America's Favorite Communists Are on the Frontlines of a US-China Rivalry

As U.S. President Joe Biden embarks on a historic visit to Vietnam 50 years after the Paris Peace Accords brought an end to the bloody Cold War-era conflict between the two nations, Washington is looking to capitalize on warming relations with Hanoi to elevate their ties to a "comprehensive strategic partnership."

But a worsening rivalry between the U.S. and China, Vietnam's powerful neighbor to the north with which Hanoi already has a "comprehensive strategic cooperative partnership," has only galvanized the socialist republic's efforts to maintain good relations with both major powers.

The strategy looks to help pave Vietnam's non-aligned path toward becoming a middle power in its own right. And yet a precarious balancing act between two powerful nations vying for global influence in an increasingly heated geopolitical environment brings with it both immense risks and rewards.

"Vietnam's policy of independence and self-reliance, as well as its '4 no's' defense doctrine—no taking sides, no use of own territory against any third party, no participation in military alliances, no threat or use of force in international relations—mean that Vietnam would not take a side in the U.S.-China competition," Nguyen Hung Son, vice president of the Diplomatic Academy of Vietnam, an elite international affairs institute that serves as a training ground for future diplomats and other professionals, told Newsweek.

"The risk to Vietnam, however, is that its policies, while formed on the basis of its own national interests, might be misunderstood as an act of taking a side, serving other countries' interests," he explained. "It is the job of the Vietnamese diplomatic community to propagate its policies to the word to mitigate the likelihood of such misunderstanding."

While non-alignment remains a central tenet of Hanoi's policies, Son, who has served in a number of diplomatic posts, including those related to the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), explained the benefits of boosting ties with Washington over the past three decades.

This effort, he argued, has been driven by "pragmatism from both sides," "mutual respect for each other" and "growing convergence of interests, especially strategic interests."

"Vietnam is interested in enhancing mutual trust amid increasing global uncertainties, deepening trade, economic and investment ties despite the sluggish global economy, and enhancing people-to-people exchange to serve as the bedrock of the long-term relationship," Son said.

And yet "obstacles" persist, he said, and these "may include the war legacy issue, difference in values and geopolitical complications."

Such complications have increasingly come to light as a more powerful and assertive China too sought to court a country with which it has a complex historical relationship.

"Vietnam shares 1,500km of its land border with China. Vietnam cannot afford not to have a close relationship with China," Son said. "As a fully integrated nation into the international community, Vietnam's policy is to maintain stable relations with not only Beijing and Washington, but also with other key super and middle powers such as Russia, India, the EU, Japan, Korea, Australia."

The proximity of Chinese and Vietnamese civilizations over the course of thousands of years has made relations unavoidable long before the arrival of the United States, or even other Western powers. While China, whose own communist leadership rose out of civil war in 1949, played an influential role in supporting the establishment of the modern Vietnamese state in 1976 by supporting the resistance against French and U.S.-led forces in back-to-back wars, cooperation quickly turned to conflict in the succeeding years.

From 1979, the year Washington and Beijing first established relations, to 1991, the year that the Soviet Union's collapse shook the communist world, China and Vietnam engaged in a prolonged border conflict that continues to influence the dynamic between them. And though Beijing and Hanoi normalized diplomatic ties at the end of that conflict and defined a common land border at the turn of the 21st century, they remain at odds over competing claims to islands in the South China Sea.

In the meantime, Washington also normalized ties with Hanoi in 1995, and both sides increasingly invested in this relationship as a means to counter a rising China, an effort that has accelerated dramatically for the U.S. in recent years.

"By the late 1990s, growing concerns about China prompted the U.S. to shift its stance towards Vietnam," Bich Tran, a fellow at the National University of Singapore's Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy and adjunct fellow at the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies, told Newsweek.

"With the most extensive historical interactions and profound expertise in managing ties with China, Vietnam stands out among Southeast Asian countries," Tran said. "Given its shared extensive boundary with China and its notable stance in the South China Sea disputes, Vietnam becomes pivotal if the U.S. aims to counterbalance China's influence."

