elevated status that will be a force for prosperity and security in one of the most consequential regions in the world.”
While neither he nor Trong directly cited China in their public remarks, it was an important subtext for the move as Biden works to establish a network of partnerships in the region to counter aggressive action by Beijing. In recent months, he has expanded cooperation with Australia, India, and the Philippines and brought the leaders of Japan and South Korea together at Camp David in Maryland to seal a three-way alliance that has eluded Washington in the past.
“The United States is a Pacific nation, and we’re not going anywhere,” Biden said Sunday, a statement that appeared intended to put China on notice.
But in response to reporters’ questions, Biden denied any hostile intent, rejecting a new Cold War in the Indo-Pacific region. “I don’t want to contain China,” he said. “I just want to make sure that we have a relationship with China that is on the up and up, squared away, everybody knows what it’s all about.”
Beijing was not persuaded. In the days leading up to Biden’s visit, Mao Ning, a spokesperson for China’s Foreign Ministry, called on the United States to “abandon the Cold War mentality and zerosum game mindset” in its dealings with Asia, insisting that Washington “abide by the basic norms of international relations.”
Biden arrived in Hanoi after a weekend in New Delhi attending the annual Group of 20 summit meeting. Notably absent was President Xi Jinping of China, who typically makes a point of attending such gatherings. In his place came Premier Li Qiang, the country’s No. 2 leader.
Biden disclosed during his news conference in Hanoi that he had spoken with Li on the sidelines of the summit. “We talked about stability,” he said. “It wasn’t confrontational at all.”
Speculation about Xi’s absence has been intense within the Biden administration. There are four theories for why he skipped the meeting: He has domestic political pressure over the country’s growing economic troubles. He wanted to send a signal to India amid a tense border dispute. He is seen at home as having spent too much time abroad. Or he wants to shift the focus to groupings more susceptible to Beijing’s direction, like the BRICS club of nations that includes Russia, Brazil, and other powers.
Despite Vietnam’s new agreement with Biden, China remains its dominant foreign partner, given the countries’ long-standing economic ties, and Beijing has signaled it will not cede the ground to the United States. Just last week, Li met with Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh of Vietnam on the sidelines of another international summit meeting in Jakarta, Indonesia.
But Vietnam, one of the few Southeast Asian nations to push back against Chinese assertiveness in the South China Sea, is looking to establish a little more distance from Beijing and give itself a little more latitude. Biden administration officials do not expect Vietnam to abandon its cooperation with China entirely, but hope to offer more of an alternative over time.