In ‘bamboo diplomacy,’ late Vietnam leader Nguyen Phu Trong left a path for smaller nations to navigate great-power rivalries
- Written by Jorge Heine, Interim Director of the Frederick S. Pardee Center for the Study of the Longer-Range Future, Boston University
Nguyen Phu Trong addresses Communist Party deputies in Hanoi in 2006.Hoang Dinh Nam/AFP via Getty Images)As a rule, the U.S. secretary of state does not attend the funeral of the general secretary of a Communist party.
Yet that is exactly what Washington’s top diplomat, Antony Blinken, had planned to do for the last rites of Nguyen Phu Trong,...