Is Vietnam’s bamboo diplomacy threatened by pandas?

Vietnam is maximising its political leverage with ‘clumping bamboo’ diplomacy. Although Thailand is famous for its skilful ‘bamboo diplomacy’ — always solidly rooted but flexible enough to bend whichever way the wind blows to survive — the Vietnamese have found another diplomatic philosophy to engage great powers. Coming out of the Cold War deeply frustrated with alliance politics and keen to preserve its hard-won independence, Hanoi decided to pursue an ‘omnidirectional’ foreign policy. The aim was to forge as many equidistant and mutually dependent relations with all major powers without leaning too much on any one side.

The logic, as a distinguished Vietnamese diplomat succinctly puts it, is that ‘the more interdependent ties we can cultivate, the easier we can maintain our independence and self-reliance, like an ivory bamboo that will easily fall by standing alone but grow firmly in clumps’.

This ‘clumping bamboo’ philosophy looms large in Vietnam’s arrangement of its strategic partnerships. Post-Cold War Vietnam has no formal allies but has so far secured 13 strategic partnerships, with Russia (2001), India (2007), China (2008), Japan (2006), South Korea, Spain (2009), United Kingdom (2010), Germany (2011), Italy, France, Indonesia, Singapore and Thailand (2013) and two ‘comprehensive partnerships’, with Australia (2009) and America (2013). This makes it one of the few countries in the world, and the only ASEAN country, that are either a ‘strategic’ or ‘comprehensive’ partner to all five UN permanent members. In 2013 alone, Hanoi built five new strategic partnerships and exchanged successful high-ranking visits with all of its strategic partners — most noticeably with China, Japan, India, Russia and the United States.

But the growing strategic competition among Vietnam’s four most important partners — China, Japan, Russia and the United States — is forcing Hanoi into a daunting balancing act. Mutual concerns about China’s assertiveness in maritime issues have recently brought Washington, Tokyo and Hanoi closer together.

Tokyo and Washington have courted Vietnam in a number of ways: boosting economic ties to help it be less reliant on the Chinese import market; including Vietnam (the only poor and non-capitalist country) in the Trans-Pacific Partnership negotiations; offering equipment including patrol vessels, know-how, and capacity building to strengthen its coast guard and military; and calling for Hanoi to play a more active and constructive role in maintaining peace and stability in the region.

Japan in particular has high hopes for its relations with Vietnam. Prime Minister Shinzo Abe chose Vietnam as the first foreign trip for his second term in office in January 2013, and this was followed by Vietnamese Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung’s return visit in December. Only three months later Tokyo invited Vietnamese President Truong Tan Sang to make a state visit and give a speech at the Japanese parliament — a gesture, according to Kyodo News Agency, that aims to demonstrate amicable ties with Vietnam amid heightened tensions with China in the East China Sea. During this recent visit, the two sides decided to elevate their ties to a new level of Extensive Strategic Partnership for Peace and Prosperity in Asia. In informal discussions, they emphasised ‘common interests’ and pledged to be ‘all-weather friends’. Following the US and Russia, Japan is now expressing its interests in using Camranh Bay for its military ships and wishes to become a relevant stakeholder in the East Sea (South China Sea) disputes — a move that should have startled Beijing.

Managing relations with China in this context is a headache for Hanoi.

Vietnam is a small country that shares both land and maritime borders with China, relies on Chinese imports, and is engaged in a dispute with China in the East Sea. While being sceptical of China’s rise for historical reasons, Vietnam has few strategic options vis-à-vis China. In the past Hanoi has been both allied and opposed to Beijing, but neither strategy seems to work nowadays. A bandwagoning strategy is undesirable given Vietnam’s strong determination to preserve its independence and territorial sovereignty, as well as the anti-China sentiment among the public. But a counter-balancing strategy is also unwise as it would worsen relations with China and bring Hanoi great economic hardship and insecurity — possibly disrupting overall foreign relations like during the decade following their 1979 border war.

So Hanoi has employed a ‘soft balancing’ strategy in the East Sea dispute — seeking to internalise the issue through ASEAN and bring in non-claimant powers, while still leaving the door open for bilateral settlement with Beijing. This strategy seems to be effective as Beijing has recently agreed to set up a number of conflict management mechanisms, including the establishment of a fishery hotline between the two agricultural ministries; a direct phone line between their defence ministries; and joint maritime development in waters off the mouth of the Tonkin Gulf.

But Beijing’s courtship of Hanoi would cease if Hanoi moved too close to Washington or Tokyo. It would be easy for Beijing to interpret further enhanced interactions between Washington, Tokyo and Hanoi as a strategic encirclement of China — and this would only worsen the security dilemma in the region. That said the ‘China factor’ has both a push and pull effect in Vietnam’s relations with other powers and Hanoi will need to walk the tightrope more carefully.

The return of multiple geopolitical tensions among big powers, such as US–China, Japan–China, and Russia–West, sparks off fears of a new era of great power rivalry at the expense of smaller states’ interests: Ukraine is just the latest example. But Vietnam’s recent history has taught it precious lessons about power politics — that it should not be over-reliant on a big power’s willingness to defend Vietnam’s interests and that it should not go with one power against the other. These hard-learned lessons should be kept in mind as Hanoi tries to maximise its leverage power through ‘clumping bamboo’ diplomacy and avoid being ‘entrapped’ in the complicated rivalry among big powers.

Thuy T. Do is a PhD Candidate at the Department of International Relations, The Australian National University. She is currently on leave from her lectureship at The Diplomatic Academy of Vietnam and was a recent Visiting Fellow at the Japan Institute of International Affairs.