US-Vietnam defence relations: Problems and prospects

The highlight of US President Barack Obama’s visit to Vietnam this week was Washington’s decision to finally fully lift a decades-long lethal arms embargo on Hanoi after much speculation. But while the move was significant both symbolically and substantively, it is really just the latest in a series of boosts for the US-Vietnam defence relationship across a range of areas over the past few years. And while both sides are optimistic about the future prospects for defense ties, they also admit that there are still major challenges that remain.
The foundational elements of a US-Vietnam defense relationship were laid even before the Obama administration came into office, in line with the gradual normalization of relations that had taken place since 1995. During the George W. Bush years for instance, the two countries began conducting regular security and defense dialogues and the United States took some steps to pave the way for growing collaboration, including establishing an International Military Education and Training (IMET) training with Vietnam in 2005 and
authorizing the provision of limited defense articles to Vietnam, even though a ban on lethal weapons remained in place.
But under Obama, US-Vietnam relations have improved significantly due to a growing convergence of interests in spite of lingering challenges.  As part of its rebalance to the Asia-Pacific, the Obama administration has placed a greater emphasis on deepening ties with emerging partners like Vietnam, which are central to supporting what it calls the “rules-based order” – as evidenced by Hanoi’s involvement in the Trans-Pacific Partnership and its activism on the South China Sea disputes in the face of China’s growing assertiveness. And Vietnam has sought to boost ties with Washington as part of its omni-directional foreign policy to engage a range of major powers to improve Vietnam’s economic development and security. Aggressive Chinese moves like the positioning of an oil rig in Vietnamese waters in 2014 have only helped further catalyze Hanoi’s closer ties with the United States.
That broader convergence has led to advances in bilateral defense ties. In 2010, the two countries kicked off a new annual Defense Policy Dialogue (DPD), the second defense dialogue at the vice-ministerial level following the Political, Security, and Defense Dialogue (PSDD) which started in 2008. In 2011, they institutionalized the US-Vietnam defense relationship in a memorandum of understanding on defense cooperation, a defense leg subsequently folded into the overall comprehensive partnership inked in 2013 by Obama and his then-counterpart Truong Tan Sang.
Subsequent years have seen some advances in the key areas of the relationship, including collaboration between the two coast guards, the holding of exercises, and even the provision of maritime security assistance to Vietnam, made easier by the partial lifting of the embargo which occurred in October 2014. In July 2015, the two sides also inked a joint vision statement laying out the future direction of the defense relationship, with new areas for cooperation like defense trade and co-production.
“All that would have been hard to imagine 20 years ago,” US Defense Secretary Ashton Carter said in remarks reflecting on the defense relationship following the signing of the Joint Vision Statement last year, which marked the twentieth anniversary of normalization between the two countries.
Looking ahead, both sides also say the best is yet to come for the bilateral defense relationship, especially with the full lifting of the embargo, which Vietnam views as a clear sign that ties have been fully normalized.
Beyond maritime security, we are also likely to see continued US efforts to build Vietnamese capacity in other aspects of security cooperation as well. For instance, through the Global Peace Operations Initiative (GPOI), the United States has been supporting Vietnam’s efforts to build its capacity to contribute to international peacekeeping. In accordance with a memorandum of understanding (MoU) on UN peacekeeping concluded in July last year between the two sides, Washington will continue to assist Hanoi in variety of ways, including through increasing the capacity of individuals and units in training for missions, providing equipment, improving English language competency, and assistance in projects related to the Vietnam Peacekeeping Center, which opened in 2014.
Exchanges and exercises could also see a boost. The focus in this realm tends to be on some kind of US access to Cam Ranh Bay, a deep-water harbor in central Vietnam along the South China Sea that Washington had used as a base during the Vietnam War before the then-Soviet Union leased it following the end of the conflict in 1975. During an historic visit to Cam Ranh Bay in 2012, former US Defense Secretary Leon Panetta had said that access for US naval ships to this facility was “a key component” of the US-Vietnam relationship. In March, Vietnam inaugurated an international port facility capable of receiving foreign warships at Cam Ranh Bay, which was followed by vessel visits from Japan, Singapore, and France.
 There are also other, bolder proposals being considered in the area of exercises. For instance, in a letter to Trong, the VCP general secretary, ahead of Obama’s visit, Senator John McCain proposed that Vietnam be invited to join the Rim of the Pacific (RIMPAC) exercise, the world’s largest international maritime warfare exercise.
