Saeed Naqvi | Vietnam joins Sino-Russian orbit, in a huge blow to West

While US President Joe Biden, whose purpose is to drag the war until the November 2024 elections, is running around to reassure allies in Ukraine, Poland, etc of his reliability, the Sino-Russian duo are picking up new allies which the Western media takes scant notice of. Vietnam’s induction in this alliance is no small gain. 

Remember, the West frothed in the mouth after Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin signed MoUs without number in Beijing on February 4 and called it “a friendship without limits”.

The deafening chants of “America in decline”, which began in 2008 after Lehman Brothers’ fall and peaked after the Afghanistan withdrawal, caused the Washington neo-cons to see red. They were seeing the West’s hegemony evaporating, yielding to a more equitable multi-polar world.

While the Western media held onto the myth of Western unity on Ukraine, European politicians began to sustain two parallel lines: one for their domestic audience and another for Brussels and Washington. 

Hungary’s Victor Orban takes the championship for his wicked candour. “European Union”, he said, “is a car with four tyres punctured”. France’s Emanuel Macron wasn’t quite as harsh. He invited his diplomats and top officials for a confidential meeting, and asked them to prepare for a new world order.

“After 300 years, Western hegemony is ending.” What he thought of the US contribution in these three centuries is clear from what he told his officials. “During these centuries, France contributed culture, Britain industry and the US war.”

The “friendship without limits” between Beijing and Moscow had set the cat among the pigeons. This Sino-Russian cohesion had a magnetic effect on powers like Iran, Saudi Arabia and many others, some of which had traditionally been in the West’s gravitational zone. India was one such ever since Manmohan Singh’s new liberal economic policies brought it firmly in line with Washington.

The Ukraine war has introduced a certain ambiguity in Indian policy, which has earned it kudos from Moscow. The Beijing-Moscow pair has attracted new adherents, whereas the Western camp is restive.

To add to Western anxieties comes a headline from Hanoi: “Vietnam sees a shared future with China.” Nothing sensationally disturbing about the headline, but as you delve into exchanges between Xi Jinping and Nguyen Phu Trong, general secretary of the Vietnam Communist Party, the language doesn’t touch the hyperbole of the Sino-Russian friendship, but it is close. Take the Lunar New Year messages the two exchanged.

Xi Jinping: “China and Vietnam are a community with a shared future.”  

Trong: Ready to work with Comrade Xi… to carry out strategic communication on theories and practice of both countries’ socialist development… and to make sure that the relations between the two parties and countries continuously develop and reach new heights.”  

Vietnam is a story of economic success comparable to China, except that the scales are vastly different. It is a country of 100 million, compared to China’s 1.4 billion. But as an economy of 100 million people, it has of late shot past Singapore and Hong Kong in its economic efficiency.

The recent Sino-Vietnam embrace follows changes in dramatis personae not to the West’s liking. Two weeks ago, Vietnam’s President Nguyen Xuan Phuc was forced to resign because in his pro-business momentum, his close circle was implicated in a high level of corruption. For a decade, the Communist Party general secretary carried out his anti-corruption campaign against Phuc, who is identified with Western interests.

A matter of great anxiety in the West is the defeat of the pro-business elements. This makes Vietnam’s Communist Party as powerful as its opposite number in China.

How different Sino-Vietnam relations were in 1979 when I found myself in the presence of Xuan Thuy, then party general secretary. The occasion was the Sino-Vietnam war, when I learnt early lessons about the Western media, its professionalism and biases. It was a different media world.

The global TV networks were inaugurated during Operation Desert Storm in 1992. In 1979, newspapers had considerable credibility -- until an event like the Sino-Vietnam war took place. The Western media did not write purple prose about the Chinese victory. Which, in any case, crucially eluded the Chinese, making Deng Xiaoping look very silly. He had threatened to “teach Vietnam a lesson”. The Western media fell back on an act of omission: it took no notice of the Battle of Lang Son, where the Vietnamese trounced the Chinese.

After Henry Kissinger’s opening with China in 1971, Sino-US ties were in their warmest phase through the 1970s. At this stage, it would be a strategic loss for the new US ally to be so roundly beaten by a Soviet ally. With this victory, Vietnam became a global champion: the only country to have defeated three permanent members of the UN Security Council in the battlefield -- France, the United States and China. 

The ouster of the market-oriented Phuc from Vietnam’s power structure has left a gap in the Western strategy of encircling China. Since the end of the Vietnam War, the “China or US” debate has raged in Vietnamese party circles. After the horrors of the Vietnam War, a rapprochement with Washington would have been unthinkable.

Likewise, a Sino-Vietnam entente cordiale would be remote after the 1979 war. When India’s vice-president K.R. Narayanan visited Vietnam in 1993, the victor of three wars with great powers, Vo Nguyen Giap, had called on him. The inevitable question arose: would Vietnam’s long-term ally be the US or China? Giap quipped: as a soldier, I have learnt that logistics is crucial for both war and peace. “China was next door and therefore a manageable long-term friend”, he said.