The trajectory of the U.S.-Vietnam relationship is an unlikely one, especially given Washington's view of other surviving communist powers, such as Cuba and North Korea. For all of its nuclear brinksmanship, the U.S.-Cuba feud has drawn little blood for the U.S., and even the more than 36,000 U.S. troops killed in the three-year war in Korea pales in comparison to nearly 60,000 U.S. soldiers killed over the course of eight years in Vietnam.

In both conflicts, local casualties extended into the millions, according to most estimates.

The U.S. began to withdraw from Vietnam in 1973 after the signing of a peace agreement in Paris and, while the legacy of the conflict continues to haunt both countries, Washington has continuously sought to reconcile this through aid, people-to-people exchanges and, increasingly, gestures of an enduring partnership. In March 2018, just as tensions between Washington and Beijing were mounting under then-President Donald Trump. a U.S. aircraft carrier visited Vietnam for the first time.

China too has sought to shore up its position in the neighboring country, both in terms of shared ideology and economics.

"China is vital to Vietnam's economic growth and communist regime stability," Tran said. "As Vietnam's top trading partner since 2004, China emerged as the sixth-largest foreign investor in Vietnam in 2022."

"As two of only five communist regimes left globally, Chinese and Vietnamese leaders see regime continuity as integral to national security," she added. "Therefore, Vietnam is incentivized to maintain constructive political and economic relations with China despite tensions."

Last October, Vietnamese Communist Party General Secretary Nguyen Phu Trong became the first foreign leader to visit China after President Xi Jinping secured an unprecedented third term as the head of his own nation's powerful Communist Party. About a month after U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken's trip to Vietnam earlier this year and just as a third-ever U.S. aircraft carrier arrived in the country, Vietnamese Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh also visited China to meet Xi in June.

While on his first trip to Vietnam as president, Biden will meet Pham, Trong and Vietnamese President Vo Van Thuong, who came to power in March as the youngest member of the politburo after the resignation of his predecessor, Nguyen Xuan Phuc, amid corruption allegations. In the leadup to the trip, Trong received a visit from Chinese Communist Party international relations director Liu Jianchao in a bid to boost ties between the two nations.

The effort to maintain a degree of U.S.-China equilibrium largely stems from Vietnam's past setbacks in choosing to align with major powers, specifically the Soviet Union, which backed Hanoi in its protracted border conflict with Beijing.

"During the Cold War, Vietnam sided with the Soviet Union and paid a heavy price," Tran said. "Hanoi does not want to choose a side now. Therefore, it is essential for Vietnam to balance its relations with China and the United States."

Khang Vu, a fellow at the University of Notre Dame's International Security Center, also cited this painful experience as particularly influential in informing Vietnam's current outlook on great power rivalries.

"Vietnam does not want to pick a side because it wants to avoid the lesson of the 1980s, when it sided with the Soviet Union against China and was punished by Beijing and later abandoned by Moscow," Vu told Newsweek. "Staying on good terms with all powers benefits Vietnam the most."

"Vietnam does not want to be dependent on any powers," he said, "so its efforts to maintain stable relations with Beijing and Washington are to increase its foreign policy options."

"Upgrading relations with the United States" offers Vietnam "an alternative option and signals to China that while Vietnam prefers an amicable relationship with Beijing," Vu explained, "it will not simply be a pushover if Beijing seriously threatens Vietnam's interests."

At the same time, "maintaining a friendly China-Vietnam relationship is vital to Hanoi's long-term security and economic development," he added.

But it's not just Beijing and Washington that Hanoi has in mind when it comes to forging foreign ties. As Son too had pointed out, Vietnam is looking to elevate its role in ASEAN and court an array of nations in the region and beyond in order to boost its standing on the world stage and avoid falling under the yoke of any single power or alliance.

"We thus are witnessing Hanoi upgrading relations with Australia, Singapore, and Indonesia along with the United States to ensure its independence from relying on any powers or groups of power in international affairs," Vu said.

"For Vietnam," he added, "the more friends it has, the more independence it enjoys."