An internal document shows the Vietnamese military preparing for a possible American war

HANOI, Vietnam (AP) — A year after Vietnam elevated its relations with Washington to the highest diplomatic level, an internal document shows its military was taking steps to prepare for a possible American “war of aggression" and considered the United States a “belligerent” power, according to a report released Tuesday.

More than just exposing Hanoi's duality in approach toward the U.S., the document confirms a deep-seated fear of external forces fomenting an uprising against the Communist leadership in a so-called “color revolution,” like the 2004 Orange Revolution in Ukraine, or the 1986 Yellow Revolution in the Philippines.

Other internal documents that The 88 Project, a human rights organization focused on human rights abuses in Vietnam, cited in its analysis point to similar concerns over U.S. motives in Vietnam.

“There's a consensus here across the government and across different ministries,” said Ben Swanton, co-director of The 88 Project and the report’s author. “This isn't just some kind of a fringe element or paranoid element within the party or within the government.”

The original Vietnamese document titled “The 2nd U.S. Invasion Plan” was completed by the Ministry of Defense in August 2024. It suggests that in seeking “its objective of strengthening deterrence against China, the U.S. and its allies are ready to apply unconventional forms of warfare and military intervention and even conduct large-scale invasions against countries and territories that ‘deviate from its orbit.’”

While noting that “currently there is little risk of a war against Vietnam,” the Vietnamese planners write that “due to the U.S.'s belligerent nature we need to be vigilant to prevent the U.S. and its allies from ‘creating a pretext’ to launch an invasion of our country.”

The Vietnamese military analysts outline what they see as a progression over three American administrations — from Barack Obama, through Donald Trump's first term, and into Joe Biden's presidency — with Washington increasingly pursuing military and other relationships with Asian nations to “form a front against China.”

In his term, Biden in 2023 signed a “Comprehensive Strategic Partnership” with Vietnam, elevating relations between the nations to their highest diplomatic level on par with Russia and China as “trusted partners with a friendship grounded in mutual respect.”

In the 2024 military document, however, Vietnamese planners said that while the U.S. views Vietnam as “a partner and an important link,” it also wants to “spread and impose its values regarding freedom, democracy, human rights, ethnicity and religion” to gradually change the country’s socialist government.

“The 2nd U.S. Invasion Plan provides one of the most clear-eyed insights yet into Vietnam's foreign policy,” Swanton wrote in his analysis. “It shows that far from viewing the U.S. as a strategic partner, Hanoi sees Washington as an existential threat and has no intention of joining its anti-China alliance. ”

Vietnam's Foreign Ministry did not answer emails seeking comment on The 88 Project report or the document it highlighted.

The U.S. State Department refused to comment directly on the “2nd U.S. Invasion Plan," but stressed the new partnership agreement, saying it “promotes prosperity and security for the United States and Vietnam.”

“A strong, prosperous, independent and resilient Vietnam benefits our two countries and helps ensure that the Indo-Pacific remains stable, secure, free and open,” the State Department said.

Nguyen Khac Giang, of Singapore’s ISEAS–Yusof Ishak Institute research center, said the plans highlighted tensions within Vietnam's political leadership, where the Communist Party’s conservative, military-aligned faction has long been preoccupied with external threats to the regime.

“The military has never been too comfortable moving ahead with the Comprehensive Strategic Partnership with the United States,” Giang said.

Tensions within the government spilled into the public realm in June 2024, when U.S.-linked Fulbright University was accused of fomenting a “color revolution” by an army TV report. The Foreign Ministry defended the university, which U.S. and Vietnamese officials had highlighted when the two countries upgraded ties.

Zachary Abuza, a professor at the National War College in Washington, said the Vietnamese military still has “a very long memory” of the war with the U.S. that ended in 1975. While Western diplomats have tended to see Hanoi as most concerned by possible Chinese aggression, the document reinforces other policy papers suggesting leaders' biggest fear is that of a “color revolution,” he said.

Further undermining trust between the U.S. and Vietnam were cuts made to the U.S. Agency for International Development by President Donald Trump's administration, which disrupted projects such as efforts to clean up tons of soil contaminated with deadly dioxin from the military’s Agent Orange defoliant and unexploded American munitions and land mines.

“This pervasive insecurity about color revolutions is very frustrating, because I don't see why the Communist Party is so insecure,” said Abuza, whose book “The Vietnam People’s Army: From People’s Warfare to Military Modernization?” was published last year.

“They have so much to be proud of — they have lifted so many people out of poverty, the economy is humming along, they are the darling of foreign investors.”

While China and Vietnam have been at odds over territorial claims in the South China Sea, the documents portray China more as a regional rival than a threat like the U.S.

“China doesn't pose an existential threat to the Communist Party (of Vietnam),” Abuza said. “Indeed, the Chinese know they can only push the Vietnamese so far, because they're fearful that the Communist Party can't respond forcefully to China (and will) look weak and it will cause a mass uprising.”

China is Vietnam's largest two-way trade partner, while the U.S. is its largest export market, meaning Hanoi needs to perform a balancing act in keeping up diplomatic and economic ties, while also hedging its bets.

“Even some of the more progressive leaders look at the United States, saying, 'Yes, they like us, they're working with us, they are good partners for now, but given the opportunity if there were a color revolution, the Americans would support it,'” Abuza said.

Under Vietnamese leader To Lam, who became Communist Party general secretary at around the same time the document was written, the country has moved to strengthen ties with the U.S., especially under Trump, Giang said.

Lam was reappointed general secretary last month and is expected to also assume the presidency, which would make him the country’s most powerful figure in decades.