But in the realm of exercises too, officials on both sides emphasize the necessity to also look at defense engagements more broadly, since it is the totality of these interactions rather than one headline-grabbing item that ultimately is the foundation for a good military-to-military relationship. US-Vietnam security cooperation in other areas like search and rescue and humanitarian assistance and disaster relief (HADR) have also expanded over the past few years, with firsts occurring periodically that go underreported. On HADR, for instance, just ahead of Obama’s visit to Vietnam this month, the two countries held the first-ever US-Vietnam Disaster Response and Civil-Military Coordination Table Top Exercise (TTX) in Hanoi. Collaboration in these realms is also expected to see an uptick as the years progress.
Despite these opportunities, there are still a range of challenges that continue to impose limits on the US-Vietnam defense relationship as well. On the US side, human rights concerns still factor into calculations about how far both sides can advance security ties. While the United States regularly engages Vietnam on the issue in bilateral interactions as well as through an institutionalized human rights dialogue, the presence of an authoritarian regime in Hanoi and the continued abuses that occur in the country make it more difficult for an administration to push the envelope on security ties because of resistance among some actors.
The dynamics played out following the lifting of the arms embargo during Obama’s visit this month. In his remarks in Hanoi, Obama argued that the remarkable trajectory of bilateral cooperation had made an across-the-board ban obsolete, and that human rights concerns would still inform any future individual sales to Vietnam despite the lifting. Nonetheless, some lawmakers, activists, and rights groups alleged that Washington had given up a crucial source of leverage on rights without any demonstrable progress from Hanoi.
“In one fell swoop, President Obama has jettisoned what remained of US leverage to improve human rights in Vietnam, and basically gotten nothing for it,” Human Rights Watch Asia Director Phil Robertson said in a statement. “President Obama just gave Vietnam a reward that they don’t deserve.”
As the United States and Vietnam move closer toward defense sales following the lifting, they can expect continued pushback on these grounds.
Meanwhile, in Vietnam, there are still some within the Vietnamese Communist Party (VCP) who remain suspicious of closer ties with the United States, which was engaged in a war in the Southeast Asian country just four decades ago. The fear is that Washington wants to overthrow the socialist government by masterminding a “peaceful evolution” toward the democracy it advocates. This is despite recent steps both sides have taken to break down the barriers to trust, including a visit to Washington by General Secretary of the VCP Nguyen Phu Truong last year – an important signal of US respect for Vietnam’s political regime in spite of legitimate differences.

    The Diplomat

US-Vietnam defence relations: Problems and prospects

The highlight of US President Barack Obamas visit to Vietnam this week was Washingtons decision to finally fully lift a decades-long lethal arms embargo on Hanoi after much speculation. But while the move was significant both symbolically and substantively, it is really just the latest in a series of boosts for the US-Vietnam defence relationship across a range of areas over the past few years. And while both sides are optimistic about the future prospects for defense ties, they also admit that there are still major challenges that remain. The foundational elements of a US-Vietnam defense relationship were laid even before the Obama administration came into office, in line with the gradual normalization of relations that had taken place since 1995. During the George W. Bush years for instance, the two countries began conducting regular security and defense dialogues and the United States took some steps to pave the way for growing collaboration, including establishing an International Military Education and Training (IMET) training with Vietnam in 2005 and authorizing the provision of limited defense articles to Vietnam, even though a ban on lethal weapons remained in place. But under Obama, US-Vietnam relations have improved significantly due to a growing convergence of interests in spite of lingering challenges. As part of its rebalance to the Asia-Pacific, the Obama administration has placed a greater emphasis on deepening ties with emerging partners like Vietnam, which are central to supporting what it calls the rules-based order as evidenced by Hanois involvement in the Trans-Pacific Partnership and its activism on the South China Sea disputes in the face of Chinas growing assertiveness. And Vietnam has sought to boost ties with Washington as part of its omni-directional foreign policy to engage a range of major powers to improve Vietnams economic development and security. Aggressive Chinese moves like the positioning of an oil rig in Vietnamese waters in 2014 have only helped further catalyze Hanois closer ties with the United States. That broader convergence has led to advances in bilateral defense ties. In 2010, the two countries kicked off a new annual Defense Policy Dialogue (DPD), the second defense dialogue at the vice-ministerial level following the Political, Security, and Defense Dialogue (PSDD) which started in 2008. In 2011, they institutionalized the US-Vietnam defense relationship in a memorandum of understanding on defense cooperation, a defense leg subsequently folded into the overall comprehensive partnership inked in 2013 by Obama and his then-counterpart Truong Tan Sang. Subsequent years have seen some advances in the key areas of