Communist Vietnam has mastered the art of managing Donald Trump. To win over the American president, Hanoi has rolled out the red carpet for a Trump-branded golf project. The country has also joined, without much hesitation, his highly controversial Board of Peace. This accommodating attitude is primarily due to economic realities: Vietnam has the third-largest trade deficit with the US, behind China and Mexico. It has fought to secure a favorable trade agreement ahead of its neighbors.
Nonetheless, deep distrust remains: Hanoi views the US as a fundamentally unpredictable, even hostile, actor. This revelation comes from a classified Vietnamese military document from August 2024 that was revealed by the US-based NGO Project88, which specializes in human rights issues in Vietnam. The document describes US and allied tactics to invade Vietnam by sea; notably, the document predates Trump’s second term, as well as the abduction of Venezuelan leader Nicolas Maduro by the American military on January 3.
The first Trump administration was nonetheless singled out for adopting a more aggressive stance than its predecessors, with the “chief objective” to “deploy military power, incite an arms race and expand the export market for US military equipment and technology.”
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