{"id":32359,"date":"2017-06-09T12:30:35","date_gmt":"2017-06-09T02:30:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/?p=32359"},"modified":"2017-06-09T10:20:36","modified_gmt":"2017-06-09T00:20:36","slug":"vietnam-asias-unexpected-peace-broker","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/vietnam-asias-unexpected-peace-broker\/","title":{"rendered":"Vietnam: Asia\u2019s unexpected peace broker?"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Image<\/p>\n

Vietnam\u2019s Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc has just concluded a visit to the United States<\/a> to meet the president and negotiate a way forward on trade and the South China Sea\u2014two issues central to Vietnam. In the end the South China Sea took a backseat to trade. North Korea also proved to be a major talking point. Washington has been seeking support to pressure North Korea to drop its nuclear and missile programs.<\/p>\n

Hanoi has condemned all North Korean missile tests and stated on 30 May, a day after Phuc arrived in Washington, that it was \u2018deeply concerned\u2019 that the DPRK was \u2018violating relevant resolutions of the UN Security Council. Viet Nam consistently supports all efforts aiming to promote dialogue and maintain peace and stability on the Korean Peninsula.\u2019<\/p>\n

Until the USN\u2019s recent FON <\/a>patrol<\/a>, Vietnam worried that the SCS might be taking a permanent backseat to the DPRK in Washington\u2019s regional discussions, allowing greater Chinese hegemony in return for help on North Korea. Hanoi steadfastly maintains that UNCLOS should be the guiding principle, and it also values a strong US American deterrent presence there. That reference to the UN and international norms shows its ongoing commitment to multilateralism and the UN (when it suits\u2014human rights and freedom of religion, not so much).<\/p>\n

The idea that Hanoi could help with North Korea, possibly using its old (though frayed) ties to begin discussions, popped up<\/a> at The Huffington Post.<\/em> But the author, who said the idea had been floated in Vietnam, didn\u2019t attribute provenance. (Another writer at <\/a>The Diplomat <\/em><\/a>suggested the same thing last year.)<\/p>\n

Were it possible, it would be a great coup for Hanoi and would help bring Vietnam, China and the US together. And it wouldn\u2019t be the first time in that kind of role: Vietnam also hosted reconciliation talks between North Korea and Japan some years before.<\/p>\n

Superficially, Vietnam could be a sensible choice. Both communist nations fought a civil war and against the United States, both under charismatic leaders. But there are also stark differences\u2014not just of hardline communism versus the type that lets McDonalds in. It\u2019s also a difference in foreign policy, between isolationism and multilateralism, \u2018more friends and fewer enemies\u2019 versus… mostly enemies. The difference in leadership is profound too: between a hereditary communist leadership, and a model that favours consensus among Politburo members.<\/p>\n

Yet North Korea was a watcher of Vietnam\u2019s post-war renovation and its 1975 reunification. In 2007 then PM Kim Yong-il visited, flying in on an old Tupolev plane, which the BBC described<\/a> as the kind of \u2018bleak reminder\u2019 of a time before the country modernised.<\/p>\n

\u2018I think there is currently great interest in North Korea in Vietnam’s way of economic reform,\u2019 Hwang Gwi-yeon, a professor in international relations at the Pusan University of Foreign Studies, South Korea, told the BBC<\/em> at the time. \u2018The situation in North Korea is similar to that in Vietnam many years ago and Vietnam has provided a very suitable model of development.\u2019 Vietnam\u2019s command economy capitalism was exciting to North Korea, coming a few years after it had tentatively tried its own version of a Chinese-style Special Administrative Region that went awry.<\/p>\n

Those ideas are 10 years old, and haven\u2019t made much of a resurgence under Kim Jong-un. Instead, things have atrophied further, despite Vietnam\u2019s support for North Korea\u2019s membership of the ASEAN Regional Forum. North Korea\u2019s failure to pay for a large shipment of rice in 1996 set ties back, making the old comrade seem unreliable. Vietnam isn\u2019t in the Chinese position of having to prop up the regime, and it doesn\u2019t have as much to worry about regarding a huge influx of refugees, though it has been part of the Southeast Asian route out, and flew a large group out to South Korea in 2004.<\/p>\n

A 2006 International Crisis Group report, which looked at the plight of North Korean refugees around the world, noted that Vietnam apparently regarded the relationship as \u2018a burden\u2019 at times, and required North Korean officials traveling to Vietnam on Hanoi\u2019s coin to take a train. The report observed that<\/p>\n

\u2018\u2026since 2004, when South Korea took hundreds of North Korean refugees from Vietnam to Seoul, Vietnam has been especially cautious to avoid the risk of having to publicly choose between Pyongyang and Seoul.\u2019<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Vietnam\u2019s ties with South Korea are strong, though largely business-based, despite having established a \u2018strategic partnership\u2019. Seoul made vague overtures about Vietnamese support regarding North Korea earlier this year<\/a>, even as Vietnam wondered about more South Korean support in the South China Sea. Most analysts tend to think that as ties with South Korea\u2014by far the largest investor in Vietnam\u2014have progressed, friendship with the North has fallen by the wayside. But those residual ties might have some value, and any brokering by Vietnam would be very well received by the US, China and South Korea, especially under the more liberal leader Moon Jae-in, who values the idea of dialogue with the North.<\/p>\n

The notion of Hanoi as broker between Washington and Pyongyang\u00a0has great symbolic value for Washington: the former enemy is now moving so fast towards capitalism that its Prime Minister goes to Washington to promote free trade to the US President<\/a>, while working the middle ground to bring peace and stability. And Vietnam, which is always looking for useful ways to improve its world role and its ties, would also benefit greatly.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Vietnam\u2019s Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc has just concluded a visit to the United States to meet the president and negotiate a way forward on trade and the South China Sea\u2014two issues central to Vietnam. …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":543,"featured_media":32360,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[1522,86,471,540],"class_list":["post-32359","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-general","tag-fonops","tag-north-korea","tag-south-china-sea","tag-vietnam"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nVietnam: Asia\u2019s unexpected peace broker? | The Strategist<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/vietnam-asias-unexpected-peace-broker\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Vietnam: Asia\u2019s unexpected peace broker? 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