Summary
Although the Chinese and the Vietnamese were Cold War allies in wars against the French and the Americans, their alliance collapsed and they ultimately fought a war against each other in 1979. More than thirty years later the fundamental cause of the alliance’s termination remains contested among historians, international relations theorists, and Asian studies specialists. Nicholas Khoo brings fresh perspective to this debate.
Using Chinese-language materials released since the end of the Cold War, Khoo revises existing explanations for the termination of China’s alliance with Vietnam, arguing that Vietnamese cooperation with China’s Cold War adversary, the Soviet Union, was the necessary and sufficient cause for the alliance’s termination. He finds alternative explanations to be less persuasive. These emphasize nonmaterial causes, such as ideology and culture, or reference issues within the Sino-Vietnamese relationship, such as land and border disputes, Vietnam’s treatment of its ethnic Chinese minority, and Vietnam’s attempt to establish a sphere of influence over Cambodia and Laos.
Khoo also adds to the debate over the relevance of realist theory in interpreting China’s international behavior during both the Cold War and post-Cold War eras. While others see China as a social state driven by nonmaterial processes, Khoo makes the case for viewing China as a quintessential neorealist state. From this perspective, the focus of neorealist theory on security threats from materially stronger powers explains China’s foreign policy not only toward the Soviet Union but also in relation to its Vietnamese allies.
Country or Region: Vietnam
Hayton, Bill
Summary
The eyes of the West have recently been trained on China and India, but Vietnam is rising fast among its Asian peers. A breathtaking period of social change has seen foreign investment bringing capitalism flooding into its nominally communist society, booming cities swallowing up smaller villages, and the lure of modern living tugging at the traditional networks of family and community. Yet beneath these sweeping developments lurks an authoritarian political system that complicates the nation’s apparent renaissance. In this engaging work, experienced journalist Bill Hayton looks at the costs of change in Vietnam and questions whether this rising Asian power is really heading toward capitalism and democracy. Based on vivid eyewitness accounts and pertinent case studies, Hayton’s book addresses a broad variety of issues in today’s Vietnam, including important shifts in international relations, the growth of civil society, economic developments and challenges, and the nation’s nascent democracy movement as well as its notorious internal security. His analysis of Vietnam’s ‘police state’, and its systematic mechanisms of social control, coercion, and surveillance, is fresh and particularly imperative when viewed alongside his portraits of urban and street life, cultural legacies, religion, the media, and the arts. With a firm sense of historical and cultural context, Hayton examines how these issues have emerged and where they will lead Vietnam in the next stage of its development.
Easley, Leif-Eric
Abstract
The middle powers literature often conflates role identity (national self-conception) of middle power states with role performance (foreign policies), while neglecting East Asia as a region of hypothesis generation and testing. Empirical studies of middle powers tend to consider European cases, Canada, Australia and South Africa, while research on contemporary East Asia international relations focuses on great powers or the development of regional institutions. This article contributes to the middle powers literature by comparing the post-Cold-War national identities and foreign policies of South Korea and Vietnam. A framework for analyzing national identity is applied to major sources of national self-conceptions in Seoul and Hanoi. The article examines how identity trajectories relate to change in South Korea and Vietnam’s geopolitical positioning between the United States and China, and assesses the prospects for middle power cooperation in East Asia.
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Tung, Nguyen Vu
Abstract
This article seeks to analyse the strength and weaknesses of the three main international relations (IR) approaches, namely, neo-realist, liberal institutionalist, and constructivist frameworks, applied to the Vietnam—ASEAN relationship since the mid-1980s. While the making and implementation of Vietnamese foreign policy with regard to ASEAN has shown some clues congruent with both neo-realist and liberal institutionalist frameworks, the constructivist approach also seems to have become an increasingly promising one, providing additional explanations to the Vietnam—ASEAN relationship. Yet, to confirm the plausibility and superiority of any theoretical model depends to a large extent on greater efforts at gaining access to and interpreting various types of sources related to the foreign policy of Vietnam.
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Tung, Nguyen Vu
Abstract
Vietnam’s membership of ASEAN was driven by pragmatic reasons of economic growth, political independence and regime survival in a post-Cold War environment. But in fact the learning process — which made Vietnamese decision-makers through their first-hand experiences more aware of convergent domestic and foreign policy goals between Vietnam and ASEAN — was instrumental in Vietnam’s decision to seek ASEAN membership as quickly as possible. The case of Vietnam joining ASEAN then shows that the process of socialization and interactions between Vietnam and ASEAN countries helped improve the awareness of commonalities and promoted cooperative relations. And this is one of the main arguments in the constructivist approach to international cooperation based on the self-other internalization. In this connection, Vietnam joining ASEAN was also part of a broader process in which the country forged a new state identity in the post-Cold War era: Vietnam opted for ASEAN membership to overcome an identity crisis and political isolation. The ideational approach, therefore, offers an additional and more plausible explanation for Vietnam’s decision to join ASEAN. Moreover, it helps explain Vietnam’s continued satisfaction with and commitment to membership of ASEAN.
