appConfigEntityId

bodyType

customContents

entityId

entityUuid

isVideo

articlePageQuery

article

articleSchemaContent

content

hooksArticlePageAdvertisementConfigArticle

hooksArticlePageFloatingButtonConfigArticle

appConfig

filter

json

liveArticle

Nguyen Khac Giang

Vietnam’s top leader, To Lam, has spent his first year on an unusually busy diplomatic circuit, but one visit has left analysts scratching their heads.
In October, just two months after visiting Seoul, where Vietnam signed US$250 million in South Korean arms deals and deepened ties with its largest foreign investor, To Lam flew to Pyongyang to stand beside Kim Jong-un at a military parade, making him the first general secretary of the Communist Party of Vietnam since Nong Duc Manh in 2007 to set foot in North Korea.
The optics hardly make sense: Vietnam courts South Korea for capital, technology and supply-chain security, while the North offers none of these.
The answer lies less in the logic of foreign policy than in Vietnamese politics. Foreign policy, to paraphrase Carl von Clausewitz, is the extension of domestic politics by other means. For To Lam, it has become a stage on which to perform ideological loyalty to socialist orthodoxy while pushing a far more hard-nosed economic agenda at home.
In that regard, the Pyongyang trip was no anomaly. In just over a year, To Lam has visited all of Hanoi’s historical ideological allies, collecting a list of firsts no Vietnamese paramount leader before him had attempted.

He became the first party chief ever to lay flowers at the grave of Karl Marx in London (his second pilgrimage to Marx’s tomb, curiously, after doing the same four years earlier as minister of public security). He was also the first party leader after the Cold War to appear on the viewing stand of a Victory Day parade in Moscow and oversaw the inaugural participation and oversaw the inaugural participation of the Vietnam People’s Army in this year’s Russian procession.
These gestures are not aimed at foreign audiences but are crafted for intraparty consumption. The Communist Party of Vietnam is entering a sensitive pre-congress period. Despite his rapid consolidation of power, To Lam must still soothe a system that prides itself on collective leadership and ideological discipline. He has ruled by decree more than deliberation. His domestic reforms, while widely welcomed by the public and overseas observers, are unsettling conservatives – including the propaganda apparatus and the military – who fear Vietnam is drifting from its socialist foundations.
To Lam’s domestic position is strong, but not impregnable. His whirlwind of socialist symbolism targets precisely these groups. The message is simple: Vietnam may be deepening integration with the West, but it is not drifting ideologically.
Cuba offers the clearest demonstration of this signalling. During his visit to Havana in September 2024, To Lam proclaimed that “solidarity with Cuba is what President Ho Chi Minh always desired” and promised, according to this writer’s translation, that the relationship would last “forever”. Cuba contributes virtually nothing to Vietnam’s economy as the island is impoverished and isolated, but the visit was never about economics. This has reassured party cadres that To Lam remembers where Vietnam came from even as he charts where it must go.
If the itineraries signal reassurance, the entourages suggest coalition building. On several recent trips, To Lam has taken the unusual step of inviting retired Politburo members who still wield considerable influence. His travel companions have included former minister of public security Le Hong Anh, ex-National Assembly chairwoman Nguyen Thi Kim Ngan, Pham Quang Nghi, who was previously Hanoi party chief, and former Standing Secretariat member Tran Quoc Vuong. None has an official diplomatic role, yet they retain patron-client networks and factional influence that matter when the congress determines leadership positions.

In Vietnam’s often opaque politics, unexplained inclusions can themselves be explanations. With the 14th party congress approaching in 2026, To Lam appears to be quietly knitting together a coalition of veteran heavyweights who can bless personnel arrangements, calm competing factions and lend legitimacy to whatever reshuffle emerges. These senior figures serve not merely as symbolic endorsements but as brokers, reassuring different blocs that they remain represented in the emerging order. Taking retired Politburo members on trips rewards them with visible status while providing cover for sensitive negotiations that would draw scrutiny if conducted at home.
Despite his dramatic ascent, To Lam still operates within a system that tolerates neither soloists nor strongmen. Vietnam’s leadership remains an intricate web of committees, party commissions, regional barons, military interests and technocrats. His ambitious domestic programme – trimming bureaucracy, pivoting to the private sector, restructuring state-owned enterprises and attracting hi-tech investment – requires not just authority but buy-in.
To Lam must convince conservatives that Vietnam’s ideological identity is intact; reformists that modernisation will accelerate; and the military that it still sits at the strategic heart of the regime, even as Vietnam diversifies away from Russian arms and seeks closer security partnerships elsewhere. Foreign policy thus becomes an arena of domestic negotiation: a way to signal balance, reassure doubters and accumulate allies.
Viewed from Western capitals, it may seem puzzling that Vietnam’s reform-minded leader spends political capital applauding Soviet-style parades or visiting a 19th-century philosopher’s tomb. These gestures are not directed at London, Brussels or Washington, but are pitched at the coming party congress, where the next leadership line-up will be assembled and where questions about “orientation” and “loyalty” still matter as much as growth targets.
For all his authority, To Lam’s success depends on binding together ideological conservatives, military elites and retired luminaries while pushing through disruptive reforms. His foreign policy – part pragmatic outreach, part socialist pageantry – is the outward expression of that domestic project. The world may be watching To Lam’s diplomacy, but To Lam is watching the home front and his own back.
Nguyen Khac Giang is Visiting Fellow at the Vietnam Studies Programme of ISEAS – Yusof Ishak Institute. He was previously Research Fellow at the Vietnam Center for Economic and Strategic Studies. This article was first published by ISEAS – Yusof Ishak Institute’s commentary website fulcrum.sg.


