They’ve been in talks with the US about purchasing arms (not just from the US but also from India or SK) since Dec ‘22. The last article about it was in Sept.
AFAIK, the veterans thing isn’t an official state visit to normalize relations. A bunch of vets just decided to visit and the Smithsonian magazine did an article on it.
Regarding the allies thing, US import from Vietnam has grown very rapidly (by around 20B/yr) since 2018, according to trading economics. It was 20% of the US’s imports from China in 2022, despite its gdp being 2% of China’s in the same year.
Currently the Vietnamese economy is very dependent on the US, SK, and Japan.
They’ve been in talks with the US about purchasing arms (not just from the US but also from India or SK) since Dec ‘22. The last article about it was in Sept.
AFAIK, the veterans thing isn’t an official state visit to normalize relations. A bunch of vets just decided to visit and the Smithsonian magazine did an article on it.
Regarding the allies thing, US import from Vietnam has grown very rapidly (by around 20B/yr) since 2018, according to trading economics. It was 20% of the US’s imports from China in 2022, despite its gdp being 2% of China’s in the same year.
Currently the Vietnamese economy is very dependent on the US, SK, and Japan.
Is Vietnam following China’s strategy?
Honestly, it’s too early to tell. Also, I’m not familiar with Vietnam beyond statistics, so I can’t extract anything from qualitative data either.