Here are a few more short videos on relevant and timely topics. They include:
–The Caux Round Table’s Special Relationship with the Vatican
–General Abrams and How to Think About War
–Principles Meet In the Middle
All our videos can be found here.
Blog
My New Book: America vs. the Overclass
I’m very pleased to announce that my new book, America vs. the Overclass: How a New Elite Corrupted Our Nation and What We Can Do to Stop Them, (published by RealClear Publishing), will be out on June 30, 2026.
You can pre-order a copy now!
I wrote it to bring to public notice some ideas from sociology and social-psychology, which have drawn my attention for many years.
The jumping-off point for my analysis of American culture, modal personalities, society, politics, is Sir John Glubb’s observation that, over the ages and across human cultures, the average life of dynasties, regimes and great nations has been 250 years.
This July 4th is the 250th anniversary of the U.S. Declaration of Independence, which my ancestor, Lewis Morris, signed.
My people are unhappy. Our politics are destructive. Our economy carries an unsustainable debt. How many more years does our republic have left?
The book, in many ways, intersects with and carries forward the concerns of the Caux Round Table. My suggestion for a revival of the American experiment in ordered liberty is for individuals to assume responsibility, to assume an office arising out of covenant. Such personal covenantal dedication to a common good is the foundation for moral capitalism and moral government. This requires a personal commitment of being inner-directed.
(Presenting Pope Leo a copy of the book last Saturday.)
My mentor in college, David Riesman, wrote about American inner-direction and its nemesis, other-direction, in his 1950 book, The Lonely Crowd. My new book seeks, in part, to honor his work and also to thank him for his friendship those many years ago.Should you read it, I would be most interested in hearing your thoughts about my thesis and the facts that I bring forward to support its credibility.
Also, if you feel so inclined, please feel free to forward this email to colleagues and friends of yours you believe would be interested.
A flyer about the book can be found here.
Elon Musk vs. OpenAI: Litigating Moral Capitalism
I have not paid attention to the current lawsuit brought by Elon Musk against OpenAI and its now private shareholders. I rather cavalierly dismissed it as an expression of egomania on the part of two very smart and driven men facing off against one another.
But an article on the trial caused me to rethink and conclude that this litigation was brought by Musk to champion moral capitalism.
The importance of the moral issue of taking responsibility for development and deployment of product and technology has just been given deep theological and philosophical importance by Pope Leo XIV in his new encyclical on AI.
Both Pope Leo and Elon Musk worried about the consequences for humanity of machine thinking – a new technology. Economists call such consequences “externalities” of a product or a service – what does the product or service cause to happen? Usually, the concern is about price. Does the price charged for a good or service include the costs to users, society, the community and the environment of any negative effects brought about by that product or service? Here is the issue of who should pay for the costs of pollution?
Thus, to have the work of developing AI, Musk thought of using what some call a “benefit corporation,” where the ability of owners to place profit above all other considerations is restrained. The purpose of the entity must be to generate benefits for specified stakeholders. Musk chose the form of a non-profit corporation. Money was raised and staff were hired. Later, the CEO, Sam Altman, working with Microsoft, took the capital of the non-profit and moved it to a for-profit company.
Musk sued for breach of contract and specific performance of the original contract provision to benefit humanity and not owners.
Here are relevant excepts from Musk’s complaint:
Mr. Musk has long recognized that artificial general intelligence (AGI) poses a grave threat to humanity – perhaps the greatest existential threat we face today. His concerns mirrored those raised before him by luminaries like Stephen Hawking and Sun Microsystems founder Bill Joy. Our entire economy is based around the fact that humans work together and come up with the best solutions to a hard task. If a machine can solve nearly any task better than we can, that machine becomes more economically useful than we are. As Mr. Joy warned, with strong AGI, “the future doesn’t need us.” …
With the DeepMind team, Google immediately catapulted to the front of the race for AGI. Mr. Musk was deeply troubled by this development. He believed (and still does) that in the hands of a closed, for-profit company like Google, AGI poses a particularly acute and noxious danger to humanity. In 2014, it was already difficult enough to compete with Google in its core businesses. Google had collected a uniquely large set of data from our searches, our emails and nearly every book in our libraries. Nevertheless, up to this point, everyone had the potential to compete with Google through superior human intelligence and hard work. AGI would make competition nearly impossible. …
The Founding Agreement of OpenAI, Inc.
