US vs. China: Where does Vietnam Stand?

September 4, 2021 (Brian Berletic - NEO) - As tensions continue to mount between Washington and Beijing, examples continue to abound comparing and contrasting the approaches used by both global powers regarding foreign policy.

Another recent example on stark display is the US and China’s respective approaches to Vietnam – a nation both countries have had rocky and even hostile relations with in the past. Both nations waged armed conflict on Vietnam last century. The nearly 20 year-long US war with Vietnam was decidedly much more catastrophic than the month-long failed invasion launched by China.

The US only normalized its relations with Vietnam in 1997, China having done so a few years earlier in 1991.

Since then Vietnam’s main benefits from both nations have been economic.

Follow the Money, Follow the Trade 

In 1997, according to Harvard University’s Atlas of Economic Complexity, Japan stood as Vietnam’s largest export market accounting for 24.22% of all exports from Vietnam, with the US and China accounting for 4.15% and 4.48% respectively (Hong Kong accounting for an additional 3.23% in China’s favor).

Also in 1997, 9.5% of Vietnam’s imports came from China versus 2.45% from the United States. In 2019, the numbers told a very different story. China is now Vietnam’s largest export market standing at 21.45% versus the United States at 19.26%. China is also Vietnam’s largest source of imports at 36.36% versus the US at 4.07%.

Between 1997 and 2019 Europe has slipped from Vietnam’s second largest regional export market to third, behind Asia and North America (primarily the US).

Trade with China is vastly important to Vietnam’s economy. Access to additional markets is also a priority for Vietnam. Considering this very important fact, what is it that Beijing and Washington bring to the table to address this primary concern and how will this play out in the near and long-term regarding current US-China tensions?

What Did Kamala Harris Bring to the Table During Her Recent Visit to Vietnam?

AP News in its August 2021 article, “Harris urges Vietnam to join US in opposing China ‘bullying,’” lays out the bleak proposition offered to Hanoi by Washington – to join the US in a growing conflict against Vietnam’s largest trading partner.

The article notes:

“We need to find ways to pressure and raise the pressure, frankly, on Beijing to abide by the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, and to challenge its bullying and excessive maritime claims,” she said in remarks at the opening of a meeting with Vietnamese President Nguyen Xuan Phuc.

Obviously, by joining the US in “pressuring” China regarding the South China Sea, Vietnam would endanger its diplomatic and economic ties with China. It could also potentially trigger a security crisis with China – a nation it shares a 1,297 km long border with.

It should be noted that despite Washington’s oversimplification and exaggeration of the South China Sea situation, the reality is much more complicated and much less a threat to regional or global stability. Disputes are between not only Southeast Asian nations and China, but also among Southeast Asian states themselves.

For example Vietnam, the Philippines, and Malaysia all have overlapping claims within the South China Sea with each other in addition to with China, resulting in minor incidents that are often resolved quickly and bilaterally. The US has deliberately injected itself into these disputes in an attempt to transform them into a regional or even international crisis it can leverage against China.

In essence, the US is trying to recruit Vietnam into an imaginary and absolutely needless conflict that would ensnare Hanoi in a security alliance with the US at the expense of constructive ties with China. It would also risk destabilizing the region in which Vietnam resides – endangering political and economic stability required for its peace and prosperity.

Then there is what the US offers in return – aid – with AP noting:

The new US aid to Vietnam includes investments to help the country transition to cleaner energy systems and expand the use of electric vehicles, and millions in aid to clear unexploded weapons left over from the Vietnam War.

Regarding “cleaner energy,” this may refer to US pressure on Vietnam to avoid construction of cheaper coal-fired power plants built in cooperation with China in favor of more expensive liquid natural gas (LNG) plants built through US financing and fired with US-delivered LNG. US LNG will also be more expensive and can only be “competitive” through a constant and ever-expanding regime of sanctions and conflicts used to make cheaper alternatives inaccessible.

Also noted was the US elevating its diplomatic relationship with Vietnam from a “comprehensive partnership” to a “strategic partnership,” although this is clearly being done as a means for Washington to use Vietnam amid its current regional confrontation – even as it provides token “investments” to clean up unexploded ordnance (UXO) from its last confrontation in the region – with Vietnam itself.

In essence, the US promise to Vietnam is to enlist it as a pawn in a Washington-engineered confrontation with Vietnam’s geographical neighbor and its largest trading partner. Little was indicated by Washington as to what Vietnam would gain from “signing up” beyond the token “investments” offered in areas like pharmaceuticals and UXO removal or its coercive “cleaner energy” plans involving overpriced US-delivered LNG.

China Skips Promises, Puts Beijing-Hanoi Ties into Practice

Compare US Vice President Kamala Harris’ trip to Vietnam and the token aid and promises of ensnaring conflict offered by Washington to recent news regarding Vietnam-China relations.

Xinhua reported the first China-Europe freight train connection between Hanoi, Vietnam-Zhengzhou, China-Liege, Belgium.

Vietnam’s inclusion into China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) through the “New Silk Road” has been long in the making with several rail routes explored to connect Vietnam more readily with China and then to extend Vietnam’s reach into international markets through China’s China-Europe railway. With the first Vietnamese goods now reaching Belgium, the tangible economic benefits of good ties with China are demonstrated rather than pontificated.

Viet Nam News in its article, “Vietnam Railways launches freight train service to Belgium,” would report:

Vietnam Railways (VNR) on July 20 added a new rail freight link from Việt Nam to Belgium, with the first train departing from Yên Viên station, Hà Nội, and expected to arrive at Liege City in Belgium.

It would also note:

VNR said the train carried 23 containers with such goods as textile, leather and footwear.  During its journey, the train will stop at Zhenzhou City of China’s Henan Province and connect to the Asia-Europe train to reach its destination.

As the service gains popularity with companies both in Europe and in Vietnam and as China continues expanding the capacity of its New Silk Road rail lines in between, this trade will only further expand, competing with maritime shipping in terms of economics and shipping time, as well as in terms of circumventing maritime security threats and bottlenecks.

