ABSTRACT
In 1978 Vietnam and the Soviet Union cemented their long-standing relationship by signing a twenty-five-year Treaty of Friendship and Cooperation. Vietnam was pressed to undertake domestic reforms and to adopt "new political thinking" in foreign policy. In June 1994, on the occasion of the visit of the Vietnamese prime minister, Russia and Vietnam renegotiated the terms of their Treaty of Friendship and Cooperation to put relations on a more equal footing. This chapter reviews these developments by tracing changes in Soviet-Russian political, military, and economic relations with Vietnam. Russian-Vietnamese political relations improved markedly during the final quarter of 1993 as a result of progress in restoring economic ties. In the aftermath of the dissolution of the Soviet Union, Vietnam moved quickly to limit the damage to its economic relations with Russia. The disintegration of the Soviet Union during 1990-1991 had a major impact on Soviet-Vietnamese military relations.