Mr. Altman purported to share Mr. Musk’s concerns over the threat posed by AGI. In 2015, Mr. Altman wrote that the “development of superhuman machine intelligence (SMI) is probably the greatest threat to the continued existence of humanity. There are other threats that I think are more certain to happen . . . but are unlikely to destroy every human in the universe in the way that SMI could.” Later that same year, Mr. Altman approached Mr. Musk with a proposal: that they join forces to form a non-profit AI lab that would try to catch up to Google in the race for AGI, but it would be the opposite of Google. …
Together with Mr. Brockman, the three agreed that this new lab: (a) would be a non-profit developing AGI for the benefit of humanity, not for a for-profit company seeking to maximize shareholder profits and (b) would be open-source, balancing only countervailing safety considerations and would not keep its technology closed and secret for proprietary commercial reasons (the “founding agreement”). Reflecting the founding agreement, Mr. Musk named this new AI lab “OpenAI,” which would compete with and serve as a vital counterbalance to Google/DeepMind in the race for AGI, but would do so to benefit humanity, not the shareholders of a private, for-profit company (much less one of the largest technology companies in the world). …
The founding agreement was also memorialized, among other places, in OpenAI, Inc.’s December 8, 2015, certificate of incorporation, which affirmed that its “resulting technology will benefit the public and the corporation will seek to open-source technology for the public benefit when applicable. The corporation is not organized for the private gain of any person.” The certificate of incorporation further affirmed that all of the corporation’s property was “irrevocably dedicated” to these agreed purposes. …
Mr. Altman became OpenAI, Inc.’s CEO in 2019. On September 22, 2020, OpenAI entered into an agreement with Microsoft, exclusively licensing to Microsoft its Generative PreTrained Transformer (GPT)-3 language model. However, OpenAI published a detailed paper describing the internals and training data for GPT-3, enabling the community to create similar models themselves. And most critically, the Microsoft license only applied to OpenAI’s pre-AGI technology. Microsoft obtained no rights to AGI. It was up to OpenAI, Inc.’s non-profit board, not Microsoft, to determine when OpenAI attained AGI. …
In 2023, defendants Mr. Altman, Mr. Brockman and OpenAI set the founding agreement aflame. In March 2023, OpenAI released its most powerful language model yet, GPT-4. GPT-4 is not just capable of reasoning. It is better at reasoning than average humans. It scored in the 90thpercentile on the Uniform Bar Exam for lawyers. It scored in the 99th percentile on the GRE Verbal Assessment. It even scored a 77% on the Advanced Sommelier examination. At this time, Mr. Altman caused OpenAI to radically depart from its original mission and historical practice of making its technology and knowledge available to the public. GPT-4’s internal design was kept and remains a complete secret except to OpenAI – and on information and belief, Microsoft. There are no scientific publications describing the design of GPT-4. Instead, there are just press releases bragging about performance. On information and belief, this secrecy is primarily driven by commercial considerations, not safety. Although developed by OpenAI using contributions from plaintiff and others that were intended to benefit the public, GPT-4 is now a de facto Microsoft proprietary algorithm, which it has integrated into its Office software suite. …
Furthermore, on information and belief, GPT-4 is an AGI algorithm and hence, expressly outside the scope of Microsoft’s September 2020 exclusive license with OpenAI. …
A board coup took place in November 2023. On November 17, 2023, OpenAI, Inc.’s board fired Mr. Altman after losing “confidence in his ability to continue leading OpenAI” because “he was not consistently candid with the board.” In a series of stunning developments spanning the next several days, Mr. Altman and Mr. Brockman, in concert with Microsoft, exploited Microsoft’s significant leverage over OpenAI, Inc. and forced the resignation of a majority of OpenAI, Inc.’s board members, including Chief Scientist Ilya Sutskever. Mr. Altman was reinstated as CEO of OpenAI, Inc. on November 21. On information and belief, the new board members were hand-picked by Mr. Altman and blessed by Microsoft. …
This case is filed to compel OpenAI to adhere to the founding agreement and return to its mission to develop AGI for the benefit of humanity, not to personally benefit the individual defendants and the largest technology company in the world.
