Introduction

Vietnam is undergoing intensive economic growth and increasing international relevance. Despite the pandemic, the Vietnamese economy grew by 2.9% in 2020, by 2.6% in 2021, and a growth rate of 7.5% is expected this year. In foreign policy, Vietnam traditionally follows a multi-directional strategy driven by its “Four No’s” policy. Under this framework, it avoids joining military alliances, siding with one power, hosting foreign military bases on its soil, and using force or the threat of force in international affairs. However, Vietnam’s traditional ability to maintain neutrality is under threat, as it is now seeking to find a difficult balance between an historical ally, Russia, an important but dangerous partner, China, and a possible new strategic partner, the United States.

In the summer of 2021, US Vice-President Kamala Harris toured Southeast Asia and paid particular attention to Vietnam. This was not surprising, as at least four US top officials visited Vietnam between 2019 and 2020, including Secretary of Defence Lloyd Austin. The topics discussed addressed the two nations’ growing bilateral military and economic cooperation. However, the visits were also made concerning China’s growing assertiveness in the South China Sea, to which the US has offered help to counter Beijing’s “bullying and excessive maritime claims”. 

However, the US is not the only power interested in Vietnam’s increasing development and relevance. Just before Harris' visit, Vietnam’s Prime Minister, Minh Chính, met with the Chinese ambassador Xiong in an unscheduled meeting to reassure him of Vietnam’s neutrality, while Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi visited Hanoi just a few weeks later to re-state China’s position in Vietnamese affairs. Recently, the Russian invasion of Ukraine last February has put Vietnam in a difficult position: should it maintain its economic and military relationship with Moscow or join the western bloc in levying sanctions? While Russia’s Foreign Minister, Sergej Lavrov, visited Hanoi in July to reaffirm the strategic partnership, both Moscow’s invasion and their resulting unpopularity in the international system may mean Vietnam begins to distance itself. 

The relationship with Moscow: historical cooperation, current frictions

The partnership between Moscow and Hanoi is rooted in the support that the USSR gave to Vietnam in its struggle for independence and the difficult relationship that both countries had with China in the second half of the Cold War. Following the Sino-Soviet split in the late 1950s - buttressed by such events as the 1974 Chinese occupation of Paracel Islands and the 1979 Sino-Vietnamese War - Vietnam and Russia became strategic partners. An important aspect of this relationship has been military cooperation. Moscow remains Vietnam’s primary arms supplier and maintains privileged access to the Cam Ranh Bay, a deep water bay off Khánh Hòa province. This military cooperation is primarily aimed at counteracting Chinese influence in the South China Sea. Moscow’s military aid includes weapons systems that are well-suited to Vietnam’s anti-access and area denial strategy against China, such as anti-ship missiles, Kilo-class submarines, fighters, and coastal defence artillery. Commercial ties on the other hand, though not significant, are growing, reaching a value of $7 billion in 2021. Furthermore, energy cooperation is of primary importance with many Russian state-owned or semi-state controlled businesses operating on the Vietnamese coast and constituting a buffer zone against the growing Chinese assertiveness in the South China Sea.

Given its strong ties with Moscow, it is not surprising that Vietnam has refused to condemn the Russian invasion of Ukraine and abstained from or has voted against any UN General Assembly Resolution intended to denounce Moscow, including the vote to expel Russia from the UN Council of Human Rights. Despite this seeming support, there are still points of friction. Russian investments into the hydropower dams on the Mekong Delta irritate Hanoi greatly due to the resulting environmental damage on one of Vietnam’s largest ecosystems and a major agricultural centre. Even more pertinent is their disagreements surrounding the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS). Vietnam stresses the importance of the UNCLOS  due to their territorial disputes in the South China Sea, in an attempt to tackle Beijing’s assertiveness, while Russia does not recognize the 2016 Permanent Court of Arbitration’s ruling which found China’s provocative actions illegal, demonstrating a breakdown in their diplomatic alignment.

The Russian invasion of Ukraine has shaken a fundamental assumption of Vietnam's defence strategy: that Russia would remain a reliable supplier of key weapons systems to help counter Chinese influence. Moscow’s isolation on the international stage and Vietnamese dependence on Russian weaponry could cause major problems for Hanoi which may feel international pressure to re-orientate their business. Russian diplomatic support is important for Vietnam, especially within international organisations, though such support is more difficult to justify today, and it continues to damage Vietnam’s reputation in the West. Furthermore, Russian arms sales to Vietnam could potentially decrease in number and quality as the Russian military industry’s attention will be re-focused on the Ukraine conflict. Despite these issues, military cooperation would be almost impossible to stop in the short term because of the challenges posed by replacing Russian weapons systems that have been relied on for many decades and because Russian weapons are not easily replaceable due to their comparatively low cost.

There are limits to how much Vietnam can alienate Russia without compromising its security. Relations between China and Russia may represent the main breaking point in these calculations. If Moscow, Vietnam’s main ally in counterbalancing Chinese influence, should move closer to Beijing and increase their technological and economic ties, Hanoi would find itself vulnerable. In such a scenario, Moscow may reduce arms sales and energy cooperation with Vietnam under pressure from Beijing.

The US: a new strategic partner?

Since the normalisation of relations in 1995, US-Vietnam relations have grown considerably. The turning point occurred when the Bush Administration reevaluated Hanoi as a potential strategic partner in its attempt to limit the growing influence of China. Further administrations have enhanced the quality of the relationship. In 2013, the Comprehensive Partnership Agreement was signed and in 2016 Obama called for closer relations and revoked the arms embargo enacted in 1975. Similarly, Trump paid particular attention to Vietnam, the only Southeast Asian country that he visited twice.

