Tag Archive for: Vietnam

Sharing security interests, ASEAN’s big three step up cooperation

Southeast Asia’s three most populous countries are tightening their security relationships, evidently in response to China’s aggression in the South China Sea. This is most obvious in increased cooperation between the coast guards of the three countries – Indonesia, the Philippines and Vietnam.

But the three are moving closer together in bilateral arrangements, not as anything like a united trio. Going that far would be too damaging for their relations with China.

The obvious, though unstated, reason for collaboration is that all three have shared interests in a rules-based maritime order in the South China Sea. China’s widely disputed nine-dash line overlaps some territorial claims of Vietnam, the Philippines, Malaysia and Brunei. China also claims that areas of Indonesia’s exclusive economic zone in the North Natuna Sea slightly overlap its claims.

Principally due to Beijing’s increasingly assertive behaviour in the region, there has been an escalation of military standoffs between China and each of Indonesia, the Philippines and Vietnam.

The three are members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, but the grouping  has been unable to collectively act on territorial disputes in the South China Sea. Indonesia, Vietnam and the Philippines have instead found security cooperation on a bilateral level much more effective in advancing their domestic security interests. This is understandable as ASEAN is not a security alliance like NATO. Its principal focus and greatest success has been in economic development and trade.

For instance, amid the growing instability in the region, Jakarta has strengthened bilateral defence ties with both Manila and Hanoi. In 2022, Indonesia and Vietnam agreed to the boundaries of their exclusive economic zones in accordance with the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS). Before the deal, they had overlapping claims in the North Natuna Sea.

In October, the Indonesian and Vietnamese coast guards jointly exercised off Ba Ria-Vung Tau, a southern Vietnamese province. The occasion also marked the first visit by an Indonesian coast guard ship to a Vietnamese port since a 2021 memorandum of understanding on maritime security and safety cooperation.

Last  month the two countries elevated their ties to a Comprehensive Strategic Partnership and committed to strengthening defence cooperation, particularly in maritime security.

Furthermore, Indonesia and the Philippines have deepened their security ties through the 2022 Indonesia-Philippines Defence Agreement. The Philippines and Indonesia run regular maritime border patrols in their respective maritime boundaries. In 2014, the two neighbours resolved their existing overlapping maritime claims under UNCLOS.

Working with Malaysia under a trilateral cooperative arrangement, Indonesia and the Philippines have run regular joint maritime patrols since 2017. This arrangement shows both Manila and Jakarta are willing and able to conduct a trilateral maritime cooperation with a third ASEAN country.

Also last month, the Philippines and Vietnam participated in the Indonesian navy’s annual multilateral naval exercise, Komodo, in Bali. In January, coast guard personnel from the US, Vietnam, Indonesia, and the Philippines took part in a two-week maritime training course in Mindanao in the Philippines.

The Philippines and Vietnam have reinforced their maritime security awareness capabilities. Early last year, they signed a landmark maritime security deal. In it, Hanoi and Manila agreed to enhance maritime cooperation between their coastguards in the South China Sea, with a particular focus on working together to prevent and manage incidents in disputed waters.

However, the three countries may be reluctant to go as far as establishing a trilateral arrangement, because doing so could further provoke China, which now has the world’s largest navy. For instance, in 2023 China’s Nansha, the largest coast guard ship in the world, was sent to the North Natuna Sea. The incident occurred shortly after the Indonesia-Vietnam agreement on the boundaries of their exclusive economic zones. Some maritime security experts interpreted the deployment of the vessel as evidence that the new deal discomforted Beijing, which counts on intra-ASEAN divisions to prevent the emergence of a united front of claimant states against China over territorial disputes in the South China Sea.

Another major obstacle to such a trilateral arrangement could be the three countries’ significant economic relationships with China. China remains the largest trading partner for both Indonesia and Vietnam. It is also one of the Philippines top trading partners.

Nonetheless, the three strategic partners have accepted that they cannot leave it to ASEAN multilateralism to advance their shared security interests in the South China Sea. Deepening bilateral defence ties between the trio could be an incentive to build toward a united and effective trilateral maritime partnership.

Vietnam adopts the Women, Peace and Security agenda

Vietnam has become the third country in the Association of South East Asian Nations to adopt a national action plan for the Women, Peace and Security (WPS) agenda, promoting meaningful inclusion of women in peace and security decision-making. 

