December 16, 2009
By Patrick Goodenough, International Editor
(CNSNews.com) – A low-key visit to Washington by Vietnam’s defense minister Tuesday underlined expanding military-to-military ties between the two former foes, amid concerns about Hanoi’s use of the army to quell internal dissent.
Gen. Phung Quang Thanh met with Defense Secretary Robert Gates at the Pentagon and was also to meet with several Vietnam War combat veterans in Congress, including Sens. John McCain (R-Ariz.), John Kerry (D-Mass.) and Jim Webb (D-Va.).
It is only the second official visit by a defense minister from the communist country since the war; the first took place in 2003.
Bilateral relations were normalized in 1995, with Kerry and McCain instrumental in the improvement of ties. President Clinton visited Vietnam in November 2000 and President Bush went in 2006. President Obama is expected to do so next year, when Vietnam chairs the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN).
Military cooperation has deepened too, with U.S. Navy vessels making several port calls since the first in 2005. A “strategic dialogue” on security issues was launched last year.
A statement provided by the Pentagon said Gates and Thanh over a working lunch held a “wide ranging dialogue on issues related to the bilateral defense relationship and regional security.”
“Both sides acknowledged the positive, ongoing cooperation in de-mining, military medicine, and POW/MIA operations. They further agreed to look at ways to expand cooperation in peacekeeping, search and rescue, and humanitarian assistance and disaster relief operations.”
The statement said Gates and Thanh agreed to establish a “mechanism to discuss strategic and policy related issues of bilateral and regional concern at the ministerial level,” with dialogue beginning next year.
Thanh discussed Vietnam’s ASEAN chairmanship “and noted the United States’ important role in regional peace and stability,” it added.
‘Repressing peaceful political dissent’
Vietnam’s chief regional security concern is a territorial dispute with China over two groups of islands in the South China Sea, an area that has also seen U.S. Navy survey ships harassed by Chinese vessels and aircraft this year.
But the government also sees a role for the military in dealing with political opposition at home.
Speaking on military policy last week, Thanh’s deputy, Lt.-Gen. Nguyen Chi Vinh Nguyen, said that “Vietnam face[s] challenges from hostile forces disguising themselves as ‘democracy’ and ‘human rights’ activists to oppose the party and the country,” according to a report Sunday in the Thanh Nien Daily, an organ of the Communist Party youth league.
The ruling party refers to the threat at “peaceful evolution.” A Voice of Vietnam report on the issue defines it “as important part of hostile forces’ global counter-revolutionary strategy aimed at combating socialist nations,” comprising mostly “non-military” measures such as the use of media, but also rebellion and subversion.
In a speech to an “all-army political conference” on December 5, party general secretary Nong Duc Manh called on the military to fight “peaceful evolution.”
“Clearly, the U.S. has no interest in furthering security ties with the Vietnamese military if it is focused on repressing peaceful political dissent,” Duy Hoang, a U.S.-based spokesman for Viet Tan, said Tuesday in response to queries about Thanh’s visit.
Viet Tan (Vietnam Reform Party) is an unsanctioned pro-democracy party active in Vietnam that says it promotes peaceful change. Hanoi considers it to be a terrorist organization.
“Through security exchanges with Hanoi, the U.S. should encourage the People’s Army of Vietnam to become a professional military dedicated to external defense,” Hoang said. “This is the message that Thanh needs to hear.”
Asked for her reaction to Thanh’s visit, Congressional Caucus on Vietnam co-chair Rep. Loretta Sanchez (D-Calif.) said Tuesday that she was “a strong advocate for the civil and political liberties of Vietnam’s people.”
“The United States should not be providing trade or military benefits to Vietnam until it substantially improves its human rights record,” added Sanchez, whose constituency has a large Vietnamese-American community.
Religious freedom concerns
Concerns about the deepening relationship go beyond the U.S. In Australia, home to another large expatriate Vietnamese community, community leader Trung Doan said Wednesday that U.S. cooperation with Hanoi may inadvertently hurt ordinary Vietnamese.
“The regime running Vietnam is, after all, an illegitimate and cowardly one which has never dared to face voters in a free election,” he said. “Clamping citizens in the claws of its security forces is how it maintains its rule.”
“Cooperating to fight terrorism sounds fair enough,” Doan said, “but a perhaps unintended effect for the Americans – albeit very intended for Hanoi – is the strengthening of the regime’s ability to fight dissent.”
Doan recalled the key role played by the military in a violent clampdown against minority Montagnards in February 2001. Amid a news blackout, he said, “witnesses reported that tens of thousand of troops, backed by dozens of tanks and helicopters, attacked and contained” an estimated 20,000 Montagnards taking part in a peaceful protest.
The military also was used against protesting Montagnards at Easter 2004.
Montagnards are members of a predominantly Christian minority in the Central Highlands. Vietnam has long been accused by Western governments of persecuting members of unsanctioned faiths, although the State Department in 2006 removed Vietnam from a list of “countries of particular concern,” citing “significant improvement towards advancing religious freedom.”
‘Very important relationship’
After meeting with Thanh Tuesday, Webb said through a spokeswoman that it was “vitally important that the United States engage with Southeast Asia at all levels.”
“I have worked for many years to build a bridge between Vietnam and the United States,” he said. “It is a very important relationship.”
Webb, who chairs a Senate subcommittee on East Asian affairs, has close ties to Southeast Asia, and during the 1990s worked as a consultant for companies seeking business in Vietnam. On a regional trip over the summer he visited Vietnam and several other countries including Burma, where he favors deeper engagement and opposes sanctions against the junta.
On Monday, Defense Security Cooperation Agency chief Vice Admiral Jeffrey Wieringa told the annual Reuters Aerospace and Defense Summit in Washington that the administration may in the future sell non-lethal weapons to Vietnam
He was quoted as saying that in terms of security ties with Hanoi, “we’re in the infancy of the process now,” but that as the military-to-military relationship matures, eventual arms sales were “certainly possible.”
Ernest Bower, director of the Southeast Asia Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said the visiting defense minister could discuss expanding military training and education, a request for U.S. involvement in ASEAN defense ministers’ regular meetings and “moving toward future military-to-military sales.”
“U.S. leaders will also surely remind the minister and his delegation that concerns over human rights, rule of law, and religious freedom are core elements of U.S. foreign policy concerns and that continued progress in these areas is key to advancing the bilateral relationship,” Bower said.
The Vietnam People’s Army has 450,000 active personnel and five million reservists, according to a white paper on defense spending released last week. Its defense budget for 2008 was $1.46 billion.
Source: CNSnews.com