By Shawn W. Crispin
The recent trip is not as monumental as some are making it out to be.
Was Vietnam’s de facto supreme leader Nguyen Phu Trong’s diplomatic tour of Washington, including a White House meeting with President Barack Obama, as monumental as reported? News headlines almost universally heralded Trong’s visit, the first ever by a Communist Party chief to the United States, as a historic milestone in deepening reconciliation and burgeoning ties between the one-time battlefield adversaries.
Beyond the diplomatic niceties, however, Trong returns to Hanoi with few significant military concessions at a time of dire strategic need, including a lack of progress in fully lifting Washington’s decades-old lethal arms embargo imposed against the communist regime’s poor rights record. Obama eased the ban last year, allowing Vietnam to obtain non-lethal maritime wares that so far have done little to curb China’s rising assertiveness in the South China Sea. Analysts had expected lifting the embargo to feature prominently on the meeting agenda and may have even been announced during Trong’s high profile visit.
Agreements from the meeting instead advanced a budding but still largely symbolic ‘comprehensive partnership’ launched in 2013. According to a White House statement, the two leaders achieved concrete agreements on double taxation avoidance, cooperation on pandemic threats, aviation safety and education. They also committed to cooperate on various regional and global issues, including natural disasters, wildlife trafficking and water security, and work towards concluding the Trans-Pacific Partnership preferential trade pact as soon as possible.
Militarily, the two sides agreed to a memorandum of understanding that will pave the cooperative way for Vietnam’s future participation in United Nations’ peacekeeping operations. It is assumed the MoU will entail human rights training for Vietnamese soldiers The New York Times also reported vague agreements on “possible coproduction” of undisclosed defense technologies and equipment, as well as further joint naval operations. The White House statement said the two sides are concerned about recent developments in the South China Sea, but recognized the imperative of “refraining from actions that raise tensions” and reject “coercion, intimidation, and use or threat of use of force.”
Read the full story at The Diplomat