Vietnam’s move marks its leadership on WPS in the region and its commitment to the agenda. It is the first Southeast Asian country to adopt the agenda through a national action plan since ASEAN launched its own regional plan on the subject in 2022. 

The United Nations Security Council adopted the WPS agenda nearly 25 years ago to address the specific, gendered insecurities that women face in armed conflict. It focuses on four pillars: participation of women in peace and security decision-making; protection of women and girls from sexual and gender-based violence; prevention of violence against women; and relief and recovery measures that address crises through a gendered lens. 

In 2004 the UN secretary-general requested members states develop national action plans to operationalise the WPS Agenda. The plans should provide clear targets, measures and monitoring mechanisms for fully implementing the agenda within states. But until now only two ASEAN members had produced action plans—the Philippines in 2010 and Indonesia in 2014. 

Contrasting with the Philippines and Indonesia, which are democracies that have suffered internal armed conflict and violent extremism in the past 25 years, Vietnam has no internal security threats motivating it to operationalise the WPS agenda. Instead, its action plan shows its determination to take a more prominent role in peace and security internationally. This is underlined by the drafting committee being chaired by the vice minister of foreign affairs, Do Hung Viet. 

Vietnam already long been committed to WPS in ASEAN and globally. Serving as the 2020 ASEAN Chair, it hosted the 20th anniversary commemoration of the UN resolution through an international conference on strengthening women’s role in building and sustaining peace. The Hanoi Commitment to Action, a commitment to accelerating meaningful implementation of the WPS Agenda, was signed by 75 UN member states at the conference. Vietnam also hosted the ASEAN Ministerial Dialogue on Strengthening Women’s Role for Sustainable Peace and Security, which focused on enhancing the promotion of WPS in ASEAN and supporting its implementation in the region. Outside the region, Vietnam has sent many women peacekeepers to UN peacekeeping missions, including to South Sudan. 

For Vietnam, increasing engagement with WPS through a national action plan bolsters its position as a gender-equality leader in ASEAN. Scholars working on gender and international politics point out that states with strong gender equality leadership can symbolically position themselves as respectable in the international arena. As Vietnam seeks to promote itself as an ASEAN leader, adopting a WPS action plan is a helpful move.

Leaders fall in Vietnam, but don’t expect a foreign policy shift

In discussing Vietnamese politics, the commentariat falls back on the word ‘opaque’. This usually means that it does not know what is happening. 

The term is resurfacing in the wake of the resignation on 19 March of Vietnam’s president, Vo Van Thuong. 

Thuong was fired for alleged ‘violations and shortcomings’ that had left a ‘bad mark on the reputation of the Communist party.’ 

Thuong’s ‘shortcomings’ need to be seen in the context of the long-running anti-corruption campaign spearheaded by the party’s secretary-general, Nguyen Phu Trong. Trong is head of the politburo and number–one in the Vietnamese system. 

Thuong’s downfall would itself be a story. But his predecessor as president, Nguyen Xuan Phuc, formerly a successful prime minister, has also been compelled to resign. 

At that time there was inevitably speculation about the reason for the purge. One view was that it was indeed about corruption. Another was that many of those penalised were victims of factional fighting, with Trong pushing out his rivals. 

However, Vietnam’s leadership issues probably derive both from genuine corruption matters and from factional fighting. The two are not mutually exclusive. 

Corruption is a massive problem in Vietnam. It makes political sense to try to deal with it. The reasons given for the exit of top leaders are plausible. 

But no political systems, including communist ones, are free from factional fighting. A difference is that factions in the United States, Britain or Australia do much of their fighting in the open; the Vietnamese do it all in secret. 

There has also been a view that there are divisions in Hanoi between those who lean towards China and those who back Vietnam’s opening to the rest of the world.  

Those associated more with the party are sometimes portrayed as closer to China, while those associated with government can be seen to tilt more towards the West. 

Again, such differences would not be surprising. Outlooks do vary. The Vietnamese are nervous about China. Defence ties with the West help bolster the country’s security. Its economic growth will continue to depend on the West and major regional economies. But it does not want to provoke China. 

Still, differences of approach are not stark divisions. In the end, Vietnamese leaders tend to agree on foreign policy decisions and stick with them. If one tenet is central to their world view, it is the importance of balance. 

