Amid the drumbeat of struggle and battle, it’s straightforward to miss extra refined geopolitical shifts. One such shift occurred in November, when Vietnam elevated its partnerships with Algeria, Kuwait, and South Africa following visits by Vietnamese Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh to the three nations. At first look, this will likely look like a nothingburger: In any case, Hanoi has been upgrading partnerships with numerous nations and maintains many such partnerships world wide.
Nevertheless, Vietnam’s newest strikes are totally different because of the present geopolitical local weather and Hanoi’s altering foreign-policy priorities. For one, it seeks to minimize its overdependence on financial and safety collaboration with China and the US. And subsequent month, the Communist Celebration of Vietnam will maintain its quinquennial nationwide congress to find out potential adjustments to the nationwide management and approve plans for all areas of statecraft over the following 5 years. On international coverage, the celebration has adopted a brand new slogan—“core, frequent”—to explain the essential position of diplomacy in repeatedly advancing Vietnam’s pursuits as a rising center energy. Put one other method, Vietnam’s nationwide safety significantly and maybe existentially relies on efficient diplomacy, particularly as intensifying U.S.-China competitors threatens to destabilize the area and endanger Hanoi’s nationwide pursuits.
Amid the drumbeat of struggle and battle, it’s straightforward to miss extra refined geopolitical shifts. One such shift occurred in November, when Vietnam elevated its partnerships with Algeria, Kuwait, and South Africa following visits by Vietnamese Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh to the three nations. At first look, this will likely look like a nothingburger: In any case, Hanoi has been upgrading partnerships with numerous nations and maintains many such partnerships world wide.
Nevertheless, Vietnam’s newest strikes are totally different because of the present geopolitical local weather and Hanoi’s altering foreign-policy priorities. For one, it seeks to minimize its overdependence on financial and safety collaboration with China and the US. And subsequent month, the Communist Celebration of Vietnam will maintain its quinquennial nationwide congress to find out potential adjustments to the nationwide management and approve plans for all areas of statecraft over the following 5 years. On international coverage, the celebration has adopted a brand new slogan—“core, frequent”—to explain the essential position of diplomacy in repeatedly advancing Vietnam’s pursuits as a rising center energy. Put one other method, Vietnam’s nationwide safety significantly and maybe existentially relies on efficient diplomacy, particularly as intensifying U.S.-China competitors threatens to destabilize the area and endanger Hanoi’s nationwide pursuits.
From this attitude, it’s exceptional that Vietnam has established new strategic partnerships up to now afield. For one, these are the primary African and Center Jap nations to obtain such shut engagement as Vietnam seeks new commerce and different offers. Extra broadly, this habits suits a sample of Hanoi looking for to diversify its international relations in recent times—not simply past Southeast Asia but additionally past the Indo-Pacific—due to deep worries about its present capability to climate great-power competitors.
As I beforehand wrote for International Coverage, Vietnam joined BRICS as a accomplice nation in June to discover various financial channels. That call was groundbreaking as a result of Hanoi has historically declined to take part in multilateral boards outdoors the Affiliation of Southeast Asian Nations, primarily to keep away from the looks of aligning with outdoors powers. Moreover, over the past 4 years, Hanoi has considerably expanded its listing of complete strategic partnerships—the best tier in its foreign-policy hierarchy—to incorporate 14 nations. From 2008 to 2016, Vietnam maintained solely three such partnerships—with China, India, and Russia. Nevertheless, beginning in 2022, Hanoi opened the floodgates and signed complete strategic partnerships with 11 extra nations, together with the US and different main powers, corresponding to Australia, France, Japan, South Korea, and, most not too long ago, the UK. Hanoi is clearly looking for new shops for collaboration that may assist it break away from its overdependence on Beijing.
Though Vietnam is pursuing a world diversification technique in an try to flee the entice of U.S.-China battle, it’s concurrently hedging with these similar nice powers. For instance, in July, Vietnam performed joint military drills with China for the primary time—a notable improvement on condition that Vietnamese protection coverage sometimes forbids such actions. Throughout U.S. Protection Secretary Pete Hegseth’s go to to Hanoi final month, the 2 nations agreed to strengthen protection cooperation via delegation exchanges in any respect ranges, in addition to joint coaching, navy drugs, catastrophe reduction, humanitarian help, protection trade cooperation, and cybersecurity. Vietnam will probably follow its decades-old pledge to “make extra pals, fewer enemies” and to concurrently “cooperate and battle” to keep away from antagonizing or changing into overly depending on the US, China, or each.
Moreover, Vietnamese Basic Secretary To Lam and the Communist Celebration have labeled the following five-year interval an “period of nationwide rise,” which means that Hanoi seeks accelerated progress, reform, modernization, innovation, and the growth of its international affect. A lot of this agenda has a home focus, however progress and modernization at house will inevitably be enablers of a extra lively and diversified international coverage. And that can construct on Vietnam’s rising worldwide relevance as a rising center energy: In keeping with the Lowy Institute’s 2025 Asia Energy Index, Vietnam made the second-biggest annual bounce of the 27 nations tracked by the index and now ranks because the twelfth strongest nation within the area.
Vietnam’s international coverage of forming new strategic partnerships to keep away from dependency on nice powers isn’t new. What’s new is the depth of Hanoi’s present method and outreach nicely past the Indo-Pacific. This implies that Vietnamese management believes that its earlier technique was inadequate to mitigate the potential fallout of deepening great-power competitors.
This development has vital coverage implications for the Trump administration’s relationship with Vietnam and its broader technique within the Indo-Pacific. Though Hanoi will proceed to hunt nearer collaboration with Washington on protection, together with in opposition to China, this collaboration could also be restricted as Hanoi seems to various partnerships to keep away from overdependence on the US. Hanoi may select to strengthen ties with Beijing as a steadiness in opposition to an unpredictable and seemingly erratic Washington, which upended years of rising closeness by slapping a 46 % tariff on U.S. imports of Vietnamese items in April earlier than finally agreeing on 20 %.
Hanoi’s evolving technique signifies that the Trump administration may discover it tough to interact Vietnam sooner or later. One workaround for Washington may very well be to leverage U.S. allies and companions which have relations with Hanoi, particularly the nations on the latter’s diversification listing. That will imply oblique cooperation with Vietnam via pleasant nations within the area, corresponding to Australia, India, Japan, and Singapore. One other method can be to de-emphasize great-power competitors throughout U.S.-Vietnam negotiations. Luckily, the Trump administration is already making an attempt this method. For instance, the 2 nations have continued to collaborate on struggle legacy points, corresponding to Agent Orange removing and figuring out the destiny of still-missing troopers and civilians.
The fact, nevertheless, is that great-power competitors stays on the forefront of Washington’s pondering and planning. Vietnam will proceed to really feel pressured and topic to the capricious whims of this competitors. Nobody can fairly blame Vietnam for responding accordingly.
