by John Boudreau
Vietnam’s military is going shopping.
Anxious about a more assertive China on its doorstep and frictions over territory in the South China Sea, officials in Hanoi recently hosted a group of foreign defense contractors looking to sell the Communist nation everything from radar systems to night vision technology and aircraft.
The military’s top officers were not present because of the sensitivity of hobnobbing with U.S. defense companies eight days before celebrations for the 40th anniversary of the defeat of America and its allies. But the meeting shows how Vietnam’s leaders are looking past ideology to practical realities.
“There are no permanent friends or enemies, only permanent interests,” Alexander Vuving, a security analyst at the Asia-Pacific Center for Security Studies in Hawaii, said by phone.
Squeezed by slower U.S. military spending, defense firms are looking to Southeast Asian nations for new markets, capitalizing on their concerns about China’s outlays on long-range planes, ships and submarines. The April roadshow, organized by the U.S. embassy, follows Washington’s easing of curbs on sales of nonlethal defense systems to Vietnam last October.
“In the coming months there will be more conversations, meetings and trips back-and-forth between American companies and their potential Vietnamese clients,” said Vu Tu Thanh, chief Vietnam representative of the U.S.-Asean Business Council, who attended the day-long symposium. “There is a surge of interest among American defense contractors.”
More than a dozen defense companies, including Boeing Co., BAE Systems Plc, Lockheed Martin Corp. and Honeywell International Inc. were invited to the April 22 event, according to the agenda for the meeting. “The symposium sought to promote U.S. firms in Vietnam,” U.S. embassy spokeswoman Lisa Wishman said in an e-mail.
Read the full story at Bloomberg