The country’s system tends to grade relationships by tier. In recent months it has raised the level of its relationships with the United States, Japan, South Korea and Australia to the highest tier of comprehensive strategic partnership. This is a level previously accorded to only China, Russia and India, with which Vietnam has had longstanding close relationships (albeit a fractious one with China). 

These diplomatic steps are closely tied to economic and technological aspirations. But lest anyone doubt Vietnam’s adherence to balance, President Xi Jinping made a state visit to Vietnam amid a flurry of relationship upgrades with the United States, Japan and Australia. 

So, what’s next?  

Vietnam’s leadership tussles are not likely to disappear before the election of a new central committee and politburo in 2026. But Trong’s successor will not be a strongman like Xi. The tradition of collective leadership is too well established. 

The recent infighting looks bad and affects foreign economic confidence. The very fact of the longstanding anti-corruption campaign, intended to safeguard party health and popularity, also makes both officialdom and the business community jumpy. 

This nervousness in turn jams up the decision-making process needed for a freer flow of domestic and foreign investment. 

And we should not make the mistake of thinking that the government is communist-lite. It is a serious Marxist Leninist state. Its bureaucracy is sclerotic and its security apparatus is rough. 

But Vietnam is now a country of 100 million people. Analysts do not doubt its economic fundamentals. According to the International Monetary Fund, Vietnam’s per–capita gross domestic product, whether measured in nominal terms or adjusted for purchasing power, is above the Philippines’ and not far below Indonesia’s. 

If Vietnam can push ahead with a major economic reform program as it did with the ground–breaking Doi Moi (literally, ‘Restoration’) program in the late eighties, its economic prospects could be good. We should deal with it accordingly. 

There is little reason to expect any of the recent leadership developments to greatly affect Vietnam’s foreign policy. Factionalism has not had a major impact on external policy in recent years and the Vietnamese will continue to adhere to the concept of balance. The West cannot arrange a tilt towards itself by Vietnam nor one away from China. Vietnam’s leaders simply will not do this.  

In the end, it is in the Western interest to deal with the Vietnamese as they are, not as we might like them to be.

Vietnam isn’t North Korea—and 50 years of Australian aid has helped

There’s growing awareness that Australia’s international development program is one of the tools of national power that Australia can use to shape the world around it.

The danger is that if ‘influence’ becomes an unstated way of judging the success of Australia’s aid, the focus may become short term and transactional. While development experts may be pleased about increased recognition of the importance of the development program—for example, in building relationships with neighbours—they’re concerned that the performance metric shouldn’t be whether, say, a country’s politicians and elites are positively disposed towards Australia.

The key to resolving this is to be clear about the type of influence that development partnerships can create. Australia’s 50-year investment in Vietnam is an instructive lesson on what a successful development partnership can achieve—and a realistic idea of what it cannot. It demonstrates that development cooperation is a long-term tool of influence.

I was in Hanoi to hear Foreign Minister Penny Wong celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Whitlam government’s recognition of Vietnam. Fifty years ago it would have been fanciful to imagine a foreign minister from a wartime enemy extolling the level of strategic trust and the people-to-people links between the two countries. It would have been even more difficult to imagine the location for the speech: the Ho Chi Minh National Academy of Politics, the literal heart of the Communist Party of Vietnam.

So how have two countries with extremely different political systems built this kind of relationship? It was done through long-term investment across all the tools of statecraft—including diplomacy, trade and defence—with development cooperation as a key element. This enabled a progression from battlefield enemy to major economic and development partner in a surprisingly short period.

Australia is still remembered for many ‘firsts’ in Vietnam. Crucially, Australia was among the first to recognise Vietnam and support its membership of the United Nations. For a time, the Australian diplomatic mission in Hanoi became the only bridge of communication between Vietnam and many Western nations.

Australia built Vietnam’s first undersea cable, satellite ground stations and high-voltage transmission lines. Many of the first foreign banks and law firms in Vietnam were also Australian. RMIT was the first international university to be invited into Vietnam.

Australia constructed the first bridge across the Mekong River in Vietnam in 2000, Australia’s largest development project to that time. Colloquially known as the ‘Australian bridge’, it remains a very visible symbol of the depth of the relationship. Tertiary education has also been an important vector to build people-to-people ties, including through scholarships provided under the development program.