With Lam at the helm, Trump’s family business has broken ground on a $1.5 billion Trump-branded golf resort and luxury real estate project in northern Hung Yen province. The Vietnamese leader almost immediately accepted Trump's invitation to join the Board of Peace, which Giang said was an unusually swift decision given that foreign policy moves are typically calibrated with close attention to Beijing’s possible reaction.

But Trump’s military operation to capture former Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro have given Vietnamese conservatives fresh justification for their unease about closer ties with Washington. Any U.S. military action involving Hanoi's ally Cuba could upset Vietnam’s strategic balance, Giang added.

“Cuba is very sensitive,” he said. “If something happens in Cuba, it will send shock waves through Vietnam’s political elites. Many of them have very strong, intimate ties with Cuba.”

Overall, the first year of Trump’s second term is likely to have left the Vietnamese happy about the focus on the Western Hemisphere but wondering about other developments, Abuza said.

“The Vietnamese are going to be confused by the Trump administration, which has downplayed human rights and democracy promotion, but at the same time been willing to violate the sovereignty of states and remove leaders they don’t like,” he said.

Rising reported from Bangkok.

FILE - Vietnam's Communist Party General Secretary To Lam, right, and Chinese President Xi Jinping wave during a meeting at the Office of the Party Central Committee in Hanoi, Vietnam, April 14, 2025. (Nhac Nguyen/Pool Photo via AP, File)

FILE - A U.S. Marine honor guard member holds the Vietnamese flag during an honor cordon at the Pentagon to welcome Vietnamese Defense Minister Gen. Phan Van Giang, Sept. 9, 2024, in Washington. (AP Photo/Kevin Wolf, File)

FILE - U.S. President Joe Biden raises a toast as he participates in a State Luncheon with Vietnam President Vo Van Thuong in Hanoi, Vietnam, on Sept. 11, 2023. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci, File)

FILE - U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, left, and General Secretary of Vietnam's Communist Party To Lam talk during a meeting in Hanoi, Vietnam, Nov. 2, 2025. (AP Photo/Hau Dinh, File)

ATLANTA (AP) — The Georgia General Assembly ended its annual session early Friday without a plan for new equipment to overhaul the state's voting system by a July deadline, plunging into doubt the future of elections in the political battleground.

The lawmakers' failure to offer a solution after months of debate raises uncertainty about how Georgians will vote in November and leaves confusion that could end in the courts or a special legislative session.

“They’ve abdicated their responsibility,” Democratic state Rep. Saira Draper said of inaction by Republicans who control the legislature.

Currently, voters make their choices on Dominion Voting machines, which then print ballots with a QR code that scanners read to tally votes. Those machines have been repeatedly targeted by President Donald Trump following his 2020 election loss, and Trump’s Georgia supporters responded by enacting a law in 2024 that bans using barcodes to count votes.

But state law still requires counties to use the machines. No money has been allocated to reprogram them, and lawmakers failed to agree on a replacement.

“We’ll have an unresolvable statutory conflict come July 1,” said House Governmental Affairs Committee Chairman Victor Anderson, a Cornelia Republican who backed a proposal to keep using the machines in 2026 that Senate Republicans declined to consider.

House Republicans and Democrats backed Anderson's plan, which would have required that Georgia choose a voting process that didn't use QR codes by 2028. Election officials preferred that solution.

“The Senate has shown that they’re not responsible actors,” Draper said. She added that Lt. Gov. Burt Jones, a Trump-endorsed Republican running for governor, seemed more interested in keeping Trump's backing than “doing right by Georgia voters.”

A spokesperson for Jones didn't immediately respond to a request for comment early Friday.

Joseph Kirk, Bartow County election supervisor and president of the Georgia Association of Voter Registration and Election Officials, said he’ll look to the secretary of state for guidance and assumes a judge will rule to instruct election officials how to proceed.

“This is uncharted territory,” he said.

Robert Sinners, a spokesperson for Republican Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, who is also running for governor, said officials are “ready to follow the law and follow the Constitution.”

Republican House Speaker Jon Burns told reporters that his chamber was seeking to minimize changes this year.

“You can’t change horses in the middle of the stream,” Burns said.

Burns said he would meet with Gov. Brian Kemp and “take his temperature" on the possibility of a special session. A spokesperson for Kemp didn't answer questions about what the outgoing Republican governor would do.

Anderson said without action, the state could be required to use hand-marked and hand-counted paper ballots in November.

Election officials say switching to a new system within just a few months, as advocated by some Republicans, would be nearly impossible.

“They made no way for this to happen except putting a deadline on it," Cherokee County elections director Anne Dover said of the switch away from barcodes. Dover said one problem under some plans is that a very large number of ballots would have to be printed.

Lawmakers seemed more concerned about scoring political points than making practical plans, Paulding County Election Supervisor Deidre Holden said.

“If anyone is resilient and can get the job done, it’s all of us election officials, but the legislators need to work with us, and they need to understand what we do before they go making laws that are basically unachievable for us,” Holden said.

Supporters of hand-marked paper ballots say voters are more likely to trust in an accurate count if they can see what gets read by the scanner.

Right-wing election activists lobbied lawmakers for an immediate switch to hand-marked paper ballots, but the House turned away from a Senate proposal to do so.

Anderson said he wasn’t sure if a special session could escape those political crosswinds, but said Georgia lawmakers must fix the problem.

“This is a legislative problem,” Anderson said. “It’s a legislative solution that has to happen.”

FILE - Voting machines are seen at the Bartow County Election office, Jan. 25, 2024, in Cartersville, Ga. (AP Photo/Mike Stewart, File)