U.S. vice president Harris to visit Vietnam, Singapore

Kamala Harris will become the first U.S. vice president to visit Vietnam next month during a trip that will also include Singapore and is aimed at rallying international support to counter China’s growing influence.

Harris will discuss regional security, the global response to COVID-19, climate change, and “our joint efforts to promote a rules-based international order,” said spokesperson Symone Sanders.

Former U.S. foe Vietnam has emerged as a key U.S. partner and a vocal opponent of China’s territorial claims in the South China Sea. Harris’ trip will follow one that Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin made this week to Hanoi.

“President Biden and Vice President Harris have made it a top priority to rebuild our global partnerships and keep our nation secure, and this upcoming visit continues that work,” the White House said in a statement outlining Harris’s travel plans.

It did not give precise dates for her trip and diplomats said these were still being worked on.

In Vietnam on Thursday, Austin sought to nudge forward security ties that have been steadily deepening amid shared concern about China’s activities in the South China Sea.

Austin also visited the Philippines and scored a significant success when its President Rodrigo Duterte restored a pact governing the movement of U.S. troops in and out of the country, something strategically vital for U.S. efforts to counter China.

Analysts said Harris’s visit would be important to emphasize Washington’s commitment to Southeast Asia, and several speculated it could result in more pledges of U.S. vaccines to the region, which has been hit hard recently by COVID-19.

“The Austin visit this week was badly needed to show Southeast Asia that the U.S. wants to engage,” said Murray Hiebert, a Southeast Asia expert at Washington’s Center for Strategic and International Studies.

“Austin was under pressure to deliver this message and Harris will do the same.”

On Sunday, the United States shipped 3 million doses of the Moderna COVID-19 vaccine to Vietnam and it has sent doses to other Southeast Asian countries too, but an agreement it reached in March with Japan and Australia and India to provide a billion doses to the region stalled due to an Indian export ban.

Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman visited Indonesia, Cambodia and Thailand in late May and early June and Japan, South Korea and Mongolia this month before heading to China for talks that appeared to do little to ease deeply strained ties.

President Joe Biden highlighted the threat Washington sees from China this week, saying that Chinese leader Xi Jinping was “deadly earnest about becoming the most powerful military force in the world, as well as the largest and most prominent economy in the world by the mid-40s, the 2040s.”

On her first overseas trip in office, Harris visited Mexico and Guatemala in June with the aim of lowering migration from the region. During her trip she focused on issues such as economic development, food insecurity and women’s issues.

By Doina Chiacu & Nandita Bose – Reuters – July 30, 2021

#diplomacy #u-s-a #vietnam

Originally posted at: https://vietnam-aujourdhui.info/2021/08/02/u-s-vice-president-harris-to-visit-vietnam-singapore/

US defence chief visits Vietnam to shore up support in Asia

United States Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin is in Vietnam looking to bolster security ties with Hanoi, one of several Southeast Asian nations embroiled in a dispute over the South China Sea.

Austin is scheduled to hold meetings with his counterpart, Phan Văn Giang, as well as with Vietnam’s President Nguyen Xuan Phuc and Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh on Thursday.

Earlier on in the day, he made a stop at the site where the late US Senator John McCain’s plane was shot down in 1967. McCain, the 2008 Republican nominee for president, was a prisoner of war in Vietnam.

Since the Vietnam War, ties between Washington and Hanoi have been slowly deepening as both countries watch Beijing’s activities in the South China Sea with growing alarm.

Vietnam has emerged as the most vocal opponent of China’s territorial claims and has received US military hardware, including coastguard ships.

Lieutenant General Vu Chien Thang, the director of the Defence Ministry’s Foreign Relations Department, said the coronavirus and measures to “enhance maritime law enforcement capability” would be discussed.

“[Vietnam] wants to know that the US is going to remain engaged militarily, it’s going to continue its presence in the South China Sea,” Greg Poling, of the Center for Strategic and International Studies, told the Reuters news agency.

On Wednesday, a US Navy warship transited through the Taiwan Strait, angering Beijing.

South China Sea issue

Before arriving in Hanoi, Austin also made a stop in Singapore, his first in the region since joining the administration of US President Joe Biden.

In a speech in Singapore, he said that the US is committed to pursuing a constructive, stable relationship with China, including stronger crisis communications with the People’s Liberation Army.

But he repeated that Beijing’s claim to virtually the entire South China Sea had “no basis in international law” and “treads on the sovereignty of states in the region”.

China claims almost the entire resource-rich sea, through which trillions of dollars in shipping trade passes annually, with overlapping claims from Brunei, Malaysia, the Philippines, Taiwan and Vietnam.

In response to Austin’s statement, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian said the US had “deliberately smeared China” and “interfered in China’s internal affairs”.

While in Hanoi, the defence chief is also expected to sign a “memorandum of understanding” for Harvard and Texas Tech University to create a database that would help the Vietnamese search for those missing from the war, a senior US defence official, speaking on condition of anonymity, told Reuters.

Austin’s visit comes as Vietnam is in the grip of a coronavirus surge, with Hanoi and half the country in lockdown.

On Sunday, the US shipped three million doses of the Moderna COVID-19 vaccine to Vietnam, raising the amount it gave via the global COVAX vaccine scheme to five million doses.

Limits to Vietnam ties

There are, however, some limits to how fast and far the Vietnamese were comfortable with deepening ties.

Experts say there are lingering concerns in Vietnam about Biden’s predecessor, Donald Trump, withdrawing from the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade pact in 2017.

There are also questions about how the US will press Vietnam over its human rights record.

Vietnam has undergone sweeping economic reforms and social change in recent decades but the ruling Communist Party retains a tight grip over media and has little tolerance for dissent.

“We will discuss those values with our friends and allies everywhere we go and we don’t make any bones about that,” Austin said in Singapore.

This month, Marc Knapper, Biden’s nominee to be the next US ambassador to Vietnam also promised to boost security ties but said they could only reach their full potential if Hanoi made significant progress on human rights.

After Vietnam, Austin is scheduled to fly on Thursday to the Philippines, which has accused China of repeated incursions into its territorial waters in the South China Sea.

Al Jazeera with news agencies – 29 juillet 2021

#diplomacy #military #u-s-a #vietnam

Originally posted at: https://vietnam-aujourdhui.info/2021/07/29/us-defence-chief-visits-vietnam-to-shore-up-support-in-asia/