The United States’ image as a guarantor of peace in the Indo-Pacific is under threat from President Donald Trump following his swift reversal of the U.S. policy of support for Ukraine’s fight against Russia. Trump wants a quick diplomatic settlement with Russia to end the war at the expense of Ukraine’s territorial integrity, and he is forcing Ukraine to pay for the U.S. assistance with its own natural resources. Some might argue that such a reversal would be beneficial to Washington’s allies and partners in the Indo-Pacific because the U.S. would devote less resources and attention to Europe and to balance against China more seriously.
However, reactions from Southeast Asian states have been generally negative. Singapore’s Defense Minister Ng Eng Hen likened the U.S. to a “landlord seeking rent,” while Malaysia’s Defense Minister Mohamed Khaled Nordin called for an interlinking of Southeast Asian defense industries to minimize reliance on “external suppliers” and prioritize regional self-reliance. This is an interesting puzzle considering that many Indo-Pacific countries have in the past criticized the lack of U.S. attention to and supported a more robust U.S. presence in the region. Southeast Asian countries have now begun to realize that the U.S. participation in regional affairs may not be beneficial to regional security if the net loss in their relations with China outweighs the net gain in their relations with the U.S. In short, the U.S. support for these countries in their maritime disputes with China may well do more harm than good.
This is not a new lesson for Vietnam, however. Hanoi understands better than anyone the danger of betting on an extra-regional great power in settling territorial disputes with China. After the Vietnam War ended in 1975, Vietnam and China began to seriously contest the poorly demarcated China-Vietnam land border, the maritime border in the Gulf of Tonkin, as well as sovereignty over the Paracel and Spratly islands. The number of provocations along the land border, per Chinese claims, increased three-fold from 439 in 1975 to 1,108 in 1978. Vietnam and China tried to diplomatically settle their territorial disputes in 1977, which is reflected in the decrease in the number of provocations that year. However, the efforts were fruitless, and border talks ended in July 1978. Vietnam thus bet on its alliance with the Soviet Union in order to protect its northern border from low-level Chinese border harassments, before China launched a full-scale invasion in February 1979 on the pretext that Vietnam had violated Chinese territory.
Vietnam’s occupation of Cambodia was of course the most pressing issue in Vietnam-China relations at the time, but a series of bilateral talks to normalize diplomatic relations beginning April 1979 touched upon territorial disputes as well. Vietnam, with Soviet backing, wanted to strictly negotiate disputes along the China-Vietnam border to have the Chinese fully withdraw their troops from Vietnamese territories and reduce the number of troops on the Chinese side of the border. Vietnam aimed to reduce tension with China so as not to have to divert its resources away from Cambodia. On the Chinese side, Beijing wanted to discuss Vietnam’s occupation of Cambodia as well, but Vietnam objected to discussing issues involving a third country. During the talks, China directly criticized the Soviet Union for obstructing Vietnam-China border talks and for enhancing Vietnam’s anti-China attitude. After 15 meetings between April and December, China and Vietnam failed to resolve these differences, and China suspended all talks indefinitely in March 1980. China did not want to negotiate territorial disputes when Vietnam was still backed by a great power.
Vietnam’s reliance on the Soviet Union to settle its territorial disputes with China backfired. China kept the military pressure on Vietnam on both the continental and maritime fronts, launching regular incursions into Vietnamese territory to occupy strategic hilltops and a violent occupation of Vietnam’s Johnson South Reef in 1988. Vietnam could only resume talks with China in January 1989 after Vietnam began withdrawing from Cambodia in 1988 and the Soviet Union had begun reducing its support to Vietnam. The retrenchment of the Soviet Union from Indochina removed the major roadblock to the settling of territorial disputes from the Chinese perspective, which explained why both countries were able to do so in the 1990s, even though the nature of the disputes remained the same.
When normalizing ties in 1991, China and Vietnam emphasized the need to settle the territorial disputes. They did not want to resolve the disputes before normalizing ties because doing so would delay normalization to an unspecified date when both recognized the immediate need to mend China-Vietnam ties. This only confirmed that China had relaxed its anti-Vietnam stance and was ready to make compromises once Vietnam was no longer allied with another great power. In 1993, both countries signed an agreement on the basic principles for settling border and territory issues over the China-Vietnam land border, the Gulf of Tonkin, and the South China Sea islands.
Vietnam finally succeeded in resolving the land border and the Gulf of Tonkin disputes with China in 1999 and 2000, thereby removing a major source of danger to its security. Vietnam claimed that its land border treaty with China resolved the disputes fairly, with Vietnam getting 113 square kilometers out of the 227 square kilometers of disputed territory. China also compromised over the Gulf of Tonkin, with Vietnam getting 53.23 percent of the Gulf. The multilateral nature of the South China Sea disputes prevented both countries from reaching a deal, but they signed an agreement in 2011 to settle those disputes peacefully. It is not a coincidence that China agreed to settle the territorial disputes with Vietnam when Hanoi formally committed itself to a neutral “Three Nos” principle in 1998. Importantly, Vietnam and China’s inability to resolve the South China Sea disputes has not prevented them from developing trade and political relations because they both understand that they have more to gain from maintaining a general friendly relationship than from quarreling over the islands.
Vietnam’s experience suggests to other Southeast Asian countries that the involvement of an extra-regional great power in a small power’s territorial disputes with China hardened, not relaxed, Chinese stance toward the disputes. This is what China is doing now with respect to the Philippines. While China has ignored Vietnam’s massive island reclamation activities, it is punishing the Philippines for refueling its maritime outposts just because the Philippines has expressed its desire to involve the U.S. in its disputes. By coercing the Philippines now and Vietnam in the past, China has successfully shown that these countries’ net gain in cooperating with an extra-regional great power against Chinese interests cannot outweigh the net loss in their ties with China.
From this perspective, any U.S. decision to devote more attention to the Indo-Pacific will do more harm than good to its allies and partners because China will perceive the U.S. and Southeast Asian countries to be colluding against it. Even worse for Southeast Asian countries, a more robust U.S. presence in the region might make China more uncompromising in its territorial disputes as well as in its attitude toward these countries’ general cooperation with Washington. If push comes to shove, China will pressure these states to pick a side.
China successfully neutralized Vietnam after the Third Indochina War, and it will look to neutralize Southeast Asia next. Whether China will succeed in neutralizing these states by accommodation or coercion depends on their policies toward the U.S. Closer defense cooperation with Washington will invite Chinese coercion, while an aloof attitude toward Washington will induce Chinese accommodation. Southeast Asian states will have to make a choice, and that choice is increasingly against the prospect of a U.S. regional presence.