To Lam's ASEAN Tour Lifts Vietnam Into Bloc's Top Tier
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- To Lam concluded a three-nation tour covering Thailand (May 27–28), Singapore (May 29–30), and the Philippines (May 31–June 1), his second foreign trip since being elected president in April.
- During the Philippines stop, Vietnam and the Philippines upgraded to an Enhanced Strategic Partnership, making Vietnam the only ASEAN member state with which Manila holds a strategic relationship.
- Between November 2024 and May 2025, Vietnam established Comprehensive Strategic Partnerships with four ASEAN countries — Malaysia, Indonesia, Singapore, and Thailand — three of which were formalized during Lam's own visits.
- Lam became the highest-ranking Vietnamese leader to deliver a keynote at the Shangri-La Dialogue since former Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung spoke in 2013.
- With strategic partnerships now established with all five founding ASEAN members, Vietnam has graduated out of the secondary CLMV grouping (Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar, Vietnam) and into the ranks of the bloc's six leading nations.
- Since becoming CPV general secretary in August 2024, Lam has visited seven of the ten other ASEAN member states, a shift the article attributes to Vietnam's "neighborhood diplomacy" expanding beyond its land-border neighbors.
Why it matters: Vietnam's elevation from the CLMV developing-state tier into ASEAN's inner circle of leading nations — accomplished in under two years under Lam — gives Hanoi more diplomatic weight in a region where China, the U.S., and Japan are all competing for influence, and signals that Lam is personally reshaping Vietnam's external affairs posture.