November 2023 To Present: Altman’s OpenAI
The public is still in the dark regarding what exactly the board’s “deliberative review process” revealed that resulted in the initial firing of Mr. Altman. However, one thing is clear to Mr. Musk and the public at large: OpenAI has abandoned its “irrevocable” non-profit mission in the pursuit of profit. Numerous leaders and intellectuals have publicly commented on the irony and tragedy of OpenAI becoming “Closed, For-Profit AI.” …
Defendants have breached the founding agreement in multiple separate ways, including at least by:
Failing to disclose to the public, among other things, details on GPT-4’s architecture, hardware, training method and training computation and further by erecting a “paywall” between the public and GPT-4, requiring per-token payment for usage, in order to advance defendants and Microsoft’s own private commercial interests, despite agreeing that OpenAI’s technology would be open-source, balancing only countervailing safety considerations.
Wherefore, plaintiff prays for judgment against defendants as follows: for an order compelling specific performance of defendants’ repeated contractual promises including, without limitation, an order requiring that defendants continue to follow OpenAI’s longstanding practice of making AI research and technology developed at OpenAI available to the public and an order prohibiting defendants from utilizing OpenAI, Inc. or its assets for the financial benefit of the individual defendants, Microsoft or any other particular person or entity.
May the good guys win and moral capitalism be vindicated by law!
A Crony Capitalist Maybe?
Two recent press reports provide information on President Trump or his agents buying and selling shares in companies whose financial fortunes turn on securing profitable contracts or permissions from the federal government working under Trump’s personal direction.
Under the Caux Round Table Principles for Government, “power given by public office is held in trust for the benefit of the community and its citizens. Officials are custodians only of the powers they hold. They have no personal entitlement to office or the prerogatives thereof.”
Taking selfish advantage of public power for personal gain or other advantage is an abuse of such trusteeship authority and may constitute, under the U.S. Constitution, an impeachable offence warranting removal from office.
The first report was in Bloomberg, published by Bill Allison and Jessica Menton.
The transactions, spelled out in more than 100 pages of documents filed Thursday with the U.S. Office of Government Ethics, list purchases and sales in broad ranges, making it hard to calculate an exact value. But the volume of trading – more than 40 per day over a three-month period – stands out as much as the potential dollar value. …
“This is an insane amount of trades,” said Matthew Tuttle, chief executive officer of Tuttle Capital Management, in an interview, adding that it looks more like something done by “a hedge fund with massive algo trades” that buys and shorts securities than a personal account. …
In the first quarter, the president bought at least $1 million each in companies including Nvidia Corp., Oracle Corp., Microsoft Corp., Boeing Co. and Costco Wholesale Corp., according to the documents. Other trades involved eBay Inc., Abbott Laboratories, Uber Technologies Inc., AT&T Inc. and discount store Dollar Tree Inc. …
The disclosure reignites conflict-of-interest concerns that have shadowed Trump’s terms in the White House. Critics have regularly accused him of mixing his official duties with his business interests. Unlike his predecessors, Trump didn’t divest or move his assets into a blind trust with an independent overseer. His sprawling business empire is managed by two of his sons and operates in several areas that intersect with presidential policy. …
Netflix Inc. and Paramount Skydance Corp. battled to acquire Warner Bros Discovery Inc. in a months-long fight with both suitors raising potential antitrust concerns. Trump made investments related to all three companies. He bought a modest stake in Warner Bros. in March, worth at least $30,000, a stake in Paramount Skydance worth at least $15,000 the same month. He also had 19 transactions naming Netflix, including sales worth as little as $1,000 and as much as $5 million during the first quarter. …
“All of this raises questions that you’d rather not raise as a president,” said Tuttle. “So, now people are asking why is he buying Nvidia and other companies now? When you’re the president, you know everything, so any stock you buy, there’s a huge question mark.” …
Trump’s biggest sales came on February 10, when he unloaded holdings in three technology firms: Microsoft, Meta Platforms Inc. and Amazon.com Inc., in amounts between $5 million and $25 million. He also sold a stake in a Vanguard ETF in January, worth at least $5 million.
The second report was written by Edith Olmsted and was published in the New Republic.
