Vietnam’s Ties to Russia Tested by China’s Moves in South China Sea

As U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken heads to Vietnam, he must negotiate a diplomatic struggle in which Vietnam and China are competing for the right to develop oil and gas reserves off Vietnam’s coast in the South China Sea.

Blinken’s visit follows a call between U.S. President Joe Biden and the chief of Vietnam’s ruling Communist Party, Nguyen Phu Trong, on March 29, when the two leaders agreed to expand the bilateral relationship.

This year marks the 10th anniversary of the U.S.-Vietnam Comprehensive Partnership. The two countries have been discussing how to advance their ties to the next level — a strategic partnership. Vietnam has comprehensive strategic partnerships with Moscow and Beijing.

The conflicting interests facing Hanoi — navigating a historically fraught relationship with China, bilateral ties with like-minded Russia, and warming relations with the U.S., an enemy defeated less than 50 years ago — may test Vietnam’s “three NO’s” foreign policy — no alignment with any countries against a third country, no military alliance with any country, no foreign military base in its territory.

Russia’s state-controlled oil company Zarubezhneft and gas giant Gazprom, working with a subsidiary of PetroVietnam, the country’s state-owned fossil fuel company, operate a gas field in Vietnam’s South China Sea exclusive economic zone (EEZ), according to the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), a think tank in Washington.

Chinese coast guard ships have sailed into the areas operated by Russian firms in Vietnam’s EEZ about 40 times since January 2022, according to vessel-tracking data from Vietnamese research organization South China Sea Chronicle Initiative (SCSCI), an independent nonprofit, according to Reuters.

The most recent incident was on March 27, days after Russian President Vladimir and his counterpart Xi Jinping met to reaffirm their “no-limits friendship.” Moscow has become increasingly reliant on Beijing to break isolation and sanctions imposed by the West over its war in Ukraine.

Colin Koh, a research fellow of maritime security issues at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies at Singapore’s Nanyang Technological University, told VOA Vietnamese that he believes Putin brought up the incidents involving the Chinese coast guard vessels in the South China Sea to Xi because working with Vietnam on energy drilling is in Russia’s interest.

Koh expressed doubt that Moscow would give up its energy partnership with Vietnam, as Beijing wants. Hanoi is “by far [Russia’s] most steadfast, most longstanding friend in Southeast Asia,” he wrote in a March 29 email to VOA Vietnamese.

“Will Moscow want to risk pushing Hanoi to the embrace of the West? … And more broadly, does Russia really want to risk being seen as not only an unreliable partner by Vietnam, but also seen as playing second fiddle to China?” he said in the email.

It would be a huge blow to Vietnam, especially in weapons procurement, if Moscow aligned with Beijing’s position in the South China Sea, according to Koh.

“Even though Vietnam has in recent years diversified beyond Russia for military technologies, the key ‘big ticket’ military equipment are still Russian in origin,” he said, listing an array of military hardware – main battle tanks, multirole combat aircraft, surface combatants, submarines and missile systems.

“Therefore, dissociating with Russia doesn’t serve Vietnam’s long-term interest, considering that fully replacing Russian systems in its arsenal will take a long time and is prohibitively costly,” said Koh.

Striking a balance

However, Hanoi should strike an equilibrium between Russia and the West and should not be seen by Moscow as leaning too much toward the West over the war in Ukraine, Koh said.

“It does help that its current position on the war in Ukraine has at least been accepted by Russia,” he said.

In the energy sector, Hanoi can look to Western companies to take over oil and gas projects in the South China Sea if Moscow withdraws, said Koh, who cautioned that any potential replacement must be willing to assume the risk of pressure from China.

In 2018, Spain’s Repsol suspended its energy prospecting off Vietnam in the South China Sea after Hanoi succumbed to a year of Chinese pressure, Reuters reported. The company may have lost up to $200 million, according to The Diplomat.

Ha Hoang Hop, Associate Senior Fellow of ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute in Singapore and chairman of the VietKnow think tank in Hanoi, told VOA Vietnamese that Beijing could not force Moscow to withdraw from the energy partnership with Vietnam.

He noted that between 2017 and 2019, Bejing “piled pressure on Moscow” but Russia responded each time by making “it very clear that the projects were in the waters completely under Vietnam’s jurisdiction, so Beijing was not in a position to interfere,” he told VOA Vietnamese in a phone interview.

Hop said, “There’s no way Russia compromises its energy projects with Vietnam in the South China Sea despite Beijing’s pressure” given that the oil and gas projects there “are also Russian interests.”
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