On November 2nd, 2023 the Prime Minister of Vietnam (Pham Minh Chinh) and the Prime Minister of the Netherlands (Mark Rutte) both attended the High Tech Business Forum and the Green Economy Forum in Hanoi, Vietnam. There, both Prime Ministers praised one another and expressed how productive they think their continuous partnership will be. Vietnam and the Netherlands have had diplomatic ties for over 50 years. With this Forum they were able to suggest changes they wanted to apply moving forward. Chinh mentioned it would be beneficial for Dutch firms to work with Vietnamese enterprises on specific issues like climate change adaptation, ship building services, semiconductors, or anything that could help to improve the globe as a whole. Chinh also believed that Vietnam and the Netherlands should expand their cooperation by increasing things like trade.
The Netherlands has a huge impact on Vietnam’s economy while being their biggest investor. The investments from the Netherlands have allowed Vietnam’s economy to flourish. Vietnam is using their positive relationship with the Netherlands to their advantage by pushing for the EU to protect them on things such as, an investment protection agreement and the removal of the yellow card warning on illegal, unreported, and unregulated fishing. They are slowly gaining protection from the EU which will be helpful as both countries are struggling with major environmental issues so any help they can receive while they work on those would be very beneficial.
In class, we discussed the balancing of power theory. This theory is when one or more states’ power is being used in another state to balance out the powers in the international system. Vietnam has been receiving some of the Netherlands economic powers (through their investments) which has allowed Vietnam to gain a lot of power back to their state and given them potential to grow in other areas where they were originally weak. Also, the EU’s impact on the relationship between Vietnam and the Netherlands is on the interstate regional level because it is discussing countries in a specific area and not all around the globe.