Bonding with Vietnam is mutually beneficial

Agreements signed during Vietnamese Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung’s visit to India last week will take India-Vietnam relations to a new level.

 India has agreed to transfer four naval patrol vessels to Vietnam and has extended a $100-million line of credit to facilitate its defence procurements. Besides, it has signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) that provides for joint exploration by ONGC Videsh Ltd and Petro Vietnam of two oil blocks in the South China Sea.  India supported Vietnam through its troubled decades and backed it in its struggles against the French and the Americans and later in its wars with Cambodia and China.  

The Vietnamese prime minister’s visit builds on this historical content. Enhanced co-operation with Vietnam energises further the Narendra Modi government’s outreach to Asia. India’s defence and energy co-operation with Vietnam has drawn China’s ire. It has warned India against oil exploration in disputed waters.

 Beijing’s objections lie in anxieties that New Delhi is supporting and strengthening Vietnam’s claims in the South China Sea and building its capacity to defend these claims. China’s objections are misplaced. Since 2011, India has downsized the number of blocks it is exploring in the South China Sea and the two blocks over which an agreement was signed recently are in Vietnam’s waters. Besides, the military hardware India is selling to Vietnam is not offensive. The patrol boats will enhance Vietnam’s monitoring of its waters and not threaten China in any way.

India’s outreach to Asia, especially its expanding relations with Vietnam and Japan, has been interpreted in terms of an emerging Asian coalition against a rising China.  Such discourse has gained currency in the context of China’s aggressive assertion of its territorial claims vis-à-vis its neighbours. China must understand that it is its escalation of conflicts that is prompting its neighbours to seek security in partnerships with each other. But relations need not be a zero-sum game; Vietnam should not have to choose between India and China, just as India wants to have a mutually beneficial relationship with Vietnam and China.

 China’s rise need not trigger unease if it treats its neighbours as partners that could benefit from its rise.  Rather than issuing warnings to India over its growing engagement with Vietnam and Japan, China would do well to engage in some introspection. It could strengthen an Asian co-operative security structure instead of fuelling the old balance of power game.