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WASHINGTON: The United States is stepping up military ties with
Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia as part of a deepening relationship with
Southeast Asia amid competition for influence from China, officials
said.
The United States and Laos, they said, plan to
exchange military attaches by the end of the year as part of the
strategy aimed at beefing up defense links with the trio in the
heart of a once central Cold War battleground.
Three years after resuming full military ties
with Indonesia soured by human rights concerns, “we are beginning
to develop those same kind of ties with Vietnam, Laos and
Cambodia,” Deputy US Assistant Secretary of State Scot Marciel
said.
“We are starting off small—doing some
training, some exchanges which we think are very useful,” he said.
“And by the end of this year, we and the Lao
government will open defense attaché offices in each other’s
capitals, which is a big step, an important step,” Marciel, the US
ambassador to the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean),
said at a Washington forum last week.
Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia were latecomers to
Asean together with Myanmar.
The other Asean states are Brunei, Indonesia,
Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore and Thailand.
US officials rejected any notion that the move
to build military ties with Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos was to check
China’s rising influence in Southeast Asia, saying it was part of
broadening the overall relationship.
“It doesn’t really signify more than
that,” said a senior State Department official, who refused to be
named.
China is rapidly building up its military and
could challenge traditional US naval dominance in the region,
experts say, citing among other examples, Beijing’s setting up of
a new underground nuclear submarine base on the southern tip of
Hainan Island, close to vital sea lanes in Southeast Asia.
Unlike many other Southeast Asian states which
have substantial military ties with the United States, “We
haven’t had that so much with Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia because
of the history,” the State department official said, referring to
the Vietnam War.
As the conflict escalated between the United
States and Vietnam, neighbors Laos and Cambodia became increasingly
involved in the war.
The Ho Chi Minh Trail—a supply route from
North to South Vietnam that the United States wanted to cut—passed
through both countries.
US officials said they were looking at expanding
an international military education and training program in Vietnam,
now confined largely to ship visits and a modest English language
teaching project for Vietnamese military officers.
The former battlefield enemies exchanged defense
military attaches in the mid 1990’s after Hanoi cooperated in
accounting for missing Americans from the Vietnam War.
US defense ties in Laos also centered on the
recovery of soldiers missing.
“It is a fact that China is growing
economically and playing a more active role in much of the world,
certainly including in Southeast Asia, but we don’t see this as a
zero sum game,” Marciel said.
-- AFP
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