ASEAN Beat | Diplomacy | Southeast Asia

Denying Great Power Interference: Vietnam’s Strategies Toward Laos and Cambodia

Since the first Vietnamese declaration of independence in 1945, Hanoi has pursued a consistent policy toward its two western neighbors.

A close-up of the Cambodia-Vietnam Friendship Monument in Phnom Penh, Cambodia.

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.

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