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U.S.-Vietnam: From Comprehensive to Strategic Partners?

by cogitASIA StaffMarch 20, 20140 Comments

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Vietnamese military officials watch U.S.S. Curtis Wilbur arrive in Da Nang. Carl Thayer argues the United States and Vietnam assign different meanings to their partnership agreement.. Source: U.S. Navy photo, U.S. Government work.

Lew Stern argues that Vietnam has adopted a new strategic vocabulary that will facilitate an upgrade in U.S.-Vietnam defense relations from a comprehensive partnership to a strategic partnership.* Stern ascribes greater efficacy to the term strategic partner (i tc chin lc) than Vietnamese officials do. How else can one explain why Spain is one of Vietnams strategic partners?

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U.S.-Vietnam: From Comprehensive to Strategic Partners? | cogitASIA CSIS Asia Pol... Page 2 of 3

In fact, the United States and Vietnam use the term strategic partner differently. For the United States the term places a greater emphasis on defence relations. To the Vietnamese a strategic partnership is a political term generally used to identify states that have developed comprehensive bilateral relations with Vietnam and which Vietnam considers to be particularly important for the attainment of its national interests.* This idea of Vietnam becoming a strategic partner of the United States was first mentioned in the 2010 Quadrennial Defence Review where Vietnam was listed alongside Indonesia and Malaysia as a potential strategic partner. The idea reportedly was first proposed directly to Vietnam by former secretary of state Hillary Clinton that same year. Strategic partnerships are embodied in official declarations whose form and content varies from partner to partner. Strategic partnership agreements normally set out a high-level joint mechanism to oversee their implementation. Strategic partnership agreements are also accompanied by a multi-year Plan of Action covering objectives in each sector of the agreement such as politicaldiplomatic, economic, science and technology, social-cultural, security and defense, etc. Vietnam presently has thirteen strategic partners: Russia (2001), Japan (2006), India (2007), China (2008), South Korea (2009), Spain (2009), United Kingdom (2010), Germany (2011), and Italy, France, Singapore, Indonesia and Thailand (2013). In 2009, Vietnam re-designated its bilateral relations with China and South Korea as strategic cooperative partnerships, while Vietnam and Russia re-badged their bilateral relations a comprehensive strategic partnership in 2012. Vietnams relations with both Australia and the United States are both characterized as comprehensive partnerships. In Australias case, former prime minister Kevin Rudd reportedly rejected the term strategic partner as inappropriate for two reasons. First, Rudd did not favor a term that was merely symbolic; he wanted it to have practical meaning. Second, Rudd felt that the term strategic should be reserved for close allies, such as the United States. In 2013, the United States and Vietnam opted for a comprehensive partnership because it suited both sides not to become formal strategic partners. The key terms that Vietnam uses to appraise its relations with the United States are objects of cooperation (i tc) and objects of struggle (i tng). These were adopted for the first time in 2003 and revised and updated by the party Central Committee last year. Vietnams Central Military Committee (Qun y Trung ng) is presently conducting conferences for senior officers to disseminate this new resolution (Qun i nhn dn), as of February 15, 2014. Basically, Resolution No. 8 directs Vietnam to cooperate with the United States for mutual benefit when their interests converge and to struggle with the United

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States when it challenges Vietnams national interests, such as one-party rule and human rights. While Vietnam and the United States share a convergence of security interests, these interests are not congruent. Vietnam does not want to become a strategic partner of the United States in the defense sense used by the Pentagon. Dr. Carlyle A. Thayer is Emeritus Professor at the School of Humanities and Social Sciences, The University of New South Wales at the Australian Defence Force Academy in Canberra, Australia. Read more by Professor Thayer here. *The author has expanded on this point in: Carlyle A. Thayer, Vietnam on the Road to Global Integration: Forging Strategic Partnerships Through International Security Cooperation, Keynote Paper to the Opening Plenary Session, 4th International Vietnamese Studies Conference, co-sponsored by the Vietnam Academy of Social Sciences and Vietnam National University, Hanoi, November 26-30, 2012.

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Vietnams Foreign Policy: New Vocabulary or New Reconceptualization? | cogitASI...

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Vietnams Foreign Policy: New Vocabulary or New Reconceptualization?

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Secretary Kerry meeting with Foreign Minister Pham Binh Minh in Hanoi, Vietnam on December 16, 2013. Source: U.S. Department of States flickr photostream, used under a creative commons license.

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Lew Stern, writing recently in the East-West Centers Asia Pacific Bulletin, suggests that Vietnams leaders have adopted an entirely new strategic vocabulary following a decade of reforms and globalization. Stern cites, in particular, the importance attached to the term hi nhp quc t, or international integration), in the Political Report to the 11th Communist Party Congress in January 2011.

