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A year after Vietnam elevated relations with the United States to its highest diplomatic level, a new report released Tuesday said an internal Vietnamese military document prepared for a possible American “war of aggression,” even while it assessed that a conflict with Vietnam posed little immediate risk. The documents also portray Washington as a “belligerent” power and describe a need to remain vigilant against what Vietnamese planners said could become an invasion pretext, according to the report and analysis highlighted by The 88 Project.
The report said the original Vietnamese document was titled “The 2nd U.S. Invasion Plan” and was completed by the Ministry of Defense in August 2024. It said the plan laid out scenarios and considerations for Vietnam’s military in the event of U.S. military action, framing the United States and its allies as seeking to strengthen deterrence against China while also, in the Vietnamese view, being prepared to use unconventional forms of warfare, military intervention, and potentially large-scale invasions against countries and territories that “deviate from its orbit.”
While the document was described as warning of long-term dangers, it also contained an assessment that “currently there is little risk of a war against Vietnam,” according to AP’s account of what the planners wrote. The report said the document nevertheless emphasized vigilance, describing how Vietnam needed to prevent the U.S. and its allies from “creating a pretext” for an invasion of Vietnam, tying that concern to the United States’ “belligerent nature,” as characterized in the plan.
The report highlighted that the Vietnamese military analysts laid out a progression across three U.S. administrations: from Barack Obama through Donald Trump’s first term and into the presidency of Joe Biden. AP reported that the document linked that progression to Washington increasingly pursuing military and other relationships with Asian nations to “form a front against China,” while simultaneously drawing a different conclusion about U.S. intentions toward Vietnam’s socialist system.
Ben Swanton, co-director of The 88 Project and the report’s author, told AP that he saw consensus across Vietnam’s government rather than isolated internal disagreement. “There’s a consensus here across the government and across different ministries,” Swanton said. He added, “This isn’t just some kind of a fringe element or paranoid element within the party or within the government.”
In the report’s account, the internal documents also focused heavily on fears of “color revolution” dynamics, describing external influence as something that could foment an uprising against the Communist leadership. AP said the organization’s analysis pointed to other internal documents that echoed similar concerns about U.S. motives in Vietnam.
The report’s discussion of Vietnam’s external posture came alongside details of recent diplomacy and possible domestic tension. AP said that in 2023, Biden signed a “Comprehensive Strategic Partnership” with Vietnam, elevating relations to the highest diplomatic level for both sides, and that the agreement was described as a partnership grounded in mutual respect. It also reported that the 2024 military document nonetheless said the U.S. viewed Vietnam as “a partner and an important link” while also seeking to “spread and impose its values regarding freedom, democracy, human rights, ethnicity and religion” to gradually change Vietnam’s government.
Vietnam’s Foreign Ministry did not respond to emails seeking comment on The 88 Project’s report or the document it cited, AP reported. The U.S. State Department declined to comment directly on the “2nd U.S. Invasion Plan,” but emphasized the partnership agreement, saying it “promotes prosperity and security for the United States and Vietnam,” according to the AP account.
AP also cited analysts who said the documents reveal internal tensions in how Vietnam’s leadership reads threats and risks. Nguyen Khac Giang of Singapore’s ISEAS–Yusof Ishak Institute said the plans highlighted tensions within the Communist Party’s political leadership, describing a conservative, military-aligned faction preoccupied with external threats to the regime. Zachary Abuza, a professor at the National War College, said Vietnam’s military still has “a very long memory” of the war with the United States that ended in 1975, and argued that the documents reinforced other policy papers suggesting Hanoi’s biggest fear is a “color revolution.”
Abuza also tied the documents’ framing to how Vietnamese leaders think about internal stability and the possibility of mass unrest, describing what he said was fear that Americans would support a “color revolution” if one occurred. He said China was portrayed more as a regional rival than an existential threat like the U.S., and he contrasted that assessment with the concern that external action could trigger a political uprising.
The report’s discussion of Vietnam’s current trajectory also pointed to recent leadership developments under To Lam, who became Communist Party general secretary around the same time the August 2024 document was written. AP reported that Giang said the country had moved to strengthen ties with the U.S., especially under Trump, even as the documents’ outlook kept highlighting deeper anxieties. Lam was reappointed general secretary last month, AP said, and was expected to also assume the presidency.
AP reported that Giang described the pace of Vietnam’s acceptance of Trump’s invitation to join a Board of Peace as unusually swift given that foreign policy moves are typically calibrated with close attention to Beijing’s reaction. Giang also said Vietnamese conservatives gained new justification for their unease about closer ties with Washington after U.S. military operations connected to Cuba, describing Cuba as “very sensitive” and saying Vietnamese elites have “very strong, intimate ties with Cuba.”
Overall, the report and AP’s analysis presented the documents as a view into how Hanoi weighs diplomatic cooperation with Washington against internal security fears. Abuza said that as Trump’s second administration focused on the Western Hemisphere, Vietnamese leaders might be left both reassured by that emphasis and confused by the administration’s approach to human rights and democracy promotion, while still remaining alert to actions that, in Abuza’s characterization, involved violations of sovereignty and removals of leaders they do not like.
In AP’s account, the documents thus portrayed a balancing act: maintaining diplomatic and economic ties while hedging against scenarios where U.S. support could shift from partnership to pressure. AP also reported that the U.S. was Vietnam’s largest export market and that China was its largest two-way trade partner, adding to the complexity of how Vietnam sought to manage risks even as it pursued deeper official engagement with Washington.