Vietnam will have the opportunity to expand its trade with Europe by diversifying its exports thanks to new options available to ship them. The New Silk Road also passes through Russia and Central Asia with new routes being planned. Vietnamese exports and thus the Vietnamese economy stands to gain thanks to China and the access it provides Vietnam through the BRI – the BRI the US is committed to not only “countering” through proposed “alternatives,” but also and perhaps primarily through physically cutting it off using state-sponsored terrorism as observed in Baluchistan, Pakistan and across Myanmar currently.

Vietnam, like many nations in Southeast Asia seeks to diversify its diplomatic and economic relations to avoid overdependence. While this presents a huge opportunity for the US, Washington lacks the tools to properly exploit it. Instead, it uses the smokescreen of providing an alternative to the BRI to continue doing what it has always done, seek political and economic control over other nations, impeding their growth to both deny them as prosperous partners for adversaires like Russia and China, but to also prevent them from independently competing against US interests in the region and around the globe.

Ultimately and regardless of Beijing and Washington’s past relations with Vietnam, the question must be asked; today, who stands most to benefit from a prosperous Vietnam and why? For Beijing, it stands to benefit from Vietnam as a potential market for its goods as well as from the growth of Vietnamese exports flowing over its New Silk Road.

For Washington, it benefits only as far as it can use Vietnam to encircle and contain China – a proposition that benefits the peace and prosperity neither of Vietnam nor the region it resides in.

China is offering Vietnam continued opportunities to expand trade and economic prosperity. The US seems to be offering the very opposite – courses of action aimed at restraining or even endangering trade and prosperity.

Brian Berletic is a Bangkok-based geopolitical researcher and writer, especially for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”.

Vietnam Begins Reclaiming Info-Space From US Tech Giants

October 4, 2019 (Joseph Thomas - NEO) - In yet another sign of waning Western hegemony, the Southeast Asian state of Vietnam has begun the long-overdue process of reclaiming its information space from US tech giants like Facebook, Twitter and Google. 

Reuters in its article, "Facebook-style app launches in Vietnam amid tightening internet rules," would report:

A Facebook-style social network was launched in Vietnam on Tuesday, following calls by the Communist-ruled government for domestic tech companies to create alternatives to U.S. tech giants Facebook and Google. 

Gapo, a mobile app that lets users create personal profiles and share posts to a Facebook style “news feed”, has received 500 billion dong ($21.55 million) in funding from tech corporation G-Group, its chief executive, Ha Trung Kien, said.

Reuters then complains that the move sought to grant the Vietnamese government tighter control over political dissidents. Reuters omits, however, that the vast majority of these "dissidents" are in fact funded out of Washington.

Just as Washington has done worldwide, it is using its deep partnership with US-based tech giants like Facebook, Twitter and Google to interfere in and influence Vietnam's internal politics.

As is becoming increasingly obvious, control over national information space is nearly as important to controlling a state, its people and resources as controlling actual, physical territory.

Vietnam's move to create local alternatives and displace Facebook's (and other foreign tech giants) from its information space is a matter of both national security and common sense.

Turning West's Hypocrisy Against it 

It is particularly ironic to see articles published by Reuters complaining about the spectre of "Vietnamese censorship" growing simply because the nation has opted to reclaim its information space from foreign firms.

This comes on the heels of Reuters and US-backed "human rights" advocates who recently lauded Facebook and Twitter censorship targeting accounts publishing content critical of Western foreign policy by claiming it was "fake news" and those involved were engaged in "coordinated inauthentic behavior." .

Now nations are turning the tables on the United States and its stable of political agitators using precisely the same rhetoric. The creation of tougher cybersecurity laws and now the creation of Facebook alternatives seeks to root out vectors of malign US influence aimed at the internal, sovereign affairs of nations like Vietnam.

We need not imagine what the US reaction would be to a Russian social media giant dominating US information space and using that platform to organise political unrest within US territory itself.

The US has already baselessly made similar claims and used these accusations to cast a wider net of censorship across its own, global-spanning social media networks targeting and purging accounts, organisations and individuals who simply oppose US foreign policy, policy that directly affects everyone worldwide, not just Americans.


Waning Cyber-Hegemony 

The US and the wider Western World because of its transparent and continuous hypocrisy, has already undermined and forfeited any moral imperative to pose as arbiter over what is and isn't free speech, and what does and does not constitute censorship.

Now with alternatives to US-based tech giants threatening to push US domination over global information space back to America's physical borders, the US will not even be able to act as arbiter by force.

Benefits to Vietnam's decision to create alternatives to Facebook and other foreign social media giants are not confined to greater control over the nation's information space and thus enhancing national security. The money Facebook funnels out of nations like Vietnam through its various services will now be kept within Vietnam.

It is a win-win scenario that has already proven itself successful in Russia and China where both nations maintain lucrative alternatives to Facebook, Twitter and Google all while preserving the integrity of their respective information space.

With smaller nations like Vietnam now wading into fray, others in Southeast Asia like Thailand, Malaysia and Indonesia may follow, dethroning Facebook, Twitter and Google and uprooting their unwarranted influence and power from the region.

Ultimately US influence across information space will contract alongside its waning military and economic footprint. For a multipolar world where the primacy of national sovereignty is restored, it must be restored not only within each nation's respective physical territory, but within their information space as well.

Joseph Thomas is chief editor of Thailand-based geopolitical journal, The New Atlas and contributor to the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”.   

What's Really Behind Anti-China Protests in Vietnam?

June 27, 2018 (Joseph Thomas - NEO) - US and European media outlets reported anti-Chinese protests across Vietnam. Claims regarding numbers varied greatly from several hundred to others claiming several thousand. The Western media was particularly careful not to mention the names of any of the individuals or organisations leading the protests.

The South China Morning Post in its article titled, "Anti-China protests: dozens arrested as Vietnam patriotism spirals into unrest," would claim:

People were angry at a draft law that would allow 99-year concessions in planned special economic zones, which some view as sweetheart deals for foreign and specifically Chinese firms.

Though the Post and others across the Western mainstream media claimed the protests were "peaceful," they eventually spiralled out of control resulting in assaults on police and vandalism of public buildings.

The systematic omission of essential facts and intentional misrepresentation regarding the protests follows the same pattern observed regarding other US-European sponsored unrest around the globe.

