Vietnam in Asia: Strategy and Diplomacy in a New Context

Abstract

Although Vietnam conducts its foreign policy in accordance with relatively fixed ideological and strategic maxims, these are more points of reference than rigid policy blueprints. However the outside world may perceive the 'Prussians of the Orient/ the Vietnamese see themselves as a small state with limited options in a geopolitical framework dominated by a confederation of hostile powers. Vietnam's emergence as an international 'problem' has been more the result of the intersection of its revolution with larger regional and global currents than the consequence of its own actions and aspirations within Indochina. Until 1975, the North's leaders were absorbed with their main missions, revolutionary victory and national reunification, and placed foreign policy objectives in this context. Since 1945, the main obstacle to the fulfilment of these goals had been the intervention of outside powers. As a result, Vietnam's foreign policy had tended to consist of reactive strategies devised to deflect and deter external pressures in order to achieve maximum flexibility for the realization of its goals. Unlike the pre-1975 period, however, when a consuming vision of national identity was at stake, Vietnam must now focus on defending its national interests in a more conventional diplomatic framework. This framework may be pictured as a series of concentric circles, with Vietnam at the centre and Indochina, the Association of South-East Asian Nations (asean), Asia, and the global networks of the great powers as the surrounding spheres. During its pro-