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The use of the term international integration was not just a change in vocabulary in recognition of the linkages between political, economic, social, and military affairs. It was also a change in conceptualization by Vietnamese policymakers. Initially, Vietnams early advocates of integrating the country into the global economy used the term ha nhp, or assimilation. This term was later discarded as it implied Vietnam would lose its socialist-oriented identity in the global system dominated by capitalism. The new term, hi nhp, or integration, is seen as having a more positive connotation. The 2011 Political Report indeed said that Vietnam must stay proactive in integrating into the worlds economic community and expand international cooperation in other fields. Although the term was used in a broader sense, it did not jettison the primacy of economic integration as Stern implies. For instance, in April 2013, three years after the partys Political Report was tabled, the Politburo adopted a resolution on international integration (Ngh quyt ca B Chnh tr v hi nhp quc t). This resolution says that economic integration is placed at the center; integration in other fields must create favorable conditions for economic integration and contribute actively to economic development, consolidation of defense, [and] ensuring national security. The priorities laid out in the Politburo resolution prove that Vietnams pursuit of proactive international integration does not mean it is inclined to become a strategic partner of the United States. The resolution also says unequivocally that international integration is a process of both cooperation and struggle, resolute pursuit of national interest and not participating in any rallying of forces or alliance with one side against another. In sum, Vietnam will continue on the path of diversifying and multilateralizing its external relations among major powers China, the European Union, India, Japan, Russia, and the United States. Or, in the words of the Politburo resolution, Vietnams goal is to advance and deepen relations with partner countries, particularly those of strategic importance to national development and national security; bring substance to the established frameworks of cooperation and create interwoven, interlinked interests between Vietnam and partner countries. Dr. Carlyle A. Thayer is Emeritus Professor at the School of Humanities and Social Sciences, The University of New South Wales at the Australian Defence Force Academy in Canberra, Australia. Read more by Professor Thayer here.

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Asia Pacic Bulletin

EastWestCenter.org/APB Number 253 | March 18, 2014

The New Vietnamese Vocabulary for Foreign and Defense Relations

BY LEWIS M. STERN

Lewis M. Stern, former Director for Southeast Asia in the Office of the Secretary of Defense 2002 2008, explains that Decisionmakers in Hanoi and Washington now need to determine what it will take to move the relationship from the status of a comprehensive partnership conferred during President Truong Tan Sangs 2013 visit to a new strategic partnership.

In the last decade, the Foreign and Defense Ministries in Vietnam have sought to develop more effective organizations and capable leadership, incorporating more complex information into the way these organizations think about the world and make decisions regarding policies and strategic direction. Increasingly energetic inquiry and the freer flow of information brought about as a result of globalization have changed Vietnams approach to issues and problems, and made Vietnamese policy makers receptive to new ideas such as capacity building. What has begun to emerge is an entirely new strategic vocabulary. Vietnamese officials started using the term "strategic partnership" with more precise meaning and employing more exacting definitions of foreign and defense relationships in late 2009/early 2010. This was about the same time as the publication of Vietnams third Defense White Paper and also during the Socialist Republic of Vietnams tenure as chair of ASEAN in 2010. Terms such as "transparency" were increasingly utilized in discourses about regional defense cooperation as evidenced by the public accounts of the ASEAN Defense Ministers Meeting Plus (ADMM+) dialogues. However, Vietnamese officials have taken these words more to heart and are employing them internally, within their own bureaucracies, rather than just externally, where the main purpose of this vocabulary is usually to say the right things at the right time for international consumption. Senior officials sought to articulate the different categories of Vietnams external relationships in public speeches and statements beginning in late 2010. Senior diplomatic and defense officials talked in terms that emphasized the intangible requirements for mutually beneficial bilateral and multilateral relationships including increased levels of reciprocity and trust. In addition, they sought to shape increasingly operational definitions of strategic cooperation and strategic dialogue, all of which suggested a much more thoughtful understanding of the fundamentals of contemporary foreign and defense relations and policies. This change is also evident in the Political Report of the 11th Congress of the Vietnamese Communist Party in January 2011 that contained a fundamental change in terminology from "international economic integration" to "international integration" (Hi nhp quc t). This new term international integration recognized the links that pervaded the political-social-economic and military challenges that almost all governments face today. As one mid-level policy analyst involved in the process confided, this change represented a compromise over language between conservatives and liberals. The liberals had wrung a concession from conservatives who wanted to make certain that the term Din Bin Ha Bnh (Peaceful Transformationthe bumper sticker representing the threat perceived to stability posed by foreign interests) was utilized in the text a sufficient number of times. In return for this inclusion, liberals were able to integrate a section into the Political Report that described broader "linkages" between economics, defense, security, and domestic social policy.

