By Prashanth Parameswaran

June 5, 2015

"This week, the United States and Vietnam deepened their defense ties during a three-day trip by U.S. Defense Secretary Ashton Carter to the Southeast Asian state.

Most notably, Carter and his counterpart, Vietnamese Defense Minister Phung Quang Thanh, inked a Joint Vision Statement on Defense Relations. The statement itself, which comes as both sides celebrate the 20th anniversary of the normalization of their ties, is not wholly new. It builds on a 2011 memorandum of understanding that set out the five areas of defense cooperation: high-level dialogues; maritime security; search and rescue; humanitarian assistance and disaster relief, and peacekeeping. And the statement also clearly notes that existing mechanisms–chiefly the annual Defense Policy Dialogue (DPD) initiated in 2010 – would continue to serve as the means to review and guide the relationship."

Read more:
http://thediplomat.com/2015/06/why-vietnam-and-the-us-are-deepening-defense-ties/

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