The COVID-19 Pandemic and the Emergence of Vietnam as a Middle Power

Abstract

Limited capability and political will have caused the great powers to fail to demonstrate their global leadership in the fight against the COVID-19 pandemic, which has created greater room to manoeuvre for other countries to influence international affairs. Preliminary achievements in the fight against the COVID-19 crisis have buttressed the rising global status of small and medium-sized states, including Vietnam. Although Vietnam has recently been recognised as an emerging middle power, scepticism looms regarding whether this higher international status is beyond its capacity. We argue that the pandemic may act as a catalyst for Vietnam to further elevate its strategic role as a middle power on the international stage in the medium and long term.

Utilizing the theory of planned behavior to predict COVID-19 vaccination intention: A structural equational modeling approach

“…This demonstrated that adults' perceived ability and ease of receiving a COVID-19 vaccine significantly contribute to their COVID-19 vaccination intention. At the time of this study, even though the COVID-19 vaccines were not available for over 100 million Vietnamese citizens, many individuals could easily access COVID-19 vaccines as Vietnam received support from the international community thanks to the success of the COVID-19 vaccine diplomacy policy [ 12 , 70 ]. From our participants, 890 of the 2722 adults had already received at least one dose of the vaccine.…”

Theorising Foreign Policy and IR in Vietnam: A Case for a Non-Western IRT?

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

“…It would be inaccurate, however, to assume that the philosophy of bamboo diplomacy is an entirely novel phenomenon in Vietnamese strategic thinking. Instead, the conceptualization of bamboo diplomacy resembles a natural evolution and accumulation of previous and ongoing policies (Do, 2017(Do, , 2022Le and Vu, 2022).…”