As Vietnam’s needs and objectives have changed, so too has the nature of Australia’s cooperation. Today the centrepiece is the Vietnam Australia Centre embedded within the Ho Chi Minh National Academy. The centre draws on Australian expertise to provide training, capacity building, research activities and policy input to support Vietnam’s national and provincial leadership.

Australia has not shied away from difficult topics. One focus of Australia’s development support is on women’s equality and leadership. Since 2002, Australia and Vietnam have regularly held human rights discussions, with the 18th Human Rights Dialogue taking place in Hanoi earlier this year. Australia has adopted a peer support model in which each country shares its human rights challenges and encouragement is given to meeting international human rights commitments. While this isn’t as cathartic as condemning Vietnam for its human rights abuses, of which there can be no doubt, it does provide an opportunity to influence thinking and approaches over the long term.

All of this shows that Australia has been a genuine partner in helping Vietnam meet its development goals despite significant ideological differences. Australia’s pioneering engagement with Vietnam has built huge reservoirs of goodwill. It has helped Australia develop a significant profile in Vietnam, which is useful for trade and other links, and an outsized level of access to Vietnamese policymakers.

So does this mean that Australia can tell Vietnam what to do? That is neither realistic nor desirable.

Influence is about creating a region that Australia wants to live in, where neighbours are meeting their development goals. This means that the focus of the development partnerships shouldn’t be on short-term, transitory outcomes or benefits.

The measure of success is that Australia has helped shape Vietnam in a way that suits Australia’s broad long-term interests in fostering a peaceful, stable and predictable region.

Perhaps the best argument in favour of a long-term investment in development, diplomacy, trade and defence is the counterfactual one. Imagine Vietnam had developed in the way that North Korea did. That’s actually not hard to conceive. Not only would it be a negative for Vietnamese people, it would be devasting for the region.

For those who are inclined to be fatalistic about Australia’s ability to impact international affairs, the Australia–Vietnam relationship is an object lesson in what can be achieved with a commitment to shaping a shared future and the intelligent, long-term use of Australia’s tools of statecraft, including its aid program.

Don’t judge Australia’s development program by whether a country’s current political leader is pro-Australia. Judge it by the trajectory of 50 years.

Vietnam’s economy shows signs of revival

In 2022, the geopolitical tensions caused by the war in Ukraine, slowing growth in the Chinese economy and sharp rises in energy and food prices led to a significantly higher inflationary outlook globally. These factors all added to the risks confronting Vietnam as its economy recovered from its lengthy Covid-19 lockdowns.

Communist Party General Secretary Nguyen Phu Trong’s visit to China in October aimed to get assurances from Beijing of undisrupted supply chains and smooth export routes. Despite these concerns, the Vietnamese economy rebounded as the country transitioned successfully from ‘zero Covid-19’ to ‘living with Covid-19’, and GDP is reported to have grown by a surprisingly high 8.03% in 2022—above-trend growth compared to the decade before Covid-19 hit.

Domestically, firms and labour markets have been recovering while the external sector showed resilience. Overall employment levels are reported to be back to pre-Covid-19 levels and household incomes rebounded by 5.8% by mid-2022. But signs of Covid-19 shocks lingered. In April 2022, almost a quarter of urban households were estimated to have earned less than they did in April 2021.

On the external front, foreign direct investment disbursements, international tourism and remittances picked up the slack despite a deteriorating current account balance. FDI disbursements rose to US$10 billion in the first half of 2022—the highest increase in five years. Foreign investments in manufacturing, particularly in electronics, continued to grow rapidly. Many international companies such as Samsung either significantly expanded their existing plants in Vietnam or relocated to Vietnam.

Monetary policy was accommodative through the first nine months of 2022. But the State Bank of Vietnam (SBV) raised interest rates by one percentage point in September to combat inflationary pressures due to significantly higher energy prices, imported input costs and wage increases. By the end of 2022, inflation was expected to be around 3.5%—still within the target of 4% set by the SBV.

Risks in the financial sector are becoming apparent. The international definition of non-performing loans in banks includes the entire loan being classed as non-performing when a loan service is missed. According to this wider definition, an estimated 5.76% of total loans in Vietnamese banks may be at risk. Re-capitalisation or the sale of some state banks (or both) is necessary to enable these institutions to effectively move capital from lenders to borrowers.

