HO CHI MINH CITY - The United
States could not have chosen a more potent
location. As Defense Secretary Leon Panetta nudged
Vietnam to host more US military craft, he spoke
last week aboard a navy ship docked 480 kilometers
north of this city, standing literally against the
backdrop of the South China Sea.
In recent
years, the sea has been the main setting for
encounters much less diplomatic than Panetta's
visit, usually pitting China against Vietnam, the
Philippines, or a handful of other Southeast Asian
nations. And now another player has firmly entered
the fray: America.
The US has long
positioned itself as a neutral bystander in the
regional drama, in which six nations joust for
control over the South China Sea's oil, gas,
fisheries, and trade routes. But
Panetta's first Asia tour
colored with some detail how America intends to
"pivot" towards Asia, particularly among smaller
countries eyeing warily an ascendant China.
After telling a Singapore defense
conference on June 2 that 60% of US warships would
be based in the Pacific by 2020, Panetta stopped
over in Vietnam, the only South China Sea claimant
country on his itinerary. Here he said that the US
would shift emphasis to Asia by working "with
partners like Vietnam to be able to use harbors
like this," pointing to Cam Ranh Bay, which
surrounded him.
No US defense secretary
had been to this southern deep-water bay, which
opens into the South China Sea, since the Vietnam
War. French, American, and Soviet militaries each
used the port in turn, but Vietnam has barred war
vessels from the facility since Russia left around
a decade ago.
Now Panetta hopes to change
that as one ingredient in a US recipe to build up
power in a region Washington neglected while China
was quintupling its military spending, according
to the Associated Press. But any mention of
America's rebalancing act in Asia comes with the
official caveat that China should not feel
threatened.
"I reject that view entirely,"
the Pentagon chief said in Singapore in response
to the notion US moves in the region aim to
counterbalance China. Panetta's reassurances,
however, did little to pacify China's hawkish
media, though US officials insist they only want
South China Sea disputes settled by international
standards to maintain freedom of navigation.
The problem, however, is that "freedom of
navigation" holds different meanings for China and
the US. Patrick Cronin, senior director at the
Center for a New American Security's Asia-Pacific
Security Program, said Washington considers the
phrase a green light for offshore commercial and
military activity all over the world. Beijing
takes a stricter line, demanding prior approval
for naval conduct in and around its claimed
territory.
"This is where globalization
potentially collides with geopolitics," Cronin
said on June 4 at a forum on the South China Sea
hosted by the Asia Society in New York.
The US is still determining the contours
of its "pivot" policy towards Asia, where it's
apparently determined to uphold trade and security
interests without irking China. But that's
difficult to do in Vietnam.
Age-old
antagonism Few other countries have had as
ancient and schizophrenic a relationship with
China. The middle kingdom arguably exerted the
deepest historical impact on Vietnamese language,
arts, politics, religion, and social tradition.
Yet one would be hard-pressed to find citizens
here showing solidarity with their giant northern
neighbor.
While Vietnamese officials seek
a pragmatic middle ground, the general public
views scuffles at sea as yet another iteration of
bullying from China, which ruled Vietnam for 1,000
years and fought deadly battles with it into the
1980s.
Even Panetta's host city of Cam
Ranh highlighted anti-China impulses. The bay has
been the subject of many recent reports in
Vietnamese media complaining that Chinese
fishermen masquerade as researchers to smuggle
large and largely profitable fish back home.
Authorities have expelled the fishermen in
an ironic reversal of Vietnam-China relations:
Typically, it has been China giving the boot to
Vietnamese fishermen from waters surrounding the
South China Sea's Paracel and Spratly Islands,
which both countries claim.
If the US has
an instinctive cohort then in curbing Chinese
hegemony, Vietnam is it. And all the players hold
strategic cards. From Cam Ranh Bay, Panetta
flew to Hanoi where Vietnamese officials announced
that they would clear US military teams to scour
three new sites for MIAs from the Vietnam War.
Stars and Stripes, a newspaper backed by the US
Department of Defense, reported last month that
commanders are pushing to wrap up MIA searches
within the decade.
At the same press
conference, Vietnamese defense minister Phung
Quang Thanh said that if the two countries are to
fully normalize relations, the US must lift its
arms embargo on Vietnam. Earlier, Thanh had made
similar comments previewing Panetta's visit in an
interview with a Vietnamese online newspaper, when
he also lamented that the US did not appropriately
recognize the country's market economy.
Panetta responded not so differently from
US Senators John McCain and Joseph Lieberman after
they visited here in January. The defense chief
repeated that the weapons ban would stay in place
until Vietnam improves its human-rights record,
marked by an ongoing crackdown on political
dissent and religious freedoms. The only
difference now is that Vietnam is showing a little
more of its hand. It may have given the US access
to three new MIA search sites, but eight others
remain off limits. What's more, the US needs
strategically-located ports like Cam Ranh Bay to
press ahead with its newly-announced modus
operandi of rotating troops through the region, in
place of building permanent, Cold-War-style bases.
That should be much less expensive for the
world's biggest military, which is currently
looking to shed nearly $500 billion in spending
over the next decade, as directed by the US
Congress. Subject to lawmakers' partisan wrangling
in this year's budget talks, that figure could
move closer to $1 trillion over the same period.
The US Defense Department's new approach
also could project a much more benign America that
makes friends in the region rather than obsessing
with hard power. Vietnam, which prides itself in a
history of ejecting foreign intruders, would not
want to be seen as a pawn of the US, or, for that
matter, China.
So perhaps it didn't hurt
that Panetta showed up in Cam Ranh in innocuous
apparel: a baseball cap, short sleeves, khakis,
and sunglasses. One Vietnamese newspaper commented
that Panetta looked less like a Pentagon chief and
more like a retiree on a relaxing weekend at sea.
Lien Hoang is a freelance
reporter covering Southeast Asia. Connect with her
at Twitter.com/lienh.
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