Why Vietnam and U.S. Are Wooing Each Other : Diplomacy: The two countries want to be friends because China is militarily threatening and Japan’s economic reach is growing.

The United States and Vietnam seem to be moving inexorably toward normalization of relations. In one of history’s little ironies, the main strategic factor propelling the two governments together is roughly the same one that got Americans involved in Vietnam in the first place: a concern that China might amass enough power to dominate Southeast Asia.

Last month, the Bush Administration dispatched a high-level delegation to Hanoi to try to resolve disputes over U.S. servicemen missing since the Vietnam War. After the Americans returned home, Bush said there had been “a major breakthrough” on American POW/MIAs that might enable this country to “begin writing the last chapter of the Vietnam War.” Vietnamese officials, Bush explained, said they are willing to turn over photographs, artifacts and records from their archives to help determine the fate of the missing Americans.

What Bush didn’t say was that during the delegation’s visit to Hanoi, the Vietnamese also quietly made it plain that they seek a new friendship with the United States to help them in dealing with China. “The Vietnamese are looking for some sort of supplement to their other relationships,” recalls one Administration official who was on the trip. “You could call it a strategic counterweight, or something like that.” It is these strategic calculations that have given both Vietnam and the United States the political will to settle POW/MIA issues that might have been worked out a long time ago.

Recently, China has dramatically increased its defense spending, set off a huge nuclear explosion, and bought advanced warplanes and other equipment and technology from Russia.

Ever since U.S. forces were forced to leave Clark Air Base and the Subic Bay naval station in the Philippines, American policy-makers have worried that the Philippine withdrawal undermined the credibility of this country’s commitment to continue its presence in Southeast Asia. In the past six months, the Administration has made two broad changes in U.S. policy toward Asia to respond to growing Chinese military power. The first was letting Taiwan buy F-16 jet fighters after 10 years of spurning such a sale. The second is the unfolding normalization with Vietnam.

No one in Southeast Asia has more reason to be wary about Chinese power than Vietnam. Over the centuries, the two countries have repeatedly been adversaries. To Vietnam, the threat from China is not ancient history. Thirteen years ago, China launched a brief, unsuccessful invasion of Vietnam, aimed, as Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping put it, at teaching the leaders in Hanoi “a lesson” for their invasion of Cambodia. It also did not go unnoticed in Hanoi when China, earlier this year, asserted claims to chunks of territory in the South China Sea, including areas claimed by Vietnam. Nor did it escape Vietnam’s notice when China signed a deal last May with a private company to drill for oil in waters Hanoi says are part of its continental shelf.

The United States seems to be eager to reciprocate Vietnam’s overtures. U.S. policy-makers are increasingly concerned about China’s growing military power, too, because they see China’s buildup as a threat to the existing balance of power in Southeast Asia.

Five years ago, U.S. strategy in Asia and the Pacific was preoccupied with containing Soviet military power; Vietnam was seen as an ally and client of Moscow. Now, with the disintegration of the Soviet Union, its focus is to preserve America’s huge economic stakes in Asia, and to prevent any other nation from achieving such a strong position that it could intimidate smaller countries.

For years, U.S. officials took it for granted that Asia’s leading powers wanted the United States to stay involved and militarily committed in the region. Now, they are no longer so sure about China. Some American visitors to Beijing last spring were stunned when Xu Xin, a senior People’s Liberation Army official, suggested it might be better for China if the United States went home.

There are additional economic factors underlying Washington’s move toward Vietnam. To modernize, Hanoi needs the U.S. trade embargo to be lifted, and U.S. companies do not want to be left behind when Vietnam opens its market of more than 60 million people. This month, Japan announced it is resuming financial aid to Vietnam, an indication that Tokyo, and Japanese companies, are no longer willing to be hemmed in by the U.S. embargo.

These economic factors also boil down, in a sense at least, to strategic considerations. The United States does not want Japan to dominate Southeast Asia, any more than it does China; and while nuclear-armed China is the worry of the moment, Japan is the concern of the future. Japan is already the leading economic power in other Southeast Asian countries. If it were to establish a position of economic dominance in Vietnam while the United States stayed out, that could give strong impetus to the creation of some form of intra-Asian trade bloc led by Japan and excluding the United States. And if such a trade bloc were formed and Japan’s economic interests were no longer linked to those of the United States, Japan would sooner or later find it necessary to build the military power needed to protect its economic interests.

At the very least, U.S. ties with Vietnam help to ensure that Southeast Asia is not dominated by China, Japan or anyone else. Renewed ties could even pave the way for future military cooperation between the United States and Vietnam. An American congressional delegation to Hanoi two years ago was told by ranking Vietnamese officials that they could foresee a day when U.S. warships might be docked once again at the naval base at Cam Ranh Bay, which Americans developed during the Vietnam War.

At that time, or even today, the idea seems far-fetched. Five years from now, it might not sound so strange.