Vietnam and Global Changes 1986–93

Abstract

As revealed by examination of Vietnamese diplomatic parlance at the United Nations, in the Non-Aligned Movement and, to some extent, in regional diplomacy with the ASEAN countries, there was a widening gap between pragmatic foreign-policy rhetoric and the formalism that dominated the political programs of the Communist Party and the discussion engaged in by the Party cadres. Obviously, this was due to the dramatic change in Vietnam’s international status from the forerunner of the anti-imperialist struggle to a regional power, which had to adjust its interests to those of the other countries in the region. Although the diplomacy had to respond without delay to this new situation, the Vietnamese Marxist-Leninist doctrine, with its general formal trend, left its basic presumptions about international relations and Vietnam’s international role intact.