Vietnam gives thumbs-up to US regional role as pivot stumbles

Vietnam supports US “intervention” in the Asia-Pacific if it helps keep peace and stability, the defence ministry said, in a timely endorsement of a continued U.S. presence amid uncertainty over Washington’s faltering “pivot”.

Vice-defence minister, Senior Lieutenant General Nguyen Chi Vinh, met on Monday with Cara Abercrombie, the US Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defence for South and Southeast Asia, and told her Vietnam backed a positive US role.

The general’s words of support, conveyed by a normally reclusive defence ministry, come when the United States most needs them, with its “rebalance” – aimed at boosting its Asian foothold and tempering China’s rise – now under strain in the run-up to a US presidential election.

Vinh “affirmed that Vietnam will support the US and other partners to intervene in the region as long as it brings peace, stability and prosperity”, he said in a statement.

At the dialogue, Abercrombie said the United States would not change its rebalance strategy, the statement added.

Uncertainty lingers in Asia over changes ahead at the White House and whether a new leadership would give less priority to keeping China in check as it grows increasingly assertive in the South China Sea, a waterway vital to global trade.