Lan D. Ngo, The Strategist:
Should Vietnam continue building its maritime forces or should it pivot landward to best ensure its security? Few would dispute that this is a critical question that merits close scrutiny. As an emergent middle power, Vietnam simply doesn’t have sufficient resources to simultaneously pursue a powerful navy and a muscular land army. Making appropriate strategic trade-offs is therefore vital to ensuring national security.
However, the recent discussion on this forum about Vietnam’s geostrategic orientation, sparked by Khang Vu’s article, misses a vital point. Debating whether the Vietnamese military should expand landward or seaward adds little value if the kind of future security threat and the scenario under which Vietnam would be attacked are not clearly and accurately specified. After all, beefing up a nation’s military doesn’t improve national security if the weapon systems purchased, and the military doctrine developed, don’t match the most probable threat.
