Vietnam's Foreign Policy in the Doi Moi Era: Evolution of Relations with the United States (1995–2025)

The subject of the study is the mechanisms of strategic adaptation through which Vietnam managed the evolution of bilateral relations with the United States over the period 1995–2025. The object is the foreign policy of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam in the Doi Moi era — from normalization in 1995 to the Comprehensive Strategic Partnership in 2023 — pursued amid post-war legacies, ideological contradictions, and intensifying great power rivalry. The aim is to identify the institutional and strategic mechanisms that enabled Vietnam to consistently convert external challenges into development opportunities without sacrificing strategic autonomy. The methodological foundation combines hedging theory, structural realism and constructivism within the middle power framework. The analytical backbone is the philosophy of “constancy in principles, flexibility in tactics”, regarded as the operational doctrine of Vietnam’s Doi Moi-era foreign policy. Methods include problem-chronological analysis, primary source examination, and comparative analysis of Vietnam, the Philippines and Indonesia. The scientific novelty lies in the concept of “principled hedging”, integrating realist and constructivist models to explain small-state foreign policy behavior under great power rivalry. The concept demonstrates that doctrinal consistency and tactical flexibility form a unified strategic system rather than mutually exclusive alternatives. Five interconnected mechanisms are identified and verified: timing and strategic layering, issue disaggregation and sectoral management, power structure exploitation, principled consistency maintenance and institutional stability. The author concludes that their complex and adaptive application, grounded in the philosophy of “constancy in principles, flexibility in tactics”, accounts for Vietnam’s capacity to pursue a sovereign foreign policy in an unstable international environment. The effectiveness of these mechanisms is conditioned by Vietnam’s unique geopolitical position, making the proposed model an explanatory tool for the Vietnamese case rather than a universal template.