During the Q&A following his address at the 2026 Shangri-La Dialogue, To Lam, Vietnam’s president and the general secretary of the Communist Party of Vietnam (CPV), made a commitment that, despite its rising profile, Vietnam would not seek to become a “center of power” in Southeast Asia. Observers of Vietnam’s foreign policy cannot help contrasting the commitment with Vietnam’s attempt to head an Indochinese bloc comprising of Laos and Cambodia confronting the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) during the Cold War.
Instead of siding with a great power and weakening ASEAN then, Vietnam now affirms its Four Nos foreign policy (no military alliances, no siding with one country against another, no letting foreign powers set up military bases in Vietnam or use Vietnamese territory against another, no use or threat of use of force in international relations) and advocates for “ASEAN centrality.”
Lam’s commitment is even more noteworthy in the context of China’s growing presence in Laos and Cambodia. Modern Vietnam has perceived its two western neighbors as part of its sphere of influence since 1945, and it is worried about the possibility of a China-dominated Laos and Cambodia. However, Vietnam has renounced the use of force to keep Laos and Cambodia within its orbit under the Four Nos. Lam’s rejection of Vietnam’s role as a “center of power” seems to reinforce that notion. Still, just because Vietnam has no intention of becoming a center of power doesn’t mean it will abandon Laos and Cambodia to other powers. The strategy now is to maintain influence in Laos and Cambodia without being perceived as a regional hegemon.
Vietnam’s end goal toward its two western neighbors is consistent – to prevent any hostile great powers from establishing presences there. On their own, Laos and Cambodia cannot pose a military threat to Vietnam due to their smaller populations and economies. Vietnam’s population of 103 million is roughly four times the combined populations of Laos and Cambodia. Still, they can serve as a staging ground for great powers to attack Vietnam from the west. Vietnam shares a 3,400-kilometer-long border with Laos and Cambodia, and it lacks horizontal strategic depth. Such a geographical weakness would require Hanoi to constantly station several hundreds of thousands of troops along the entire border if it is unsure of the Lao and Cambodian intentions. As such, nurturing friendly governments in Vientiane and Phnom Penh is a must if Vietnam is to keep things quiet on the “western front.”
Vietnam’s strategy toward Laos and Cambodia throughout the three Indochina wars reflects Hanoi’s determination to keep its western neighbors a zone free of foreign influence by manipulating who ruled the two smaller Indochinese countries. During the First Indochina War (1946-1954), the Democratic Republic of Vietnam (DRV) waged a war of independence against France not only within Vietnam’s territory but also throughout the rest of Indochina.
This was because of geographical necessity. Hanoi was afraid that France-backed regimes in Laos and Cambodia would continue posing a threat to its fledgling communist government. The DRV created communist sister states in Laos and Cambodia to contest against the royalist governments there. The western flank was so important that the Vietnamese communist leadership decided to concentrate their forces on Dien Bien Phu instead of the Red River Delta. This was to open a Vietnam-Laos-Cambodia front to force France to spread its forces thin throughout Indochina – the exact disadvantage that the French wanted to avoid.
With Chinese support, the DRV succeeded in neutralizing Laos and Cambodia from French control under the 1954 Geneva Agreements, as France had to withdraw from Indochina. However, it failed to win international recognition for the Cambodian communists and obtained only limited recognition for the Pathet Lao. This is where Hanoi’s geographical pragmatism trumped its ideological commitment to its Lao and Cambodian comrades. After Geneva, the DRV was willing to peacefully coexist with the royalist governments in Laos and Cambodia and restrained Lao and Cambodian communists from waging revolutions so long as the royalist governments abided by the Geneva Accords by not joining military alliances. This was also the general line of the international communist movement at the time.
Such tolerance soon expired at the onset of the Second Indochina War (1955-1975). This time, the DRV perceived that the United States was trying to undermine Lao and Cambodian neutrality by sponsoring pro-U.S. groups in their respective governments and putting them under the protection of the Southeast Asian Treaty Organization. In May 1959, rightist elements excluded the Pathet Lao from the neutral Royal Lao Government (RLG). This prompted Hanoi to increase its military support to the Pathet Lao to resist the RLG. The 1962 Geneva Conference on Laos did not change Hanoi’s course. As the war against the U.S.-backed Saigon government intensified, the DRV needed a friendly Lao government to protect the Ho Chi Minh Trail and crack down on cross-border commando insertions into its territory, and the RLG could not meet that demand.
