VIETNAM: Hanoi elected to U-N Security Council
Updated
Asia has a new representative on the United Nation's Security Council. For the first time, Vietnam has been elected as a non-permanent member with a two year term to start in January. Hanoi has celebrated the decision, describing it as a key step in its post-war global integration.
Presenter: Karon Snowdon
Speakers: Vietnam expert Professor Carl Thayer, Australia's Defence Force Academy
THAYER: Vietnam has gone from success to success after opening up, and it's worked very hard to make itself a valuable player to the major actors, it hosted APEC last year, and in between those two benchmarks has hosted the ASEAN summit. It's a strong player in the non-aligned movement and then in more recent, in the past year or so to really step up it offered to host US Korea normalisation talks, and indeed hosted the first talks between North Korea and Japan. So it's made itself almost indispensable, and finally it said it will back Japan's membership on a reformed Security Council. So it's win-win for Vietnam.
SNOWDON: And what's it mean for Vietnam's standing in the world?
THAYER: This is the high peak and pinnacle for itself, but it's going to pose tremendous challenges. What does it mean? it means that now Vietnam, a country that believes in national sovereignty and non-interference has joined a body which imposes sanctions and UN peacekeeping and makes a vote. And these are going to be binding and it can't hide behind non-interference and national sovereignty.
SNOWDON: How do you think if Vietnam had been a member at the time the Security Council was considering the issue recently of Burma and the crackdown against dissidents or democracy activists there, how do you think Vietnam would have placed itself in that debate?
THAYER: Well Vietnam would have been very close to the regional consensus and there is an example when it hosted the Asia-Europe summit meeting process the question of Myanmar's representation was a sticking point, and if Myanmar showed up many important European countries were not going to.
Vietnam brokered the compromise and the Europeans showed up. So Vietnam has been able to demonstrate a pragmatism, and in this particular case of Myanmar once the UN Security Council came up with a non-binding resolution that China supported that made it so much easier for Vietnam. So I say it would see very closely what the regional consensus is, it'll always be against I think the activism of the European and US countries on these issues, but it has its own interests, separate from China, and on this particular case it worked out well for Vietnam. China spoke first and Vietnam could follow.
SNOWDON: It seems that Vietnam is prepared to take on some reasonably sized challenges in recent years, you know joining the WTO at this stage of its development was one of them, and now the Security Council. Is it punching above its weight?
THAYER: Well no I think Vietnam, 85 million people, 13th largest country in the world, has seen that one of its greatest challenges is being left behind in the region if it develops. And so it's set its goal on integrating with the region and integrating globally. It has a foreign policy, a nice slogan of making friends with all countries.
But it has to hook its economy up, it's been exemplary in meeting the UN's millenium development goals, it's done that earlier. It's one of eight countries chosen for the one UN initiative to reform a bunch of competing UN bodies. So I think strategically its leaders have really seen if they get their act together and integrate, learn world's best practice they can escape being the place where the war was fought, and more importantly bridge that development gap and catch up with the Thailands, Malaysias and Singapore within the region.
SNOWDON: And do you think its own political circumstances, being a communist state, being fairly controlling of political activism within the country, do you think it's going to find particular difficulties? I mean it certainly won't be alone in that, but does that pose difficulties for it?
THAYER: Well it's already begun to because the groups that monitor human rights violations have already indicated their disappointment at Vietnam's election. And the deputy prime minister, who's also foreign minister wrote a long article in the Communist Party newspaper outlining the accomplishments of the UN and Vietnam's contribution, and there's a paragraph that highlights human rights.
But of course Vietnam has been cracking down on political dissidents, it's still involved in religious persecution of particular groups in its country. But the UN consists of many other fellow travellers along that line, so Vietnam won't stand out in particular. But if it does say it's joined the UN because of these lofty principles then yes the pressure will be on by its more cosmopolitan members to see that Vietnam raises the standards in human rights and doesn't engage in religious persecution.