The Vietnamese stock market fell by some 30% in 2022, making it one of the worst-performing in the world. Simultaneously, corporate bonds, which were virtually zero in 2019, rose to an estimated 15% of GDP in 2022. This forced the SBV to belatedly slap on regulations in a previously unregulated market, resulting in a significant contraction of credit conditions. The risks in the financial sector will only worsen as monetary conditions further tighten into 2023.

Fiscal policy was contractionary in 2022, largely due to the under-execution of spending programs such as the economic recovery support program. A more rapid roll-out of the program could bolster recovery in the short term and enhance growth in the longer term.

A targeted approach to helping vulnerable households rather than untargeted reductions in environmental protection tax and cuts in the value-added tax and import taxes will enhance the effectiveness of the social safety net. This could also help to promote domestic consumption rather than relying heavily on exports in order to support growth.

The Vietnamese economy remained surprisingly resilient in 2022. But the possible recessions and economic slowdown in Vietnam’s three major trading partners—the United States, the European Union and China—are raising serious question marks for 2023 where growth is projected to fall to 6.3%.

There is some fiscal space to boost growth in the short term as public debt has fallen to an estimated 43.1% of GDP, well below the legislated 65%. But the recent resignation of President Nguyen Xuan Phuc and the dismissal of high-level officials for alleged corruption in the acquisition of vaccines and medicines during the Covid-19 pandemic could delay public-sector procurements and investments in the near term.

In December, the G7 agreed to provide US$15.5 billion to help Vietnam transition away from its heavy reliance on coal. Under this plan, Vietnam should be able to source 47% of its power from renewable energy by 2030. Since the majority of the funds provided will be loans, a healthy fiscal position will be necessary to maintain the confidence of lenders.

Just under 2 million of the 6.9 million people of tertiary education age in Vietnam are enrolled in tertiary studies. This figure needs to double to 3.8 million for Vietnam to be on par with other upper-middle-income countries within 15–20 years. Significant resources need to be spent on up-skilling the population.

Covid-19 has been a serious distraction in the past three years. It’s time for authorities to focus on financial stability in the short term and enhancing growth in the medium and long term.

Vietnam’s maritime imperative

The recent debate on The Strategist about whether Vietnam should have a maritime or continental geostrategic orientation has reinvigorated the long-term and historical interaction between the two strategic cultures. It also shows that it’s not easy for a relatively small power such as Vietnam to construct its future path, given the limited resources it currently possesses. I would argue against Khang Vu’s ideas and align more with Euan Graham and Bich T. Tran’s view that Vietnam should prioritise its maritime domain and invest more on maritime capabilities.

Looking out to the sea is a way for the nation to re-engage and reconcile with its Southeast Asian maritime past. Vietnam’s strategic culture has always been affected by a continental mindset dominated by a Confucian, anti-mercantile ruling elite in the country’s dynastic period. The market, beyond the ‘sacred boundary’ of the bamboo hedge, symbolised the low status of commerce. During the Ho Chi Minh era (1945–1969), Vietnam was dealing mostly with land-based security threats and wars fought primarily on land.

The maritime apex of the 16th and 17th centuries was deliberately ignored because the Marxist–nationalist historical narrative deliberately antagonised the Cochinchina realm and its successor, the Nguyen dynasty (1802–1945), which laid the first foundations for the colonial era through their proactive maritime interaction with the West.

In the 21st century, as Vietnam finds itself in a world of economic interdependence, extensive trade networks and rising maritime challenges, it doesn’t just simply aspire to create a new geostrategic path. It has been in the process of rediscovering its maritime identity.

By expanding its interests into the maritime domain, Vietnam is also trying to redefine its ‘living space’. The Red River Delta has always been considered the birthplace of the Vietnamese people. Thousands of years of interaction with the Chinese civilisation created several push factors: the asymmetry of power and geographical proximity that defined the northern threat. This eventually culminated in the legendary ‘southward expansion’ that helped solved the problem of lack of strategic depth.

However, after the border wars with China and the Khmer Rouge in the 1970s and 1980s, Vietnamese leaders realised that the country needed to extend its sovereignty and jurisdiction beyond the shoreline. In other words, they wanted to turn maritime zones in the South China Sea into a security buffer.

It’s not surprising that Vietnam, as a small country, is attempting to make full use of the international maritime order under the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea to limit warships near its coast, while facilitating its eastward expansion into the sea.

