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12
Grand Strategic Fitand Power Shift:ExplainingTurning Points inChina-Vietnam Relations
 Alexander L.Vuving 
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R
elations between China and Vietnam followed a checkered path since bothcountries reemerged as modern states after World War II.Within halfacentury,official definitions ofthe Sino-Vietnamese relationship traveled from“comrades plus brothers”(1949–1977) to “dangerous enemies”(1979–1988) to“good neighbors,good friends,good partners,good comrades”(from 2002).While the deterioration occurred abruptly (1977–1979),the improvement tooka decade (1988–1999).Cooperation seems much harder to achieve than conflict,and yet the two countries have settled their conflicts even in zero-sum issues suchas territory and major power influence.Toward the end ofthe twentieth century and at the dawn ofthe twenty-first,Vietnam and China reached two turningpoints regarding these issues,which reflect a new plateau on which the Sino-Vietnamese relationship is situated.In December 1999,China and Vietnamsigned a land border treaty that is the first since the Franco-Qing pacts of1887and 1895 to legally delimit territorial boundaries between them.A year later,another agreement on the delimitation ofmaritime border in the GulfofTonkinwas concluded.
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In 2005,Vietnam arrived at an unprecedented situation inwhich it maintained equidistance between and,at the same time,amicable rela-tionships with China and the United States—two major powers rivaling forinfluence in the region.The central question ofthis chapter is:What caused thesetwo turning points? Particularly,I will explain why China and Vietnam adoptedthe actions that led to these landmarks ofcooperation.
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The chapter also challenges existing explanations ofthe two cooperationevents.Interestingly,each ofthese explanations resides at one ofthe threeusual levels ofanalysis—the international,the domestic,and the individual.As for the settlements ofborder disputes between China and Vietnam,scholarly and popular explanations underline unit-level factors and arguethat China and Vietnam signed the border pacts because they both neededpeace and stability as they were preoccupied with economic developmentand regime security.Besides,some emphasize the role ofindividual leaders,particularly General Secretary Le Kha Phieu ofthe Vietnam CommunistParty (VCP),in adopting the terms ofthe treaties.As regards Vietnam’sequidistance between China and the United States,a widespread viewamong observers assumes that actors are induced by systemic forces tobalance power and interprets this equidistance as the result ofVietnam’sefforts to balance one great power against the other in order to avoidoverdependence on any ofthem.In this chapter,I will present a more robust explanation.It is more robustin that it accounts additionally for puzzles that the existing explanationscannot and that it uses the same mechanisms to explain both cases.Regardingthe border agreements case,I argue that a common need for peace and stabil-ity was not sufficient to drive China and Vietnam to settle their border dis-putes on the terms they did.Moreover,regime insecurity was not the primary motive that led China to signing the treaties,and other Vietnamese leaders inthe position ofLe Kha Phieu would have also endorsed the border pacts onthe same terms as Phieu did.As concerns the equidistance case,I argue thatthis state ofaffairs is maintained less by Vietnam’s balancing act than by whatcan be called a “grand strategic fit”among Vietnam,America,and China.Infact,Vietnam’s leaders are divided in terms ofgrand strategy,and neither of Vietnam’s two competing grand strategies complies with the logic ofpowerbalancing.The factor most responsible for reaching the two turning points understudy is “grand strategic fit,”which is made possible by complex power shiftsthat involve the protagonists.The mechanisms work as follows.Shifts in theglobal power configuration are perceived differently and given different mean-ings by the actors,whose grand strategies are,on the one side,adjusted to thepower shifts,but on the other,based on the actors’own historical experiences.When the bilateral fits between the actors’grand strategies close a full circle,major events ofcooperation are poised to occur.This explanation does notimply that domestic politics,leaders’personalities,and systemic balances of power do not play an important role in shaping the events.Indeed,thesefactors are involved in the making ofthe events but they are involved in waysdifferent than suggested by the regime insecurity,the leader’s personality,andthe balance ofpower arguments.
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ALEXANDER L.VUVING
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The Concept ofGrand Strategy and Vietnam’s Two Grand Strategies
Grand strategy refers to the underlying logic ofthe full package ofdomesticand foreign policies ofa state.As the paradigm that informs and guides foreignpolicy,grand strategy consists ofpremises and pathways.Grand strategicpremises include assumptions about the structure and dynamics ofthe worldand a state’s goals in it.Grand strategic pathways are the methods and avenuesto achieve those goals under the conditions described by the premises.The making ofa state’s grand strategy involves societal debates amongadvocates ofdifferent grand strategy proposals but also contests and com-promises among competing elite groups.Different grand strategy proposalscan share the same goals while disagreeing on their worldviews and hencetheir pathways to achieve the goals.More radically,they can diverge in boththeir views ofthe world and their state’s goals,thus pursuing fundamentally different pathways.States naturally try to pursue a unified grand strategy,but there are many casesin which a state is divided in terms ofgrand strategy as the political contest amongits contradicting grand strategies remains unsettled.One example is Russia underPresident Boris Yeltsin,whose inconsistent domestic and foreign policies reflectedthe tug ofwar between the Atlanticists (e.g.,Prime Minister Yegor Gaidar) and theEurasianists (e.g.,Prime Minister Yevgeny Primakov).Post – Cold War Vietnam isanother example (see below).In such cases,it is useful to distinguish between elitegrand strategy and state grand strategy.The latter is the result,necessarily inco-herent,ofongoing struggles and compromises between competing elite grandstrategies.Post – Cold War Vietnam’s state grand strategy reflects a contest,sometimesstalemate,between two elite grand strategies,which I term the integrationistsand the anti-imperialists.Anti-imperialism does not mean anti-hegemonic,butis a Leninist concept in which imperialism is the “highest stage ofcapitalism.”Vietnam’s anti-imperialism has its roots in the country’s struggles against Frenchcolonialism and U.S.involvement during most ofthe twentieth century.By thelate 1980s,anti-imperialism began to fade away as Vietnam underwent its tough-est socioeconomic crisis since World War II.During this decade,an alternativegrand strategy that called for integration into the world economy grew out ofabitter experience with Vietnam’s economic crisis and international isolation,compared with the spectacular rise ofthe Newly Industrialized Countries in cap-italist Asia.Parting company with the anti-imperialists,whose national ambitionwas to be the “spearhead ofworld national liberation movement”and the“advanced post ofsocialism in Southeast Asia,”the integrationists developed thenational ambition ofbecoming a “rich people and strong country”(
dan giaunuoc manh
) and identified Vietnam’s “lagging behind”(
tut hau
) other countriesin its surrounding region as the largest threat to national survival.To achieve that
TURNING POINTS IN CHINA-VIETNAM RELATIONS
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