Forget G20, Kim’s trip to Russia and Biden’s visit to Vietnam are more significant

Kim is going to Vladivostok, Biden to Hanoi. The physical and diplomatic routes taking them to their destinations could not be more different.

North Korea’s leader Kim Jong Un is expected to take an armoured train to Vladivostok in the next few days to discuss an arms deal with President Putin. Three trains will make the 20 hour, 1,000km long journey. An advance engine to check the rails for safety, then Kim’s luxury train, complete with flat screen TVs, expensive wines, caviar, fresh lobster, and a third for extra bodyguards, communications kit and anything else a top 21stC dictator might require. 

After leaving the bright(ish) lights of Pyongyang, some of which may be working, the convoy will chug slowly through countryside dotted with grindingly poor villages. The contrast with the life of the ‘Respected Comrade Supreme Leader, Peerlessly Great Man, Banner of all victory and glory’ to use just some of his titles, is stark.

Onwards to Hamhung. If it’s night-time Kim may not notice his country’s second city as it will be in almost complete darkness. Satellite imagery of the People’s Republic at night shows a vast expanse of black with a small point of light coming from the capital. If officials have managed to light the station, Kim will at least be able to spot the giant portraits of himself which hang at every through point heading northeast. On to Rason, the last town before the frontier, and then the border town of Khasan before crossing the bridge over the Tuman River and to Vladivostok.

Why bother? Because if Kim’s willing to supply Putin with multiple types of artillery weapons and ammunition for the war in Ukraine, then Putin’s willing to supply money, energy, and grain to North Korea. Kim gets to reduce his reliance on China, Putin ensures he has sufficient munitions to continue a lengthy war of attrition and wait for Ukraine’s western backers to tire and pressure Kyiv to negotiate an end to the fighting. North Korea is already supplying Russia with a limited amount of artillery shells from its enormous stockpiles. 

The groundwork for a much larger deal was laid by the visit of the Russian defence minister Sergei Shoigu to Pyongyang in July. There’s talk Kim may even travel on to Moscow. Now that’s a long train journey. 

Meanwhile, on Sunday, Biden will be flying into Hanoi aboard Air Force One after attending the G20 summit in New Delhi. The Vietnamese capital is everything Pyongyang is not. International tourists throng the city centre’s luxury hotels, and modern business tower blocks dominate the skyline which at night is a blaze of neon advertising signs. As Biden’s advisors may have told him “It’s Communism Joe, but not as we know it.”

Kim is turning, in some desperation, to Putin, and vice versa. Their countries have little in common, few friends, and moribund economies. Biden’s trip is part of a much longer and thought-out policy. He’s betting that Vietnam’s leader, General Secretary Nguyen Phu Trong, is so concerned about being dominated by China that he will deepen ties with the US. The two countries are expected to sign a Strategic Partnership Agreement (STP). Vietnam has three tiers of relationship with countries and the STP would be a step up from the basic Comprehensive Partnership Agreement. 

The two already enjoy a good relationship despite one calling itself ‘communist’ and the other ‘capitalist’. The US is Vietnam’s second largest trading partner after China and allows American aircraft carriers to make port calls in Da Nang. The closer ties come as tensions rise between Vietnam and China over territorial disputes in the South China Sea, something most of China’s neighbours are concerned about.  The latest point of contention is over Beijing’s construction of an airfield on an island which Vietnam claims as sovereign territory. 

Upgrading the US relationship will help Vietnam develop its high-tech industries, boost its crime fighting abilities, and upgrade its coastguard. It also takes it a small step away from Beijing even if China is at the top of the three-tier relationship definition. For Biden, closer relations are part of a bet that, on the road to Cold War 2.0, small and medium sized powers will increasingly shift towards one of the two superpowers and that a small step away from Beijing is a small step towards the US.

For some people the Vietnam/US relationship is defined by the Vietnam war. But the US military withdrew from Vietnam in 1973. Twenty-three years later Bill Clinton became the first post war American president to visit and since then, every president has made the trip. The relationship with China goes back much further, as does their degrees of enmity. The Han Dynasty colonised north Vietnam more than 2,000 years ago and it took a thousand years before an independent Vietnamese kingdom was established.  The most recent conflict between them was a month-long war in 1979. China also pretends to be a communist state when in fact both are simply controlled by a communist party, but neither pretends to be friends. 

Vietnam, like North Korea, may be a one-party state dictatorship, but unlike North Korea it has a future. Several generations of Vietnamese have seen their lives bettered and their country forge relationships across the world.  Kim’s train is on the wrong track.

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