A Vietnamese military band yesterday performed a rousing Star Spangled Banner as US Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter arrived for talks at the Ministry of Defense in Hanoi.
Once inconceivable, such displays between the wartime adversaries are increasingly common as Vietnam frets over China.
Carter and his counterpart, Vietnamese Minister of Defense Phung Quang Thanh, later signed a “joint vision statement” pledging to expand defense trade — including possible coproduction — and collaborate on maritime security.
Photo: Reuters
“We are both committed to deepening our defense relationship,” Carter said. “We had a very in-depth discussion that extended well over an hour-and-a-half because there is so much we are doing together.”
Carter’s Vietnam stop, midway through a 10-day Asian swing, was a signal to China that its South China Sea island-building campaign is alienating its neighbors. However, the first visit to Hanoi by a US defense secretary since 2012 was also a reminder of the limits of the burgeoning US-Vietnam relationship.
The new vision statement, which builds on an accord from 2011, is not legally binding. New US arms sales have been slow to develop since the administration of US President Barack Obama last fall partially lifted a long-standing ban on military sales to Vietnam. Hanoi has reportedly been baffled by Pentagon procedures.
In Washington, expanded arms sales are opposed by Human Rights Watch, which said Vietnam’s rights record “remains weak in all key areas.”
Some older members of the Vietnamese politburo, who recall the US as the enemy, are skeptical of a complete turnabout, and while Vietnam is wary of Chinese domination, China remains its top trading partner and an important source of capital.
“This is a piece of complex systems engineering,” said Dean Cheng (成斌), an Asian affairs specialist at the Heritage Foundation in Washington. “There are many, many moving parts, not just China and the US. The whole area is very much in flux.”
With 42 percent of Vietnamese no more than 24 years old, wartime memories are overshadowed by contemporary worries about China.
Still, Vietnam’s US$90 billion in two-way trade with China is more than double its annual cross-border commerce with the US, and more than 10 percent of foreign investment in Vietnam comes from Chinese companies.
Super Typhoon Kong-rey is the largest cyclone to impact Taiwan in 27 years, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said today. Kong-rey’s radius of maximum wind (RMW) — the distance between the center of a cyclone and its band of strongest winds — has expanded to 320km, CWA forecaster Chang Chun-yao (張竣堯) said. The last time a typhoon of comparable strength with an RMW larger than 300km made landfall in Taiwan was Typhoon Herb in 1996, he said. Herb made landfall between Keelung and Suao (蘇澳) in Yilan County with an RMW of 350km, Chang said. The weather station in Alishan (阿里山) recorded 1.09m of
NO WORK, CLASS: President William Lai urged people in the eastern, southern and northern parts of the country to be on alert, with Typhoon Kong-rey approaching Typhoon Kong-rey is expected to make landfall on Taiwan’s east coast today, with work and classes canceled nationwide. Packing gusts of nearly 300kph, the storm yesterday intensified into a typhoon and was expected to gain even more strength before hitting Taitung County, the US Navy’s Joint Typhoon Warning Center said. The storm is forecast to cross Taiwan’s south, enter the Taiwan Strait and head toward China, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. The CWA labeled the storm a “strong typhoon,” the most powerful on its scale. Up to 1.2m of rainfall was expected in mountainous areas of eastern Taiwan and destructive winds are likely
The Central Weather Administration (CWA) yesterday at 5:30pm issued a sea warning for Typhoon Kong-rey as the storm drew closer to the east coast. As of 8pm yesterday, the storm was 670km southeast of Oluanpi (鵝鑾鼻) and traveling northwest at 12kph to 16kph. It was packing maximum sustained winds of 162kph and gusts of up to 198kph, the CWA said. A land warning might be issued this morning for the storm, which is expected to have the strongest impact on Taiwan from tonight to early Friday morning, the agency said. Orchid Island (Lanyu, 蘭嶼) and Green Island (綠島) canceled classes and work
KONG-REY: A woman was killed in a vehicle hit by a tree, while 205 people were injured as the storm moved across the nation and entered the Taiwan Strait Typhoon Kong-rey slammed into Taiwan yesterday as one of the biggest storms to hit the nation in decades, whipping up 10m waves, triggering floods and claiming at least one life. Kong-rey made landfall in Taitung County’s Chenggong Township (成功) at 1:40pm, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. The typhoon — the first in Taiwan’s history to make landfall after mid-October — was moving north-northwest at 21kph when it hit land, CWA data showed. The fast-moving storm was packing maximum sustained winds of 184kph, with gusts of up to 227kph, CWA data showed. It was the same strength as Typhoon Gaemi, which was the most
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