On February 10, Donald Trump purchased between $1 million and $5 million worth of stock in Nvidia, a massive AI chip maker. A week later, Nvidia announced a major computer processing power deal with Meta. …
Trump previously purchased between $500,000 and $1 million worth of Nvidia stock on January 6, after clearing the sale of Nvidia’s H200 chips, the company’s second-most powerful AI chip, to China. A week later, the Commerce Department officially approved the sale. This week, after Huang traveled with Trump to China, the Commerce Department cleared 10 Chinese firms to buy Nvidia’s chips – making way for Trump to make millions more. …
Also on January 6, Trump purchased between $50,000 and $100,000 worth of stock in AMD, another AI semiconductor company, which was authorized to sell their chips to Chinese customers a week later. Trump purchased at least $740,000 in AMD stock last quarter, according to NOTUS. …
In the first quarter of 2026, Trump also purchased at least $260,000 worth of stock in Palantir, a private weapons manufacturer with hefty government contracts and ties to the president. …
In January, Trump bought between $65,000 to $150,000 of Palantir stock and sold between $1.1 million and roughly $5.3 million of it in February. That same month, Palantir won a billion-dollar purchasing agreement with the Department of Homeland Security to use the company’s software to aid Trump’s sweeping deportation efforts. …
In March, Trump purchased between $200,000 and $500,000 in Palantir stock. Last month, Trump made a public call for people to buy stock in Palantir – including the stock’s ticker symbol in his social media post – in an obvious effort at market manipulation. A few weeks later, Palantir landed yet another major federal contract.
The Caux Round Table has proposed the following schema to describe the moral dynamic of systems of crony capitalism. It uses philosopher Jurgen Habermas’s construction, where morality emerges in the engagement of normativity (at the top) through human agency, with facticity (at the bottom) and reciprocally, the engagement of facticity with normativity, similarly through human agency.
April Pegasus Now Available!
A little belatedly, here’s April Pegasus.
This issue delivers three essays on differing topics, but with an overarching theme. We have moral responsibilities beyond ourselves to our families, our communities and our nations. In a world where the self, loneliness and an idea of doing your own thing have become more prevalent, these essays remind us of duty and responsibility – vital, core blocks to what makes a society and culture work and, ultimately, flourish. We neglect these ideas at our peril.
As usual, I would be most interested in your thoughts and feedback.
AI: Who’s in Charge?
The contextualizing of capitalism, free markets and innovations has been with us since the dawn of capitalism. What are we to make of the tulip mania in Holland or the South Sea Bubble in London? Or worse, the Mississippi Bubble (1718–1720), a massive 18th century financial crisis in France caused by the rapid inflation and subsequent collapse of shares in the Compagnie des Indes, managed by John Law?
Driven by speculative investments in French Louisiana, share prices soared from 500 to 18,000 livres before crashing, ruining many investors and causing severe economic damage. Some have thought that the collapse of the company’s stock wiped out the new, precarious, rising middle class in France, which contributed to the extremisms of the French Revolution.
Outcomes are realities which can be scrutinized from moral perspectives.
AI is now creating new realities. What moral compasses are needed to frame our appreciation of AI? What modalities are needed to impose that frame on the practices, production processes and products of AI?
In a recent piece for The Economist, Shuwei Fang of Harvard writes of AI from this perspective:
The conversation about AI and the information economy is mostly about supply. Content is being commoditized. Journalism is dying. Intellectual property is being scraped without consent or compensation. The internet is being flooded with misinformation and slop. …
What’s missing here is that AI’s impact on the information ecosystem is also a demand-side shock and arguably, a demand-side expansion.
Every major information revolution, from printing to mobile, expanded the market for knowledge, often dramatically. AI is likely to do the same, but is also categorically different: the world is entering the age of machine audiences. …
Consider what happens when someone asks an AI a question about the world. The system draws on vast amounts of knowledge and other content, synthesizes what it deems relevant and gives an answer shaped to serve that person’s intentions. That answer is entirely new and may never be seen again. …
But AI does not only create machine demand. It simultaneously expands human demand too. The obscure corners of information demand – very specific needs that no article or broadcast could ever serve before – become addressable. Conversational AI brings latent demand to the surface too, helping people articulate needs they could not previously express. And AI lowers cognitive barriers: complex information, once comprehensible only to specialists, becomes digestible by anyone who can ask a question. …
This market has barely begun to form. There are no stable mechanisms to match and price the demand signal against the supply that could serve it. The information supply chain that could run from how knowledge is sourced, through how agents exchange it, to how AI delivers comprehension to humans, has no common rails and no incentive structure to reward rigor over fluency. …
The disciplines that journalism and the scientific method developed over centuries – of truth-seeking, accountability and self-correction – are the very operating principles that market will require.
What Should We Learn from the Iran War? Please Join Us June 2 on Zoom
Is war-fighting unidimensional (the clash of the big battalions) or multi-dimensional (morale, will, economics)?
