The Uncertainty of Vietnam’s Domestic Politics and Foreign Policy

In a major new defense white paper, its first in ten years, Vietnam has signaled that it could abandon its long-standing foreign policy strategy of hedging between major powers like China and the United States and move more definitively into Washington’s orbit. These documents are generally full of turgid Marxist-Leninist jargon, but this one, released late last year, is unusually blunt, with an unprecedented warning to China about the consequences of stepping up its aggressive behavior toward Vietnam in the South China Sea.