The president of the United States, Joe Biden, continued this Sunday in Hanoi, capital of Vietnam, his round of Asian courtship to forge alliances with a view to neutralizing the influence of his great rival, China, in the Indo-Pacific region. In an appearance before the press, Biden defended, however, that it is not about starting “a new cold war”, but about maintaining “stability”.
He ended up in Vietnam after attending the G-20 meeting in New Delhi, which resulted in a strengthening of the idea of the global South in the geostrategic order, and with a common declaration that calls for respect for territorial integrity, but without reach the explicit condemnation of Russia. “That’s what this trip is about, India cooperating much more with us, and Vietnam being closer to the United States. “It is not about containing China, but about having a stable base in the Indo-Pacific,” Biden said in Hanoi.
The objective of the visit to Vietnam, and the meeting with its Secretary General, Nguyen Phu Trong, was to signal the progress in diplomatic relations between both countries until they reached their maximum status, “comprehensive strategic partners.” The strengthening of ties also implies an increase in economic cooperation, with special attention to the West’s dependence on Asian semiconductors, a global imbalance that was highlighted by the pandemic. “It’s not going to be easy for Vietnam,” a senior White House official conceded in a call with reporters before the trip, in which he spoke on condition of anonymity. “They are under enormous pressure from China. “We are aware of what is at stake.”
The gesture ends a 28-year diplomatic journey. In 1995, the relationship between both countries was considered normalized, after the war that confronted them until the dishonorable American withdrawal in 1973, with a visit by the then president, Bill Clinton. A report from The New York Times on Saturday, however, clouded the atmosphere of the reception. It reported on the secret plans of Vietnam, which has benefited in part from the tension between Washington and Beijing, which has positioned it as an alternative source of supplies for American markets, to buy weapons from Russia, despite the fact that this would contravene sanctions. imposed by Washington on Moscow after its illegal invasion of Ukraine. On Monday, Biden plans to announce measures to help Vietnam shake off its overreliance on Russian weapons, according to a senior administration official quoted by CNN.
Gesture round
Despite the president’s justifications before the press in Hanoi, on a day that he defined as “historic,” it is difficult not to interpret Washington’s gestures and strategy in recent months as part of a plan designed to contain Beijing. First, Biden welcomed Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos to the White House for the first time in more than a decade. Later, he opened the halls to the Indian Prime Minister, Narendra Modi, whom he entertained with a state dinner, an honor reserved for very few visiting leaders in Washington. And finally, he held a summit at his Camp David retreat, a place of enormous resonance in the military and strategic history of the United States, with the Prime Minister of Japan, Fumio Kishida, and the President of South Korea, Yoon Suk Yeol to open “a new era of trilateral cooperation.”
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In Hanoi, Biden said that he had met with Chinese Prime Minister Li Qiang on Saturday during the G20, an appointment that President Xi Jinping preferred to skip, in what has been interpreted as another symptom of the tense relations between Beijing and Washington with the backdrop of the war in Ukraine and the harmony with the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, and the rearmament of the alliance of the group of emerging economies known as BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India and China), which is preparing its expansion of five to 11 members.
Biden and Xi have not spoken for 10 months. So the US president’s meeting with Li counted as the highest-level exchange between the two powers since last year’s G-20 in Indonesia. “We talk about stability. … It was not a confrontation at all,” Biden summarized.
The press conference brought with it another scene to feed the many who consider Biden’s age, 80, an obstacle in his plans to run for re-election. The meeting began with the president saying that he had “traveled around the world in five days,” a week during which problems were growing at home, in the form of unfavorable electoral polls and low popularity records. And it almost ended when, apparently accusing of jet lag, he tried to end his late-afternoon appearance by saying, “I don’t know about you, but I’m going to bed.”
The press managed to squeeze out another minute, until Biden, who tried to appear dynamic in his staging, going back and forth with the microphone in his hand, like a television presenter, ended up leaving the room while a journalist told him. shouted a question for him to react to the news, released Wednesday, that special prosecutor David Weiss intends to ask the grand jury to indict Hunter Biden, his son. He is another of the president’s headaches: he is investigated for tax crimes and for lying when he assured that he was clean of drugs when buying a gun.
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