Seminar: Vietnam and the Major Powers: Multilateralising International Defence and Security Cooperation

For the past twenty-five years Vietnam has pursued a policy of ‘multilateralising and diversifying’ its foreign relations. Vietnam seeks to develop comprehensive relations with each major power without aligning with any one of them. Vietnam manages it external relations through the framework of formal agreements on strategic partnerships such as those with Russia (2001), India (2006), Japan (2007), China (2009), and in the case of the United States an agreement on comprehensive partnership (2013).

Since 2011 Vietnam has given priority to developing international defence and security cooperation with the major powers. Vietnam seeks to give each major power equity in Vietnam’s stability and development in order to ensure Vietnam’s non-alignment and strategic autonomy. This seminar compares and contrasts Vietnam’s multilateralization of international defence and security cooperation with Russia, India, the United States, Japan and China over the last five years.

About the Speaker

Carlyle A. Thayer is Emeritus Professor, The University of New South Wales at the Australian Defence Force Academy, Canberra. Most of his academic career has been spent teaching in a military environment: The Royal Military College-Duntroon (1979-85); Australian Defence Force Academy (1985-2010); Asia-Pacific Center for Security Studies, Honolulu (1999-2002); Centre for Defence and Strategic Studies, Australian Defence College (2002-04); and the Australian Command and Staff College (2006-07 and 2010). In 2005 he was appointed C. V. Starr Distinguished Visiting Professor at the School of Advanced International Studies, Johns Hopkins University in Washington, D.C. In 2008 he was appointed the Inaugural Frances M. and Stephen H. Fuller Distinguished Visiting Professor at the Center for Southeast Asian Studies, Ohio University, Athens, Ohio. Professor Thayer was educated at Brown (1967), and received an M.A. in Southeast Asian Studies from Yale (1971) and a PhD in International Relations from The Australian National University (1977). He is the author of over 500 academic publications, including: The Vietnam People’s Army Under Doi Moi (ISEAS 1994); Beyond Indochina, Adelphi Paper 297 (IISS 1995); Vietnam People’s Army: Development and Modernization (2009); and Southeast Asia: Patterns of Security Cooperation (ASPI 2010).

Registration
For registration, please fill in this form and email to iseasevents4@iseas.edu.sg by 3 June 2016.