President Barack Obama’s decision to announce the end of the U.S. arms embargo on Vietnam during his first visit to that country represents the latest step in the maneuvering of the great powers for influence in Southeast Asia.
The decision will prove controversial in Washington since many people, including in Congress, wanted to see greater progress regarding human rights and civil liberties in Vietnam—such as the release of political prisoners and the holding of freer elections than the highly constrained legislative ballot that just occurred—before the administration had taken this step. Opponents of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade deal will also use the decision to warn about how the United States is relaxing standards to encourage Vietnam and other countries with questionable labor practices to join the trade initiative.
The arms repeal decision will also prove unwelcome in Beijing, where the move will correctly be seen as a U.S. effort to fortify the ability of Southeast Asian countries in order to resist China’s ambitions in the South China Sea. Chinese policy makers and analysts will also warn that the U.S. decision will heighten regional tensions and stimulate Hanoi and other countries to take a harder line on negotiations with China to address territorial disputes. Unfortunately, many Chinese will see the move as part of a U.S. effort to “contain” China, which would be an incorrect conclusion.
It is true that Washington worries that, if China continues to press its claims in the region through militarization of the region and coercive tactics, Beijing could inadvertently ruin the commercial vitality of this vital waterway. By signaling a willingness to sell weapons to Vietnam, Washington actually hopes to discourage militarization and arms racing in the western Pacific by making clear to all parties that the United States remains an influential and interested actor in their dispute.
Although U.S. arms sales to Vietnam and the Philippines represent one dimension of the U.S. approach to Southeast Asia, the leading rebalancing tools employed for most Southeast Asian states have been diplomacy and economic, including raising the U.S. diplomatic profile in the region and encouraging all these countries to join the TPP. Even on this occasion, the most significant announcements from Hanoi during Obama’s visit have been the commercial trade deals, such as the Vietnamese decision to buy $11 billion worth of Boeing passenger jets.
That said, there are no U.S. plans to support a large-scale Vietnamese military buildup let alone encourage Vietnam to fight a war with China. Although the United States partially lifted the arms embargo in 2014, to permit Vietnam to buy lethal arms for maritime security, there has in fact been no single U.S. weapons sale since then nor any evidence that either Hanoi or Washington has tried to promote one. The arms sale on Vietnam, like the ones by the U.S. and the EU retain on China, are of primarily symbolic significance signaling Western unease over how these two governments have used their militaries in the past.
Of course, Vietnam, like China, already obtains much better weapons than anything the United States might sell them from Russia. Moscow has sold both countries billions of dollars of advanced weapons systems over the years, including sophisticated warplanes and warships that have kept both countries in the top ranks of global weapons importers over the past decade. Russia has even sold Vietnam advanced land-attack missiles that the Vietnamese navy could theoretically use to attack the Chinese mainland, though few expect such a development.
In fact, Russia could play a critical swing role in shaping the outcome of the Chinese-U.S. rivalry over Southeast Asia. Last month’s fifth Moscow Conference on International Security for the first time had an entire panel focused on Asian security. The Russian speakers promoted Moscow’s “new security concept” for the Asia-Pacific region, based on the principle of equal and indivisible security, mutual interest, and the need to avoid the types of security crises that we see in Europe in Asia.
The ASEAN speakers at the event, which included several defense ministers, advocated Russia’s assuming a more prominent role in Asian security affairs. The day before the conference, the heads of the ten ASEAN countries’ military delegations attending the Conference met with the Russian Defense Minister and announced plans for expanded cooperation within the ASEAN Regional Forum and the ASEAN Defense Ministers’ Meeting Plus (ADMM+). Russia hosted its first ASEAN summit in Sochi last week, which produced a communiqué calling for deeper Russian-ASEAN cooperation in a number of areas.
However, China-Russian cooperation regarding Asia security still prevails. In his address at the Moscow Security Conference, Chinese State Councilor and Defense Minister Chang Wanquan spoke about the dangerous spread of international terrorism and reviewed China’s own counter-terrorist actions. He joined the Russian speakers in calling for a broad global coalition, based on ideological coexistence in line with international law and under the auspices of the UN, which respected the sovereignty, independence, and territorial integrity of the participating countries. These in turn should, in his view, employ a comprehensive counterterrorist approach involving diplomatic, economic, political, cultural, and other means to counter terrorism. Chang also mirrored Moscow’s view in denouncing double standards, actions directed against a nationality or religion, interference in other countries’ internal affairs, and pursuit of unilateral gain at the expense of general security. In addition, he affirmed the readiness of the Chinese military to combat terrorism at home and abroad, stressed the dangers of cyber terrorism, and cited the Chinese “One Belt, One Road” Initiative as a means of advancing regional security through international development.
Russian-Chinese solidary was even more in evidence at the concurrent meeting at the Conference on Interaction and Confidence Building Measures in Asia (CICA) in Beijing. At a joint news conference at the end of April, Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov, though not explicitly backing Beijing’s territorial maritime claims, joined Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi in demanding that outside powers (i.e., the United States) refrain from interfering in disputes among Asian countries. The two foreign ministers also emphasized their “serious concerns in regard to the US intention to deploy the THAAD system in the South Korea.”
The maneuvering for regional influence among the great powers will continue as President Obama completes his week-long visit to Asia and when Russian Vladimir Putin visits China next month.
