Head-of-state visits typically take months to organize, but Vietnam's President Truong Tan Sang is coming to Washington on very short notice and just after an evidently jolting encounter with China's leaders. Could it be that Sang and his colleagues have decided to pay the price the US has demanded for a "strategic partnership"?
Early in June, US State Department officials told a Congressional subcommittee that closer ties with Vietnam, in particular weapons sales, are on hold until there is "continued, demonstrable, sustained improvement in the human rights situation." The officials put on the public record a message that US diplomats have been delivering privately for a couple of years. Their testimony largely went unnoticed except by the online media that stoke the fires of dissidence in Vietnam.
Coincidentally, Vietnamese police arrested yet another blogger on June 13, charging Pham Viet Dao with "abusing his right of free speech to undermine the interests of the State." According to the Associated Press, 43 dissidents have been jailed this year, twice the pace of 2012. Moreover, there's evidence that the cybersecurity arm of Vietnam's police has deployed FinFisher surveillance technology - made by UK-based Gamma International - to plant spy software in computers and smartphones of people who access dissident blogs.
Hanoi has not welcomed American démarches on human rights issues. Party stalwarts gag on demands that Vietnam allow greater democratic freedoms, fearing that Washington's true objective is to bring down the regime.
The crackdown on bloggers seemed to manifest a regime tilt toward China, the bête noire of Vietnam's dissidents. For years, dissident bloggers have flayed the regime for, they say, its failure to defend Vietnam's interests against its giant neighbor. Exhibit A: China's step-by-step solidification of a claim to "indisputable sovereignty" over most of the South China Sea, including waters off Vietnam's coast.
Vietnam's naval and air forces, though not insignificant, are no match for China's. Rather than risk clashes over disputed rocks and reefs - and possible oil and gas deposits - Vietnam's rulers have sought to brake Chinese aggression by rallying the support of ASEAN partners and by forging "strategic relationships" with the United States and other extra-regional powers. The results of these diplomatic efforts have been modest. ASEAN's 10 members have jawed on about "centrality" in regional matters, but failed to establish a common front with respect to China's sweeping territorial claims. Meanwhile, wary of being maneuvered into defending Vietnamese or Filipino islets, the United States has insisted that it "does not take sides" on territorial disputes. Worried also that the rising superpower will retaliate in other areas, Washington and most ASEAN capitals have shied away from direct challenge to Beijing's quest for hegemony over waters lying between Hong Kong and Singapore.
Beijing's claims are based on records of visits by fishermen centuries ago. In contrast, the Philippines, Malaysia, Brunei and Vietnam rely on the UN Charter on the Law of the Sea and other international law. Policy shepherds in Washington agree that the thicket of claims must be untangled by reference to those legal precepts. But this stance is undermined by repeated US failures to ratify UNCLOS and the failure of the four ASEAN frontline states to sort out conflicting claims among themselves. The stance offers no clue to Washington's course if Beijing continues to nibble its way toward a fait accompli.
As tensions have risen, non-Communist Vietnamese and a significant faction within the Communist Party have urged a de facto economic and military alliance with the US. There's been progress toward Vietnam's membership in the projected US-led Trans-Pacific economic partnership. Although many party leaders remain skeptical of US intentions, in the last four years there's been remarkable expansion of consultations with the US armed forces. In June, for example, senior members of Vietnam's general staff toured US bases.
