Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld said on Monday that U.S.-Vietnamese ties had reached a “new level” and that the former battlefield enemies would boost military exchanges and training.
Vietnam is one of several Asian states with which the Pentagon has built close ties to help its war on terrorism and to hedge against a rising China, which Washington says is too secretive about its military spending and its intentions.
Rumsfeld recalled after Hanoi talks with Defense Minister Pham Van Tra and Prime Minister Phan Van Khai that President Bush and Khai had met last year and pledged to raise economic, political and security relations “to a new level.”
“Certainly that has happened,” he said as he wound down the second stop of a three-nation Southeast Asian trip.
Rumsfeld and Tra agreed to increase “exchanges at all levels of the military and in various ways further strengthen the military to military relationship,” he told reporters.
The two sides agreed to start medical training under a Pentagon-funded program, and step up cooperation on de-mining and finding remains of soldiers from the Vietnam War, he said.
U.S. military ties with Hanoi, 31 years after the end of the Vietnam war and 11 years after the normalization of diplomatic ties, have warmed gradually with ship visits.
Rumsfeld, the second Pentagon chief to visit communist-run Vietnam since the fall of U.S. ally South Vietnam in 1975, last visited Hanoi in 1995 as a private citizen.
“I was and remain struck by the economic success that you can see and the activity and the change in this city,” he said.
The military talks took place less than a week after the two countries signed a new trade pact that paves the way for Vietnam to join the World Trade Organization by year-end.
M.I.A. recovery
A U.S. Navy ship would visit Vietnam this summer, the fourth in four years, Rumsfeld said.
But he told reporters in Singapore on Sunday that “we have no plans for access to military facilities in Vietnam” and his aides stressed that ties would evolve gradually. For Hanoi, this means avoiding provoking giant neighbor China.
U.S. analysts say Vietnam, which fought a brief war with China in 1979, shares America’s desire for good relations with Beijing and wariness about rapid Chinese military growth.
Daniel Blumenthal, former China chief at the Pentagon, said the Vietnamese in fact “want China to take note that there is a regional response to Beijing’s military build-up” and that both Washington and Hanoi benefit from warming military ties.
“Vietnam gains an offshore balancer while America gains another potential access point to the Taiwan Strait or other areas where China seeks to deny U.S. access,” said Blumenthal, an analyst at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington.
Exchanges under the Pentagon’s International Military Education and Training (IMET) program would begin with English-language training for Vietnamese officers in San Antonio, Texas, a senior Pentagon official said.
Further IMET exchanges “will need some time to cook and there are some restraints on our side”, said the official, referring to Congressional oversight that raises concerns about U.S. military partners’ human rights behavior.
Rumsfeld and Tra discussed cooperation on recovering the remains of the 1,805 U.S. soldiers still listed as missing in action in Southeast Asia. The U.S.-Vietnam war killed more than 58,000 Americans and 3 million Vietnamese soldiers and civilians.
The Pentagon official said Washington could offer technical help for Hanoi in recovering the remains of its 300,000 missing soldiers. He added that although Vietnam was very helpful, Washington wanted more assistance searching Vietnamese archives and finding data on its soldiers missing in Laos and Cambodia.
Hanoi will play host to Bush in November at the annual summit of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum.
Rumsfeld was due to travel to Indonesia for talks on Tuesday.