HANOI—US President Barack Obama on Monday scrapped a Cold War-era ban on weapons sales to Vietnam, as the ties between the former foes grow closer thanks to trade and mutual fears of Chinese expansion in the disputed seas.
The announcement, made at the start of Obama’s three-day visit to Vietnam, ends a decades-old embargo and will likely infuriate Beijing, which has been increasingly assertive in its claims to the disputed areas of the South China Sea.
“The United States is fully lifting the ban on the sale of military equipment to Vietnam that has been in place for some fifty years,” Obama said at a joint press conference alongside his Vietnamese counterpart President Tran Dai Quang.
Obama said the move was not prompted by China’s regional maneuvers, but came as the countries enter a “new moment” that takes them towards a “normalization” of ties.
Vietnam’s Quang welcomed the rollback of the ban, hailing the shared “common concerns and interests” that now bind the two countries.
The Obama administration has pitched this week’s trip as an opportunity to push ties beyond the period of rapprochement, with Vietnam now a vital plank in America’s much vaunted pivot to the Asia-Pacific region.
The visit is Obama’s first—and the third by a sitting president since the end of the Vietnam War in 1975. Direct US involvement in the conflict ended in 1973.
The nations have experienced an astonishing turnaround in their relations, from bitter foes physically and psychologically scarred by a decade of war to regional allies.
Obama said he was “moved” to see thousands of locals lining Hanoi’s streets, craning with smartphones in hand for a view of his motorcade.
Washington and Hanoi share common security goals as Beijing flexes its muscles in the South China Sea, where Vietnam and several other nations also claim ownership of islands and reefs.
But historically Vietnam’s dismal human rights record has weighed against a full rollback of the arms embargo.
In a muted reference to its parlous rights situation, Obama said Washington “still had differences” with Vietnam on human rights but “modest progress” had been made.
The sentiment will jar with many long-persecuted activists and dissidents.
The one-party state still ruthlessly cracks down on protests, jails dissidents, bans trade unions and controls local media.