How regime legitimation influences Vietnam's strategy toward US–China strategic rivalry

Abstract

Vietnam has tried to maintain a delicate balance between the United States and China by pursuing a hedging strategy. In a shifting strategic environment marked by structural uncertainty caused by the rise of China, weaker Southeast Asian states like Vietnam are projecting a non-alignment posture. However, this rational behavior is not the product of systemic factors alone but also certain domestic political dynamics. We argue that regime legitimation – how the Vietnam Communist Party seeks to generate and sustain internal and external legitimacy – weighs heavily on Vietnam's strategy toward US–China competition. In particular, three legitimation strategies employed by the Vietnam Communist Party – performance-based legitimation, nationalism-based legitimation vis-à-vis China, and defensive legitimation vis-à-vis “hostile forces” – produce dynamics that ensure Hanoi does not get inadvertently pulled into the orbit of either Beijing or Washington. Theoretically, this article contributes to the literature on domestic determinants of foreign policy with a focus on regime legitimation. Empirically, we seek to supplement the discussion on the salience and relevance of domestic politics in informing Southeast Asian states' strategic calculation amid great-power competition.

Nationalism in discursive legitimation: An analysis of the Vietnamese Communist Party’s ‘bamboo diplomacy’ discourse on digital journalism

“…From a policy-based approach, Le (2012) argued that since the mid-1980s, the key sources of regime legitimacy for the VCP had been nationalism and the socio-economic performance that the Đổi Mới [Renovation] policy brought about. Similarly, Phan and Ho (2022) also identified performance-based legitimation, nationalism-based legitimation, and defensive legitimation, as the three strategies the VCP employed to justify its actions in response to the strategic competition between the U.S. and China. While previous scholars have contributed considerably to the academic discourse on the VCP's legitimation strategies, they tend to refer to sources of traditional media, with little attention to modern modes of communication, particularly digital journalism.…”