The U. S.-Vietnam joint statement on the South China Sea contains glaring contradictions.
During his recent 12-day trip to Asia, including stops in Japan, South Korea, China, Vietnam, and the Philippines, U. S. President Donald J. Trump focused mainly on North Korea and trade issues. He treated the South China Sea problems, by comparison, as a side issue or an afterthought. There were plenty of opportunities to raise these issues. In addition to bilateral summits at each of his stops, Trump attended the multilateral APEC meeting in Vietnam and the ASEAN-U. S. Summit in the Philippines.
During his stops in east Asia, Trump did make a few perfunctory and superfluous statements on the South China Sea. He reaffirmed the need to uphold the principle of freedom of navigation and over-flight, respect for international law, and a peaceful and rules-based settlement of disputes. But when the issue of the South China Sea was raised at the closed-door meeting between ASEAN and the United States, the only reported response from Trump was “a need for fair trade.” Given the bombastic and aggressive statements by Trump administration officials early in his term, this relatively milquetoast approach did not inspire confidence in friends and allies nor fear in supposed targets of the U. S. policy. Indeed it only served to deepen the concern with U. S. “staying power” in Southeast Asia.
In Vietnam and the Philippines, Trump issued joint statements with each of his respective hosts that, among other points, elaborated at some length their shared policy regarding the South China Sea. Unfortunately this policy potpourri only managed to confuse friends and rivals alike. Indeed, the parts of these joint statements that dealt with the South China Sea issues were a gobbledygook of redundancy and disingenuousness.
In the 14-paragraph joint statement issued by Trump and Vietnamese President Tran Dai Quang, the longest paragraph was the one that addressed the South China Sea issues. The U. S.-Philippines joint statement essentially repeated phrases from the U. S.-Vietnam leaders’ joint statement.
The Trump-Quang statement began by underscoring the strategic importance to the international community of free and open access to the South China Sea. This agreed, the two then reaffirmed “the importance of unimpeded lawful commerce and the need to respect freedom of navigation and over flight and other lawful uses of the sea.” A little later in the paragraph, the statement also proclaimed the parties’ commitment to “refrain from unlawful restrictions on freedom of the seas…” For Vietnam these phrases are particularly disingenuous.
