Vietnam floats between China and US

By Lien Hoang

Last month, the United States and Vietnamese navies spent five days practicing navigation, medicine and diving skills in the central Vietnamese port of Danang, with some concerts and sports thrown in for good measure.

Not exactly on the level of war games, which US Marines were conducting with the Philippines that same week. But that softer tone might be just what Vietnam is looking for in its struggle to secure a share of contested territories in the South China Sea.

The country aims to strike a delicate balance between its two most important partners, China and the US, both of which play vital parts in the intensifying maritime imbroglio. Coveted shipping routes and natural resources, most notably oil and gas, have made the sea contentious for decades.

But, as Vietnam's horns have locked a little tighter with China's in recent years, the so-called US strategic "pivot" to Asia seems to be coming at a serendipitous time for Hanoi.

China's fast political, economic and military ascent has Southeast Asian countries scrambling for alternative alliances. In the case of Vietnam, that has meant shoring up support from Russia, Japan, India, Australia and notably the US, a former war adversary.

Their joint naval activities in Danang offered the latest evidence of a changing US-Vietnam relationship. Though non-combatant, the annual training exercises grown piecemeal since they started in 2010.

Last year, Vietnam gave more input to the exchange, and this year the US sent bigger, better-armed vessels: a command ship, a guided missile destroyer and a rescue and salvage ship.

For the United States, the visit projects a message that its military presence in Asia is welcome. That's the sort of legitimacy it needs to defend its stated interest in freedom of navigation in the South China Sea and its unstated interest of counterbalancing China's rise.

With American winds at its back, Vietnam can stand a little bolder in front of its much larger neighbor. Still, the Vietnamese aren't going as far as the Philippines, which staged mock rescues with US forces of a captured island and oil rig during joint exercises last month.

Vietnam's strategic collaboration with the US is more subtle, perhaps by design, so that it can be seen as acting independently while keeping options open with China.

"It's better to have both the US and China to hold each other at bay, rather than one dominant," says Carl Thayer, a Vietnam expert at the Australian Defense Force Academy in Canberra. "Vietnam does not want its relationships with the US and China to be very bad, but it also does not want them to be very good."

The balancing act represents differences that reach the highest echelons of Vietnam's ruling Communist Party, between those members looking west versus those clutching to ties with their ideological comrades to the north.

Since 2005, China and Vietnam have performed perennial reminders that they can get along in the form of joint patrols of the Tonkin Gulf. That followed a watershed compromise to divide up the bay in 2000.

But the Tonkin demarcation covers just a small fraction of the South China Sea, known in Vietnam as the East Sea. Elsewhere in these contested waters, agreement has proved much more elusive. Vietnam and China also continue to fight over sovereignty of the Paracel Islands, while farther south, the Spratly archipelago includes four more feuding claimants, namely the Philippines, Taiwan, Brunei and Malaysia.

Ownership of the islands would mean control over some of the world's busiest sea lanes and biggest fisheries. The area is also believed to hold vast energy supplies. Reuters reported in April that the findings of a Philippine company suggested one area of the sea in the Reed Bank could contain more than five times the amount of natural gas than originally estimated.

China purports to own the majority of the sea, which it protects through occasional scuffles with its smaller adversaries. In April, China released 21 Vietnamese fishermen after a seven-week detention for alleged trespassing. Less than a year earlier, China used similar charges to defend twice cutting the cables of Vietnamese ships on exploratory missions in the sea.

More recently, Vietnam has tried to assert sovereignty by sending monks to build pagodas on the Paracels. It also conducts naval training exercises there and this week unveiled a statue of ancient military hero Tran Hung Dao. At the same time, China is pushing forward with tourism development on the islands.

Diplomatic tightropes

It's times like these that a US buttress might look especially appealing to Hanoi. But Vietnam can and will only go so far to woo the Americans. Though the country has a handful of strategic partnerships, including with China, such a proposal with the US has stalled over human rights-related issues.

United States Senators John McCain and Joe Lieberman cited such concerns in January while rejecting a Vietnamese request for defense equipment. It doesn't help that, since the senators' visit, Vietnam has arrested an American democracy activist and extended the detentions of bloggers whose criticism includes anti-China posts on the sea disputes.

Friday marks Vietnam Human Rights Day in the US, which brings together activists and lawmakers to discuss where progress can be made.

For its part, Washington has its own diplomatic tightrope to walk with Beijing. US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton wrapped up a visit to China this month, clouded not only by US harboring of a Chinese dissident but also by South China Sea concerns. As the US calls for freedom of navigation in the waters, China nags the country for bolstering its Southeast Asian rivals.

Dialogues with China and the US make up two pillars in Vietnam's approach to the South China Sea, as described by Ian Storey, a senior fellow at Singapore's Institute of Southeast Asian Studies.

Though China and Vietnam are both "pretty keen to not let this dispute get out of hand", Storey says Vietnam's three other strategies are bulking up its military, internationalizing the dispute and turning to the 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN).

China scholar Andrew Nathan, a professor at Columbia University in the US, agrees that a military strike is unlikely. In addition to the diplomatic costs, use of force would be a logistical nightmare across hundreds of islands, rocks, and reefs, and would do little to remove other countries, he says. Still, China is strengthening its navy and therefore its hand at the bargaining table.

Vietnam's ASEAN allies bring their own baggage to the controversy. For a while, Vietnam can ride the coattails of the Philippines, which has stronger US military backing and is currently in a month-old high-seas standoff against China.

The tensions over Scarborough Shoal continue without resolution but also without violence, which could be tested Friday when anti-China protests are planned to hit Manila. At the same time, energy firms in China and the Philippines are discussing joint exploration of the contested Reed Bank.

The Philippines has been the loudest proponent for a unified stance against China, but other ASEAN members are loath to risk the aid and investment China offers, notably with fewer strings attached than US assistance.

The unified stance that Vietnam and the Philippines want is supposed to be a Declaration on the Conduct of Parties in the South China Sea. China signed a watered-down version of the declaration in 2002 with ASEAN countries, four of which claim parts of the South China Sea.

As the 10th anniversary of the original document approaches, ASEAN is making revisions to present to China. The question is whether the association will add any teeth this time, or simply see how much longer it can continue to float along at sea.

Dipetik dari - Asia Times Online