How Vietnam looks at Powers, How Powers look at Vietnam

An interview with Dr. Derek Grossman: How Vietnam Looks at Powers, How Powers Look at Vietnam

Introduction

July 2021 marks the 5th anniversary of the Permanent Court of Arbitration Award defending the Philippines’ lawsuit against China over the South China Sea issue. US Vietnam Review, University of Oregon, interviews Dr. Derek Grossman, Senior Defense Analyst at RAND Corporation, about Vietnam’s military capabilities, prospects for relations between Vietnam and the United States, and China’s future strategy for the South China Sea.

US and China in Vietnamese views

You once said that in Vietnam, the US has a “slight advantage on the political and diplomatic side” over China. (“Regional Responses to U.S.-China Competition in the Indo-Pacific: Vietnam,” p.77) Could you please explain this American “slight advantage”?

Derek Grossman

I think you’re referring to the brand report that I wrote last year. As part of the reports, looking at regional responses to US China competition, I wrote on the Vietnam Report in that series. Let me just take a step back briefly and explain what we did so we had a methodology in place to measure relative influence between the US and China as they compete in a range of different countries. Most of which were in Southeast Asia, but some were also in Northeast Asia and South Asia.

The methodology we use has three different components: diplomatic, economic and security. The question you’re asking is about the US having a slight edge diplomatically and politically.

So we incorporated both quantitative and qualitative data into our analysis for each of those three components. What I found on the diplomatic side was that the US and Vietnam tended to share a common worldview, which is that they both want to live in a rules based order. And, of course, the one that does not really want to live as much in a rules based order is China. That comes to a head in the South China Sea. China’s perspective is that the nine dashed line is based on historical territorial rights. Vietnam’s perspective is that it is one of the (member of) the United Nations conventions for the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) in which disputes need to be settled peacefully and through a legal process.

And so, Vietnam is increasingly turning to the US as a like minded partner in that regard and so that’s why I said that at least there’s a slight advantage US has on the diplomatic and the diplomatic factor.

But we also, of course, have to keep in mind that Vietnam and China have a long standing relationship, especially between the two communist party’s of the Vietnamese Communist Party and Chinese Communist Party. That has been born out of years and years of opposing colonialism and imperialism. Ho Chi Minh, the founder of Democratic Republic of Vietnam, also you know, was in close contact with the Chinese Communist Party from very early on, and so that is something that we had to kind of take into account. But increasingly China’s worldview is very different from Vietnam, and that was the main thrust for why we said that the US has a slight advantage.

There are other factors as well. One of the sub factors within that diplomatic factor was public opinion and as I’m sure you know, public opinion in Vietnam about China is extremely low.

Nobody knows quite the percentage, but it may be somewhere in the area of 90% of the Vietnamese poll have a dislike for China at a minimum and maybe even a hatred of China. And when you look at the flip side for the United States, the Vietnamese population is overwhelmingly pro US so that also factored into the US having that slight diplomatic advantage.

You pointed out that “Vietnam worries that Cambodia and Laos are becoming increasingly beholden to China, in effect eroding Vietnam’s special relationship with these nations. The United States should show a commitment to compete with BRI to help Vietnam avoid encirclement by pro-China countries.” Would you please explain Vietnam’s view about the Chinese BRI strategy? Does Vietnam see the BRI as an opportunity instead of a threat? Vietnam proposed the Draft Law on Special Economic Zones in 2018, allowing foreigners to lease land for 99 years in 3 areas, including Van Don, an economic zone adjacent to the Chinese border. Besides, this Draft Law waives visas for Chinese citizens who enter Vietnam via Van Don. Does it aim to take advantage of opportunities from the Chinese BRI strategy?

