Russian President Vladimir Putin has arrived in the Vietnamese capital Hanoi for the second leg of his East Asia tour.
The trip, which follows his sumptuous visit to North Koreais interpreted as a demonstration of the diplomatic support that Russia still enjoys in this region.
The United States criticized the visit for providing a platform for President Putin to promote his war of aggression in Ukraine.
Vietnam still values its historic ties with Russia, even as it strives to improve relations with Europe and the United States.
Overlooking a small park in Ba Dinh, Hanoi’s political district, a five-meter-high statue of Lenin depicts the Russian revolutionary in a heroic pose. Every year on his birthday, a delegation of senior Vietnamese officials solemnly lays flowers and bows their heads before the statue, a gift from Russia when it was still the Soviet Union.
Vietnam’s ties with Russia are close and date back decades, to the vital military, economic and diplomatic support provided by the Soviet Union to the new communist state of North Vietnam in the 1950s.
Vietnam described their relationship as “filled with loyalty and gratitude.” After Vietnam invaded Cambodia in 1978 to overthrow the murderous Khmer Rouge regime, the country was isolated and sanctioned by China and the West, and relied heavily on Soviet aid. Many older Vietnamese, including the powerful Communist Party general secretary Nguyen Phu Trong, studied in Russia and learned the language.
Today, the Vietnamese economy has been transformed by its integration into global markets. Russia lags far behind China, Asia, the United States and Europe as a trading partner. But Vietnam still uses mostly Russian-made military equipment and relies on partnerships with Russian oil companies for oil exploration in the South China Sea.
The invasion of Ukraine posed a diplomatic challenge for Vietnam, which it has so far successfully met. She chose to abstain on various UN resolutions condemning Russia’s actions, while maintaining good relations with Ukraine and even sending aid to kyiv. They also share a Soviet-era heritage; thousands of Vietnamese have worked and studied in Ukraine.
All of this is consistent with Vietnam’s long-standing foreign policy principles of being friends with everyone but avoiding formal alliances – what the Communist Party leadership now calls “bamboo diplomacy”, kowtowing to strong winds of great power rivalry without being forced to make decisions. sides.
This is why Vietnam has so readily improved its relations with the United States, a country against which its former leaders fought a long and destructive war, in the interest of seeking lucrative markets for Vietnamese exports and balancing its close ties with its giant neighbor, China.
The United States has opposed President Putin’s official visit to Vietnam on the grounds that it undermines international efforts to isolate it, but it can hardly be surprised. Besides the special historical ties with Russia, Vietnamese public opinion towards the war in Ukraine is more ambivalent than in Europe.
There is some admiration for Putin as a strongman who challenges the West, and skepticism, fueled in part by social media commentary, of American and European claims to respect international law.
This is also true in other Asian countries, where the war in Ukraine is seen as a distant crisis. In Thailand, for example, a historic military ally of the United States that opposed Russia during the Cold War, public opinion is just as divided as in Vietnam. Thais also value the even older ties between their monarchy and Russia’s pre-revolutionary tsars, and the Thai government today maintains close ties with Russia, valuing the contribution of millions of Russians to its tourism industry.
How long Vietnam will maintain its camaraderie with Vladimir Putin is less clear. It is already looking for other sources of military equipment, but it will take years to end its current dependence on Russia.
A series of high-level resignations within the Communist Party recently suggests intense internal rivalries over the next generation of leaders and, potentially, over the direction the country will take. But there is no question yet of abandoning the ambition to be the friend of all and the enemy of none.