Clausewitz (1838) wrote a lot about “the battle,” but never considered “the battle” as sufficient unto itself in bringing an enemy to acceptance of defeat and surrender of will to assert its moral goals.
Similarly, Sun Tzu (544–496 BC) had pointed out the high value-added of understanding and then disabling an enemy’s strategy.
Consider how the Ukrainians have fought the Russians to a standstill and are now capable of carrying “the battle” deep in the Russian homeland. That’s tenacity and innovation at work. Turns out the Ukrainians had some high “cards” that Donald Trump overlooked.
What are the Iranians fighting for?
What is Donald Trump fighting for?
What do Iran’s neighbors need and want to advance their futures?
Clausewitz most famously wrote that war is an extension of politics by other means. So, in war, politics must never be discounted. In Iran, maybe regime change needs to come before “the battle” can win the war?
What is the role of alliances?
A Caux Round Table perspective on war would start from setting moral standards and rules of right and wrong in going to war and in fighting and killing others. Just war theory, the Hague and Geneva Conventions, 1928 Kellogg-Briand Pact outlawing war; the United Nations compact among sovereign nations, etc.
Please join us at 9:00 am (CDT) on Tuesday, June 2, for a Zoom round table on what should be the lessons learned, so far, from the Israeli/U.S. attack on Iran.
To register, please email jed@cauxroundtable.net.
Event will last about an hour.
Advice from Napoleon to Donald Trump
Yesterday, President Donald Trump said that his ceasefire agreement with Iran is “on life support” and that the most recent negotiating proposal was “a piece of garbage.”
In Iran: “There is no alternative but to accept the rights of the Iranian people as laid out in the 14-point proposal,” Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, speaker of Iran’s Parliament, wrote on social media. “Any other approach will be completely inconclusive; nothing but one failure after another. The longer they drag their feet, the more American taxpayers will pay for it.”
Napoleon, quite put off by the American conduct of this war, could be heard in the far distance saying again, “Gentlemen, if you set out to take Vienna, take it.”
Who Might This Be?
I recently sat in on a lunch meeting where the agenda was simply “values.”
We were asked to talk about what is good and what is bad. The comments and questions that followed were unsurprising for Americans these days, but the group anchored itself in respectful listening.
But one member put on the table a list of behaviors associated with good motivations and others associated with “less than helpful” approaches to life.
Here is a list of those latter behaviors. If they were to be associated with a prominent personality, who might come to mind?
Addictive, acquisitive, prohibiting, conquering, authoritarian, egotistical, competitive, controlling, dominating, insensitive, suspicious, aggressive, self-preserving, hierarchical, isolated, absolutist, contemptuous, closed/secretive, given to pretense, comfort-seeking, divisive.
These expressions of personality were associated with fear-based, materialistic, defensive approaches to life by Demi Miller of St. Paul, Minnesota.
Enhancing the Comprehensive Strategic Partnership between Vietnam and India: Reading Between the Lines
Hoang Thang Dinh (PhD, CRT Fellow)
There is a famous line by Vietnamese poet Xuân Diệu: “How can one live without loving, without longing, without cherishing someone?” Yet in international politics – especially in Asia today – states often find it convenient to “love without saying it,” to “grow closer without letting others know,” to “align without making it official.” That is why General Secretary and President Tô Lâm’s state visit to India, and the decision by Hanoi and New Delhi to elevate their bilateral relationship to an “Enhanced Comprehensive Strategic Partnership” (ECSP), has a significance far beyond ordinary diplomacy. In many ways, it was an effort to “make clear who we truly are to each other” after years in which both sides recognized each other’s strategic value but publicly maintained enough distance to avoid unnecessary geopolitical discomfort.
A close reading of Tô Lâm’s remarks at the Indian Council of World Affairs (ICWA), Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s statements at the joint press conference, and the wording of the Joint Statement itself, reveals that this note of “enhancing” is not merely a cosmetic upgrade in diplomatic terminology. (1,2,3) Rather, it reflects an important transformation in how Vietnam and India perceive each other within Asia’s evolving balance of power – an Asia in which China has become increasingly assertive, the United States increasingly present, and middle powers such as India, Japan, and Vietnam increasingly compelled to construct flexible forms of strategic alignment in order to preserve their own autonomous maneuverability.
