The arrests, and the administration's tepid response (Clinton raised the subject with the Vietnamese, but didn't suggest their thuggish tactics would affect the budding U.S.-Vietnam relationship) highlight what has become an increasingly problematic aspect of Obama's foreign policy. Even as the administration has made impressive efforts to reset ties with old foes like Russia, strengthen bonds with China, and simultaneously take advantage of the agitation China causes in its near abroad by solicitously courting China's neighbors, the administration is too often overlooking human rights in the process.

The issue has been a persistent theme since Obama took office--perhaps not surprisingly, given his professed realist leanings and declared admiration for foreign policy thinkers like Brent Scowcroft and George H.W. Bush. But it has nonetheless disappointed many of Obama's allies on the left and his admirers abroad, who had expected his administration to make a clean break from the policies of its predecessor. Indeed, after several months of sustained attack from pundits and human rights organizations earlier in the year, the Obama team did shift its rhetoric, and start raising the subject of human rights more frequently. Clinton herself walked back what was probably her most notorious statement on the subject, a declaration in early 2009 that the United States shouldn't let human rights concerns "interfere" with its cooperation with China. But while the language has changed for the better (for example, after dissident Liu Xiaobo was awarded this year's Nobel Peace Prize, Obama praised the decision and called on China to free him), too little has moved on substance. The administration continues to cozy up to unsavory regimes and rarely takes its human rights concerns beyond the rhetorical level--by making them a condition of foreign aid, for example, or requiring that they be addressed before other forms of cooperation are extended.

The most glaring recent example of this trend is Vietnam. It may be depressing (depending on your viewpoint) but it shouldn't be a shocker that Obama has failed to press Russia or China very hard on rights, given how little leverage Washington has with these powers--and how such pressure has backfired in the past.

But Vietnam is small and weak. True, it is an attractive new partner for the United States, both economically and strategically. Its GDP grew by seven percent last quarter, making it one of hottest markets in Asia. It also offers U.S. manufacturers a low--indeed lower--cost alternative to Chinese labor, which is rapidly growing more expensive.

But despite Hanoi's economic reforms, it also remains a pretty nasty authoritarian regime--indeed, Human Rights Watch has called it "one of the most repressive in Asia." In the last two years, the government has launched a widespread crackdown, hauling in and imprisoning farmers protesting land grabs in the Mekong Delta, Catholic parishioners opposing the government confiscation of church properties, and Montagnard activists fighting government control of their churches--as well as hundreds of peaceful political activists.