Webinar on the Coalition to Stop Funding the War
"The Coalition to Stop Funding the War:
The Final Stage of the Movement for Peace in Indochina"
A webinar with
- Jane Fonda
- Michael Jones
- Larry Levin
- John McAuliff
- Karen Nussbaum
- Brewster Rhoads
- Bill Zimmerman
Sunday, April 26, 2 - 3:30 p.m. ET
Register by clicking here
https://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_xOLuZRIFQeejBwFGHpPlxg
Jane Fonda is a film icon and recipient of two Academy Awards, two British-Academy Awards, seven Golden Globe Awards and many other accolades for her stage, film and television artistry. She protested against the Vietnam War and supported active-duty GIs and Vietnam veterans who were organizing against the war. She was the creator and lead performer in the FTA Show and toured with the show and performed n the show at American military bases in the US and in the Pacific. She is the co-producer of the documentary film FTA.
Michael Jones Following two years of Peace Corps in Malaysia my wife Diane and I found ourselves in Vietnam, the very place we had thought to avoid. Working for the American Friends Service Committee was my alternative service to participation in the military. Our project was a physical rehabilitation center providing prostheses and therapy to war injured civilians. In addition to humanitarian work, Quakers were a voice in the movement to end the war. We spent nearly a year involved in peace activism on Capitol Hill utilizing our experience from living in Vietnam to help educate decision makers. This included several months with Coalition to Stop Funding the War.
Larry Levin was the executive director from 1972 to 1975 of the Coalition To Stop Funding the War, a lobbying group representing approximately 25 church, civic, antiwar and labor organizations working to defund U.S. military action in Southeast Asia. Previously he was the Washington representative for Medical Aid for Indochina (MAI) and before that a co-founder of the Indochina Peace Campaign (IPC). During the 1972 election campaign he was the coordinator for Jane Fonda's and Tom Hayden’s national tour supporting the antiwar cause in key election states. In 1975, one month before the war ended, he traveled to Hanoi to represent the Coalition as a member of a Swedish-sponsored Commission to Investigate U.S. War Crimes in Vietnam.
After the Vietnam era, Levin was active in California Democratic politics and spent a number of years as communications director for Democratic members of the California State Senate in Sacramento. He earlier had a career in journalism, including posts at CBS and NBC television stations in Los Angeles, the NBC bureau in Frankfurt, Germany, and as the producer of a Bonn-based PBS news magazine called “European Journal.” During his time in Europe he covered the 1989-90 revolutions against Communist rule in Eastern Europe and the reunification of East and West Germany. Between reporting stints he worked as a press advisor to the German Green Party and later in Ireland as a communications advisor for the Sinn Fein party in a number of election campaigns.
Levin also taught journalism in the 1990s at Ohio University and in the 2000s as a visiting professor at universities in Ireland and Germany. He now resides in both those countries, dividing his time between Dublin and Berlin. In January 2023, at the invitation of the the Viet Nam Union of Friendship Organizations (VUFO), he returned to Vietnam to attend ceremonies commemorating the 50th Anniversary of the Paris Agreement. During that visit he received a state medal and citation in recognition of his work in the 1970s against U.S. war funding.
John McAuliff is the executive director of the Fund for Reconciliation and Development and coordinator of the Vietnam Peace Commemoration Committee. As a student at Carleton College, he organized support for the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee and participation in the Mississippi Summer Project of 1964. After serving in the Peace Corps in Peru, he became the first President of the Committee of Returned Volunteers, leading its participation in the Vietnam anti-war movement, including the demonstration at the Chicago Democratic Convention. He represented CRV in national antiwar coalitions and the U.S coalition at international conferences in Sweden. For ten years he directed the Indochina Program in the Peace Education Division of the American Friends Service Committee, traveling on its behalf to Hanoi with a delegation from the Indochina Peace Campaign that arrived on April 30, 1975, the last day of the war. In 1985 he founded the Fund for Reconciliation and Development to continue his AFSC work for normalization of relations with Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia. After that was accomplished in 2005, he refocused most of his work on a similar goal with Cuba. He was "detained" at the March on the Pentagon and the Mayday civil disobedience action and while demonstrating against George Wallace during his Presidential campaign in New York.
Karen Nussbaum has been an organizer for more nearly 60 years. She was the founding director of 9to5, the national organization of working women; District 925, SEIU; the AFL-CIO Working Women's Department; and Working America, the community organizing arm of the AFL-CIO. She is a senior advisor at Working America and shows up to defeat authoritarianism wherever she can.
Brewster Rhoads, a native of Philadelphia, PA, was active in the anti-war movement as a student at the William Penn Charter School and Williams College. He organized multiple vigils, demonstrations and lobbying activities in Western Massachusetts before joining the staff of the Coalition to Stop Funding the War in Washington, DC in 1974.
