Vietnam to host US aircraft carrier despite Trump’s tariffs, Iran war chaos

An American nuclear-powered aircraft carrier is set to dock in Da Nang this week, in a visit analysts say shows the durability of US-Vietnam relations despite trade tensions and global upheaval. The USS George Washington, a Nimitz-class carrier currently deployed with the US Navy’s Seventh Fleet out of Yokosuka, Japan, is expected to call at the central Vietnamese port from Thursday to Monday, though officials have yet to confirm the exact date. Its looming arrival “signals that engagement between the United States and Vietnam has not been disrupted by the war in Iran and diversion of other US military assets to the Middle East”, said Carl Thayer, a political scientist and emeritus professor of politics at the University of New South Wales in Australia. It also showed that defence cooperation between the two countries had withstood “Trump’s tariffs and other issues”, he said. The port call comes as Vietnam and the US approach three years since formalising a comprehensive strategic partnership in September 2023, representing Hanoi’s highest level of diplomatic relations. The USS Ronald Reagan steamed into Da Nang accompanied by two escort ships in June that year, marking the most recent visit by a US carrier. Port calls were also made by US carriers in 2020 and 2018. Bui The Giang, a former Vietnamese ambassador to the United Nations, described the carrier’s visit as a routine, low-key affair reflecting the maturity of bilateral ties. “There is nothing sensitive about this visit from Vietnam’s perspective,” he told This Week in Asia. “It is simply a routine port call in the context of bilateral relations having been upgraded.” The visit is also set to include community engagement activities such as a performance by a US Navy band, a friendly volleyball match and social interactions between personnel from the two navies – part of a deliberate effort by both governments to frame the relationship as extending beyond security cooperation, analysts say. A veteran’s view For Nguyen Duc Gan, 79, the carrier’s arrival stirs deep personal emotions. Captured during the Tet Offensive in 1968 and held for four years in a prisoner-of-war camp run by the US-backed South Vietnamese government, the former communist fighter says the arrival of an American warship shows how far relations have come. “I welcome Vietnam’s invitation for a US aircraft carrier to visit,” he said, adding it reflected “a policy of putting the past behind us and looking towards the future”. The visit also reinforces Washington’s continued naval presence in the South China Sea and wider region. Thayer said the deployment aligned with US free-of-navigation exercises carried out under international law and was “designed to give reassurance to US allies, security partners and littoral states such as Vietnam that the South China Sea will remain stable and secure”. Ahead of its planned Vietnam stop, the USS George Washington took part in this year’s Exercise Valiant Shield alongside the navies of Japan, Australia, Canada and New Zealand. Those war games were intended to deter attempts to alter the status quo, according to Thayer, who cautioned against overstating the impact of the coming carrier visit, saying it would not “materially affect China’s so-called grey zone operations and aggressive behaviour towards the Philippines” at sea. China is expected to monitor the visit closely, but Thayer said Beijing was unlikely to publicly criticise Vietnam for hosting the US carrier and its response would instead “take a more general tack” with routine military signalling such as shadowing the carrier groups with its own vessels and aircraft. Such an envisaged “low-keyed response” contrasted with China’s “high-volume criticism and aggressive action on the sea against the Philippines”, he said, which “suggests that China has been circumspect towards Vietnam because it does not want to drive it into the arms of the United States”. Taking no sides Vietnam has repeatedly rejected any suggestion that warmer ties with Washington amount to taking sides against Beijing. Its defence policy rests on the so-called four noes: no military alliances, no siding with one country against another, no foreign military bases and no use of force or threat of force in international relations. Thayer said this policy and Vietnam’s strategy of “diversification and multilateralisation” by expanding its number of comprehensive strategic partnerships were explicitly designed to preserve the country’s strategic autonomy. Giang agreed, framing the US relationship as an unremarkable outgrowth of gradually deepening ties over the decades. “We are not doing anything behind anyone’s back,” he said, adding that Vietnam should not be expected to justify its ties with one power to another. Despite their expanding defence cooperation, Vietnam’s military relations with the US still fall far short of alliance level. Vietnam has also bought relatively little American military hardware, a decision Giang said was driven as much by cost and compatibility as politics. “US weapons are extremely expensive and a US aircraft carrier costs billions of dollars,” he said, further pointing to the incompatibility between much of Vietnam’s existing Soviet-era equipment and American platforms. Vietnam and China, meanwhile, have maintained dialogue mechanisms to manage disputes despite their South China Sea differences. Giang said the two countries had developed their own approaches to handling maritime disagreements, further noting that Vietnam had consistently argued the South China Sea should be governed by international law rather than unilateral claims. “The South China Sea is not anyone’s private pond,” he said. “It is an international maritime space governed by international law.” Ultimately, analysts say the carrier’s visit illustrates the balance Vietnam has long been trying to strike: deepening cooperation with the US without provoking China, while insisting that stronger ties with one power need not come at the other’s expense.