U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken told reporters he discussed the ongoing Russian invasion of Ukraine with leaders of communist Vietnam – one of Russia’s most loyal allies – during his meetings with them in Hanoi this weekend.
Blinken headed to Vietnam on Friday after traveling with leftist President Joe Biden to Ireland last week. He left on the last leg of his current travels, to Japan for a meeting of top diplomats representing the G7, on Sunday. Prior to attending the G7 meeting on Monday, Blinken attended a ceremony to celebrate the beginning of construction of a new U.S. embassy in Hanoi and met with several top Vietnamese leaders, including Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh and the nation’s foreign minister and head of the external relations commission.
Vietnam maintains complicated relations with the United States, torn between the fallout from America’s involvement in the communist war of the 1970s and America’s emerging status as a top trade partner. The Vietnamese government is also greatly concerned about the growing colonization of its territory in the South China Sea by neighboring China, which, while a fellow communist country, is one of Vietnam’s most established historic enemies.
Highlighting Vietnam’s distaste for both China and America, during an address to the United Nations in the 1970s, then-Foreign Minister Nguyen Co Thach told the international governing body, “We do not have such high regard for the U.N. as you do … Because during the last 40 years, we have been invaded by four of the five permanent members of the Security Council.” Russia is the outlier.
The State Department said in a readout of Blinken’s conversation with Prime Minister Chinh that the secretary of state discussed cooperation to “promote an open, prosperous, resilient, and peaceful Indo-Pacific region,” language Washington typically uses to refer to operations to prevent China from colonizing the entirety of the South China Sea.
“The Secretary reiterated our shared commitment to ASEAN [the Association of Southeast Asian Nations] centrality and the role Vietnam has played as a leading member,” the State Department noted. “The Secretary also emphasized the importance of human rights.”
Asked by an American reporter about his conversations with Chinh and other top leaders in the country, however, Blinken said that he had discussed Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, despite Vietnam being one of Russia’s top international allies and having little involvement in the European war.
“We did talk about Ukraine and about the Russian aggression in Ukraine. Vietnam has a long history and relationship with Russia. We understand that and recognize that,” Blinken said.
“At the same time, I’ve heard clearly from our Vietnamese interlocutors and I’ve heard them state publicly their commitment and the importance that they attach to the basic principles that are also under threat by Russia’s aggression,” Blinken continued, “the principles at the heart of the U.N. Charter – territorial integrity, sovereignty, independence. Vietnam stands strongly for those. They’ve made that clear. They’ve said so publicly and they repeated that in conversation with us today.”
The Ukrainian state media outlet Ukrinform interpreted Blinken’s comments as meaning that “the Government of Vietnam strongly stands for Ukraine’s sovereignty, territorial integrity and independence.”
Russia first invaded Ukraine in 2014, colonizing its Crimean peninsula. After nearly a decade of apathy from the international community – even in the face of pro-Russian insurgents suspected of shooting down a commercial airliner using Russian missiles – Russian leader Vladimir Putin announced in February 2022 that he would launch a full-scale “special operation” to oust Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.
Vietnam has not played a major role internationally in the global conversation surrounding the Ukraine invasion. Russia is a “strategic comprehensive partner” of Vietnam’s, a key supplier to Hanoi of military hardware. Russia is also a critical seller of coal for Vietnam’s power grid, which resulted in skyrocketing prices in fuel this year after the imposition of Western sanctions on the Russian energy industry
“Because of the conflict between Russia and Ukraine, the price of coal in the global market in 2022 has increased by sixfold since 2020, and by 2.6-fold since 2021,” chairman of Vietnam Valuation Association Nguyen Tien Thoa told Singapore’s Channel News Asia in February.
Vietnam was allied for years with the Soviet Union, which aided the communists in taking over South Vietnam during the Vietnam War, and even today it relies on Russia for about 74 percent of its imported military weapons, according to Radio Free Asia (RFA). Vietnam and Ukraine also maintain friendly ties, a relic of the Soviet era, but only at the “comprehensive partnership” level.
As a result, Vietnam has abstained from condemning Russia’s invasion of Ukraine at the United Nations, though it voted against expelling Russia from the U.N. Human Rights Council. In September, when the Human Rights Council vote occurred, Blinken canceled his scheduled visit to Hanoi in retaliation.
In remarks this weekend, Blinken did not give an impression of any tensions between the two countries, instead effusively praising Vietnam’s progress as a country and declaring that the Biden administration believes “that by supporting Vietnam’s ambitions we advance our own, from the creation of American jobs and the strengthening of American businesses, to progress on the climate crisis that affects us all, to preventing pandemics.”
“The United States is committed to supporting a strong, prosperous, independent, and resilient Vietnam. And we respect Vietnam’s right to shape its future under its own political system,” Blinkens said, presumably referring to communism. Communist Vietnam remains an extremely repressive society where the government engages in ” unlawful or arbitrary killings, degrading treatment and punishment against political prisoners, arbitrary arrest and detention, interference with citizens’ privacy, restrictions on free expression, movement and media,” and other atrocities, according to Blinken’s State Department.
Vietnam is currently in the middle of a communist purge of top party officials that toppled former President Nguyen Xuan Phuc in January, leaving the country with then-vice president Vo Thi Anh Xuan taking the helm of the presidency. In most communist countries, “president” is a relatively weak title subordinate to the chairman or general secretary of the Communist Party. In Vietnam, former President Nguyen Phu Trong holds that position and is believed to be behind the “anti-corruption” sweep taking down several potential rivals.
Blinken nonetheless commended Vietnam for “progress” on human rights.
“We’ve seen, I think, positive steps taken in some areas, to include, for example, the respect for the rights of the LGBTQI+ community,” he told reporters on Saturday. Vietnam is currently considering legalizing sex changes for citizens.