Like Germany and Japan…..
Countries America got in wars with?
Those countries emerge as economic powerhouses ….
Viet Nam is joining them….
President Biden is making it so….
And planting seeds in Asia against China in the process…
President Biden cemented a new strategic relationship with Vietnam on Sunday, bringing two historical foes closer than they have ever been and putting the ghosts of the past behind them out of shared worry over China’s mounting ambitions in the region.
During a landmark visit to Hanoi by the American president, Vietnam’s Communist Party leadership formally raised the country’s ties to the United States to the highest level in Hanoi’s diplomatic hierarchy, equivalent to those it has with Russia and China. Mr. Biden said the breakthrough was “the beginning of even a greater era of cooperation” a half-century after American troops withdrew.
“Today, we can trace a 50-year arc of progress in the relationship between our nations, from conflict to normalization,” Mr. Biden said at a news conference after a meeting with Nguyen Phu Trong, the general secretary of the Communist Party of Vietnam. “This is a new elevated status that will be a force for prosperity and security in one of the most consequential regions in the world.”
While neither he nor Mr. Trong directly cited China in their public remarks, it was an important subtext for the move as Mr. Biden works to establish a network of partnerships in the region to counter aggressive action by Beijing. In recent months, he has expanded cooperation with Australia, India and the Philippines and brought the leaders of Japan and South Korea together at Camp David to seal a three-way alliance that has eluded Washington in the past….
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While neither he nor Mr. Trong directly cited China in their public remarks, it was an important subtext for the move as Mr. Biden works to establish a network of partnerships in the region to counter aggressive action by Beijing. In recent months, he has expanded cooperation with Australia, India and the Philippines and brought the leaders of Japan and South Korea together at Camp David to seal a three-way alliance that has eluded Washington in the past.
image…President Biden and Nguyen Phu Trong, the general secretary of the Communist Party of Vietnam, in Hanoi, Vietnam, on Sunday.Credit…Kenny Holston/The New York Times