Anti-Chinese Fervour is Pro-American, Not "Nationalist" 

The Post itself would claim the protests took on a "nationalist" tone, yet in the Post's own article and without an explanation from the Post as to why, American flags could be clearly spotted among the mobs.

The few names that were mentioned by the US-European media included well-known so-called "pro-democracy" activists drawn from networks openly supported by Washington, London and Brussels.

This included Duong Dai Trieu Lam, mentioned by the Financial Times in its article, "Anti-Chinese protesters take to Vietnam’s streets." He's a member of the so-called Vietnamese Bloggers Network which routinely coordinates its anti-government activities with the support of Western embassies.

The network was founded by now-jailed opposition figure Nguyen Ngoc Nhu Quynh, also known as "Mother Mushroom." A Newsweek article titled, "Who is Vietnam's Mother Mushroom? Blogger Honored by Melania Trump Jailed for Ten Years," would admit:

Quynh, a single mother of two, had given interviews to Voice of America and Radio Free Asia, her lawyer Vo An Don said. She founded a network of bloggers in her homeland and has written about deaths in police custody, environmental disasters and human rights. 

She received the Woman of Courage award at the U.S. State Department in March this year, presented by Melania Trump. Vietnam said the award “was not appropriate and of no benefit to the development of the relations between the two countries”, the Guardian reported.

Other US-European sponsored opposition figures include Nguyen Van Dai who heads the so-called "Brotherhood for Democracy," another transparently US-funded and directed front aimed at pressuring, destabilising, co-opting and/or overthrowing Vietnam's political order.

Nguyen Van Dai was recently released from prison and exiled from Vietnam.


His exile was not the first. There was also blogger Nguyen Hoang Hai, also known as Dieu Cay, who when exiled to the United States, was greeted by supporters waving the yellow and red-striped flag of the now defunct Republic of Vietnam (South Vietnam), the proxy state created by French colonialists and American invaders during the Vietnam War.

His return was covered by US State Department-funded and directed Radio Free Asia's Vietnamese-language version.

Other pro-US/anti-Chinese opposition figures include Le Quoc Quan, who was in fact a US National Endowment for Democracy (NED) fellow. US Congress members and the NED itself wrote passionate pleas for Le Quoc Quan's release from prison. The NED, in a post on their website titled, "NED Reagan-Fascell Fellow Le Quoc Quan Arrested after Return to Vietnam," would claim (our emphasis):

The National Endowment for Democracy (NED) is greatly troubled by the arrest in Vietnam of Le Quoc Quan. Le Quoc Quan, a lawyer, has recently been in residence at NED on a congressionally-funded Reagan-Fascell Democracy Fellowship, pursuing independent research on the role of civil society in emerging democracies. He was arrested on March 8 in his hometown in Nghe An province, only 4 days after his return from Washington to Vietnam. At this time, Le Quoc Quan’s whereabouts are unknown, and there are no public charges against him. 

“It is a deep insult to the United States that the Vietnamese regime would harass someone in this way who has just participated in a citizen exchange program supported by the US Congress and Department of State,” said NED President Carl Gershman. “Le Quoc Quan is someone who is optimistic about the future of his country, who is most concerned about improving the lives of his fellow citizens, and who is nothing if not a Vietnamese patriot.”

Frontline Defenders, a front funded by Western governments and corporate foundations like George Soros' Open Society, would mention Le Quoc Quan's anti-Chinese activities, stating that:

As well as providing legal representation to those who are persecuted for claiming their rights, Le Quoc Quan runs a blog. In this blog he writes about various issues including civil rights, political pluralism and religious freedom. He has also participated in a number of protests against China's territorial claims in the South China Sea.

It is clear that Vietnam's so-called opposition is in no way "nationalist," and merely opposes Chinese interests in Vietnam because Washington opposes them. By taking US and European funding and carrying out Western directives, they are actively undermining Vietnam's sovereignty, not upholding it.

It is also clear why the US and European media omit mention of opposition leaders even when covering significant events like the recent anti-China street protests. Had the truth been told to international audiences, the opposition's hypocrisy would be exposed and their legitimacy undermined.

American Meddling Endangers Vietnam and the Region 

At a time when the US and its European allies make accusations about supposed "Russian interference," US and European-backed mobs take to the streets in nations like Vietnam, attempting to influence national policy and decision-making, while literally flying US flags.

For Hanoi, it must continue its balancing act between Beijing and Washington. But the sort of opposition Washington is cultivating in the streets of Vietnam appears to not only be overtly coercive, but clearly connected to unfinished business dating back to the US invasion and occupation of Vietnam. Hanoi and Beijing have faced off militarily as well, but the threat the US posed and still poses is not a matter of disputed borders between two nations, but Washington's enduring desire to control all within Vietnam's borders.

Vietnam is not the only nation facing growing US coercion in the form of US-funded and directed opposition movements. Cambodia and Thailand likewise face opposition parties entirely backed by the US and its European allies. US-backed opposition also just assumed power in Malaysia and a US-funded and directed opposition party has already seized power and ruled in Myanmar since 2016.

US efforts to undermine and overwrite national sovereignty across Southeast Asia includes regional synergies between opposition fronts in each respective nation. It would likely benefit targeted nations to likewise coordinate their activities in countering, diminishing or entirely uprooting foreign-funded and directed networks interfering in the region's internal political affairs.

Joseph Thomas is chief editor of Thailand-based geopolitical journal, The New Atlas and contributor to the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”.

Vietnam Locks up US-funded Agitators

April 11, 2018 (Joseph Thomas - NEO) - Vietnam has tried and imprisoned several members of a US-funded network engaged in sedition across the country. The move follows  trials and prison terms handed out earlier this year for other US-funded operatives meddling in Vietnam's internal political affairs. 

Image: Nguyen Van Dai, recently sentenced to 15 years in prison, is pictured with US Senator and chairman of the International Republican Institute (IRI) John McCain in the US Embassy in Hanoi, Vietnam. The IRI provides money to foreign agents of US influence and is a subsidiary of the National Endowment for Democracy (NED).  

