The moment he stepped out of his Hanoi home on a mid-September afternoon to walk down the narrow alleyway to the bus stop, Dr Nguyen Quang A knew he was in trouble again.
Ten plain-clothes security officers were waiting to intercept the former computer scientist before he could head to the United States embassy for coffee with the ambassador.
“I turned back to my home but three of them chased me, took my arm and pushed me into a car to drive me to the police station,” Dr Quang A, 74, said.
He was grilled for nearly four hours over Facebook posts about the controversial “Dong Tam” case, where a land dispute between villagers and the military led to violent clashes with the police and prompted accusations of state abuse.
This was the 18th time the veteran rights activist had been detained by state security.
In 2016, he was imprisoned in a moving car to ensure he missed a meeting between then US President Barack Obama and leading pro-democracy figures.
History was now repeating itself but with a key difference. In 2016, activists like Dr Quang A felt a tangible hope for change.
Dr Nguyen Quang A is an outspoken Vietnamese human rights activist
Credit: Linh Pham
President Obama was on the cusp of securing a Trans-Pacific Partnership – a sweeping 12-nation trade deal that lay not only at the heart of his ‘pivot to Asia’ policy, but which also set tough new standards on democratic reforms for countries like Vietnam that aspired to join.
US negotiators had offered economic benefits to extract pledges from the Communist government to permit independent trade unions, freedom of association and an open internet.
“It was a very good tool to pressure the Vietnamese government to improve human rights,” said Dr Quang A.
But rights groups were crushed when a newly elected President Donald Trump, believing the TPP was harmful to US manufacturers, pulled out within days of entering office in January 2017.
North Korea nuclear talks, the US-China trade war, and tensions in the South China Sea have dominated Mr Trump’s Asia-related headlines.
But the early divorce from the TPP, now a footnote in his presidency, seeded doubts about the Trump administration that remain today.
Analysts say it squandered a chance to counterbalance China’s dominance without relying on military pressure to do so.
Trump's has favoured set piece deals over engagement in Asia
Credit: AFP
It was also a devastating blow for Vietnam’s democracy activists.
Nguyen Ngoc Nhu Quynh recalls the moment the political tide turned.
Mother Mushroom, as the 41-year-old blogger is more widely known, was already in jail on the contentious charges of conducting propaganda against the state when her investigating officer began to taunt her.
“He said, ‘look, Trump is president now and you need to read his [America First] inauguration speech. You have to know that no one cares any more about human rights’,” she said. A few months later she received a harsh ten-year sentence, sparking an international outcry.
US diplomats continued to lobby behind the scenes, leading to Mother Mushroom’s release after two years, and whisking her and her family to exile in Texas, but many others remain trapped back home.
On October 7, Pham Doan Thang, another prominent dissident blogger who criticised alleged police brutality was arrested for “anti-state activities.” She faces charges that carry jail terms of up to 20 years.
She was detained just hours after the government held annual talks on human rights with the US. Critics claim the US has long lost its leverage in such discussions.
President Trump’s withdrawal heralded fundamental changes to US policies in the Indo-Pacific region that went far beyond the prism of human rights, however.
Asia today is the world’s fastest-growing region and has long been predicted to become the centre of the 21st century global economy.
Vietnam has a vibrant economy but a questionable human rights record
Credit: Bloomberg
Some argue that Mr Trump’s early disengagement missed an opportunity to offer Asian countries an off-ramp to avoid China’s orbit, and was ultimately detrimental to US security ambitions.
The failure of the US to “harness its economic power to strategic effect” has been a “glaring weakness,” Dr Lynn Kuok, senior fellow for Asia-Pacific Security at the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) said.
In addition, the more hardline approach the White House has taken against China is a “very dangerous battle to be waging” and risks alienating regional partners, Dr Kuok said, adding that the region’s prosperity and stability depended on good ties between the superpowers.
President Trump has evolved from calling Xi Jinping, the Chinese president, a “good friend” to presiding over a historical low in US-China relations, amid spiralling clashes over trade, Hong Kong unrest and Beijing’s claims to the South China Sea and Taiwan.
America’s tough stance on China has been welcomed in some Asian capitals but alarmed others.
Lee Hsien Loong, Singapore’s prime minister, summarized it well when he warned that regional countries did not want to be forced into a difficult choice in a great power game.
At September’s UN General Assembly Joko Widodo, Indonesia’s president, warned sparring geopolitical rivals risked global peace. “War will benefit no one. There is no point of celebrating victory among ruins.”
His comments reflected tensions in the South China Sea, a resource-rich area where Beijing, Indonesia, the Philippines, Vietnam, Taiwan, Brunei and Malaysia, all have competing claims to reefs, islands and waters.
China’s increasing swagger has stoked fears it could use access to key shipping routes as a tool for economic coercion.
The US has held joint naval patrols with Australia amid rising tensions in the South China Sea
Credit: Reuters
The US has matched Chinese military drills with an increase in its own Freedom of Navigation Operations (FONOPS), joint naval patrols with allies and sanctioning Chinese companies.
In July, Mike Pompeo, the US secretary of state, for the first time declared China’s maritime claims “completely unlawful,” aligning Washington with a 2016 ruling by a Hague tribunal that China had violated international law.
Hardline it may be, but the Trump administration has gained supporters for its approach too.
“The South China Sea is actually an example where we’ve made some good progress. In the Obama administration, there was a lot of concern among our allies that we weren’t willing to really stand up to China,” said Bonnie Glaser, senior advisor for Asia at the Centre for Strategic and International Studies.
But she cautioned that some allies, while welcoming the defence of their legal rights to resources, feared there was a tipping point that could lead to conflict.
Pressure on Southeast Asian governments to push back against China had introduced “more friction,” she added. “Southeast Asians have always cared first and foremost about economics and I think they believe we are just not doing enough in that realm.”
Dr Euan Graham, an Australia-based senior fellow at IISS, there was “no nostalgia” in Asia for the Obama years, with many privately supporting the continuity of Mr Trump’s China policy in substance if not in style.
At 74, after decades on the front row of US policy flipflops in Asia, Dr Nguyen Quang A has no illusions about the US coming to the rescue of Vietnam’s human rights community.
Dr Nguyen Quang A, 74, says he has no plans to give up his human rights work
Credit: Linh Pham
“We are well aware that the international community can contribute a lot but the main force [for change] is within Vietnam, he said from his home in Hanoi, the location of America’s biggest ever bombing campaign, almost 50 years ago.
“If we cannot solve the problem, we will never solve it,” he said.
The most upsetting aspect of his recent arrest had been the denial of his request to collect his three-year-old grandson from kindergarten, he reflects.
He would have been 24 during the 1972 Christmas bombing when the US obliterated his city in a failed attempt to liberate his people from Communism.
His love for the child compelled him to squarely face the “real danger” of prison to battle on with his rights advocacy.
“I think of my grandson, my grandchildren. I don’t want them to live in such a suppressive country.”
- This is part five of our series on how Donald Trump has changed the world, return to Telegraph.co.uk on Saturday morning for the sixth and final part, on how dictators are filling the vacuum left by Trump’s absence in Africa
- Read Thursday’s instalment: Trump’s other wall: How the US president quietly won his war on migration
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