Derek Grossman

Vietnam is in a really tough spot when it comes to Chinese BRI, and so my understanding is Vietnam would rather not be involved in BRI because they simply do not trust China’s plans and intentions with that massive infrastructure and investment program, as you mentioned, with Cambodia and also with Laos. The Vietnamese look across their border and they see that the Chinese come in with their own workers and build up these infrastructure projects, sometimes in insensitive areas, whether environmentally or militarily and then they wind up staying and building Chinatowns within the sovereign countries. The idea, at least from what I’ve heard from Vietnamese who are experts on this issue, is that Hanoi has no intention of putting itself in that type of predicament. The Chinese want to build the north- south highway in Vietnam. Some of that highway would go through sensitive areas for Vietnam, but some of them are sensitive military sites. And former generals, I think, maybe current generals as well, in the Vietnamese People’s Army had come out publicly and said it’s a bad idea because it gives the Chinese too much information.

There’s a lot of other factors involved here as well. You mentioned the special economic zone draft law in 2018 that resulted in nationwide protests for weeks and eventually the Communist Party had to withdraw that draft legislation. It has not reappeared and I don’t think that’s a coincidence. Because going back to what I said earlier, the Vietnamese population is at a minimum extremely suspicious of Chinese intentions and at a maximum really is very sort of, you know, frustrated with China, and kind of, you know, angry with China in some ways. Maybe some even hate China. And so you know I think BRI is one of those things that kind of brings out those feelings that China is trying to take over the Vietnam economy, maybe even secretly. Too many jobs are going to China, not enough to Vietnam, not enough products are made in Vietnam.

The level of corruption that BRI brings, I mean when I went to Vietnam to conduct the research, you know, one of the folks I spoke to said that Vietnam doesn’t even know how many BRI projects actually exist in Vietnam. Because a lot of them pre-existed before Xi Jinping and of course Xi Jinping’s hallmark economic program. A lot of them have now been repackaged to become BRI, so Hanoi is doing an active investigation to determine which projects now count as BRI. The only official BRI project in Vietnam, as I’m sure you know, is the Hanoi metro system. It’s massively over budgeted and delayed. And when you look at the counterpart in Ho Chi Minh city that’s being built by the Japanese. The Japanese have the Ho Chi Minh city metro system there. It is over budget, it is delayed, but not as over budgeted and delayed as the Chinese. And the Chinese have had safety concerns issues with testing some of their rail cars, so that is kind of like the poster child for the Vietnamese. One of the reasons why you cannot trust BRI is because it’s inefficient, it’s even maybe dangerous. There’s all these other reasons that I mentioned as well about sensitivity of sites and maybe giving the Chinese the keys to the palace unwittingly.

Do you think that there is a gap, a difference between the views of the Vietnamese Communist Party’s leader and the views of Vietnamese intellectuals and civil society toward China? Vietnam may see the Chinese BRI as both an opportunity and a threat? Nevertheless, if, in the Vietnamese eyes, the opportunities are more prominent, the risks are insignificant, would they want to join hands with the US to contain it?

Derek Grossman

Well so going back to the responses to the regional competition report on Vietnam, we covered the diplomatic US had a slight advantage. In the economic factor China had an overwhelming advantage. Most of this is due to BRI, but it even, I’m sure, predates BRI because China is the partner right next door with the massive economy. I think a lot of Vietnamese are worried about that, as I said. Now, when it comes to the leadership aspect of it, the Vietnamese Communist Party and the Chinese Communist Party again have a very long standing close partnership. I don’t think the US would ever be able to kind of split that bond and nor does the US seek to but suffice it to say that’s a long standing, very close relationship that, I think, benefits Vietnam quite a bit because they get a lot of insights as to what China is up to by talking to them constantly. And also, frankly, the Vietnamese have adopted some Chinese aspects of society.

There’s lots of examples of this, for instance, the SEZ law that we were just talking about. SEZ comes from China, right? The idea of “Đổi mới” (Reform) in 1986.

I think it harkens back to “gaige kaifang” (改革开放 “reform and openness”) in 1978 when the Chinese reformed and opened up their economy to the West and to the world to become more capitalistic.

The cyber security law in Vietnam is essentially verbatim what the Chinese cyber security law says. With all of that in mind, as a China analyst at heart, we always say when we analyze China, when they adopt things from the outside, they do so with Chinese characteristics, so they always kind of repackage whatever it is they’re adopting to fit China.

