No strategic dialogue partner, but thinking very strategically

27 August 2021

One of the key deliverables in Vice President Kamala Harris’ visit to Vietnam was the quiet announcement that the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) will be opening a new Southeast Asia Regional Office headquartered in Vietnam.

The new CDC office will be one of four regional offices spread around the world. They will collaborate with host and regional governments, and conduct research and training to respond to and prevent public health crises. As the CDC Director, Rachel Walensky put it: "The new office in Hanoi will be essential for global health security and help countries strengthen public health fundamentals throughout the region. It will be the hub for understanding the unique health challenges in Southeast Asia, and in doing so will undoubtedly save many, many lives”. There is not a country that is more important and deserving of this new outreach than Vietnam. Let me lay out five reasons.

Poised for partnership

First, Vietnam has extremely good public health systems in place. Though just a middle-income country, it has made considerable investments in public health and is now making improvements to its medical system. Vietnam has a long history of professionally and proficiently dealing with SARS-type diseases and avian influenzas. The country is in the middle of a COVID-19 outbreak; complacent with success in 2020 in containing the virus, Hanoi was slow to secure vaccines, and the Delta variant is highly transmissible. But don’t let that fool you; by global standards, Vietnam is still doing very well with under 400,000 cases and under 10,000 deaths between February 2019 and August 2021, in a country that borders China, and has considerable cross-border trade.

The US has long seen Vietnam as a key diplomatic partner in the region, it should equally look upon Vietnam as a key partner in public health.

Second, Vietnam’s 2020 decision to develop four separate indigenous vaccines may be a mistake. Indeed, the country had so few cases at the time that Phase III clinical trials were not as effective. While the leaders in Hanoi were very keen to use the pandemic to jumpstart Vietnam’s biopharmaceutical industry, it missed a huge opportunity to license western mRNA technology and serve as a regional manufacturing hub especially when its economy was fully open. They have since done exactly that. In August 2021, Arcturus Therapeutics Holdings announced an agreement with Vinbiocare Biotechnology, which is part of the country’s largest conglomerate Vingroup, to establish a manufacturing facility for an mRNA vaccine.

Built on a very strong medical/biological/public health education and research system, Vietnam’s pharmaceutical industry is poised for growth. Other international firms are likely to follow. This is in stark contrast to Thailand, for example, where AstraZeneca had to partner with a firm that had no experience in vaccine production, but which happened to be owned by an unpopular king. That firm failed from the start in producing at the rates it promised, slowing down vaccine distribution to Thailand and the region.

Third, Vietnam is strategically located for research into avian influenzas, SARSs-COVID viruses, and other zoonotic diseases that can jump from animals to people. Because of its geography and climate, Vietnam shares many of the COVID viruses and avian influenzas found in southwestern China. Indeed, several wild animals are actively bred for consumption in southwestern China along Vietnam’s border. Vietnam is poised to be a key regional partner in zoonotic virus monitoring and vaccine development.

The reality is that the US government's continued insinuations of a lab leak theory, whether supported by intelligence or not, has severely impacted future cooperation with China’s Wuhan Institute of Virology. Damage has been done, trust has been lost, and it is unlikely to be repaired anytime soon because of the hardening of diplomatic positions in both Beijing and Washington. Vietnam can fill this hole.

This brings us to the fourth reason. The United States and Vietnam are deepening their bilateral relationship. Though some had hoped that the Vice President’s trip would elevate ties to a “Strategic Partnership”, measures like establishing the CDC’s regional centre are more important. While economic and commercial ties are growing quickly, there are still irritants such as concerns over Vietnamese currency manipulation (though the two sides have reached an agreement).

The reality is that the United States is unlikely to re-enter the Transpacific Partnership or negotiate a bilateral trade agreement with Vietnam any time soon. Biden does not have the political capital to do so, which leaves no economic architecture as the foundation for the bilateral relationship. Nor can the relationship be focused on security alone. Vietnam has to bend over backwards to convince Beijing that its relations with the United States are not an alliance or directed against China. There will always be limits to how far the security relationship can develop, largely due to Hanoi’s own 4 Nos policy.

This is exactly why the two sides can broaden their definition of security to include public health. Indeed, nothing has impacted national security, force readiness, and prosperity more than the COVID-19 pandemic. Both sides would not only benefit from but also find it politically more acceptable to treat public health as a national security priority. It would not elicit the same degree of fear in Beijing, and subsequent pressure on Hanoi.

Finally, this is also a way to cooperate with Vietnam as equal partners. Yes, the CDC has enormous capabilities and resources at its disposal. But the Vietnamese, despite having far fewer resources, have great expertise in researching, monitoring, and dealing with pandemics. The US has every bit as much to learn from their Vietnamese counterparts, which is often easier done amongst the scientific community.

Leveraging Hanoi’s influence

The Regional Center will play a key role in training public health workforces, expanding regional public health laboratory training, creating a regional network of public health Emergency Operation Centers, and strengthening the early warning systems for zoonotic and other emerging infectious diseases. The US has long seen Vietnam as a key diplomatic partner in the region, it should equally look upon Vietnam as a key partner in public health.

More importantly, after the regional centre is established, Vietnam should take the lead in setting up local monitoring and other scientific and educational exchanges with their Lao and Cambodian counterparts. Here they have considerably more sway and interest than the United States.

Thinking Strategically

Vice President Harris announced the immediate delivery of 1 million more mRNA vaccine doses from the United States, in addition to the five million already donated. More is likely forthcoming. Likewise, the Department of Defense announced that it was transferring 77 ultra-low temperature vaccine freezers “to assist vaccination distribution efforts in all 63 provinces”. These are all critically important for dealing with the current crises.

But to take the bilateral relationship into the future, Hanoi and Washington need to think about future threats and shared interests. The CDC’s Regional Center in Vietnam is a great foundation for that. Though the bilateral relationship was not elevated to a Strategic Dialogue Partnership, this was thinking strategically.

DISCLAIMER: All views expressed are those of the writer and do not necessarily represent that of the 9DASHLINE.com platform.

Author biography

Zachary Abuza is a professor at the National War College in Washington and an adjunct at Georgetown University. The views expressed here are his own and do not reflect the position of the US Department of Defense or the National War College. Image credit: Flickr/US Department of State.