Bilateral trade has sharply increased, accounting for $112.9 billion in 2021, compared to $1.5 billion in 2001, meaning the US is Vietnam’s second commercial partner. Meanwhile, between 2011 and 2019, American investments in Vietnam have increased by two billion, a move that has been responded to by the Hanoi government which is encouraging FDI by establishing new criteria to improve economic efficiency and guarantee a higher quality of goods and human capital. Moreover, the US-China trade war pushed many American manufacturers to relocate their production sites to Vietnam. As an example, Apple has recently moved some of its production to northern Vietnam. This is a trend that could increase in the future in accordance with the ongoing Sino-American strategic rivalry, as both Washington and Hanoi seek to reduce their economic and technological dependence on Beijing. 

However beneficial, there are still tensions that emerged during the Trump Administration, particularly expressed around the President's frustration over US commercial deficits, including those owned by Vietnam. Vietnam’s history of human rights abuses, lack of democratic values, constraints on freedom of press and speech, and the pervasive role of the State in Vietnam’s economic life have also been problematic for US lawmakers. The failure of the US’s Trans-Pacific Partnership (TTP), however, has seen Vietnam join the US-abstaining Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP) and the China-led Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP).

Given the growing Chinese assertiveness in the region, Hanoi hopes to tighten its ties with Washington to counter Beijing’s influence. Vietnam’s updated December 2019 “National Defence White Paper” implies that China is the country’s main security challenge as it cites “unilateral actions, power-based coercion, violations of international law, militarisation, change in the status quo, and infringement upon Vietnam’s sovereignty”. US-Vietnam relations are officially defined as a comprehensive partnership, but on more than one occasion top Vietnamese officials have stated that ties are already “strategic in practice” meaning that while Vietnam only officially maintains “comprehensive strategic partnerships” with China, Russia and India, in practice they also do with the US. A strategic partnership would allow both countries to solidify and enhance the level of their cooperation, though may invite retaliation from China, which both Vietnam and the US are seeking to avoid. The security aspect is also an important part of this relationship, however, it is important to notice that US arms sales do not involve lethal systems but only aeronautic engines, surveillance drones and ships that are utilised in maritime surveillance of the South and East China Sea.

The China dilemma

Despite the increasing trajectory of US-Vietnamese ties, Beijing has considerable leverage at its disposal to coerce Hanoi, both economically and diplomatically. Primarily, Vietnam has had a continual trade deficit with China since 2001 that has increased from $211 million to $32 billion in this period. The imported products from China mainly consist of capital and intermediate goods that are vital to Vietnam’s economic potential and even maintaining its current manufacturing capabilities. Furthermore, despite tensions over sovereignty in the South China Sea, Vietnam is still politically close to China. The Vietnamese and Chinese Communist parties maintain an intimate relationship due to their ideological alignment, a relationship that is led by their conservative factions. Indeed, the power struggles between the different internal factions within the party play an important role in determining and influencing Vietnam's foreign policy. Beijing, however, wisely exploits the Vietnamese Communist Party’s fear of regime change arguing that the US’s coupling of communism with tyranny will indirectly encourage the anti-Vietnamese Communist Party forces. In this sense, it attempts to drive a wedge between Vietnam and the US, and keep its southern neighbour on side. 

An Uncertain Future

Given their economic intertwinement with China, few, if any, Southeast Asian countries are in a position to align themselves exclusively with one country or the other. Having to choose between the United States and China at the diplomatic or strategic level is a major policy decision that comes with significant implications. Vietnam is no exception, particularly following its so-far successful balancing policy. This evaluation has reflected the complexity of the Ukraine war for Vietnam, and the stress that it places on the small, yet high politically significant, nation. In order to retain its strategic autonomy, a core goal for Vietnam, Hanoi will likely continue to carefully toe the line of a balancing power, avoiding over-commitment or hedging with any one power. In the past, this has been highly successful at managing a relationship of peace and trade proliferation with China, without being pulled into their sphere of influence. 

Circumstances, however, are changing and may force Vietnam onto a different path. While a change in official Vietnamese policy towards the US is unlikely, it seems more than probable that the cooperation with Washington will continue and increase, as it benefits both parties in limiting Chinese influence. Hanoi has assumed a fundamental role in US strategies in the Asia-Pacific, while the US is a strong external force of support to counter and contain Chinese economic and military expansionism. This aid is necessary to sustain its domestic economic growth and is support that Russia is no longer able to supply. 

The post-1989 strategic partnership between Russia and Vietnam has been characterised by inertia, thereby opening opportunities for other actors to fit in. Hanoi no longer seems to rely on Russia as its core partner in standing up to Chinese expansionism. From this perspective, the close partnership between Moscow and Beijing is the main hurdle in the Russo-Vietnamese relationship. Because of this, we will likely see Vietnam loosen its commitment to strong ties with Russia. On the one hand, Hanoi’s unwillingness to condemn the Russian aggression in Ukraine not only contradicts one of its “no’s” in foreign policy, i.e., the prohibition of the use of force, but it also contradicts Vietnam’s position on the importance of international law in its territorial disputes with China. Similarly, Moscow’s partnership with Beijing is at a higher level than the one with Hanoi, and their close cooperation could pose a serious threat to Vietnam’s national interests.

The interwoven relationship of Hanoi, Washington, Beijing, and Moscow is a highly unique phenomenon, with major implications on the state of international and regional politics. Vietnam, while being a small power, has the ability to give each of the three superpowers significant access and influence not just in the South China Sea, but also in the wider Asia-Pacific.