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VIETNAM'S FOREIGN POLICY UNDER DOI MOI. Edited by Le Hong Hiep and Anton Tsvetov. Singapore: ISEAS - Yusof Ishak Institute, 2018. xix, 294pp. (Tables, graphs.) US$29.90, paper. ISBN 978-981-4818-14-8.
Mainstream perspectives of Vietnam's foreign policy vis-â-vis China and academic analyses have diverged in recent years. The standard media narrative suggests that Vietnam courts US support to check or hedge against China. One implication of this view is that Vietnamese conflicts with the US and the French were aberrations from the longer-standing historical threat from China, which now drives Vietnam's foreign policy.
Challenging this perspective, scholars such as Keith Taylor (A History of the Vietnamese, Cambridge University Press, 2013) and David Kang (American Grand Strategy and East Asian Security in the Twenty-First Century, Cambridge University Press, 2017) contend that Vietnam has historically been far more concerned with internal divisions than with its northern neighbour. Taylor cites as evidence Vietnam's relatively pacific relations with China, while Kang suggests that Vietnam does not engage in classic balancing maneuvers such as increasing military spending.
Within this context, Le Hong Hiep and Anton Tsvetov's edited volume Vietnam's Foreign Policy Under Doi Moi provides a timely account of Vietnam's foreign policy since the Doi moi economic reforms of 1986. The book provides a general overview of Vietnam repairing its relations with the West and China followed by a detailed description of important bilateral relationships, including with China and the US....