Earlier today, The New York Times and other news outlets reported that Pres. Obama has rescinded a decades-old embargo on Vietnam. Dissolving any lingering vestiges of the Vietnam War and the Cold War would seem a good thing until you realize one detail: it was a lethal weapons embargo.
Is something ‘off’ about this ‘normalized’ relationship? Barack Obama at a press conference with Vietnam’s President Tran Dai Quang at the Presidential Palace in Hanoi May 23, 2016. Photo by Reuters
Fabulous. As if U.S. arms manufacturers were lacking anybody to sell to, right? As if any country in the world is lacking ways to kill people.
One reason for lifting the embargo is that apparently Vietnam needs a little more muscle in the face of China’s buildup in the South China Sea. China and Vietnam have long been trading partners and ideological pals, but Beijing’s claims of waters off Vietnam’s coast in the South China Sea have been raising tensions.
The Times notes that one remaining barrier to lifting the arms embargo had been Vietnam’s lagging human rights record — “an area where we still have differences,” according to Obama.
He is perhaps referring to factors such as a lack of independent media; or that, “Legally and formally, human rights organizations and unions cannot exist independently of the Communist Party of Vietnam,” according to John Coughlan, a researcher at Amnesty International for Cambodia, Laos, and Vietnam, in an interview on Slate.com. Amnesty International’s ”conservative” estimate is that there are 83 prisoners of conscience detained in Vietnam at this time.
John Sifton, the Asia policy director of Human Rights Watch, said, “President Obama just gave Vietnam a reward that they don’t deserve.”
So did the U.S. just lose influence over Vietnam’s approach to human rights? Does the Obama administration think that it’s bribing Vietnamese president, Tran Dai Quang into behaving better? Or do Obama and his advisors just not care as much as they claim to?
Even though “only” about $1 billion is earmarked for weapons procurement out of Vietnam’s $4.6 billion defense budget, spending on new equipment is expected to reach $1.6 billion a year by 2015 according to the Teal Group, a Virginia-based consultancy.
Obama is playing Santa Claus on this visit to Asia, essentially telling Vietnamese officials they’ve been good enough this year. Meanwhile, American military contractors’ Christmas stockings look to be further stuffed should the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), a trade deal among 12 nations, pass.
Obama has suggested that the TPP would benefit Vietnam greatly, and will eventually become law — though it has little chance of passing Congress before November’s elections. Plus, Bernie Sanders, Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump all oppose it (at least for now — you never know when Trump will change his tune on something).
With or without the TPP, the U.S. government seems to be on its way to “normalizing” its relationship with Vietnam.
“The decision to lift the ban was not based on China or any other considerations,” said Obama in a press conference with Pres. Quang at his side. “It was based on our desire to complete what has been a lengthy process of moving toward normalization with Vietnam.”
Given the blind eye turned toward human rights abuses and the clear benefit to arms makers, it’s clear that “normal” relationships between the U.S. and other countries are just as screwed up, co-dependent and potentially abusive as any personal relationship in the U.S. these days.
When you get rewarded for not changing your destructive ways, where’s the impetus to change? I’d suggest couples’ therapy for the U.S. and Vietnam, but from what I can tell, they’d be better off working on themselves individually for a while. Can anyone recommend a good meditation retreat or something for an entire government?
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“The Times notes that one remaining barrier to lifting the arms embargo had been Vietnam’s lagging human rights record — “an area where we still have differences,” according to Obama.”
I think my irony meter exploded again.
I know — for real. That killed me.