Since the 2010s, a deliberate return to the maritime past has been gradually realised. The nation’s 2007 maritime economy strategy was re-evaluated and amended in 2020 with a focus on sustainable development. The goal is to turn Vietnam into a ‘country with a strong maritime economy [that] can get rich from the sea’.

After the 12th communist party congress in 2016, Vietnam’s military policy stressed the ‘gradual’ modernisation of several critical services, with the navy and the air force at the forefront (there was no mention of the ground force). The South China Sea dispute pushed the determination further in 2021 after the 13th congress, when ‘gradual’ transformed into ‘immediate’ as the guiding principle for modernisation.

China’s aggressiveness in the South China Sea is apparently the main reason behind the push. However, it’s also because the maritime vision, economically and strategically, has persuaded the party to invest in naval and air power.

What about threats that come from land? Two points relating to the use of force and the level of threat are relevant to this discussion.

Vu is right that it’s not wise militarily for a country with limited resources like Vietnam to invest in a wide range of capabilities without a concrete strategy for how and when it will use them, and for what ends. Investing in one’s navy and air force in general is an expensive endeavour, because those services require not only personnel, but also a particular level of technological mastery and a strong industrial base.

However, as Graham and Tran point out, ‘a binary continental-versus-maritime dilemma is somewhat artificial’. The absolute separation between the navy and other services in modern warfare, as Vu implies, is an obsolete approach given the intensive evolution of military technologies and the way armies wage wars in the 21st century. A successive defensive campaign against an invasion force on land requires interoperability for joint operations among the services, including the navy. Similarly, a strategic defensive campaign in the maritime domain also demands support from the army and air force to protect the border and critical land-based infrastructure.

In short, a paradigm of mutually exclusive continental and maritime thinking in military design would be devoid of any meaningful value in combat operations, at both the campaign and strategic levels.

And what kind of threat is critical for Vietnam in the present? I believe threats should be categorised along a spectrum of probability. The most imminent threat for Vietnam would be a military conflict in the South China Sea following a potential mass pre-emptive strike by long-range weapons and cyberattacks to cripple the country’s critical infrastructure and capabilities to strike back.

A maritime blockade of Vietnamese outposts in the Spratly Islands is another scenario. A large-scale border war like what happened in the 1970s and 1980s is extremely unlikely (although cannot be ruled out). Vietnam’s relationship with its three neighbours in today’s interconnected and interdependent world is defined by different principles, priorities, dynamics and mindsets compared to the Cold War era. The borderland has been increasingly shaped by peaceful economic cooperation and the idea of common prosperity.

Due to limited resources, it’s completely logical and understandable that Vietnam must prioritise investing in the maritime domain in both economic and military terms.

Vietnam should become, in the words of Colin S. Gray, ‘a land-based, encouraged, and organized’ maritime country, not vice versa. The tilt towards the sea has already been set in motion. Turning back to a purely continental mindset would be a strategic mistake.

Vietnam and Australia share a strong framework for deeper ties in a contested Indo-Pacific

Australia must diversify its economic and strategic relations with its neighbours in Southeast Asia. Trade Minister Dan Tehan’s visit to Vietnam last month to shore up economic ties came while Australian exporters continued to suffer from China’s trade sanctions. Vietnam is becoming an attractive option for Australia’s trade diversification efforts and as a strategic partner. Here’s why it deserves more attention.

Like Australia, Vietnam is a champion of regional trade integration and the rules-based economic architecture in the Indo-Pacific region. It has demonstrated this through its advocacy for major trade efforts. Also like Australia, it is a member of the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP). Vietnam was instrumental in the pursuit of CPTPP in the wake of the demise of its predecessor agreement, the Trans-Pacific Partnership, after the US withdrew. Its most recent contribution is the completion of the 15-member Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP), signed in November 2020 while Vietnam was chair of ASEAN.

Its commitment to trade liberalisation makes Vietnam a standout economic partner for Australia. This also means Australia and Vietnam are partners together in the framework of agreements which define the Indo-Pacific economic sphere. RCEP and CPTPP are tools for Australia to pursue diversification with Vietnam. There are opportunities for trade expansion to help solve some of the supply-chain risks that exist in the region.