The East-West Center promotes better relations and understanding among the people and nations of the United States, Asia, and the Pacific through cooperative study, research, and dialogue. Established by the US Congress in 1960, the Center serves as a resource for information and analysis on critical issues of common concern, bringing people together to exchange views, build expertise, and develop policy options.

Asia Pacific Bulletin | March 18, 2014

Vietnamese strategic thinkers have also wrestled with new ways of thinking about their core missions, and ways to transform sluggish, decisionadverse bureaucracies into nimble, adaptable, flexible institutions capable of quickly integrating new ideas.

Since then, the Vietnamese decision-making bureaucracy has been trying to add further substance to the term of international integration. Ministerial-level institutes were drawn into the effort to shape a concept that sought to define a roadmap to integration for the 2011-2020 time frame, and approached Western analysts and think tanks for analytical perspectives on the subject. Vietnamese strategic thinkers have also wrestled with new ways of thinking about their core missions, and ways to transform sluggish, decision-adverse bureaucracies into nimble, adaptable, flexible institutions capable of quickly integrating new ideas. Strategic thinkers have recognized that modern governments need to be able to rapidly change course, switch perspectives, and recognize unforeseen possibilities and unanticipated dimensions of an issue as they move forward. Therefore, it is imperative that such systems are stocked with capable analysts, decisive managers, and well-informed leaders. Vietnam already has a head start in this area. Many young Vietnamese military officers and foreign policy officials represent a unique combination of personal capabilities, including a willingness to address issues directly, along with a capacity to conduct earnest and strategic dialogue with foreign friends and partners. Some have degrees in international relations from prestigious foreign schools and many have been in the Defense or the Foreign Ministry for around ten years, serving as desk officers in Vietnamese embassies in the West during the late 1990s, and have now returned home to policy level assignments. These young and well-educated officials represent an emergent human capital of mid-level foreign policy and defense/security bureaucrat with keen strategic talents and analytical acuity. The inclusion of disaster relief and humanitarian assistance as an element of practical bilateral and regional cooperation in Vietnams relations with new friends and strategic partners went a long way toward pressing systems to think flexibly about their hidebound cultures and narrow ways of defining mandates. So too did the need to effectively confront terrorism with an all of government response and the imperative for regional cooperation on health challenges such as pandemics and food security issues. Establishing predictable, institutionalized means of confronting this multitude of challenges across ministries in a public way was a key step toward an integrated approach. Integration also required a new way of thinking about international organizations, regional blocs, strategic dialogues and confidence building opportunities. Vietnamese analysts seemed to believe that by adding the term international integration (Hi nhp quc t) to the Political Report, more room had been created in which to promote relations with the outside world. To young Vietnamese intellectuals, this phrase carried an importance similar to the adoption of the term "renovation" to describe the serious reforms institutionalized in the mid- and late-1980s. These Vietnamese thinkers recognized that the concept was a work in progress and that over time the definition would evolve in a manner that would present more options for reshaping Vietnams foreign relations and defense policy.

The Asia Pacific Bulletin (APB) series is produced by the East-West Center in Washington. APB Series Editor: Dr. Satu Limaye APB Series Coordinator: Damien Tomkins The views expressed in this publication are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the policy or position of the EastWest Center or any organization with which the author is affiliated.

US-Vietnam defense relations have begun to reflect some of these changes. Decisionmakers in Hanoi and Washington now need to determine what it will take to move the relationship from the status of a comprehensive partnership conferred during President Truong Tan Sangs 2013 visit to a new strategic partnership. The bilateral defense relationship has increasingly begun to focus on building capabilities in specialized areas such as peacekeeping and expanded areas of practical bilateral cooperation such as disaster relief exercises. This, and the effort to define a basis for strategic cooperation, will drive the two defense establishments closer to the point when they will have to turn attention to the manner in which defense reform, professional military education, standards of conduct, and civil-military relations become variables in the development of both the bilateral defense relationship and Vietnams regional interaction with friends and neighbors.
Dr. Lewis M. Stern served as the Director for Southeast Asia in the Office of the Secretary of Defense from 2002 to 2008 and was a Visiting Research Fellow at the Institute for National Strategic Studies, National Defense University from 2008 to 2010. He can be contacted at LewSternConsulting@yahoo.com.