36 APRIL-MAY 2025 | THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL The time was right for a geopolitical approach. Now that we were drawing down in Iraq and South Asia, President Barack Obama wanted to shift our attention to East Asia and to a rising China. He would not unveil our “rebalance” to the region until a November 2011 speech, but Secretary Clinton and Assistant Secretary Campbell had already begun laying the groundwork. The Secretary had articulated an American strategic interest in the South China Sea in a widely reported July 2010 speech to the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) Regional Forum in Hanoi. In fall 2010, we had participated in the East Asia Summit (EAS) as a guest, against the wishes of the Russians and the Chinese but with the strong support of Vietnam—that year’s ASEAN chair. We would join EAS formally the next year. So, building a regional role for the relationship driven by common U.S.-Vietnam geopolitical interests made strong sense, and my previous experience with Japan, China, and Southeast Asia had prepared me well for the task. But what would establishing a more “geopolitically driven relationship” require? Vietnamese political elites have a saying: “If you get too close to the Americans, you lose the [Communist] Party; if you get too close to the Chinese, you lose the country.” My goal as ambassador was to help the Vietnamese walk the tightrope between the United States and China in a way that recognized local realities and suited American interests. Those interests required that Vietnam participate effectively in a Southeast Asian balance of power that would maximize Hanoi’s room to maneuver, limit Chinese regional influence, and allow the United States and our allies to play the strongest possible role in an area of growing strategic and economic importance to us. For a Strong and Independent Vietnam Common interests notwithstanding, an outright alliance with Vietnam was unlikely any time soon. The Chinese invaded Vietnam in 1979, partly in response to Hanoi’s conclusion of an alliance with Moscow, and I doubted that the Vietnamese leadership, many of whom had suffered through that war, would want to risk another such conflict. Moreover, China was geographically too close and offered too many economic opportunities for the Vietnamese to turn away from the big northern neighbor in favor of the U.S., a distant power with a reputation for bugging out. “Why should we rely on the U.S. for our security,” a Vietnamese general exclaimed to me after the 2012 Scarborough Shoal incident, “when you’re unwilling to defend your ally the Philippines in the South China Sea?” So, a more incremental approach, within which I could manage growing Washington expectations, seemed wise. We could still pursue a more vigorous diplomacy with Vietnam right away using all the tools of statecraft, not to establish a new alliance, but to buttress a balance of power that could assure our continued economic, diplomatic, and military access to the region. Vietnam’s size and population may have paled in comparison to the big powers with interests in the region, but this proud and growing middle power had agency, its leadership had pluck, and its people craved autonomy. Our Vietnamese interlocutors were astute observers of regional power relations and of the ebbs and flows of Chinese influence. Senior American officials liked talking to them. At my first press conference as ambassador, I hit on a statement that would sum up our approach to Vietnam in words that would resonate with publics on both sides of the Pacific: “The United States seeks a strong, prosperous, and independent Vietnam that respects human rights and supports the rule of law.” Our two countries had significant common interests in free trade, freedom from coercion, and freedom of navigation in the South China Sea, and I hoped we could build a cooperative relationship on that basis. To cooperate effectively with Hanoi, we had to build greater bilateral trust. This meant energetically continuing to address the legacies of war, including the search for American personnel missing in action (MIAs), the remediation of Agent Orange contamination at key sites, the removal of unexploded ordnance throughout the country, and assistance to those Vietnamese people with Agent Orange–related and other disabilities. I was proud to have watched over the construction of USAID’s project to incinerate soil heavily contaminated by Agent Orange at Da Nang Airport. I joined the congressional father of this program, Senator Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.), in Da Nang to open this facility in April 2014. Ambassador David Shear chats with rescued child laborers at the Blue Dragon NGO headquarters in Quang Nam province with embassy interpreter Nguyen Duy Minh in March 2013. COURTESY OF DAVID SHEAR
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