Flying distance for a dictator, neutral on nukes: why Vietnam is perfect for Trump-Kim summit
- When you’re a communist nation with ties to both the world’s leading democracy and its most repressive regime, it’s hard even for China to oppose your credentials as host
The selection of the venue is highly symbolic diplomatically, and therefore the decision will have strategic implications and reflect geopolitical considerations.
Hanoi has made no secret of its interest in hosting the highly anticipated event, with the Vietnamese Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc vowing last week to “do our best to facilitate the meeting” were his country to be chosen.
Vietnam is also one of the few countries in the world to maintain good relations with both the US and North Korea – respectively, the world’s leading free democracy and its most repressive communist regime.
And, being one of the world’s few surviving communist nations, Vietnam is a long-time ally of North Korea.
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In 1950, four years before Vietnam won its independence from France, North Korea became one of the first nations to recognise the communist regime in Hanoi diplomatically. It also provided material aid and personnel to North Vietnam during its war with the US. More recently, Hanoi helped Pyongyang deal with a famine by supplying it with food, swapping rice for weapons.
Vietnam and the US, meanwhile, did not normalise relations until 1995, two decades after North Vietnam defeated the American-backed South Vietnamese regime to end the Vietnam war. However, their relations have warmed rapidly in recent years. In 2016, the US dropped an arms embargo on Vietnam and one year later a US Navy aircraft carrier visited the country for the first time since the end of the Vietnam war. The former foes also engage in increasing military and security cooperation, apparently in an effort to balance China’s rising influence.
The recent simultaneous visits to Vietnam by Mark Lambert, a senior US State Department official handling North Korea issues, and North Korean Foreign Minister Ri Yong-ho, suggest Hanoi may be involved in mediating between the US and North Korea.
As one of the fastest-growing countries in the world, Vietnam would also serve as the best example to Pyongyang of how a Stalinist economy can be transformed from poverty and isolation into an economic powerhouse. Vietnam is now an important trade partner with both the US and South Korea – currently North Korea’s main foes but also potentially its main trade partners in future. In the past two decades, trade between Vietnam and the US has grown exponentially, from US$451 million in 1995 to US$52 billion in 2016.
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Vietnam and South Korea normalised relations in 1992, and Hanoi is now Seoul’s fourth-largest trading partner after China, the US and Japan, with two-way trade valued last year at US$62.6 billion.
Selecting Vietnam as the summit venue would also be largely acceptable to China, Japan and South Korea – the other big players regarding affairs on the peninsula.
Beijing, Tokyo and Seoul have long encouraged Pyongyang to embrace economic globalisation. As a close US ally, Japan welcomes Vietnam’s increasingly cosy relations with Washington. South Korea, as one of the largest foreign investors in Vietnam, would like to use the country to show the North how it could prosper once it opens up its economy.
And while Beijing might not like Hanoi’s high-profile involvement, the Chinese government cannot find any good reason to oppose it, especially as President Xi Jinping has promised to help Trump solve the North Korea issue. And with US and Chinese negotiators engaging in critical talks in an effort to divert a full-blown trade war between the world’s two largest economies, Beijing may well think it pays to keep any reservations it may have about Vietnam all to itself. ■
Cary Huang, a senior writer with the South China Morning Post, has been a China affairs columnist since the 1990s