ASIAN SECURITYVietnam Isn’t North Korea—and 50 Years of Australian Aid Has Helped
How have Australia and Vietnam, two countries with extremely different political systems, built such a successful partnership? It was done through long-term investment across all the tools of statecraft—including diplomacy, trade and defense—with development cooperation as a key element. This enabled a progression from battlefield enemy to major economic and development partner in a surprisingly short period.
There’s growing awareness that Australia’s international development program is one of the tools of national power that Australia can use to shape the world around it.
The danger is that if ‘influence’ becomes an unstated way of judging the success of Australia’s aid, the focus may become short term and transactional. While development experts may be pleased about increased recognition of the importance of the development program—for example, in building relationships with neighbors—they’re concerned that the performance metric shouldn’t be whether, say, a country’s politicians and elites are positively disposed towards Australia.
The key to resolving this is to be clear about the type of influence that development partnerships can create. Australia’s 50-year investment in Vietnam is an instructive lesson on what a successful development partnership can achieve—and a realistic idea of what it cannot. It demonstrates that development cooperation is a long-term tool of influence.
I was in Hanoi to hear Foreign Minister Penny Wong celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Whitlam government’s recognition of Vietnam. Fifty years ago it would have been fanciful to imagine a foreign minister from a wartime enemy extolling the level of strategic trust and the people-to-people links between the two countries. It would have been even more difficult to imagine the location for the speech: the Ho Chi Minh National Academy of Politics, the literal heart of the Communist Party of Vietnam.
So how have two countries with extremely different political systems built this kind of relationship? It was done through long-term investment across all the tools of statecraft—including diplomacy, trade and defense—with development cooperation as a key element. This enabled a progression from battlefield enemy to major economic and development partner in a surprisingly short period.
Australia is still remembered for many ‘firsts’ in Vietnam. Crucially, Australia was among the first to recognize Vietnam and support its membership of the United Nations. For a time, the Australian diplomatic mission in Hanoi became the only bridge of communication between Vietnam and many Western nations.
Australia built Vietnam’s first undersea cable, satellite ground stations and high-voltage transmission lines. Many of the first foreign banks and law firms in Vietnam were also Australian. RMIT was the first international university to be invited into Vietnam.
