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US, Vietnam seek comprehensive strategic partnership amid China’s clout, polarised world
- While the US and Vietnam want closer cooperation, there are limits to their ties amid several key geopolitical challenges, analysts say
- By designating the US as its ‘comprehensive strategic partner’, as expected, Vietnam is signalling to the world it has an independent foreign policy
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As Hanoi prepares to welcome US President Joe Biden on Sunday, a formal upgrade in ties appears all but certain. If expectations hold true, Vietnam will soon refer to the United States as its “comprehensive strategic partner”, the highest place among Hanoi’s three-tiered diplomatic ranking of its friends.
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During his 24-hour stay, Biden is scheduled to meet all four of the Vietnamese Communist Party’s top leaders. He is also expected to pay homage to the late senator John McCain at the lake where he was captured after his aircraft was shot down during an air raid against Hanoi in 1967.
The trip will be short, but the new status in relations it is expected to bring will be the culmination of a long-standing bipartisan push in Washington to cement ties with Hanoi as the US seeks to counter Chinese influence in Asia.
But while experts in both countries see potential for even greater cooperation once the new status is made official, they caution that the bilateral relationship would still have its limits.
“The upgrade by the two signatories will bring great benefits to the two countries in many fields,” said Le Dang Doanh, a retired senior economic adviser to five prime ministers, citing trade and defence cooperation as areas he hoped to see strengthened in the US-Vietnamese bilateral relationship.
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