- The two former arch-enemies have been brought together by a combination of greed and a shared fear of emerging threats in the post-American era, Richard Heydarian writes
"The enemy of my enemy is my friend."
So goes an ancient Middle Eastern proverb, which has reverberated across millennia with strategic pungency. In many ways, the same logic is driving one of the unlikeliest alliances of the 21st century, namely between the United States and Vietnam.
What has brought these two former arch-enemies together is a combination of greed, in the form of booming bilateral trade, and a shared fear of emerging threats in the post-American era, especially in Asia.
And it's precisely China where these two impulses have intersected in a singular strategic focus. The upshot is a blossoming silent alliance which has grown in proportion to an intensified strategic rivalry between China and the West.
Amid the ongoing Sino-American trade war, Western and Japanese companies have shifted their investments to Vietnam. By far, the Southeast Asian country, which has also attracted mainland Chinese investors dodging American tariffs, is the greatest beneficiary of the economic cold war between the US and China.
While much of Asia frets over the direction of the trade war, Vietnam is quietly welcoming diverted investments and rapidly replacing foregone Chinese light-manufacturing exports to America. Vietnam has also been a beneficiary of the West's trade diplomacy.
Intent on luring Hanoi across the Pacific, the Obama administration proposed the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement, which aimed to further embed the Southeast Asian country within the US-led liberal economic order.
Through deepened economic engagement, Washington calculated, Vietnam could gradually be transformed into a strategic partner in ways that a proud and major power such as China never could.
Although the Trump administration later nixed the trade deal, Vietnam eventually joined the Japan-led successor agreement, the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP11).
To use the lexicon of ancient Chinese stratagems, Vietnam is soliciting the aid of 'far barbarians' to check 'near barbarians'.
The upshot is greater economic interdependence among Vietnam and important US allies Japan and Australia, with the possibility of Washington rejoining the trade deal down the road.
And this dynamic transcends trade. More than half of Japan's total infrastructure investments in Southeast Asia, as many as 74 projects worth US$240 billion, are concentrated in Vietnam alone.
Recently, from across the Indian Ocean, Brussels signed the EU-Vietnam Free Trade Agreement (EVFTA) with Hanoi.
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The mega-deal, which aims to eliminate 99 per cent of bilateral tariffs, has been described as the EU's "most ambitious free trade deal ever concluded with a developing country".
Soon afterward, the EU also signed its first defence pact with a Southeast Asian country, the so-called Framework Participation Agreement (FPA), which facilitates greater interoperability, defence cooperation and joint exercises and includes an exchange of advanced military hardware.
It's in the South China Sea, however, where the hard edge of the undeclared alliance between Vietnam and the West is becoming apparent.
In recent years, all major Western powers, including the French and Australians, have stepped up their naval deployments to Vietnamese ports.
In March 2018, the US upped the ante by deploying the 103,000-tonne USS Carl Vinson aircraft carrier to the Vietnamese port of Da Nang as part of a five-day goodwill visit. Accompanied by two large warships, the aircraft carrier represented America's largest military presence in Vietnam since 1975.
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Daniel Kritenbrink, the US ambassador to Vietnam, proudly described the visit as "an enormously significant milestone in our bilateral relations and demonstrates US support for a strong, prosperous and independent Vietnam".
The Southeast Asian country was also among the first overseas destinations of US President Donald Trump as well as former US Defence Secretary James Mattis, who portrayed Vietnam as an important strategic partner in the region.
In its National Security Strategy (NSS) paper, the Trump administration has identified Vietnam as a "cooperative maritime partner".
In the Pentagon's Indo-Pacific Strategy report, Washington made it clear that it is "prioritising new relationships" with "key players" in Southeast Asia such as Vietnam, which "remain central in our efforts to ensure peace and underwrite prosperity in the Indo-Pacific" and "are strategically located on key sea lanes between the Indian and Pacific Oceans".
The Pentagon has underscored its commitment to "improve Vietnam's defence capabilities", especially in the maritime security realm, through providing increasingly advanced military hardware, including T-6 trainer aircraft and Scan Eagle Unstaffed Aerial Vehicles, as well as a supply of coastguard vessels.
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The undeclared alliance was fully on display during the ongoing Sino-Vietnamese naval stand-off near the Vanguard Bank. Though claiming to be neutral on the sovereignty disputes in the South China Sea, Washington squarely leaned on Hanoi's side.
US State Department spokeswoman Morgan Ortagus underscored how "the United States firmly opposes coercion and intimidation by any claimant to assert its territorial or maritime claims".
She called on China to "cease its bullying behaviour and refrain from engaging in this type of provocative and destabilising activity".
The strategic bargain is pretty straightforward. To use the lexicon of ancient Chinese stratagems, Vietnam is soliciting the aid of "far barbarians" to check "near barbarians".
For its part, Washington is intent on assembling a ring of alliances across the Indo-Pacific to box in and surround a resurgent China.
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The future of this stealth alliance, however, will also depend on two major factors: one, whether Vietnam is willing to ditch its "three no's" policy of never aligning with one foreign power against a third, hosting no foreign military camps, and having no explicit alliance with any superpower as it did during the cold war; and two, whether the US can overcome domestic opposition, especially among human rights groups and South Vietnamese veterans, to tighter cooperation with an authoritarian communist regime.
Ultimately, however, what will define the future of Vietnam-US relations is the trajectory of the US-China rivalry.
Richard Heydarian is an Asia-based author and academic
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