By Brian Leung , Asia Times
Saigon– Rising territorial tensions and the recent oil rig crisis have put Sino-Vietnamese ties on the rocks, driving Hanoi to ramp up strategic alliances with other regional powers, particularly the United States. But Vietnam is not poised to completely drop the gauntlet by jettisoning its deep-seated reliance on its giant northern neighbor that has both burgeoned and bedeviled bilateral ties.
General Martin E. Dempsey (C), chairman of the US joint chiefs of staff, and General Do Ba Ty (not pictured), deputy defense minister and chief of general staff of the Vietnam People’s Army hold talks at the Defense Ministry in Hanoi on August 14, 2014. Dempsey, who is the first ever US chairman of the joint chiefs of staff to visit Hanoi since the end of the Vietnam War in 1975, is making a three-day official visit focused on bilateral ties. (HOANG DINH NAM/AFP/Getty Images)
General Martin Dempsey, chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, was in Vietnam last week, marking the highest ranking military officer to visit Vietnam since 1971. During his four-day landmark tour, Dempsey met with Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung and high-ranking military leaders in Hanoi, visited the central city of Da Nang, a strategic deep water harbor facing the South China Sea previously used by American forces, and symbolically concluded his trip in Saigon, once the political and economic hub of the US-backed regime during the Vietnam War.
Dempsey was upbeat about the prospect of Washington lifting its 30-year ban against selling lethal weapons to Vietnam, a move both Vietnamese top echelons and influential US Senator John McCain have advocated.
“There’s a growing sense among our elected officials by our administration, by non-governmental organizations, that Vietnam has made progress against the limitations that led to the lethal weapon ban,” said Dempsey at a press conference. “I think the maritime domain is the place of our greatest common interest right now, common security interest. My recommendation, if the ban is lifted, will be that we start with that.”
In early May, when China first towed a US$1 billion oil exploration rig into waters Vietnam considers part of its 200-nautical mile exclusive economic zone (EEZ) and continental shelf in the South China Sea, the move triggered tense skirmishes between Chinese and Vietnamese coast guard vessels.
In an unprecedented move on the disputes, China sent United Nations secretary-general Ban Ki-moon a position paper detailing what it called Vietnam’s “illegal disruption” of its “routine” offshore drilling operations in the contested Paracel Islands region.
When the confrontation sparked deadly anti-China riots in central and southern Vietnam, Hanoi’s leaders “realized that they have to reduce their dependence on China. China’s troop movements near the Sino-Vietnamese border and its [alleged] hidden hands in the anti-China riots inside Vietnam during the oil rig crisis have led to a change in Vietnamese leaders’ perception of China’s role vis-a-vis Vietnam,” said Alexander Vuving, a security analyst at the Hawaii-based Asia-Pacific Center for Security Studies.
Prime Minister Dung said that “bad elements” escalated the violence, while other anonymous officials have said China inflamed the on-the-ground situation to tarnish Vietnam’s image.
At the height of the bilateral tensions, Vietnam’s top Communist Party leaders, including premier Dung, spoke publicly on several occasions about plans to take legal action against China, a move that would internationalize the conflict. “We always want peace and friendship but this must ensure independence, self-reliance, sovereignty, territorial integrity, and maritime zones,” Dung said in late May. “These are sacred and we will never trade them off for some kind of elusive, dependent peace and friendship.”
Since China withdrew the oil rig in mid-July, Hanoi has maintained that it could opt to take international legal action against Beijing, similar to the claim the Philippines has filed against China through the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS). At the same time, Hanoi has sought to bolster alliances with both the US and treaty ally Japan, a hedging strategy many analysts view as Vietnam’s best option in countering China’s assertiveness in the South China Sea.
“China is acting on the assumption that it has ‘undeniable sovereignty’ in the sea. If Vietnam wants to challenge this it must have the physical means to protect its claims,” said Bill Hayton, author of the forthcoming book South China Sea: the struggle for power in Asia. “Nobody wants open conflict but Vietnam wants to acquire the capability to deter the kinds of non-military tactics that China has been using recently while also preparing for a hypothetical military confrontation in the future. To do this the country needs as many friends as possible.”
Read the full story by Brian Leung from Asia Times.
