James W. Pfister: Vietnam: from enemy to ‘strategic partner’

President Joe Biden on Sept. 10 visited Vietnam at Hanoi to strengthen ties and, perhaps, to add to the Pacific partnerships to balance China. With Nguyen Phu Trong, general secretary of the Communist Party, they announced a new “comprehensive strategic partnership” between the United States and Vietnam, the highest level of foreign partnership which Vietnam recognizes.

Vietnam is unique among mainland Southeast Asian nations for its long history with China. Chinese records mention the Vietnamese during the third century B.C. The kingdom of Nam-Viet goes back to 208 B.C., comprising part of present-day southern China and three provinces of the northern part of Vietnam in the Red River delta and northeastern coastal plain. It was an autonomous kingdom under Chinese suzerainty. (George McTurnan Kahin, “Governments and Politics of Southeast Asia,” 1964).

Then, in 111 B.C., Nam-Viet was annexed to China until 939 A.D., about 1,000 years, and governed by China as a province known as Giao Chi. (Ibid). The Vietnamese were able to break away from China, but the threat was ever-present.

The long history of Vietnam from 939 was marked by much division as Vietnam moved south until it was unified by Gia Long in 1802. It did not engage in warfare with its neighbors such as the Thai, but remained relatively isolated in its internal conflicts, except regarding Cambodia and Champa.

Then came European colonialism in the mid-nineteenth century under France. The Japanese dominance during World War II produced the Viet Minh and Ho Chi Minh as anti-Japanese and anti-French nationalists, who cooperated with the U.S. OSS in anti-Japanese activities. With the defeat of Japan, on Sept. 2, 1945, Ho declared independence in Hanoi for the Democratic Republic of Vietnam. Ho quoted the famous second paragraph of the American Declaration of Independence. Ho contacted the U.S. for support. Had President Franklin D. Roosevelt lived, support may have been forthcoming. (Russell H. Fifield, “Americans in Southeast Asia,” 1973).

At this critical juncture of history, with FDR having died in April 1945, American foreign policy sided with France, a future NATO ally, in its desire to return to Vietnam. This all got wrapped up in the U.S. anti-Communist containment strategy. The U.S. financially supported France in its war to return but did not enter the war. Unfortunately, the U.S. did not accept the Geneva Settlements of 1954 which ended the said French-Indochinese War. It saw those settlements as a Communist victory. The war against Ho eventually became an American war, and we know the outcome of that tragic American decision.

Vietnam became unified again on July 2, 1976, following the end of the Vietnam War in 1975, as the new Socialist Republic of Vietnam. The U.S. and Vietnam normalized relations in 1995. Now, with the new strategic partnership, the two have elevated their relations to the highest level according to Vietnam’s hierarchy. With its land border with China and a long coastline of the South China Sea, Vietnam is on the forefront of possible trouble with China, which legally claims areas in the said sea, regardless of a U.N. court of arbitration’s decision to the contrary. Vietnam’s Exclusive Economic Zone is involved. The U.S. has supported Vietnam in this dispute. (Huong Le Thu, “Hanoi’s American Hedge,” Foreign Affairs, Sept. 12, 2023).

Meantime, Vietnam continues to have a decades-long relationship with Russia with a recent weapons deal (Josh Boak and Aamer Madhani, Associated Press, Sept. 12, 2023), and with China: “Hanoi is thereby turning the country’s vulnerability into a strength by maintaining relations with both China and the United States and even benefiting from their competition.” (Huong Le Thu, Ibid.).

Vietnam has had a long history of independence before the French came and since 1975. They will pursue their interests. They will continue relations with U.S. opponents in an ideologically unbalanced structure of relationships. On the downside, the U.S. is again operating in the Chinese sphere of influence and the Vietnamese relationship may drag the U.S. into legal disputes with China, or worse. We do not need another Taiwan, which risks nuclear war, or another adventure on mainland Southeast Asia, which greatly divided American society and was very costly. What are we getting out of this deal?

James W. Pfister, J.D. University of Toledo, Ph.D. University of Michigan (political science), retired after 46 years in the Political Science Department at Eastern Michigan University. He lives at Devils Lake and can be reached at jpfister@emich.edu.

This article originally appeared on The Daily Telegram: James Pfister: Vietnam: from enemy to ‘strategic partner’