The Guardian view on Obama’s Vietnam visit: human rights have been marginalised | Editorial

Barack Obama’s visit to Vietnam has made for some attractive images of crowds lining the streets of Hanoi to cheer the leader of a power that was once a relentless foe, or of the US president sitting on a plastic stool during a stop at a pavement restaurant to taste the local pork-and-noodle bun cha. But behind the smiles and photo ops, hard-headed geopolitics was at work too. The visit to Vietnam