THE United States announced an end to its embargo on sales of lethal arms to Vietnam on Monday, an historic step that draws a line under the two countries’ old enmity and underscores their shared concerns about Beijing’s growing military clout.
The move came during President Barack Obama’s first visit to Hanoi, which his welcoming hosts described as the arrival of a warm spring and a new chapter in relations between two countries that were at war four decades ago.
Obama, the third US president to visit Vietnam since diplomatic relations were restored in 1995, has made a strategic ‘rebalance’ toward Asia a centerpiece of his foreign policy.
Vietnam, a neighbor of China, is a key part of that strategy amid worries about Beijing’s assertiveness and sovereignty claims in the South China Sea.
The decision to lift the arms trade ban, which followed intense debate within the Obama administration, suggested that such concerns outweighed arguments that Vietnam had not done enough to improve its human rights record and that Washington would lose leverage for reforms.
Obama told a joint news conference with Vietnamese President Tran Dai Quang that disputes in the South China Sea should be resolved peacefully and not by whoever “throws their weight around”. But he insisted the arms embargo move was not linked to China.
“The decision to lift the ban was not based on China or any other considerations. It was based on our desire to complete what has been a lengthy process of moving towards normalization with Vietnam,” he said. He later added that his visit to a former foe showed “hearts can change and peace is possible”.
The sale of arms, Obama said, would depend on Vietnam’s human rights commitments, which would be made on a case-by-case basis.
