A United States official said the US would continue to work closely with Vietnam after the latter announced last week that it had strengthened ties with China, including in defence and security, Reuters reported.
Vietnam’s leaders improved relations with China during President Xi Jinping’s visit to Hanoi last week. This came three months after US President Joe Biden visited the country in what was seen as a success of Vietnam’s “bamboo diplomacy.”
Cameron Thomas-Shah, spokesperson at the US embassy in Hanoi, stated:
“Our relationship with Vietnam is not about any third country. Our close cooperation with our Vietnamese partners across various sectors, including health, education, technology, and trade, will continue for the foreseeable future.”
The US is also working on expanding defence cooperation with Vietnam. Carl Thayer, a senior Vietnam security expert at the Australian Defence Force Academy in Canberra, stated that these “aspirational goals” with China were unlikely to affect defence cooperation with Washington.
Vietnam and China also agreed to reinforce intelligence sharing to prevent “hostile forces” from supporting mass movements such as those that led to revolutions in former communist countries in recent years.
The emphasis on ‘hostile forces’ is not a surprise. China’s leaders always whisper this in Vietnam’s leaders’ ears. But don’t overstate the bilateral cooperation between them on this. They won’t be sharing intel.
Raymond Powell, a former Air Attache to the US embassy in Vietnam who currently leads Stanford University’s Project Myoushu on the South China Sea, said that “Hanoi will continue to look for the safe ground between placating Beijing’s political expectations and the threat China poses – particularly to its South China Sea position,” where the two Asian countries share conflicting claims.