Customs seizes record HK$125 million worth of marijuana shipped by sea, arresting 3

Why the Global South keeps its doors wide open to Russia

Saudi oil pipeline closure puts Asia’s economic resilience to the test

Torrential rain in Vietnam leaves 3 dead, 16,000 homes flooded

Vietnam

The hidden domestic agenda behind Vietnam’s baffling foreign policy

North Korean leader Kim Jong-un and Vietnam’s To Lam (left) talk before a meeting in Pyongyang, North Korea, last month. Photo: VNA/AP

To Lam, general secretary of the Communist Party of Vietnam, holds a meeting with South Korean National Assembly Speaker Woo Won-shik in Hanoi on November 21. Photo: AFP

Vietnam’s To Lam talks with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un (right) before a meeting in Pyongyang, North Korea, last month. Photo: VNA/AP

Russian President Vladimir Putin and To Lam shake hands at the Kremlin in Moscow in May. Photo: AP

Avoiding ‘strategic suicide’: Vietnam’s US-Russia-China diplomatic dance

US and Vietnamese flags fly during a welcome ceremony for visiting US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth in Hanoi, Vietnam, on November 2. Photo: AP

US Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth and Vietnamese Defence Minister Phan Van Giang shake hands before a meeting in Hanoi on November 2. Photo: AP

Vietnamese Communist Party General Secretary To Lam (left) meets former Russian president Dmitry Medvedev, head of the ruling United Russia party, in North Korea on October 10. Photo: Sputnik/AP

US President Donald Trump delivers remarks on tariffs at the White House on April 2. Photo: Reuters

US President Joe Biden proposes a toast with Vietnam’s President Vo Van Thuong at the Presidential Palace in Hanoi in September 2023. Photo: EPA-EFE

US and Vietnamese flags fly during a welcome ceremony for visiting US Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth in Hanoi, Vietnam, on November 2. Photo: AP

A US Army C-130 aircraft drops military equipment during joint drills in Lithuania earlier this year. Photo: AP

A man poses for photo on the turret of a Russian T-90A tank during the Vietnam 2024 International Defence Expo in Hanoi last year. Photo: AFP

Vietnam’s leader heads to North Korea for first visit in 18 years to rebalance relations

Vietnam’s Communist Party General Secretary To Lam (centre) is welcomed upon arrival at Pyongyang International Airport on Thursday. Photo: Vietnam News Agency/AFP

Vietnam’s Communist Party General Secretary To Lam waves as he disembarks from the plane at Pyongyang International Airport. Photo: Vietnam News Agency/AFP

North Korean leader Kim Jong-un gives a speech at the Party Founding Museum on the occasion of the 80th anniversary of the founding of the Workers’ Party on Wednesday. Photo: KCNA/Reuters

Vladimir Putin (left) and North Korea’s leader Kim Jong-un are all smiles during the Russian leader’s visit to Pyongyang in June last year. Photo: Sputnik/AP

Vietnam’s new US trade deal sparks optimism despite tariff challenges

A container is loaded onto a cargo ship while docked at Hai Phong port in Vietnam. Photo: Reuters

Tourists walk past a Made in Vietnam store at a street in Hanoi on Thursday. Photo: EPA

A Nike store at a shopping centre in Hanoi. The US-Vietnam trade deal sent shares of electronics and textile companies soaring. Photo: AFP

This Week in Asia

Opinion

To Lam’s recent pilgrimages to North Korea and Cuba signal ideological loyalty, even as he pushes a hard-nosed reform agenda at home


To Lam’s recent pilgrimages to North Korea and Cuba signal ideological loyalty, even as he pushes a hard-nosed reform agenda at home.


Diplomacy

To Lam

Cuba

Russia

North Korea

Kim Jong-un

Expresses the views, ideas and conclusions of the author. (Eg. Enough of Crazy Rich Asians, think of crazy poor Hongkongers.)


Column

Asian Angle

.css-1c6uqr6{color:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-family:inherit;line-height:inherit;overflow-wrap:break-word;}To Lam’s recent pilgrimages to North Korea and Cuba signal ideological loyalty, even as he pushes a hard-nosed reform agenda at home

To Lam’s recent pilgrimages to North Korea and Cuba signal ideological loyalty, even as he pushes a hard-nosed reform agenda at home