Hours after delivering the speech at the first Asia Security Forum, Vietnam’s top leader, General Secretary of the Communist Party of Vietnam To Lam, said in an interview that Vietnam “does not approach [its] relations with the great powers through the prism of security.” For 13 years within the Shangri-La Dialogue (SLD), Hanoi has built its regional position on a non-traditional security agenda that has continued to expand. This program began with Nguyen Tan Dung’s 2013 keynote speech at the SLD and reached its full expression in To Lam’s speech in 2026.
The balance between the United States and China kept Vietnam secure, but it had little say in the direction of the region. Hanoi’s emphasis on non-traditional security provides fertile ground to help shape regional arrangements without touching the red lines of major powers.
On May 31, 2013, Nguyen Tan Dung, then Prime Minister became the first Vietnamese leader to deliver a speech at the Shangri-La Dialogue. His speech comes less than a year after ASEAN failedfor the first time in its history, to publish a joint press release. The July 2012 Phnom Penh meeting was deadlocked over the language issue regarding the South China Sea.
In his speech, Nguyen Tan Dung presented “long tin chiến lược» (strategic trust), a Vietnamese diplomatic concept on how states in the Asia-Pacific region should manage their security relationships. He returned to this concept throughout his speech, linking it to the responsibility of the great powers and the centrality of ASEAN. He has also used it to frame non-traditional challenges such as climate change, pandemics and water security.
Over the next decade, the Vietnamese voice in dialogue was that of the Ministry of National Defense. A succession of defense ministers retained Nguyen Tan Dung’s “strategic trust” framework while expanding the non-traditional security agenda.
THE Plenary 2014 was the clearest illustration of Vietnam’s emphasis on non-traditional security. Phung Quang Thanh, then defense minister, spoke on May 31, 2014, weeks after China towed the Haiyang Shiyou 981 Oil Rig in waters claimed by Vietnam. Although the title of his speech – “Managing Strategic Tensions” – refers to this moment, Thanh actually spoke about transnational crime and maritime security cooperation. In the midst of a sovereignty crisis, Hanoi has chosen to speak the language of cooperation.
By 2025, Defense Minister and Deputy Prime Minister Phan Van Giang plenary showed how the non-traditional security agenda had grown. Citing strategic trust again, he rattled off a list including natural disasters, pandemics, climate change, water security, food security, terrorism, drug crime and human trafficking.
To Lam opened the 23rd Shangri-La Dialogue on the evening of May 29, 2026, becoming the second Vietnamese leader after Nguyen Tan Dung to deliver a speech. The 2026 keynote returned to strategic trust and gave it more weight.
Lam presented regional instability as the product of three fundamental crises occurring simultaneously: a crisis of international order, a crisis of the development model, and a crisis of strategic confidence. He placed the concept introduced by Dung at the center of diagnosis. According to him, strategic trust is about managing differences within rules-based frameworks so that competition between great powers remains limited and predictable.
Lam spoke of the need to shape “an Asia-Pacific that is peaceful, stable, resilient and capable of mitigating risks early and remotely.” Specific risks he mentioned included defense technology and industry standards, AI governance, resilience of undersea cables and critical infrastructure, cooperation in the information environment, human security and societal resilience, and preventive diplomacy capacity. His use of “kiến tạo» (proactive construction) also showed the ambition of a country which has decided to be able to contribute to the design of regional agreements.
One element distinguishes 2026 from 2013. Dung had directly designated the United States and China as the two powers with the greatest responsibility for the future of the region. In contrast, Lam was referring in 2026 to “partners with major influence in and outside the region” and “great powers” in general. He condemned coercion and unilateral measures aimed at creating new facts on the ground, and warned against transforming trade and technology into instruments of pressure.
Vietnam’s investment in a non-traditional security program is a response to regional competition. Competition between the United States and China has reduced the room for maneuver available to small and medium-sized states in the Asia-Pacific region. Between the two, the long-standing flexibility that Hanoi calls “bamboo diplomacy” ensures Vietnam’s survival while leaving limited room to shape outcomes. Thus, the non-traditional security agenda is the area in which a state with Vietnam’s clout can attempt to set conditions on the terrain of its choosing.
The agenda paves the way for cooperation with Japan, South Korea, Australia, Indiaand the European Union in areas where Vietnam faces capacity gaps, including AI governance, submarine cable protection, cyber standards and critical infrastructure resilience. These are areas where strict security alignment would not be possible for Vietnam, given the need to manage its relationship with China. This also prevents Vietnam from taking sides in the Sino-American competition, which allows it to maintain its flexibility towards the two countries intact.
None of this means that Vietnam has been soft on difficult issues. Lam wholeheartedly reaffirmed Vietnam’s position in the South China Sea and made clear that warming relations with China and defending sovereignty go hand in hand. In this sense, the non-traditional security agenda is the terrain on which Vietnam has chosen to rely because the defense of sovereignty, on its own, carries little weight.
Lam’s remark that Vietnam does not view its great power relations through the prism of security was a choice. The prism he has set aside is the one that would leave Hanoi in an endless balance between Washington and Beijing. An intermediary state has limited capacity to dictate security outcomes in the region. What it can do is impose its framework in the regional conversation and hope that it endures, and that is the work that Hanoi has spent 13 years on.
Lam’s keynote speech was a sign of how far this work has come.