The prison terms for agents of US-funded political meddling in Vietnam come as the US and its European allies continue pushing accusations of Russian meddling. However, unlike the US and Europe's accusations against Russia, agents of US-funded sedition in Vietnam are exposed by extensive evidence, much of which comes from the US government itself. 

The BBC in its April 6, 2018 article, "Nguyen Van Dai: Vietnam jails activist lawyer and five others," would claim:

Six prominent Vietnamese activists have received heavy prison sentences on charges of "attempting to overthrow" the country's communist government. 

Lawyer Nguyen Van Dai was sentenced to 15 years, while the other defendants were jailed for between seven and 12 years, relatives said on Thursday.

The article mentions Nguyen Van Dai and his fellow defendants' role in founding the so-called "Brotherhood for Democracy."

Deutsche Welle in its article, "Vietnamese human rights lawyer Nguyen Van Dai among six given jail terms," adds that:

Dai founded the Committee for Human Rights in Vietnam in 2006 and was sentenced to five years in jail in 2007 for spreading propaganda against the government. While his term was reduced to four years on appeal, his lawyer's license was revoked. 

After his release in 2011, Dai co-founded the Brotherhood for Democracy network in 2013. It included other, formerly jailed dissidents advocating via social media for human rights throughout Vietnam.

DW would also report (our emphasis):

They were all accused of "activities aimed at overthrowing the people's government," according to the indictment issued by the Supreme People's Procuracy in Hanoi last December. The charges included carrying out human rights training, calling for multi-party democracy and receiving funding from foreign groups.

The BBC, DW and other US and European media organisations went through extensive efforts to avoid mentioning US training, funding and other forms of support provided to Nguyen Van Dai and other recently arrested and jailed "activists." The defendants' various website also fail to directly and openly disclose their funding.

However, admissions have been inadvertently made.

Covering Up US-Funding of Sedition in Vietnam  

While the US National Endowment for Democracy (NED) website lists 11 programmes being funded in Vietnam as of 2017, descriptions are left intentionally ambiguous, failing to disclose any organisation or individual actually receiving the funds. Disclosures for previous years have since been deleted from the NED website.

Opposition website "The 88 Project" in a post titled, "Vietnam Free Expression Newsletter No. 5/2018 – Week of January 29-February 4" would report on the imprisonment of Tran Hoang Phuc, Nguyen Van Dien and Vu Quang Thuan earlier in 2018.

Phuc is admitted to have been a participant in the US State Department's Young Southeast Asian Leaders Initiative (YSEALI). YSEALI indoctrinates young people across Southeast Asia, often helping them organise and fund subversive operations posing as "nongovernmental organisations" (NGOs).


Radio Free Asia (RFA), a US State Department-funded media front producing propaganda aimed at the Asia-Pacific region, would describe the Brotherhood for Democracy as a successor to another prominent opposition group in Vietnam, Bloc 8406.

In a 2013 article titled, "Vietnamese Activists Form 'Brotherhood for Democracy'," Radio Free Asia would claim:

A group of mostly former jailed dissidents in Vietnam have set up a new online group to coordinate efforts to bring democracy to the country, now under one party communist rule. 

The movement, known as the "Brotherhood for Democracy," was established about 10 days ago and the membership has grown to 70 so far.

The article would also claim:

The biggest online Vietnamese group pushing for democratic reforms is Bloc 8406. It was organized across the country in 2006, but many of its leaders, including co-founder Roman Catholic priest and dissident Nguyen Van Ly are languishing in prison.

However, Radio Free Asia, like other US and European media organisations, failed to disclose the group's funding.

US diplomatic cables disclosed by Wikileaks would reveal that many involved in Bloc 8406 were recipients of US government training and funding.

A cable titled, "Blogging and Political Dissent in Vietnam," would claim (our emphasis):

Dissident attorney Le Quoc Quan, who was detained for 3 months in 2007 after completing a fellowship with the National Endowment for Democracy in Washington, DC, has his own blog (www.lequocquan.blogspot.com). Over the past year, Lawyer Quan has posted many articles critical of the government's handling of last year's Catholic protests at the Thai Ha parish and the September-October arrests of at least 13 activists associated with the dissident political movement Bloc 8406 (reftel). 

And while NED had deleted past financial disclosures regarding Vietnam, NED's e-bulletin, "Democracy Digest," has several archived articles that offer clues.

In one 2016 article titled, "Obama must raise Vietnam’s rights abuses, civil society crackdown," an interview with the aforementioned Nguyen Van Dai's wife conducted in the US was published. The interview includes a question regarding Dai's involvement with the National Endowment for Democracy. When asked if he attended a "workshop on Democracy in the US," Dai's wife replied:

Oh yes, that was back in 2006. Dai got invited by the NED (National Endowment for Democracy).

"Democracy Digest" would also admit in a 2009 post entitled, "Vietnam stifles dissent in advance of party congress," that the Vietnam Committee on Human Rights or "Que Me" is a grantee of the US National Endowment for Democracy. Despite the similar names, this latter organisation does not appear to be the same one founded by Dai in 2006. It does, however, directly support and defend the activities of Dai and his organisation, including a recent article decrying his lengthy prison sentence.

Nguyen Van Dai Worked for US State Department Propaganda Front, Radio Free Asia 

A 2015 Radio Free Asia article published in Vietnamese titled, "Nguyen Van Dai was arrested before the meeting with the EU representative" (when translated), features an image of Dai with US Senator John McCain in the US Embassy in Hanoi. The article also admits (translated):

It is also recalled that Lawyer Nguyen Van Dai is a human rights lawyer who regularly defends the victims and those who are oppressed in Vietnam. He is also a blogger of the RFA Asia Free Press.

Thus, while the US and European press reported Vietnam's accusations that Dai and his collaborators were recipients of foreign funding and served as agents of foreign interests, they failed to include known information of Dai's role working on behalf of the US government.

However, as mentioned before, Radio Free Asia is funded and directed by the US State Department with the US Secretary of State serving as a board member. RFA's own article admits that Dai is a "blogger" working for RFA, and thus serving under the direction RFA's board of directors, including the US Secretary of State.

It should also be noted that McCain sits on the board of directors of the International Republican Institute, a subsidiary of the National Endowment for Democracy. It is unlikely McCain would have met with Dai in the US Embassy in Hanoi if Dai was not a recipient of US funding and an agent for US interests.