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Tu, Nguyen Trieu
Abstract
Atomic energy applications have been developed and used in various sectors of the national economy in Vietnam. Recently, the Government has approved the ‘Strategy for Peaceful Uses of Atomic Energy up to 2020’. The government has also acknowledged that to ensure safety and security for the development of atomic energy applications, it is especially essential to strengthen the state management in this field. Therefore, the government has focused its efforts on building the capacity of the Vietnam Agency for Radiation and Nuclear Safety and Control (VARANSAC) – Vietnam’s regulatory body. This article reports VARANSAC’s encouraging changes in the past year. This will help the international nuclear energy community understand, and hence believe in Vietnam’s international integration and trust the consistent policy of Vietnam on ensuring safety for the people, society and the environment in the process of socio-economic development in the country.
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Malley, Michael S., and Tanya Ogilvie-White
Abstract
Indonesia, Thailand, and Vietnam recently announced that they are launching nuclear energy programs, and Malaysia and the Philippines soon may follow suit. As a result, by 2020, at least three states in Southeast Asia could possess latent nuclear capabilities—the option to pursue military applications of dual-use nuclear technology. Analysis of the nuclear programs, domestic proliferation pressures, and the external threat environment in Southeast Asia leads the authors to conclude that the nuclear intentions of states in that region are entirely peaceful and the probability of future nuclear breakout there is low. However, this finding does not justify complacency. In the long term, the benign outlook for regional security may change, and in the near term weak regulatory regimes present serious challenges to nuclear safety and create opportunities that non-state actors may exploit. To minimize these risks, the authors recommend creating a “proliferation firewall” around the region, which would combine strong global support for Southeast Asian nuclear energy programs with innovative regional multilateral nuclear arrangements.
Phat, Tran Huu
Abstract
This is an interview with Dr. Phat, the Former Chairman of the Vietnam Atomic Energy Commission (VAEC) and the current Chairman of its Council of Science, Technology, and Training.
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Phat, Tran Huu
Abstract
Since 1980 we established and implemented successfully the National Programme for Application of Nuclear Energy to Socio-Economy Sectors of Vietnam, in which the Dalat reactor was restored and upgraded under the IAEA support. The Dalat reactor is a research reactor with the power 500 Kw which is being operated rather well under the management of the VAEC.
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Wang, Changjian, Qiang Wang, and Fei Wang
Abstract
Vietnam’s demand on power supply is increasing rapidly along with economic growth. It is a matter of urgency for Vietnam to find alternative energy source other than fossil fuel in order to minimize the influence on local climate. Currently the world’s largest nuclear power market exists in emerging economies and developing countries as those countries are in great need of relatively cheap energy to drive its economic growth. But nuclear power, neither cheap nor safe, is putting those countries in a dilemma. As the hot spot of the nuclear power market shifted from “advanced technology” to “economic affordability”, how to find a comprehensive nuclear power solution for developing countries with specific requirements poses a serious question to the international community.
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Prime Minister’s Office
This official statement discusses Vietnam’s latest nuclear energy strategy called the National Master Plan for power development for the 2011 – 2020 period with the vision to 2030.
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Symon, Andrew
Abstract
The possibility of nuclear power in Southeast Asia to help meet huge growth in electricity demand has suddenly risen in government planning. Vietnam, Indonesia and Thailand have plans for nuclear power generation while Malaysia and the Philippines are studying the option. These plans and possibilities raise a gamut of economic, environmental and security issues and fears which policy makers are only beginning to grapple with. As in other parts of the world, both where there are established nuclear generation industries and where there are not, nuclear power is being turned to as a possible solution to meeting demand when the cost of traditional fossil fuels used for generation, coal and natural gas, are rising steeply, and in a way that mitigates against contribution by fossil fuel combustion to the greenhouse effect and predicted global warming. But how governments in Southeast Asia go about implementing nuclear power is still far from clear. Optimal development from economic, environmental and security points of view would argue for a cooperative approach via the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), possibly through an ASEAN nuclear power authority. So far, plans for nuclear power generation are fairly limited when considered against total projected power demand. But they may be the precursor to a much greater commitment to nuclear power if first plants are successfully developed. Managing the development of nuclear power will be a major test of ASEAN’s maturity and effectiveness.
Hamilton-Hart, Natasha
Summary
In Hard Interests, Soft Illusions, Natasha Hamilton-Hart explores the belief held by foreign policy elites in much of Southeast Asia—Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Thailand, Singapore, and Vietnam—that the United States is a relatively benign power. She argues that this belief is an important factor underpinning U.S. preeminence in the region, because beliefs inform specific foreign policy decisions and form the basis for broad orientations of alignment, opposition, or nonalignment. Such foundational beliefs, however, do not simply reflect objective facts and reasoning processes. Hamilton-Hart argues that they are driven by both interests—in this case the political and economic interests of ruling groups in Southeast Asia—and illusions.
Hamilton-Hart shows how the information landscape and standards of professional expertise within the foreign policy communities of Southeast Asia shape beliefs about the United States. These opinions frequently rest on deeply biased understandings of national history that dominate perceptions of the past and underlie strategic assessments of the present and future. Members of the foreign policy community rarely engage in probabilistic reasoning or effortful knowledge-testing strategies. This does not mean, she emphasizes, that the beliefs are insincere or merely instrumental rationalizations. Rather, cognitive and affective biases in the ways humans access and use information mean that interests influence beliefs; how they do so depends on available information, the social organization and practices of a professional sphere, and prevailing standards for generating knowledge.