The same goes with Prince Norodom Sihanouk’s Cambodia. Hanoi was willing to tolerate his government and limited support for the Cambodian communists so long as Sihanouk was letting DRV troops set up camps and use Cambodian territory to launch attacks against U.S.-backed South Vietnam. However, after the pro-U.S. General Lon Nol overthrew Sihanouk in March 1970, Hanoi ramped up its military support to the Cambodian communists who were waging war on Lon Nol. With Chinese and Soviet backing, the DRV successfully forced the United States to withdraw from Indochina in January 1973, which brought the Lao and Cambodian communists into power in 1975. Hanoi thought that its western flank was finally stabilized.
The Third Indochina War (1978-1991) once again showed how determined Vietnam was to keep its western flank free of foreign powers by nurturing friendly Cambodian and Lao governments. Soon after taking power in Cambodia in April 1975, the Khmer Rouge came to pose a new threat to unified Vietnam’s southwestern front. Vietnam tried to negotiate territorial disputes with it, but all attempts failed.
However, what worried Vietnam was not the Khmer Rouge’s military power but its Chinese backer. Vietnam could have overthrown the Khmer Rouge in late 1977, but it decided to only launch limited counteroffensives then, so as not to upset China. However, Chinese military advisors’ presence in Cambodia and their role in arming and planning attacks against Vietnam after serious Vietnam-China talks in October 1977 worried Hanoi. With Soviet military support, Hanoi decided to topple the Khmer Rouge and replace it with a pro-Vietnamese government in 1978 to neutralize Chinese influence in Cambodia. The fact that Vietnam could install a new Cambodian government just two weeks after launching the invasion in December 1978 showed the power disparity between the two neighbors.
With respect to Laos, Hanoi won Vientiane’s allegiance by promising to protect it from Thailand and domestic rebels. In exchange, Vientiane downgraded its diplomatic ties with China and limited Chinese engineering troops’ presence there. The 1977 Vietnam-Laos Treaty of Friendship and Cooperation allowed Hanoi to station troops on Lao soil to guard Vietnam’s western flank as well as to put pressure on Khmer Rouge remnants along the Laos-Cambodian border. By January 1979, Hanoi had two friendly governments on its western flank.
However, such use of force proved to be costly. Vietnam stationed 50,000 troops in Laos and 200,000 troops in Cambodia to protect the pro-Vietnam governments there. At the same time, it had to prepare for the possibility of a second Chinese invasion after February 1979 across the Vietnam-China border. Internationally, Vietnam was condemned by the West, ASEAN, and China as a regional hegemon and placed under heavy economic sanctions. Due to the decline of the Soviet Union, Hanoi had to retrench from its use of force as the principal method of keeping Laos and Cambodia free from great-power interference. It withdrew from Laos and Cambodia in 1988 and 1989, respectively, and it agreed to a non-aligned Cambodian government under the 1991 Paris Peace Agreements.
After 1991, Vietnam adjusted its strategy toward Laos and Cambodia. Instead of relying on military power and a great power ally, Hanoi has emphasized political arrangements to reinforce Laos and Cambodia’s non-aligned status. The 1977 Friendship Treaty with Laos remains the bedrock of Vietnam’s effort to keep Laos free from foreign powers, as the treaty commits both sides not to undertake actions that hurt the interests of the other. Laos receives Chinese funding for its infrastructure, but it doesn’t host Chinese military bases.
With Cambodia, Hanoi has strictly abided by the 1991 Agreements not to send troops to Cambodia, which is also consistent with its Four Nos. Importantly, this move has allowed Hanoi to bind others to the same commitment, as the Paris Peace Agreements committed all signatories, including France, the United States, and China, not to station troops on Cambodian soil. Cambodia’s 1993 Constitution explicitly prohibits the establishment of foreign bases on its soil. This is what Hanoi wants. Vietnam also supports the Hun family’s domestic authority despite Cambodia tilting closer to China under Hun Sen’s leadership.
This is because the Hun family is less likely to seek foreign help to balance against Vietnam compared to other, more anti-Vietnam Cambodian factions. China’s growing presence at Ream Naval Base does raise concerns in Hanoi, but it is a far cry from China’s support for the Khmer Rouge in their attacks against Vietnam. Vietnam, for now, is countering Chinese influence in western Indochina by waging its own infrastructure war, and constructing vital ports and waterways connecting it with Laos and Cambodia.
Vietnam is likely to continue embedding its Laos and Cambodia strategy within ASEAN via an expansion of the Four Nos. “ASEAN centrality” keeps the region, and specifically western Indochina, free of great-power interferences without Vietnam being seen as imposing its will on others. So long as China and other great powers don’t turn Laos and Cambodia against Vietnam, Vietnam is not likely to resort to the use of force to manipulate the leaderships of Laos and Cambodia as it did during the three Indochina wars.
