Retooling Southeast Asia Geopolitical Map : Global relations: Lifting of the trade embargo on Vietnam gives U.S. new opportunities in one of the world’s most dynamic regions.

Early this week, Adm. Charles R. Larson, the commander-in-chief of American forces in the Pacific, sat back in his spacious headquarters office above Pearl Harbor and mused about the possibility of a renewed U.S. military relationship with Vietnam.

“It’s not inconceivable that our ships could once again visit Cam Ranh Bay,” the commander told The Times, referring to the prized Vietnamese port that has been used during the last 15 years by the Soviet Union and Russia. “That would be somewhat down the pike, and it (the arrangement) would be one of access rather than a permanent (U.S.) presence on the ground.”

The remarks by the commander, who had just returned from a meeting with a senior Vietnamese defense official in Hanoi, underscored the strategic implications of President Clinton’s decision to lift the U.S. trade embargo against Vietnam.

In one sense, the lifting of the trade embargo marks the end of the long process of healing the scars of the Vietnam War, more than 20 years after the last U.S. troops came home. Yet Clinton’s action could also mark the beginning of something new: a realignment of the geopolitical map of East Asia, opening the way for new diplomacy, new alignments and alliances.

Southeast Asia is a region with a population and economic market as large as those of Western Europe. Vietnam lies at the heart of it. The lifting of the trade embargo gives the United States not only a new market for its products but also, more broadly, new opportunities to develop close ties with what many believe is now the most dynamic region on the globe.

And it gives the United States new flexibility and leverage in dealing with China, Vietnam’s historic adversary. Both China and Vietnam seek Western investment capital. Both countries would like greater access to American technology, although China is at a much more advanced level of development than Vietnam.

The possibilities of the improved relationship are intriguing--and, to students of history, tinged with irony.

Will the United States and its old Vietnamese enemy now work together to provide some sort of counterbalance to China’s growing military power, in effect limiting China’s ability to dominate Southeast Asia?

Will Vietnam now become a loyal member and, indeed, powerhouse of the Assn. of Southeast Asian Nations, the regional group that was founded, with strong American support, to prevent Vietnam from spreading its influence and its Communist ideology into neighboring countries such as Thailand, Malaysia and Singapore?

Will Hanoi develop close new ties with Taiwan? Private Taiwanese companies have sunk so much money into Vietnam that Taiwan has now surpassed industrial powers such as France and Japan to become the country’s largest single source of investment capital.

“Vietnam has sent its financial leaders and economic officials to visit Taiwan,” noted Taiwanese Foreign Minister Frederick Chien recently.

And how will all these changes in Southeast Asia affect Japan, which has drawn ever-closer economic links to the region but which is still burdened by the memories of World War II.

If China keeps increasing its defense budget and its air and naval forces to the point where Japan someday feels threatened, for example, Japan might cooperate with the United States, Vietnam and other Southeast Asian countries to offset China.

If China seems less worrisome in the future, Vietnam could become a crossroads where Japan, China, the United States and the old colonial power, France, compete for influence.

For the American presence in Asia, Clinton’s lifting of the trade embargo represents the most important development since the United States was forced two years ago to give up its strategic facilities at Clark Air Force Base and Subic Bay Naval Station in the Philippines.

At that time, there were some fears in Southeast Asia that the United States might withdraw from the region, leaving Japan and China as the major powers.

American military planners now maintain that the pullout from the Philippine bases, which the United States had occupied since the beginning of the century, has not been such a calamity.

“The withdrawal from the Philippine bases was far less traumatic than we anticipated,” said one senior U.S. military official at the U.S. Pacific Command in Honolulu this week. “Replacing Clark and Subic just isn’t on (the agenda) anymore.”

After the closure of the Philippine bases, American military strategists developed a new approach that they call “places, not bases.” Instead of seeking one or two major new American military installations such as Clark and Subic, the United States has negotiated deals with a number of countries that permit a variety of less intense military arrangements.

“We’ve kind of spread out our presence without having an established base,” said Adm. Larson, the Pacific commander-in-chief, in an interview this week. “We’ve been offered ship repair in Singapore, Malaysia and Indonesia, in addition to the other normal peacetime activities.”

Still, military cooperation with Vietnam would be a huge boon. The country has a population of more than 70 million, located not far from Hong Kong and the most prosperous areas of South China. Vietnam is impoverished now, but it has an army that over the last 40 years has withstood France, the United States and, most recently, China.

In 1979, Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping launched a brief invasion to “teach Vietnam a lesson” after the Vietnamese invasion of Cambodia. Chinese troops withdrew after a month in which they suffered significant casualties and discovered that their armed forces were sorely in need of modernization.

U.S. officials insist that any sort of strategic or military cooperation with Vietnam is a long way off. They say that the first step in the process of change in the region will be for Vietnam to integrate itself into ASEAN and to forge closer ties with its Southeast Asian neighbors.

American officials also contend that the improving ties with Vietnam are not directed at China--a country with which, after all, the Clinton Administration has been seeking to mend fences. “I don’t think China is a near-term threat,” Larson said this week. Still, U.S. officials regularly note that China has increased its defense budget, is building up its armed forces and has made huge territorial claims in the South China Sea.

It seems likely that when Secretary of State Warren Christopher met with Chinese Foreign Minister Qian Qichen in Paris in late January, the United States privately informed China of U.S. plans to lift the trade embargo against Vietnam. Christopher may well have assured Beijing that the move was not aimed at China.

Of course, that is about the same thing that the Richard M. Nixon Administration told officials in Moscow more than two decades ago when the United States was forging a new relationship with China.

When Larson traveled to Hanoi late last month, he was the highest-level American military official in Vietnam since the end of the war.

The U.S. commander was permitted to meet with Vietnam’s deputy minister of defense and was brought directly into the Citadel, the building in Hanoi in which Vietnamese military officials planned their campaigns against American and South Vietnamese forces during the Vietnam War.

The purpose of Larson’s trip was to make sure that Vietnam is cooperating in the effort to locate Americans missing in action since the war. He pronounced himself satisfied with Hanoi’s performance.

But there were clearly other things on the American commander’s mind as well.

Before American ships return to Cam Ranh Bay, Larson said in this week’s interview, “you’d have to work out the issue of the (Russians).” Some Russian equipment remains stationed at the base, he pointed out. “They do have a presence there. It’s more of a logistical base or a logistical stop. But they’ve got at least a couple of hundred people there on the ground in Cam Ranh Bay.

“I don’t think it’s out of the question that we might make port visits or something there (to Vietnam),” Larson said, though he quickly added: “I really wouldn’t foresee American bases there.”

BACKGROUND

The embargo against Hanoi dates to 1964, when the United States openly shifted to a war footing in Vietnam, and was expanded to cover the entire Communist-ruled country in 1975, when Saigon fell. U.S. businesses have clamored for an end to the embargo, saying it locks them out of the potentially lucrative Vietnamese market. European and rich Asian nations have already invested hundreds of millions of dollars in the country and secured development contracts. Though business dealings will now be legal, a resumption of U.S.-Vietnamese diplomatic ties does not appear imminent.