Cooperating with a country that China cannot confront would be a smart strategy for Vietnam.
Professor Mourdoukoutas said that Vietnam is starting to cooperate with Russian oil giant Rosneft and this could be a "game changer".
Professor Panos Mourdoukoutas - Head of the Department of Economics, LIU Post University, New York, USA, in an article published on Forbes on August 7, said that Vietnam has a smart strategy to prevent China from plotting to "monopolize" the East Sea, which is to cooperate with a country that China cannot currently oppose - Russia.
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| Vietnam is cooperating with a country that China cannot currently oppose (Illustration photo: AP) |
Professor Mourdoukoutas commented that China considers the East Sea as its “backyard” and has been doing everything to realize its unreasonable sovereignty claim over this sea. This includes illegally building artificial islands, violating international court rulings, including the PCA ruling in 2016 in the Philippines’ lawsuit against China. It also threatens neighboring countries by sending their ships into the neighboring countries’ sovereign waters.
While Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte is not ready to stop Beijing, Vietnam is not.
So far, Vietnam has been deploying its forces to deal with Chinese ships intruding into Vietnam's exclusive economic zone and continental shelf.
Along with that, Vietnam has been pushing its partners to build a Code of Conduct in the East Sea (COC) to handle China's activities in the East Sea, including disregarding international law to build artificial islands, blockade, deploy offensive weapons such as missiles, aircraft... and threaten to establish an Air Defense Identification Zone (ADIZ).
Vietnam has built a cluster of oil exploitation technical services in areas of the East Sea (belonging to Vietnam's Exclusive Economic Zone and continental shelf according to UNCLOS 1982-ND), rejecting China's unreasonable Nine-Dash Line claim over almost the entire area of the East Sea.
However, Vietnam initially chose partners such as India's NOGC and Spain's Repsol. These two companies had to abandon the contract after pressure from Beijing.
Now, Vietnam is starting to cooperate with Russian oil giant Rosneft, according to a recent article by Bennett Murray published on Foreign Policy.
“This time, a much tougher partner is involved: Rosneft, whose major shareholder is the Russian government,” Murray wrote.
Russia’s presence in the South China Sea could be a game changer for Vietnam. It would be extremely difficult for Beijing to confront the Russian navy, which is ready to defend Moscow’s interests in the region. And that could dampen China’s South China Sea ambitions, and keep peace in the region.