Vietnam Spends Political Capital US Granted Versus Beijing to Jail US Agitators 
The irony is that the lengthy prison terms come at a time when the US needs Vietnam the most. The US has faced growing indifference across Southeast Asia regarding its attempts to recruit the region into encircling and containing China. Vietnam has emerged as one of the few nations willing to engage with Washington in an overt gesture to check Beijing's growing influence.

Image: The US finished grandstanding after the USS Carl Vinson docked in Vietnam in a historic visit hailed as a move putting "China on notice." The political capital this granted Vietnam appears to have been immediately used to liquidate key figures in US-funded networks aimed at compromising and pressuring Vietnamese policymakers.  

However, Vietnam has done so cynically. The political capital granted to Vietnam by the US in its efforts to court Hanoi appears to have been spent to eliminate highly symbolic figures among US-funded networks aimed at compromising Vietnamese sovereignty and pressure Vietnamese policy making.

It remains to be seen how far Washington will push Hanoi regarding the jailing of US-funded agitators. Other members of US NED-funded fronts across Southeast Asia, including YSEALI alumni will likely suffer a crisis of confidence over US indifference to their jailed counterparts in Vietnam if the US fails to act. However, if the US does act, it will lose one of the last nations in the region willing to work with Washington regarding Beijing. 

Perhaps then a pan-Asian effort to finally uproot and expel permanently aspects of US and European "soft power" can begin.

Joseph Thomas is chief editor of Thailand-based geopolitical journal, The New Atlas and contributor to the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”.

The Imperative of Replacing Google and Facebook

May 11, 2017 (Tony Cartalucci - NEO) - Nations are beginning to take more seriously the control of their respective information space after years of allowing US-based tech giants Google and Facebook to monopolize and exploit them.

Vietnam, according to a recent GeekTime article, is the latest nation to begin encouraging local alternatives to the search engine and social media network in order to rebalance the monopoly over information both tech giants enjoy in the Southeast Asian country today.

Google and Facebook: More than Search Engines and Social Media

The two tech giants and others like them may have appeared at their inceptions to political, business, and military leaders around the world as merely opportunistic corporations seeking profits and expansion.

However, Google and Facebook, among others, have become clearly much more than that.

Both have verifiably worked with the US State Department in pursuit of geopolitical objectives around the world, from the collapse of the Libyan government to attempts at regime change in Syria, and using social media and information technology around the world to manipulate public perception and achieve sociopolitical goals on behalf of Wall Street and Washington for years.

The use of social media to control a targeted nation's information space, and use it as a means of carrying out sociopolitical subversion and even regime change reached its pinnacle in 2011 during the US-engineered "Arab Spring."

Portrayed at first as spontaneous demonstrations organized organically over Facebook and other social media platforms, it is now revealed in articles like the New York Times', "U.S. Groups Helped Nurture Arab Uprisings," that the US government had trained activists years ahead of the protests, with Google and Facebook participating directly in making preparations.

Opposition fronts funded and supported by the US State Department's National Endowment for Democracy (NED) and its subsidiaries Freedom House, International Republican Institute (IRI), and National Democratic Institute (NDI) were invited to several summits where executives and technical support teams from Google and Facebook provided them with the game plans they would execute in 2011 in coordination with US and European media who also attended the summits.

The end result was the virtual weaponization of social media, serving as cover for what was a long-planned, regional series of coups including heavily armed militants who eventually overthrew the governments of Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, and Yemen, with Syria now locked in 6 years of war as a result.

It was during Syria's ongoing conflict that Google would find itself involved again. The Guardian in a 2012 article titled, "Syria: is it possible to rename streets on Google Maps?," would report:

In their struggle to free Syria from the clutches of President Bashar al-Assad, anti-government activists have embarked on a project to wipe him off the map. Literally. On Google Maps, major Damascus thoroughfares named after the Assad family have appeared renamed after heroes of the uprising. The Arab Spring has form in this regard. When anti-Gadaffi rebels tore into Tripoli last August, the name of the city's main square on the mapping service changed overnight – from "Green Square", the name given to it by the erstwhile dictator, to "Martyr's Square", its former title.

The internet giant's mapping service has a history of weighing in on political disputes.

Google's monopoly in nations without local alternatives ensures that public perception is lopsidedly influenced by these deceptive methods.

The Independent in a 2016 article titled, "Google planned to help Syrian rebels bring down Assad regime, leaked Hillary Clinton emails claim," would expand on Google's activities regarding Syria:

An interactive tool created by Google was designed to encourage Syrian rebels and help bring down the Assad regime, Hillary Clinton's leaked emails have reportedly revealed. 

By tracking and mapping defections within the Syrian leadership, it was reportedly designed to encourage more people to defect and 'give confidence' to the rebel opposition.

Clearly, more is going on at Google than Internet searches.

Nations would be equally irresponsible to allow a foreign corporation to exercise control over their respective information space - especially in light of verified, documented abuses - as they would by allowing foreign corporations to exercise control over other essential aspects of national infrastructure.


Vietnam Taking Control of its Information Space 

The GeekTime article, shared by the US State Department's NDI on Twitter titled, "Is Vietnamese campaign to build a Facebook alternative fighting fake news, or fostering censorship?," claims (emphasis added):

During a parliamentary committee meeting earlier this month, Truong Minh Tuan, Minister of Information and Communications in Vietnam, said that the government is encouraging Vietnamese tech companies to build local replacements for platforms such as Facebook and Google (which are the most popular in their categories in Vietnam). 

The article also reported:

It is part of a wider campaign to “strengthen cyber security” and the integrity of the country’s information. “The plan is to try and address the problem of how ‘fake pages’ with anti-government content grew uncontrollably on Facebook,” said Tuan. “Going further, we need social networks provided by local businesses that can replace and compete with Facebook in Vietnam.”

NDI's mention of the article is meant to imply that the Vietnamese government stands to profit from the localization of search engines and social media - and it does. However, the localization of Vietnam's information space is no different than the localization of Vietnam's defense industry, energy and water infrastructure, schools, and healthcare institutions. They are the Vietnamese people's to control, not Washington, Wall Street, or Silicon Valley's.