The first critical question is what exactly distinguishes an “Enhanced CSP” from the previous “Comprehensive Strategic Partnership.” On the surface, some might dismiss it as little more than an exercise in diplomatic semantics, given that Vietnam and India already established a CSP back in 2016. But in modern diplomacy – particularly among Asian states that tend to use strategic language sparingly – the addition of the word “Enhanced” is never accidental. If the 2016 CSP focused primarily on political trust, high-level exchanges, foundational defense cooperation, trade, and people-to-people ties, the ECSP of 2026 signals movement toward much more substantive strategic integration: coordination within the regional order itself about the nature of that order.
In other words, the earlier CSP resembled a strategic friendship, while the ECSP increasingly resembles a strategic alignment of interests and capabilities. This becomes especially clear in the phrases repeatedly emphasized by Indian officials: “strategic convergence,” “shared vision,” and “economic security.” These words are no longer the vocabulary of symbolic diplomacy; they are the vocabulary of geopolitics. When New Delhi stresses strategic supply chains, critical minerals, economic security, advanced technology, and maritime security, it effectively signals that Vietnam now occupies a new place within India’s Indo-Pacific strategy. From the Indian perspective, Hanoi is no longer merely a traditional friend in Southeast Asia – it is becoming a crucial player in an intentional response to China’s restructuring of regional strategic space.
Indeed, Indian newspapers such as The Economic Times and The Times of India have treated To Lam’s visit not as an ordinary bilateral event, but presented it using the the prism of Indo-Pacific, strategic competition, and the reshaping of Asia’s balance of power. Within that framework, Vietnam emerges as perhaps India’s most trusted strategic partner in ASEAN. It is hardly accidental that New Delhi has steadily deepened defense ties with Hanoi over the years, from submarine training and defense credit lines to discussions surrounding the BrahMos missile system.
This context explains why Vietnamese media placed unusual emphasis on Tô Lâm’s meeting with Indian National Security Adviser Ajit Doval, even before highlighting several other diplomatic engagements. (4) In today’s Indian power structure, Doval is not merely a security adviser; he is one of the principal architects of the Modi era’s strategic doctrine, deeply involved in shaping India’s Act East policy and broader Indo-Pacific approach. By foregrounding this meeting, Hanoi effectively signaled that security has become the core pillar of the ECSP.
There is an unwritten rule in Asian diplomacy: the most sensitive matters are rarely settled during semi-public official talks but are instead handled more discreetly through national security channels. Issues involving intelligence-sharing, defense technology, maritime coordination, or balancing China are seldom discussed publicly in full detail. Thus, Tô Lâm’s meeting with Ajit Doval carried far greater significance than a ceremonial diplomatic encounter. It suggested that Hanoi and New Delhi are quietly building layers of cooperation far deeper than what appears in public communiqués.
Yet an intriguing paradox remains: despite the ECSP and extensive international reporting about Vietnam potentially acquiring BrahMos missiles (5), Vietnamese media have almost entirely avoided references to the “Free and Open Indo-Pacific” (FOIP), “balancing China,” or even “hot weapons purchases.” This silence is not accidental. (6) It reflects Hanoi’s characteristic practice of strategic balancing.
Vietnam currently faces an extraordinarily delicate challenge: how to strengthen deterrence capabilities without becoming confined and stereotyped inside a new Cold War-style alliance system. If Hanoi openly emphasized BrahMos, the Indo-Pacific, or maritime security cooperation aimed at countering pressure in the South China Sea, Beijing could easily interpret such moves as participation in a broader containment structure against China. Yet while Vietnam seeks to diversify strategic partnerships, it also remains determined not to destabilize its overall relationship with Beijing. (7)
Consequently, Hanoi has adopted a remarkably nuanced discourse: security cooperation is real, but the language presenting its reality is deliberately “de-militarized.” Vietnam speaks more often about “non-traditional security,” “regional stability,” “technological cooperation,” and “international law” than about alliances, deterrence, or counter-balancing. Put differently, Vietnam seeks to “enjoy the substance without donning the uniform.” This is “bamboo diplomacy” at the geopolitical level.
This approach also shapes how Vietnam interprets FOIP. For Washington, FOIP carries an unmistakably strategic meaning centered on freedom of navigation and counter-balancing China’s becoming a naval power. Japan sees FOIP as a framework for preserving a rules-based order. (8) India, meanwhile, presents FOIP in softer terms – as inclusive and multipolar, avoiding the appearance of an Asian NATO. (9) Vietnam’s public messaging about the enterprise is even more nuanced.
