Vietnam’s threat of legal warfare could signal it is ready to take an even bolder stance on China
- Hanoi has floated the idea of going further than diplomatic protests over Beijing’s conduct in the South China Sea
- At a time when the Philippines has moved closer to Beijing under Rodrigo Duterte, Vietnam has gone the other way
“China is a sleeping giant. Let her sleep, for when she wakes she will move the world,” warned the French emperor Napoleon Bonaparte centuries ago. Today, not only has China awakened, but it has shaken up the world, especially its southern neighbours.
No country has grappled more excruciatingly with this geopolitical shock than Vietnam. For millennia, the Southeast Asian country has essentially defined its identity in opposition to threats, real or perceived, from its giant neighbour to the north.
During a high-profile conference in Hanoi this month, Vietnamese Deputy Foreign Minister Le Hoai Trung raised the prospect of action beyond routine diplomatic protests. He highlighted extra-diplomatic options such as third-party “fact-finding, mediation, conciliation, negotiation, arbitration and litigation measures”.
“The UN Charter and UNCLOS [the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea] have sufficient mechanisms for us to apply those [legal] measures,” the Vietnamese diplomat said, raising the prospect of replicating a similar move by the Philippines earlier this decade.
Philippine boat sinking may not have been an accident, US analysts say
Adopting a “three noes” policy of non-participation, non-recognition and non-compliance vis-à-vis the arbitration proceedings, Beijing dismissed the tribunal’s award as a “piece of trash paper”. But few international scholars questioned the validity of the ruling.
Philippine-China relations, however, took a dramatic turn when the then newly elected Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte chose to “set aside” the legal spat in favour of warmer economic ties.
Meanwhile, Vietnam moved in the opposite direction, taking an increasingly tough stance against China in multilateral forums. During his speech before the UN General Assembly this year, Vietnamese Foreign Minister Pham Binh Minh openly lashed out at China, calling on it to “exercise restraint and refrain from conducting unilateral acts, which might complicate or escalate tensions at sea, and settle disputes by peaceful means”.
“Vietnam has on many occasions voiced its concerns over the recent complicated developments in the South China Sea, including serious incidents that infringed upon Vietnam’s sovereignty,” the Vietnamese chief diplomat said defiantly.
Only few years earlier, however, Vietnam approached the disputes with greater caution.
South China Sea likely to be high on Asean agenda when Vietnam takes chair
Throughout the Philippines’ legal warfare against China, Vietnam played a double game. On one hand, it opportunistically distanced itself from the arbitration proceedings at The Hague, making it clear that it was neither involved in nor bound by their outcome.
Vietnamese universities and think tanks also regularly invite people, including the author, to present on the merits of the Philippines’ arbitration award. Until the conclusion of the arbitration proceedings in mid-2016, Hanoi refused to explicitly support the outcome.
So when Duterte decided to recalibrate his country’s China policy, Vietnam was left exposed on its own. In response, Vietnam desperately doubled down on its security cooperation with the United States, Japan and India, while bolstering its maritime defence capabilities through large-scale purchase of advanced Russian submarines and weapons systems.
Within the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean), Vietnam became the most prominent advocate for more critical statements against China’s reclamation and militarisation of maritime territory. The upshot was a de facto alliance with Washington, which openly praised Vietnam for taking on China.
As David Stilwell, the US assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific affairs, told Southeast Asian states before this year’s Asean summit: “This is your turf, this is your place. Vietnam has done a good job of pushing back. I would think that regarding Asean centrality … [Asean] would join Vietnam to resist actions that are destabilising and affecting security.”
In its Indo-Pacific strategy paper, the Pentagon gushed over how military cooperation with Vietnam had “grown dramatically over the past several years” with “annual training exchanges and activities to enhance bilateral cooperation and interoperability with the Vietnam People’s Army, air force, navy and coastguard”.
Washington has even handed its communist former adversary Scan Eagle unstaffed aerial vehicles, a T-6 trainer aircraft, several advanced patrol boats and a retrofitted US coastguard high-endurance cutter.
Encouraged by growing American support, Vietnam has upped the ante against China. Last month, an influential Vietnamese think thank, the Institute for Research on Policy, Law and Development, held a high-profile public forum, during which participants urged legal action against China to “identify who is right and who is wrong”.
Only months away from taking over the Asean chairmanship, an emboldened Vietnam is signalling its willingness to take on the Chinese dragon like never before.
Richard Heydarian is an Asia-based academic and writer
