Vietnam’s Incomplete Middle-Power Identity: The Complexity of the ‘Self’ and ‘Other’

Vietnam as an emerging middle power has recently become a topic of concern in both academia and policy-making. While in terms of capability and diplomacy, Vietnam has betokened the features of an emerging middle power, the aspects of identity remain ambivalent. From the empirical perspective, the regional literature on middle powers neglects the case of Vietnam as a middle power. Therefore, instead of taking positional and behavioral approaches to understanding Vietnam's middlepowerness, the article endeavors to adopt a constructivist prism to deeply analyze the middle-power identity of Vietnam. Two variables, including self-perception and other-perception are brought to the fore. The article aims to disentangle the puzzles of 'why has Vietnam been hesitant to self-identify itself as a middle power' and concurrently 'why have East Asian neighbors been slow to recognize Vietnam as a middle power despite its qualifying capability and foreign policy' by choosing Hanoi's Southeast Asian neighbors and China as significant 'others' to further understand the identity facets that make Vietnam a complete middle power. Using constructivism, compiling official documents and research works, and interviewing experts, the article concludes that objective, subjective and especially inter-subjective variables constrain Vietnam and the regional community recognize Vietnam's full middlepowermanship.