Vietnam, France announce establishment of comprehensive strategic partnership

France has become the eighth nation, and the fifth in the past two years, to rise to the top of Hanoi’s diplomatic hierarchy.

Vietnam and France have announced the establishment of a Comprehensive Strategic Partnership (CSP), making France the eighth nation, and the first member of the European Union, to rise to the top of Hanoi’s diplomatic hierarchy.

French President Emmanuel Macron and To Lam, Vietnam’s president and the head of the ruling Communist Party of Vietnam (CPV) signed the agreement establishing the CSP during Lam’s visit to the Élysée Palace in Paris yesterday.

Lam’s two-day visit to Vietnam’s former colonial ruler, the first by a Vietnamese head of state in 22 years, also saw him meet with high-ranking officials including the head of the French National Assembly.

To mark the upgrade, the two nations issued a joint statement that, in a paraphrase by Vietnamese state media, “committed to bolstering bilateral ties” and “pledged to maintain high-level exchanges and interactions through all channels between the French administration and the Communist Party, Government, National Assembly, and local authorities of Vietnam.”

In addition to the usual economic component, there will also be a robust security aspect to the CSP, with Hanoi and Paris expressing a “desire to enhance the exchange of delegations, cooperation, consultations and training activities.” The joint statement also “underlines the commitment to maintaining peace, security, and stability” in the South China Sea, where China has recently become more forceful in asserting its expansive maritime claims against rival claimants, particularly the Philippines.

France has become the eighth nation to be promoted to the top tier of Vietnam’s diplomatic hierarchy, after China, Russia, India, South Korea, the United States, Japan, and Australia. Interestingly, five of these CSPs have been established over the past two years, which suggests a concerted attempt to broaden and deepen Vietnam’s relationships with important regional and global powers.

For Paris, the CSP with Vietnam, and the defense aspects in particular, will buttress its evolving Indo-Pacific strategy, which seeks to bolster French influence in the region. First published in 2019, this aims to protect France’s fundamental interests in the Indo-Pacific (these include 1.65 million French citizens living in French territories in the Pacific and Indian Ocean, and an exclusive economic zone of 9 million square kilometers), to safeguard strategic interests, such as freedom of navigation and access to the global commons, and to defend its interests as a global power and permanent member of the U.N. Security Council. For these reasons, France is also in talks with the Philippines on a reciprocal access agreement that would allow troops from each country to hold exercises in the other’s territory.

For Vietnam, this latest upgrade – further CSPs with Indonesia and Singapore are also reportedly under discussion – fits well within the country’s omnidirectional foreign policy, which seeks good relations with as many important powers as possible. At the same time, it raises the question of whether the proliferation of CSPs has diluted the symbolic and political currency of the status. Certainly, the rash of upgrades has detracted somewhat from the historic nature of the upgrade in September 2023 with the United States, which jumped directly from the comprehensive partnership, skipping over the intermediate step of strategic partnership.

Of course, it is very likely that this is exactly the point: to send a message to Beijing that the upgrade with the U.S. was not directed at containing China (as some in Washington might see it) but as part of a broader diplomatic charm offensive that happened to include the U.S. This theory becomes more plausible when one considers reports that Vietnam was reluctant to support the upgrade with the U.S.

The fact that the “Comprehensive Strategic Partnership” has no fixed definition, aside from reflecting warm relations and a desire to improve them further, gives Hanoi some flexibility in using upgrades to pursue its singular brand of foreign policy balancing and cushion itself against intensifying U.S.-China competition. The fact that France now sits alongside both superpowers at the top of Vietnam’s diplomatic hierarchy, with the possibility of other nations joining it in short order, is as good an illustration of Vietnam’s approach as any.

By Sebastian Strangio – The Diplomat – October 8, 2024