Economic Integration and National Security in a Strategic Policymaking Environment: The Case of Viet Nam

Viet Nam’s approach to strategic and economic policymaking has consistently married a deep engagement with regional processes of economic integration with a commitment to working with all major powers to ensure peace and stability. Since Doi Moi, economic integration has been among the three key pillars of reforms in Viet Nam, together with market-oriented reforms and macroeconomic stabilisation. A vast amount of literature (Dinh et al. 2009; Central Institute for Economic Management [CIEM] 2013; Dinh et al. 2020) has shown that economic integration has been highly interactive with domestic economic reforms. Specifically, economic integration has broadened opportunities through access to foreign investment and foreign markets, adaptation to international trade rules and deeper participation in global value chains. Periods of progressive economic integration (i.e. 1989–96, 2000–07, 2014–19) also came with fundamental economic reforms, which led to significant socio-economic development and thus nurtured greater consensus towards economic integration. After numerous wars, including for national unification, Viet Nam stresses the importance of protecting national security and, more broadly, a stable environment for socio-economic development to take place. Over time, the country has gradually become more open to the international dimensions of national security. In 2020, the country was elected as a non- permanent member of the United Nations Security Council