After leading the G-20 meetings about prioritizing aid to developing countries, those of the so-called Global South, US President Joe Biden ended the summit on Sunday and quickly boarded a plane. heading to Vietnam. A brief stop before returning home that is key to counteracting China’s influence in the region.
The most important announcement after Biden’s landing in Hanoi has been an agreement in which the Southeast Asian country has elevated the relationship with the United States to a “comprehensive strategic partnership.”
It is a symbolic designation, but with great geopolitical weight. Now, both countries share the highest status in terms of bilateral relations, equaling the level that authoritarian regimes such as China and Russia have in the communist nation.
Vietnam also operates as a one-party regime, but is interested in rapprochement with its former enemy, Washington, due to the many problems it has with neighboring China regarding claims in the disputed waters they share.
This new alliance comes almost half a century after the end of the Vietnam War. After the victory of the Communist Party in 1975, the US imposed a trade embargo that lasted until 1994.
“Vietnam is a critical power in the world and a benchmark in this vital region,” Biden said as soon as he landed in Hanoi, where he was received by the Vietnamese leader, Nguyen Phu Trong, general secretary of the Communist Party of Vietnam.
Biden skipped the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) summit in Jakarta, held just before the G-20 meeting, to go to Vietnam in an attempt to show the importance that the world’s leading power places on their relationship. with a country that, like its rival China, also does not pass the basic human rights standards that Washington defends.