Whether the Vietnamese government abuses that localization or not is the business of the Vietnamese people. The actual concern NDI has is that once the localization of information technology is complete in Vietnam, forever will these effective vectors of sociopolitical subversion be closed to the corporate-financier special interests driving US foreign policy and the work of fronts like NDI.

Tony Cartalucci, Bangkok-based geopolitical researcher and writer, especially for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”.  

Washington's Quiet Proxy War Against Vietnam

Image: Taken from the website of one of many US-funded "rights advocates"
in Vietnam, Dr. Cu Huy Ha Vu can be seen openly advocating US-backed
sedition in Vietnam. Vietnam, like so many other nations, has been fighting
a quiet battle to fend of US subversion for years. 

January 3, 2015 (Tony Cartalucci - NEO) - Washington's meddling across Asia has grabbed headlines recently in Hong Kong where US National Endowment for Democracy (NED) funded opposition leaders attempted to trigger a "color revolution" targeting the government of Beijing and Hong Kong's local administrators. Its spectacular failure was owed to the almost immediate exposure of the protesters as foreign-backed proxies serving foreign interests.

Additionally, political chaos has plagued Thailand amid a half-year struggle to oust Wall Street-Washington-backed dictator Thaksin Shinawatra and his subversive, well-funded proxy political front and various faux-rights advocates all extensively funded by Washington. Malaysia has likewise fought carbon-copies of US-backed opposition fronts in Hong Kong and Thailand, with its own battle against "Berish" led by Wall Street and Washington's Anwar Ibrahim.

Popular support, despite reports by the Western media, in each respective country, has been exposed as extremely small. In Thailand, for instance, even at the height of Shinawatra's bid to seize back power in 2010, his "red shirt" movement represented a paltry 7% of Thailand's 70 million citizens - a minority that has only shrunk since then. 

In Myanmar, US-British creation, Aung San Suu Kyi has also expended her credibility and illusion of popular support. Her bid to work her way into Myanmar's political order has left even her own supporters disillusioned - not mentioning her support of Myanmar's brutal and infinitely racist, "saffron monks" who regularly lead machete wielding mobs amid riots of mass murder against Rohingya refugees.

However, US meddling is not limited to these countries. Indeed, the familiar template of "pro-democracy" fronts backed by NED and the Western media can be seen manifesting itself, if to a lesser degree, across the under-reported political landscape of Vietnam.

In a rare episode, US meddling has broken the surface recently with complaints across NED's network of faux human rights advocates and the Western media over the arrest of Nguyen Dinh Ngoc, described by the Associated Press in their article, "Nguyen Dinh Ngoc, Blogger, Detained In Vietnam," only as a "blogger." AP would report: 

Blogger Nguyen Dinh Ngoc, 48, was taken into custody and his house was searched in the southern commercial hub of Ho Chi Minh City on Saturday. The Ministry of Public Security said in a statement that police were investigating and will deal with Ngoc in accordance with the law, but did not elaborate.

Over the past month, police in Ho Chi Minh City detained two other bloggers for alleged anti-government postings.

Anti-government postings alone are certainly no reason to lock up a "blogger." However, NED would reveal in its own hand-wringing over the detainment of various "bloggers" in Vietnam that many are recipients of NED funding and support - meaning they are not simply critics of the Vietnamese government, but rather foreign-backed agents of sedition making their subsequent detainment justified. 

In 2013, NED would also decry the detainment of "bloggers" in Vietnam. In a post titled, "Democracy blogger arrested in Vietnam," NED would claim: 

In a letter to the Prime Minister of Vietnam, the National Endowment for Democracy has expressed its deep concern over the Dec. 27 arrest of prominent human rights lawyer and blogger Lê Quốc Quân in Vietnam.  

Quân, who was a Reagan-Fascell Democracy Fellow (2006-2007) at NED in Washington, DC, has written extensively on human rights abuses in Vietnam and has been detained by authorities multiple times on account of his pro-democracy views.

NED shamelessly admits the arrested blogger was working on their behalf and with their extensive support. NED is behind nearly every "human rights" advocate in Vietnam opposing the government - with many reporting diligently on NED's activities in the country - though never posting publicly their financial and political ties to Washington. For example, "Vietnam Human Rights Defenders" who recently condemned the above reported detainment of Nguyen Dinh Ngoc, regularly praises and reports on NED and USAID programs, but nowhere in its "about us" section does it disclose any of its funding, let alone its ties to NED and USAID itself. There is, however, an extensive "links" list leading off to NED and every other imaginable rights advocacy front created by Wall Street and Washington behind which their agenda is peddled.  

In one article, it praises Dr. Cu Huy Ha Vu, a literal "fellow" at the National Endowment for Democracy.  In an article by "Vietnam Human Rights Defenders," Vu is reported to claim pressure from the US is essential for the "peaceful democratization of Vietnam." Pressure, no doubt, including armies of NED-funded bloggers, opposition fronts, and street demonstrations as seen in Thailand, Malaysia, and more recently in Hong Kong. 

US Meddling in Vietnam Amid Greater Regional Bid for Hegemony 
NED's official page describing its support for groups in Vietnam is particularly ambiguous - a pattern seen when NED refuses to admit association with any particular nation's most prominent trouble-makers - as seen in Hong Kong recently. Under a subheading titled, "Human Rights," NED states: 

To build the expertise and skills of Vietnamese civil society organizations and activists in their efforts to support and defend human rights. The project will train lawyers and other activists on human rights advocacy, project management, and community organizing as well as link them to their counterparts in other ASEAN countries in an effort to strengthen an emerging grassroots civil society movement in Vietnam.

Linking them with their "counterparts in other ASEAN countries" indeed - because NED's bid to overturn the political order in Vietnam is linked directly to Wall Street and Washington's bid to turn all of Southeast Asia into a unified proxy front to wield against China. Identical campaigns of political subversion in Thailand, Malaysia, and Myanmar to install into power Thaksin Shinawatra, Anwar Ibrahim, and Aung San Suu Kyi respectively, would yield a regional bloc led by a collection of client states and puppet dictators propped up by and in the service of the West. 