I would argue that the Vietnamese adopt Chinese concepts with Vietnamese characteristics that it’s never quite wholesale nor should it be. I mean every country makes its own decisions, but especially when adopting concepts from your adversary all right up North, there is, I think, a certain hesitancy to go too far, so, for example, with the cyber security law, yes it’s verbatim. But Vietnam is not putting into place a great firewall in the way China’s some in the party in the Vietnamese Communist Party might want to do that. But I think there’s I think most of them figure that you can’t stop Facebook in Vietnam, you can’t stop Twitter. You’re just going to cause outrage, it’s going to cause more problems for Vietnam, so, in the end, it’s sort of a cyber security law light.

But you know, there is that kind of interesting dynamic going on, so to answer your question, I mean, I think the leadership is very close to the Chinese leadership, but the people are much more distant. What’s interesting is the military is caught in the middle right, because the military in Vietnam is beloved by the people and they’re very suspicious of China, but they also answer to the party. So you know it’ll be a very important and interesting dynamic that plays out over time.

One other thing you mentioned is civil society. It depends who you talk to, right? I mean some of the older folk that I’ve talked to in Vietnam, they are kind of more suspicious of the United States because they lived through the Vietnam War. And that’s you know they try to actually help Vietnam, of course, against the United States during that war. But then when you talk to folks that are kind of middle aged and especially the younger crowd, they usually can speak some English right and or they’re fluent, they have a very kind of friendly view of the United States and a much more distrustful view of China. So there’s a generational kind of spectrum as well to keep in mind.

Do you think political systems and ideology are an insurmountable barrier between the United States and Vietnam? Vietnam still teaches communism in the army, police, universities, and high schools. The political system of Vietnam is still a communist dictatorship. The Vietnam Communist Party still considers the United States dangerous to its power. Vietnam’s government still believes those who oppose communism and the dictatorship as ideological enemies. From the perspective of ideology and political regime, do you think the US or China win the trust of the Hanoi government?

Derek Grossman

Yeah so that’s a really kind of fundamental question. That, I think, kind of looms over the US Vietnam comprehensive partnership, which is can the US and Vietnam continue their relationship when Vietnam is authoritarian and a socialist country ruled by a communist party while the United States is a democratic system and capitalist system, right? I mean, can those things continue to sort of coexist, right? I think the US and Vietnam have done a pretty good job of papering over their differences.

I would highlight that the only Vietnamese Communist Party General Secretary visit to the White House to happen, was in July of 2015 during the Obama administration. How is that facilitated? It’s very important to kind of understand this, because I don’t think it’s very well understood frankly in this community of people who watch these issues. That was facilitated because the Obama administration recognized and respected Vietnam’s form of political governance and that has served as the cornerstone of the relationship that we see today. Yes, relations were normalized in 1995 but things didn’t really start to take off until right around 2015. So it’s still new. It’s only six years ago, right?

And what we saw with the Trump administration and now we’re seeing with the Biden administration is a reaffirmation of the fact that the United States respects, recognizes the legitimacy of and respects the Vietnamese political system.

Without that there can really be no progress and relationship. Now China will easily say, for example, yeah, you know, the United States says that but they’re really trying to forge a closer economic relationship with you in order to insert a Trojan horse that’s eventually going to democratize Vietnam; and then the Communist Party is going to lose control, and you guys are all going to be really unhappy about that; it’s not going to be good for you, it’s not going to be good for us, right? And there are especially older folks in the Vietnamese system, who lived through the Vietnam War who still believe in this idea of peaceful evolution, and it’s exactly what I just said that the US will try to somehow, you know, through increased interactions, basically kind of influence, on the younger generation to overthrow the government.

That is going to be really tough to get over. And it’s not just the political governance or ideological issues at play. It’s also human rights. So the Trump administration was very selective in how it talked about human rights. Anything to do with China in human rights is bad, righ? Vietnam and others, we’re not going to talk about it as much. It was selective.

