Foreign Policy Orientations of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam

Abstract

What are the implications for Southeast Asia with a unified Vietnam? Will Vietnam attempt to dominate its neighbours by forming an Indochinese Federation? Will Vietnam support insurgent groups within certain ASEAN countries? And finally, will Vietnam side with the Soviet Union in the Sino-Soviet dispute to counter balance Chinese influence in the region? These are the questions most often raised by concerned Southeast Asian leaders in the wake of the dramatic communist victory in Vietnam in April 1975. This article attempts to evaluate both Vietnam's foreign policy orientations in the fourteen months since liberation and to suggest some of the constant factors, impinging on Vietnam's decision-making apparatus. Hopefully this approach will provide certain guidelines m an attempt to answer the above queries. This paper is a review of the extensive nature of Vietnam's global diplomatic contacts and the intensive interaction that the country has sought with countries of different ideological orientations.