With corporate-financier hegemony ensured via economic "free  trade" agreements like the unpalatable ASEAN Economic Community (AEC) and the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), China would not only be politically isolated from Southeast Asia, but economically as well. As with NATO in Europe, the US plans to create an ASEAN military alliance it itself leads, meaning in addition to political and economic isolation, Beijing will be militarily encircled as well. 

Meddling in Vietnam Part of Washington's Long-War Against China 

As early as the Vietnam War, with the so-called "Pentagon Papers" released in 1969, it was revealed that the conflict was simply one part of a greater strategy aimed at containing and controlling China.

Three important quotes from these papers reveal this strategy. It states first that:

“...the February decision to bomb North Vietnam and the July approval of Phase I deployments make sense only if they are in support of a long-run United States policy to contain China.”

It also claims:

“China—like Germany in 1917, like Germany in the West and Japan in the East in the late 30′s, and like the USSR in 1947—looms as a major power threatening to undercut our importance and effectiveness in the world and, more remotely but more menacingly, to organize all of Asia against us.” 

Finally, it outlines the immense regional theater the US was engaged in against China at the time by stating: 

“there are three fronts to a long-run effort to contain China (realizing that the USSR “contains” China on the north and northwest): (a) the Japan-Korea front; (b) the India-Pakistan front; and (c) the Southeast Asia front.” 

While the US would ultimately lose the Vietnam War and any chance of using the Vietnamese as a proxy force against Beijing, the long war against Beijing would continue elsewhere.

This containment strategy would be updated and detailed in the 2006 Strategic Studies Institute report “String of Pearls: Meeting the Challenge of China’s Rising Power across the Asian Littoral”where it outlines China’s efforts to secure its oil lifeline from the Middle East to its shores in the South China Sea as well as means by which the US can maintain American hegemony throughout the Indian and Pacific Ocean. The premise is that, should Western foreign policy fail to entice China into participating in Wall Street and London's “international system” as responsible stakeholders, an increasingly confrontational posture must be taken to contain the rising nation.

This proxy war has manifested itself in the form of the so-called "Arab Spring" where Chinese interests have suffered in nations like Libya that have been reduced to chaos by US-backed subversion and even direct military intervention. Sudan also serves as a proxy battleground where the West is using chaos to push Chinese interests off the continent of Africa. 

With continued US meddling in Vietnam more recently, it can be seen that America's strategy of encirclement and containment is still very much in play. Vietnam has once again, if even only subtly, become a proxy battleground between Washington and Beijing.

The Vietnamese, historically fiercely independent, may attempt to balance themselves between Beijing's regional rise and Washington's plans for a united ASEAN front against that rise. And while the US openly admits it is trying to link its various subversive fronts together across ASEAN, the Vietnamese government and its counterparts in Malaysia, Thailand, and Myanmar would be wise to link their efforts to confound this hegemonic endeavor.

Tony Cartalucci, Bangkok-based geopolitical researcher and writer, especially for the online magazine“New Eastern Outlook”.

ASEAN Economic Community - Why, For What, and By Whom?

November 26, 2014 (Tony Cartalucci - NEO) - On TV, upon the magazine rack, in schools, and on billboards around the country, the coming ASEAN Economic Community (AEC) is being heralded everywhere across Southeast Asia. 

Upon ASEAN's official website, the AEC is described as: 

The ASEAN Economic Community (AEC) shall be the goal of regional economic integration by 2015. AEC envisages the following key characteristics: (a) a single market and production base, (b) a highly competitive economic region, (c) a region of equitable economic development, and (d) a region fully integrated into the global economy.

The AEC is an unquestionable inevitability - and more alarmingly - an inevitability absolutely none of the many hundreds of millions of Southeast Asian citizens have asked for, voted for, or have any direct say in regards to. So inevitable is AEC's unfurling in 2015, that few have even bothered to ask "why?" "for what?" and "by whom?"

A Cheap EU Knock-Off Destined for Catastrophic Failure  

If AEC's premise as described by ASEAN itself sounds suspiciously similar to the European Union (EU), that's because it is. It is not only driven by the same immense global spanning corporate-financier special interests that consolidated Europe's economies, currencies, and institutions, but for the very same goal of collectively looting the region if and when it is successfully consolidated.

The EU now writhes in debt, endless proxy wars fought on behalf of Wall Street and London, and socioeconomic strife caused by EU regulations forced upon various populations against their will. While it was always difficult for citizens of respective European nations to have their voice truly represented within the halls of their own respective national governments, it is more difficult still for the EU's ruling elite assembled in Brussels to be held accountable and made to actually work for the  European people. 


Instead, the EU serves the immense corporate-financier interests that cobbled this supranational consolidation together in the first place. The European people were not allowed to vote on entering into the EU, and those that did repeatedly voted against it until threats, economic extortion, and propaganda finally succeeded in overcoming resistance. In Southeast Asia, nothing of the sort has even been proposed, and most Southeast Asians are oblivious to what ASEAN and the AEC even represent. Like the International Monetary Fund's (IMF) incursion into Asia during the late 1990's, it won't be until catastrophic failure has already swallowed the whole of Southeast Asia that people begin to realize what has been foisted upon them. 

Already, many across Southeast Asia are being effected by bilateral free-trade agreements (FTAs) that allow local markets to be flooded by cheap foreign goods. Socioeconomic disparity, even across Southeast Asia and greater Asia itself can devastate communities and industries already just barely making do. Special interests driven to ink FTAs generally make no provisions to prepare local markets about to be devastated, and no provisions after FTAs take demonstrable tolls. FTAs inked by ousted Thai Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra with China, for example, devastated Thai farmers when cheaper Chinese produce flooded Thai markets. Some farmers including those who grew garlic, were driven almost entirely out of business.

The AEC will multiply this by creating similar conditions across all industries and between all of ASEAN's members. Additionally, the AEC then seeks to integrate ASEAN into the greater "global economy," or in other words, FTAs with the US and EU. Industries just emerging in each respective ASEAN member state will be utterly crushed, bought out, or overrun by foreign corporate-financier monopolies. For local tycoons laboring under the delusions that somehow there is a place around the "global elite's" table for them, the current state of the EU should serve as a cautionary reminder that indeed, no there is not. 