In their discussion, Tehan and Vietnamese Deputy Prime Minister Pham Binh Minh touched on one, the supply of rare-earth elements. China has long been the dominant extractor and processor of rare earths, with an 80% share of the market. Governments are concerned that control of these critical materials will be used as a geopolitical lever. Using CPTPP and RCEP as a platform, Canberra and Hanoi can develop a supply-chain model in which Australia mines and does initial rare-earths processing and Vietnam undertakes advanced processing before the final product stage.

On top of these trade and investment agreements, Australia and Vietnam share other instruments for cooperation. The Australia–Vietnam strategic partnership signed in 2018 includes a focus on security and defence, as well as economic cooperation. It commits both countries to building strategic relations, particularly security cooperation and reaffirms the importance of their defence ministers’ and ‘2+2’ dialogues. It also establishes an annual ministerial-level forum for identifying opportunities to expand trade and investment.

This exchange between senior trade officials is a valuable opportunity for Australia and Vietnam to plan next steps to realise their bilateral economic goals: doubling investment and becoming top 10 trade partners. During his visit, Tehan met with other top members of the politburo, Vietnam’s key decision-making body, including President Nguyen Xuan Phuc and the head of the Central Economic Committee and a former industry and trade minister, Tran Tuan Anh. The holding of such high-level meetings signalled the esteem with which Vietnam holds its relations with Australia.

All of this engagement exists at the national level, but there’s also a logic for establishing closer cooperation at the subnational level. A recently established provincial-level link for fostering closer ties was signed in September last year between the governments of Western Australia and Ba Ria – Vung Tau province, with economic cooperation a key pillar of their memorandum of understanding.

Ba Ria – Vung Tau is a coastal province and part of the greater Ho Chi Minh City metropolitan area, a region populated by 22 million people that is becoming an important industrial hub. It already hosts industries linked to Western Australia, a testament to the commitment of Vietnam, and the province, to attracting foreign investment.

Interflour, a joint venture between WA’s CBH Group and Indonesia’s Salim Group, has a grain port at Cai Mep. Across the bay, the WA-based commercial and defence shipbuilder Austal opened a yard in 2018. BlueScope Steel also has operations in the province. These companies are on hand to pass their invaluable business and policy knowledge of Vietnam on to other Australian companies seeking to set up in the province.

With all these frameworks in place and no major bilateral irritants to resolve, the main constraint on closer Australia–Vietnam ties is the Covid-19 pandemic. Restricted international travel has curbed vital people-to-people exchanges that support the development of strategic ties. This year hasn’t brought any relief; indeed, Vietnam is facing its worst outbreak since the pandemic began. Australia’s provision of 1.5 million doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine and $40 million to support the rollout in Vietnam is an important gesture bringing some hope that the sooner both countries vaccinate, the sooner they can open their borders and reconnect to form a deeper partnership.

Policy, Guns and Money: Vietnam’s national congress, online extremism, and Covid-19 and organised crime

When Vietnam’s communist party held its national congress on 1 February, many thought it would be a turning point similar to that of the Doi Moi reforms of the 1980s. ASPI’s Huong Le Thu and Robert Glasser discuss the initial results of the congress and what the future of politics looks like in Vietnam.

Next, Daria Impiombato speaks with Monash University’s Alexandra Phelan about the terror–crime nexus in Latin America and how Covid-19 has exacerbated both organised crime and terrorism globally, as well as what this means for law enforcement agencies.

Then Jocelinn Kang and Fergus Ryan from ASPI’s International Cyber Policy Centre discuss their research into right-wing extremist groups and the online homes they have found in Russia and China.

On the screen: Spike Lee’s ‘Da 5 Bloods’

No film about the Vietnam War has ever touched its eerie futility as compellingly as Ted Posts’ classic Go Tell the Spartans (1978), in which the brilliant Burt Lancaster commands an American special forces unit in the central highlands of South Vietnam. The movie is based on the book Incident at Muc Wa by Daniel Ford, who was the correspondent for US Nation. It’s set in 1964.

The key point about the American forward base is that it neighbours a cemetery. The cemetery is the final resting place of dead French legionnaires who were part of the failed colonial campaign to keep Indochina part of the French empire. From time to time, one of the American soldiers actually sees the ghost of a French legionnaire in the mist looking at him. It is a constant reminder of imperial debacle.

