🇻🇳🇺🇸 When Biden came to town

Hello friends!

Biden was in Vietnam for a day, but there is a fortnight’s worth of coverage to get across. 

Before we crack in though, I do want to touch on this terrible story in Hanoi where at least 56 people were killed in an enormous fire at an apartment block on Wednesday. Neighbours say the building had few exits, while the government has vowed an investigation.  

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Let’s crack in,Erin Cook

US President Joe Biden’s visit on Sunday to Vietnam is a tricky thing to think about. It’s not about China, but it’s not NOT about China. But it should be about Vietnam. And then, on top of the geopolitical reality of the region today, there’s the long history, the “bitter past” as Biden called it, between the US and Vietnam. 

Hanoi and Washington upgraded the relationship to a “comprehensive strategic partnership” and it comes “as both countries work together to achieve our shared goals of peace, prosperity, and sustainable development,” according to a White House statement. 

This includes some huge deals, Nikkei Asia reports, like a massive order from Vietnam for some new Boeing planes and US investment in a chip factory (which may prove to be the biggest story here in the long run). The US has also renewed pledges to work with Vietnam to remove dioxin contamination — a long hangover of the war. 

The CSP puts the US on the same diplomatic level as old friends China and Russia, which prompted a lot of speculation about what it all means. I do think there’s a degree of misunderstanding about Vietnam’s motivations here. Hanoi is courting many countries, flagging CSPs to come with Australia and Indonesia, for example, and I personally think it’s more indicative of Vietnam’s economic ambitions in the coming years with geopolitical concerns perhaps secondary. 

To his credit, Biden stressed repeatedly (and was asked about it repeatedly by the American press corp) that this deepening of ties shouldn’t be read in the ‘new Cold War’ framework: “I think we think too much in ... cold war terms. It’s not about that. It’s about generating economic growth and stability in all parts of the world. And that’s what we’re trying to do,” he said, as reported by Associated Press. 

As I often say in these pages when it comes to Vietnam, in Mike Tatarski we trust. The Guardian had the same idea and tapped him for the outlet's analysis. His piece gives us some very interesting historical context about the relationship. This par in particular jumped out to me:

It’s rare for something to be deemed ‘historical’ and for it to actually be historical.  

Tatarski checks out the response from Russia — ‘muted’ — and China, where the Global Times wrote the CSP is merely a “symbolic gesture.” ISEAS’s Nguyen Khac Giang warned that there may be more to come: “On the surface, I expect China to exhibit restraint in its reactions, especially since Hanoi has consistently emphasised that the upgrade isn’t about ‘containing’ China. However, beneath the surface, China might be inclined to ramp up its aggressive manoeuvres in the South China Sea or wield its economic influence as a warning sent to Hanoi,” he told Mike. 

That is interesting. Hanoi naturally would’ve weighed up that likely prospect but has not let it sway the government from pursuing deeper relations with the US, which in itself feels telling. How tough can China’s bite be when you’re the hot new pick for industry that would’ve, a decade ago, gone to China. 

All the power to the Mekong wrote Brian Eyler (who knows a thing or two about the river) for Foreign Policy shortly before the visit. The Mekong Delta is crucial to food security and the country’s economy but is going through it at the moment with upstream damming in China affecting water flows. 

“Meaningful new deals struck in sectors such as commerce, energy, educational exchange, climate adaptation, sustainable development, and science and technological transfers can be captured fully or partially under the Mekong umbrella,” he writes. In addition to being savvily targeted, projects focusing on sustainability and development, rather than security, are far less likely to upset Beijing and put Vietnam in a sticky position, Eyler adds.

So a step forward on the environment, potentially. But human rights activists say the CSP has done nothing on their turf. “The Biden administration is clearly sidelining human rights in the interest of advancing partnerships with governments it sees as strategically important — and sending a message that the US is willing to tolerate blatant failures to protect and uphold human rights,” Amnesty International’s Asia director Carolyn Nash told Reuters, looking at both Vietnam and India, where Biden attended the G20. 

On that front, independent journalist Mai Phan Loi was released 18 months early from prison on “tax evasion” charges — on the day Biden arrived. A friend told RFA that the release was a surprise and widely believed in the community to be prompted by the visit.