Why, For What, and By Whom? 

In addition to buying out and monopolizing all that resides within Southeast Asia, Wall Street and London desire to use Southeast Asia as a bulwark against China's rising power. These special interests may have even used the rise of China as a means to extort cooperation from respective ASEAN member states in the creation of the AEC.

Again, those ruling political orders across Southeast Asia need only look at NATO and how each member within that alleged "alliance" is strong-armed into one undesirable, highly destructive, and costly conflict after another - not only in direct opposition of each respective NATO member's own population, but in opposition of international law and norms. 

An ASEAN AEC fleeced by the West and driven as a proxy into the maw of neighboring China would cost everyone - from the general population to the ruling elite of each of ASEAN's respective member states - just as is seen across the EU. 

The dream of consolidating and exploiting Southeast Asia as a single geopolitical bloc against China is a long documented conspiracy the United States and its partners in the United Kingdom have worked on for decades. 

As early as the Vietnam War, with the so-called "Pentagon Papers" released in 1969, it was revealed that the conflict was simply one part of a greater strategy aimed at containing and controlling China.

Among many important quotes, is one that outlines the immense regional theater the US was engaged in against China at the time, stating: 

“there are three fronts to a long-run effort to contain China (realizing that the USSR “contains” China on the north and northwest): (a) the Japan-Korea front; (b) the India-Pakistan front; and (c) the Southeast Asia front.” 

While the US would ultimately lose the Vietnam War and any chance of using the Vietnamese as a proxy force against Beijing, the long war against Beijing would continue elsewhere. The use of Southeast Asia as a consolidated front against China would continue on up to and including until today.

This containment strategy would be updated and detailed in the 2006 Strategic Studies Institute report “String of Pearls: Meeting the Challenge of China’s Rising Power across the Asian Littoral”where it outlines China’s efforts to secure its oil lifeline from the Middle East to its shores in the South China Sea as well as means by which the US can maintain American hegemony throughout the Indian and Pacific Ocean. The premise is that, should Western foreign policy fail to entice China into participating in Wall Street and London's “international system” as responsible stakeholders, an increasingly confrontational posture must be taken to contain the rising nation. The use of nations in Southeast Asia to check China's regional power plays chief among this posture. 

Other US policymakers have articulated the use of Southeast Asia as a proxy against China in more direct terms. Neo-Conservative, pro-war policymaker Robert Kagan in his 1997 piece titled "What China Knows That We Don't: The Case for a New Strategy of Containment," noted: 

Chinese leaders worry that they will "play Gulliver to Southeast Asia's Lilliputians, with the United States supplying the rope and stakes.

Kagan would later serve as an adviser to US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton who would herself declare a campaign to do just that - supply Southeast Asia with "rope and stakes." Called the "pivot to Asia," Clinton would make a hegemonic declaration in Foreign Policy magazine titled, "America's Pacific Century," stating that: 

...the United States has moved to fully engage the region's multilateral institutions, such as the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) and the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum, mindful that our work with regional institutions supplements and does not supplant our bilateral ties. There is a demand from the region that America play an active role in the agenda-setting of these institutions -- and it is in our interests as well that they be effective and responsive.

Clinton's reference to America playing "an active role in the agenda-setting of these institutions," referring to ASEAN and APEC, and the rest of her very lengthy editorial reflect a nearly verbatim update of Kagan's 1997 piece - if only stated a bit more diplomatically than Kagan's very straight forward "containment of China" proposal. One must wonder how anyone could learn of America's desire to set the agenda of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, and not immediately identify overt aspirations of extraterritorial neo-imperialism.  

As part of this desire to set the agenda for Southeast Asia, the US has worked hard through its various NGOs to manipulate, influence, and outright overthrow the political orders in place across the region in order to install compliant regimes that reflect America's goal of consolidating and commandeering theses nations both to wholesale loot them economically, and in pursuit of its containment strategy versus China. 

There's a Reason the AEC is not up for Debate 

Clearly, if the AEC's implementation is merely the consolidation and exploitation of the peoples and resources of Southeast Asia, the process of its implementation will neither be up for debate, nor put to a vote. While the United States and the many overly optimistic proponents of the AEC ceaselessly harp upon the tenants of "democracy" and "human rights," these most basic concepts have been utterly absent in the creation of this new supranational bloc.  

The people of Southeast Asia did not ask for ASEAN nor the AEC. Much of what both represent are in fact openly opposed by many grassroots movements across the region - not to mention by many around the world. There is a reason the AEC is not up for debate and an endless torrent of full spectrum propaganda is undulating the media in efforts to market the AEC to the general public - no one would buy it otherwise. 

In a democratic society, the people are to vote and in return are to be represented by those they voted for. These representatives are to take the needs and desires of the people and turn them into local, national, and international policy. Instead, the AEC represents a conspiracy cobbled together by special interests and then dishonestly marketed toward the general public to accept. In other words, it represents democracy in reverse - it is the supposed representatives telling the people what they "want" rather than the people telling their representatives what to do. Democracy in reverse could also be defined as "dictatorship" - and in that regard, ASEAN and its AEC would not be a national dictatorship, but rather a supranational one magnifying the abuses and ramifications of such abuses accordingly.   

For this reason, whether one is a conservative nationalist or a liberal democrat, the idea of an AEC forced upon the people without their input, consent, or even expressed desire for such a system should be appalling and surely protested against. However, many must already know that such protests would be futile. But this futility itself only further exposes the unwarranted influence and power that truly drives the AEC's undemocratic and intolerable implementation.

Instead, it will be up to groups within each respective ASEAN member, and up to each community within to expose, boycott, and replace with local alternatives both the national and multinational special interests involved. While such a campaign will be difficult, the only other choice is to do nothing and suffer the same indignation, socioeconomic decay, and perpetual war the EU now suffers. The people of Southeast Asia have many advantages including the advantage of time on their side to mitigate a repeat of the EU's slow-motion collapse - but it is only an advantage if people begin acting now. 

Tony Cartalucci, Bangkok-based geopolitical researcher and writer, especially for the online magazine“New Eastern Outlook”.