At the most superficial level, Vietnam views FOIP primarily as an economic opportunity: diversification of supply chains, attraction of high-tech investment, semiconductors, rare earths, and logistics development. (10) This is the least politically sensitive dimension for Hanoi because it aligns directly with national development priorities. At a more balancing-of- power level, Vietnam sees FOIP as a legal and normative space for defending UNCLOS, freedom of navigation, and peaceful dispute resolution. This is, in essence, ASEAN’s version of FOIP. (11) But at the third level – unsentimental balancing of hard power – Vietnam remains extremely cautious. Hanoi understands perfectly well that it benefits from the presence of the United States, Japan, India, and Australia in maintaining regional equilibrium, yet it also understands that moving too close to any single source of power projection could threaten its own strategic autonomy. (12)
It is precisely here that the triangular relationship among Vietnam, India, and China becomes particularly significant. Over recent years, competition between New Delhi and Beijing has intensified dramatically, stretching from the Himalayas to the Indian Ocean. Vietnam has consequently emerged as a key partner in India’s eastward strategic outreach. Yet Hanoi also understands that it cannot become the “frontline state” of any anti-China coalition. Vietnam needs India to widen its strategic space, but simultaneously it needs a stable relationship with China in order to sustain national development.
For this reason, Vietnam – India relations are likely to continue evolving in a manner that is “substantial but soft.” In practical terms, meaningful cooperation in security, technology, and economics will steadily expand, while public rhetoric will remain carefully calibrated. The sharper the U.S.–China rivalry becomes, the more skillfully Hanoi will need to manage its strategic image. (13)
Within this broader context, Vietnam’s potentially joining BRICS also becomes increasingly interesting. (14) n theory, Vietnam possesses many characteristics associated with BRICS+: strong relations with Russia, China, and India; growing importance within ASEAN; an open export-oriented economy; and a highly strategic geopolitical location. Yet Hanoi remains cautious. The reasons are not merely economic but geopolitical. Since its expansion, BRICS has increasingly acquired the image of a bloc seeking to reduce Western influence and challenge the dominance of the U.S. dollar. Vietnam, however, still depends heavily on the United States, the European Union, Japan, and South Korea for trade, investment, and technology. Joining BRICS prematurely could generate geopolitical interpretations that would complicate Hanoi’s balancing of its strategic needs against offsetting risks.
Thus, Vietnam is likely to continue prioritizing “multi-alignment” over bloc politics. Hanoi seeks connectivity with all centers of power without becoming glued to any single one. This, in many ways, distinguishes Vietnam’s diplomacy from that of many other middle powers.
More broadly, the international and Indian media reactions to To Lam’s visit also reveal Vietnam’s changing position within the regional order. What captured attention was not ceremonial protocol, but geopolitics: the ECSP, BrahMos, strategic supply chains, rare earths, the Indo-Pacific, and Tô Lâm’s evolving political role. Vietnam is no longer viewed merely as a developing Southeast Asian country; increasingly, it is perceived as a “swing state” – a country capable of influencing the broader strategic balance of Asia. (15)
And perhaps that is the deepest meaning of the ECSP. The enhancement is not about choosing sides, but about expanding strategic space for both Hanoi and New Delhi in an Asia growing ever more polarized. India needs Vietnam to deepen its presence in Southeast Asia and the South China Sea; Vietnam needs India to diversify strategic partnerships and avoid being trapped within the binary, zero-sum, logic of U.S.–China competition. Meanwhile, China – though rarely mentioned explicitly – remains the silent shadow present throughout the entire public staging of this visit.
Ultimately, the “Enhanced CSP” is not merely a story about two countries. It is a reflection of a new Asia in which middle powers are becoming increasingly proactive in shaping their own strategic destinies. And in such a world, the most important task is not to stand entirely on one side or another, but to become strong enough to “impress on others who we truly are to one another” with every major power – while still preserving enough distance in order not to lose one’s autonomy in any single bilateral relationship. (16)
References:
THAM KHẢO:
(10) https://fulcrum.sg/vietnams-hedging-strategy-in-the-indo-pacific/?utm_source=chatgpt.com
(11)https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/10357718.2020.1869132?utm_source=chatgpt.com
(13) https://www.lowyinstitute.org/publications/vietnam-s-bamboo-diplomacy?utm_source=chatgpt.com