The Biden administration is not as selective and seems to be much more, you know, willing to criticize even countries that it wants to become closer with on human rights. So you know, I think that that could raise some problems, now with what we saw with the Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin’s visit to Vietnam in the last few days. That topic was broached, it was privately done, it was not publicly discussed. But during Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman’s visit to Cambodia, Indonesia and Thailand, in late May early June, she did talk about it, and she talked about it very publicly. I’ve been writing about this quite a bit. I mean there always is sort of this tension but especially in the Biden administration.

There’s this ongoing tension between emphasizing or prioritizing shared values versus shared interests. The interests are clear. That is extreme competition with China and counter China at every turn. The shared values part is that we want to work with democracies to get this done through the quad Australia, Japan, India and the United States. Through those types of mechanisms, I just saw before we got on that President Biden is going to make good on hand holding a summit for democracy, sometime in December. Do you think Vietnam is going to be invited to that? No. Right? That’s going to rub Vietnam the wrong way. It just is, right? So there are kind of inherent problems that can only be resolved by reaffirming that political foundational point and also people to people ties, I mean the Secretary of Defense’s visit, I thought, hit all the right notes in terms of, you know, talking about legacy of war issues, helping Vietnam find its own war dead, continuing the agent orange detoxification efforts. You know, all of those things, I think are really important, and in fact, are probably more important to Vietnam than dealing with the South China Sea, which is more kind of a US issue. Don’t get me wrong, I mean Vietnam is concerned about it but there’s other things too.

That is on Vietnam plates that are kind of at an equal level, and so it was really important, I think, for the US to kind of air that out. Looking at what Secretary of State Tony Blinken is doing as we speak, he’s meeting with ASEAN and two of the five meetings for this week with ASEAN are  about the Mekong river.

Again, an existential issue for Vietnam ensuring that Chinese damming upstream does not impact Vietnam’s rice paddies in the lower Mekong which serves as the bulk of Vietnamese food source. So it’s really important to see those other things kind of getting a little bit of spotlight in the relationship. And I think that’ll improve the US Vietnam ties over the long run.

Vietnam in the US perspectives

Would you mind explaining the Vietnamese position on the US chessboard in Asia?

Derek Grossman

Yeah, so well, the hard part about that is we don’t have an Indo-Pacific strategy for the Biden administration, right? And, frankly, we are away from that. I mean we don’t even have a national security strategy yet. The way it usually works is, you first have a national security strategy, then you have a national defense strategy and then you have an Indo-Pacific strategy. So we could be many months away, maybe even a year away from an Indo-Pacific strategy for the Biden administration. What we do have, however, is an Interim National Security Strategic Guidance document that was published by the Biden administration in March.

So this was kind of like, let us give you a sense of what our strategy is going to be without actually telling you everything about our strategy because we don’t know yet. In that interim guidance document, Vietnam is spotlighted as a very important partner.

So Vietnam and Singapore in Southeast Asia are really kind of almost a thing. And that I think was reflected by the Secretary of Defense’s choices for visits in Southeast Asia were Singapore, Vietnam and then the Philippines. There’s another reason for that which is to get the visiting forces agreement to stay intact under the Durterte government. So there was sort of a special case, but no other Southeast Asian countries including our allies, including the Philippines and Thailand, were mentioned by name in that document, except for Vietnam and Singapore. I think that Vietnam holds a very important place in the US is a kind of emerging indo-pacific strategy.

And you know that’s here to stay, I don’t see that going anywhere… unless the Biden administration decides to really amp up the pressure on human rights. I don’t see that happening right now, because I see this kind of gets into a longer discussion, but basically a massaging of the message. What you know is that the Biden administration not just talking about human rights and kind of blowing up all the other potential areas of cooperation, but a more kind of carefully choreographed way of bringing it up, whether in private or through different statements that kind of bring it up, but not make it the priority of the relationship. So I think that’s probably going to remain the key to continuing what we see is some pretty good momentum in US Vietnam relations.