Spike Lee recalls the American war in Vietnam in his most recent effort, Da 5 Bloods. The storyline is deceptively simple, but the issues canvassed in the movie are extraordinarily complex, from the America of Muhammad Ali, Malcom X, Martin Luther King and George Wallace in the 1960s through to Donald Trump in the White House and Black Lives Matter today. Lee does not miss.

The year is 1968. The five bloods are five African American soldiers, commanded by their charismatic squad leader, ‘Stormin’ Norman Earl Holloway. The mission at the core of the film is the recovery, then and now, of a cache of CIA gold being used to pay a band of mercenary tribesmen fighting the North Vietnamese Army and the Viet Cong. The plane transporting the gold is shot down and in the original effort to recover the gold, Norman is killed.

Now, the four remaining bloods are determined to recover both Norman’s remains and the gold, for a diverse range of purposes ranging from the best to the worst of motives.

Lee achieves extraordinary performances from his cast, especially accomplished British actor Delroy Lindo as Paul and Clarke Peters as Otis. Many in the cast will be well known to audiences, from earlier work on television as in The Wire, through to movies such as Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri.

Paul begins as a Trump loyalist, compete with a ‘Make America Great Again’ cap for which he is roundly ridiculed. But it becomes clear, particularly when his son David (Jonathan Majors) arrives unexpectedly, that Paul is severely troubled.

Ho Chi Minh City now has skyscrapers, glitzy nightclubs and McDonald’s, but there are reminders everywhere of the war, especially in conversations with a younger Vietnamese generation, still suffering from loss.

As always, Lee handles confrontations masterfully. There are probing questions about why African Americans, who made up 13% of the US population in 1968, occupied 39% of all combat roles. And the scenes of fighting leave nothing to the imagination. However, the director is not above satirising the most challenging of circumstances. Ride of the Valkyries is played as ‘da bloods’ venture upstream in a launch. The nod to Apocalypse Now is self-evident.

So too is the acknowledgment of Walter Huston’s unrestrained, joyful dance when the gold is discovered in The Treasure of Sierra Madre, written by the mysterious B. Traven, whose work is revived in this film.

The movie’s French characters offer light and shade. The journeyman actor Jean Reno plays an unscrupulous character, Desroche, who wouldn’t be out of place in Ric’s Café in the classic Casablanca. Mélanie Thierry plays the humanitarian Hedy Bouvier, dedicated to lifting landmines.

Lee (born Shelton Jackson Lee in Atlanta, Georgia) was educated at New York University’s graduate film school. He made his mark early with films which directly portray the African American experience, especially in New York City. With films such as Crooklyn and Do the Right Thing, Lee brought the lived experience of African American families to a global audience. Da 5 Bloods continues in this tradition.

Originally, the story was written for a diverse cast of veteran characters, but Lee decided that the film should translate African American experiences in the frontline of the war. It works very well, though Lee demonstrated with Edward Norton and Philip Seymour Hoffman in 25th Hour that he works as easily with characters from different backgrounds.

The Vietnamese characters run across the spectrum of that country’s post-war era. The vets’ guide, Vinh (Johnny Tri Nguyen), is adapted to the future, an American Vietnamese daughter in Michon (Sandy Huong Pham) is a link between the war and a Vietnamese future of commercial intensity, and Veronica Ngo is ‘Hanoi Hannah’, who holds the grim microphone of the past.

This film has a less-than-airtight narrative and there are leaps of faith required from the audience. But there are surprises and deceptive and dangerous walks in the apparent innocence of sunshine in the countryside.

This is a film which is not only eloquent on the Vietnam War, but tells a vivid tale of African American life, from the battlefield to being back in a civilian world that often denied the vets’ very presence and was dismissively ungrateful for their wartime service.

Policy, Guns and Money: Covid disinformation and Vietnam’s virus response

In this episode, ASPI’s Huong Le Thu talks to Australia’s ambassador to Vietnam, Robyn Mudie, about Hanoi’s response to the Covid-19 pandemic.

Next, senior analyst Jake Wallis and research intern Albert Zhang chat about Covid-related disinformation and manipulation of social media, and the rise of patriotic trolling campaigns in support of China on social platforms.

Finally, our professional development program’s Julia Butler speaks with research interns Daria Impiombato and Tracy Beattie about the intersection of conflict and crisis and the potential impacts of large Covid-19 outbreaks in Yemen and Myanmar.