the relationship, including collaboration between the two coast guards, the holding of exercises, and even the provision of maritime security assistance to Vietnam, made easier by the partial lifting of the embargo which occurred in October 2014. In July 2015, the two sides also inked a joint vision statement laying out the future direction of the defense relationship, with new areas for cooperation like defense trade and co-production. All that would have been hard to imagine 20 years ago, US Defense Secretary Ashton Carter said in remarks reflecting on the defense relationship following the signing of the Joint Vision Statement last year, which marked the twentieth anniversary of normalization between the two countries. Looking ahead, both sides also say the best is yet to come for the bilateral defense relationship, especially with the full lifting of the embargo, which Vietnam views as a clear sign that ties have been fully normalized. Beyond maritime security, we are also likely to see continued US efforts to build Vietnamese capacity in other aspects of security cooperation as well. For instance, through the Global Peace Operations Initiative (GPOI), the United States has been supporting Vietnams efforts to build its capacity to contribute to international peacekeeping. In accordance with a memorandum of understanding (MoU) on UN peacekeeping concluded in July last year between the two sides, Washington will continue to assist Hanoi in variety of ways, including through increasing the capacity of individuals and units in training for missions, providing equipment, improving English language competency, and assistance in projects related to the Vietnam Peacekeeping Center, which opened in 2014. Exchanges and exercises could also see a boost. The focus in this realm tends to be on some kind of US access to Cam Ranh Bay, a deep-water harbor in central Vietnam along the South China Sea that Washington had used as a base during the Vietnam War before the then-Soviet Union leased it following the end of the conflict in 1975. During an historic visit to Cam Ranh Bay in 2012, former US Defense Secretary Leon Panetta had said that access for US naval ships to this facility was a key component of the US-Vietnam relationship. In March, Vietnam inaugurated an international port facility capable of receiving foreign warships at Cam Ranh Bay, which was followed by vessel visits from Japan, Singapore, and France. There are also other, bolder proposals being considered in the area of exercises. For instance, in a letter to Trong, the VCP general secretary, ahead of Obamas visit, Senator John McCain proposed that Vietnam be invited to join the Rim of the Pacific (RIMPAC) exercise, the worlds largest international maritime warfare exercise. But in the realm of exercises too, officials on both sides emphasize the necessity to also look at defense engagements more broadly, since it is the totality of these interactions rather than one headline-grabbing item that ultimately is the foundation for a good military-to-military relationship. US-Vietnam security cooperation in other areas like search and rescue and humanitarian assistance and disaster relief (HADR) have also expanded over the past few years, with firsts occurring periodically that go underreported. On HADR, for instance, just ahead of Obamas visit to Vietnam this month, the two countries held the first-ever US-Vietnam Disaster Response and Civil-Military Coordination Table Top Exercise (TTX) in Hanoi. Collaboration in these realms is also expected to see an uptick as the years progress. Despite these opportunities, there are still a range of challenges that continue to impose limits on the US-Vietnam defense relationship as well. On the US side, human rights concerns still factor into calculations about how far both sides can advance security ties. While the United States regularly engages Vietnam on the issue in bilateral interactions as well as through an institutionalized human rights dialogue, the presence of an authoritarian regime in Hanoi and the continued abuses that occur in the country make it more difficult for an administration to push the envelope on security ties because of resistance among some actors. The dynamics played out following the lifting of the arms embargo during Obamas visit this month. In his remarks in Hanoi, Obama argued that the remarkable trajectory of bilateral cooperation had made an across-the-board ban obsolete, and that human rights concerns would still inform any future individual sales to Vietnam despite the lifting. Nonetheless, some lawmakers, activists, and rights groups alleged that Washington had given up a crucial source of leverage on rights without any demonstrable progress from Hanoi. In one fell swoop, President Obama has jettisoned what remained of US leverage to improve human rights in Vietnam, and basically gotten nothing for it, Human Rights Watch Asia Director Phil Robertson said in a statement. President Obama just gave Vietnam a reward that they dont deserve. As the United States and Vietnam move closer toward defense sales following the lifting, they can expect continued pushback on these grounds. Meanwhile, in Vietnam, there are still some within the Vietnamese Communist Party (VCP) who remain suspicious of closer ties with the United States, which was engaged in a war in the Southeast Asian country just four decades ago. The fear is that Washington wants to overthrow the socialist government by masterminding a peaceful evolution toward the democracy it advocates. This is despite recent steps both sides have taken to break down the barriers to trust, including a visit to Washington by General Secretary of the VCP Nguyen Phu Truong last year an important signal of US respect for Vietnams political regime in spite of legitimate differences. The Diplomat