So if the US wants to strengthen cooperation with Vietnam to contain China, how will the US handle the human rights issue in Vietnam?

Derek Grossman

Yeah, just like I was saying, I think that it is going to be much more kind of choreographed, and you know, handled in a more discreet way. Going forward, I think that Wendy Sherman will visit Cambodia, Indonesia and Thailand. You know, the responses from those countries were not particularly positive. Because they feel like they’re being lectured on human rights.

When Secretary Blinken visited India last week, it was very interesting what happened. India, yes, is a democracy, but it is an increasingly illiberal democracy under Prime Minister Narendra Modi. They do not treat minorities primarily Muslims well in India and it’s become a real issue. We had the Pegasus scandal, the other day, which you know, exposed that the Indian Government was spying on journalists and all kinds of different people. There’s concerns in Washington that India is not, you know, quite the free and liberal society that it once was. So when Blinken went there, he said, we are going to talk about democracy, we are going to talk about human rights. But we’re going to do it from a position, we the United States are going to do from a position of humility. He actually uses that word, “humility”. We are not a perfect democratic system and we are not professing to be one. We have flaws, we’re trying to fix those flaws. We want to have a genuine frank conversation with our allies and partners about becoming better democracies. So you know, we saw this with Secretary Austin’s visit as well when he went to Singapore and talked about shared values. He said we are also looking for a more perfect Union. So those are the types of repackaging that I’m talking about when it comes to Vietnam, of course, Vietnam is not a democracy.

So I think that talking about democracy is probably not what’s going to happen, but human rights, inevitably, is going to come up, but it will, it will be done in a similarly massage manner to what talking about democratic issues.

How does China view Vietnam?

China is critical to Vietnam. How do you rate Vietnam’s importance to China? China repeatedly advised Vietnam to protect socialism, namely, to protect the communist political regime. In your opinion, will China accept Vietnam’s democratization, even though the possibility of Vietnam’s democratization is very low?

Derek Grossman

Yeah I mean I think China so certainly does not want to see Vietnam become a democratic country because it’s right at the Chinese doorstep in their backyard.

But I mean I did a study recently that was published for Asia Policy that’s the National Bureau of Asian Researches journal that tracked Chinese views of US Vietnam Cooperation over time and, frankly, if you go back to even 1995 to up until today. China doesn’t think that the US has moved the needle all that much with Vietnam. And that’s because Vietnam shares that socialist ideology with China and China has not seen that budge whatsoever.

And you know for China, ensuring that Vietnam does not become a democracy, I think, is really a very important deal.

But you know if the US and Vietnam were to increase their security cooperation, even to the level of strategic partnership, so beyond the current comprehensive partnership to a strategic partnership which might involve, you know, additional exercises. It might even involve, you know, Vietnam becoming some sort of dialogue partner with the Quad. I still don’t think China is going to be faced by that.

Because, at the end of the day, China’s viewing its dispute with Vietnam is really related to the South China Sea and to potentially the border dispute which they’ve always handled internally with Vietnam.

It’s hard to know what would sort of be the red line for Beijing but I will tell you that in the last 26 years Vietnam has not crossed that red line and it doesn’t seem like it’s going to. And, in fact, when you look at the “three nodes defense policy” which is now the “four nodes and one depends” policy, it was forged back when it made its first appearance in the Vietnam Defense White Paper and 1998 and what I’ve heard is that it actually was a concession to China.

It was Vietnam voicing the idea that these are the three things that we will not do, no alliances, no foreign military bases and now aligning with a second country against the third parenthetically you. We won’t do any of those three things in order to maintain China, Vietnam, and Malaysia relations. That’s what I’ve heard. I don’t know if it’s true. But it wouldn’t surprise me. Assuming that’s true, as long as that Defense policy stays in place, then I think China is going to feel very confident about itself. But with that I am going to have to jump off unfortunately so maybe if you wanted to conclude, we can do that.

Thank Dr. Derek Grossman so much for sharing your analysis with us.