Brewster was a VISTA volunteer in Western Massachusetts, Director of the Washington-based Coalition for a New Foreign Policy, Director of the Green Umbrella environmental sustainability alliance in Cincinnati and the SW Ohio Regional Director for Ohio Governors Dick Celeste and Ted Strickland. He managed over 150 issue and candidate campaigns in Ohio.
Brewster is currently the Chair of the Board of the Ohio River Way, Inc., a nonprofit working to promote outdoor recreation opportunities on and along the Ohio River from Portsmouth, OH to Louisville, KY.
He also serves on the boards of Adventure Crew, the Mill Creek Alliance, the Ohio Environmental Council Action Fund and Innovation Ohio.
An avid kayaker and cyclist, he is the founder and chair of the Ohio River Paddlefest, now the largest paddling event in the U.S.
Brewster lives in the Mt. Washington neighborhood of Cincinnati with his wife Ann Lugbill, a whistleblower attorney. His oldest daughter, Elizabeth, is a professor of international human rights and Southeast Asian studies at Gothenburg University in Sweden. His youngest, Caroline, is a Montessori teacher in Berlin, Germany.
brewohio@gmail.com
Bill Zimmerman received a Ph.D. from the University of Chicago in 1967. His later faculty appointments at Brooklyn College and back at UChicago, were both terminated because of antiwar activism. Leaving academia, he helped establish Science for the People in 1970-71. In 1972-73, he built and led Medical Aid for Indochina and the Bach Mai Hospital Emergency Relief Fund. In 1974-75, he worked in the leadership of the Indochina Peace Campaign. After the war, Bill managed Tom Hayden’s 1976 campaign for US Senate, then began a long career as a political campaign manager and media consultant. His successful clients included Chicago Mayor Harold Washington, New Mexico Governor Toney Anaya, Colorado Senator Tim Wirth, Congressmen Lane Evans (IL) and Sam Gejdenson (CT), among many others. He was also responsible for numerous successful ballot initiative campaigns, including the nation’s first law legalizing physician assisted suicide (Oregon 1994), its first law to legalize the medicinal use of marijuana (California 1996), the first law requiring treatment instead of incarceration for drug possession offenders (California 2000), and the first law placing a surtax on annual incomes over $1 million (California 2004). He is the author of Troublemaker: A Memoir from the Frontlines of the Sixties.
Holly Near at the 2015 VPCC conference in Washington, "Singing for Our Lives", click here https://www.bing.com/videos/riverview/relatedvideo?q=holly+near+singing+for+our+lives&mid=369BE7A2D4EB6457A649369BE7A2D4EB6457A649&churl=https%3a%2f%2fwww.youtube.com%2fchannel%2fUCjWWd2MxBTRq6XZTXqzXAeQ&mcid=DFF54AE0FD344BF99D9867286DBE13B3&FORM=VIRE
Resources
Michael Koncewicz in Jacobian, March 11, 2024
The Campaign to Confront Nixon and End the War in Indochina
The Anti Defense Lobby Part 3: The Coalition for a New Foreign Policy
The Four Stages of the Anti War Movement - Bill Zimmerman in the NYT, October 24, 2017
Timeline of Key Congressional Votes
to Reduce U.S. Military Aid to Southeast Asia
Summer 1972 – Creation of Indochina
Peace Campaign leading to Midwest speaking tour in September by Jane Fonda, Tom
Hayden and Holly Near
December 1972 – Christmas Bombing of North Vietnam
January
4, 1973 – Religious Convocation and Congressional Visitation
January 1973 - Coalition to Stop
Funding the War is launched
January 27, 1973 – Peace Agreement is signed in Paris
May 1973 – House passes Addabbo Amendment (219-188)
to end bombing of Cambodia and bar additional U.S. military operations in
Southeast Asia
May 1973 – Senate passes Eagleton Amendment (67-21)
to end bombing of Cambodia & Laos
June 1973 – Senate passes Case-Church Amendment (73-16)
to cut off funding for U.S. military operations in Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia
by August 15, 1973. Passed 73-16
June 1973 – House votes 204-204 to defeat an amendment
to overturn the Case-Church Amendment thereby keeping the cutoff of
funding for U.S military operations in place.
July 1973 – Both the Senate (75-18) and the House (284-135)
pass the War Powers Resolution requiring Congressional
authorization of the use of U.S. military forces in foreign combat. Nixon
vetoed the resolution, but the House and Senate overrode his veto on November
7, 1973.
September 1973 – twenty city speaking tour
by Fonda, Hayden, Near, Bob Chenoweth and Jean-Pierre Debris
October 26-28 1973 - Conference of twenty antiwar organizations in
Germantown, Ohio forms the United Campaign for Peace in Indochina*
April 1974 – House defeats Nixon’s request for $474 million
in supplemental military aid for South Vietnam by a vote of 177-154 with
101 members NOT voting.
May 1974 – Senate passes Kennedy Amendment (43-38)
baring the use of $266 million in DOD supplemental assistance funds “in, for or
on behalf of any country in Southeast Asia”.
June 1974 – Senate defeats Kennedy-Cranston Amendment
(46-45) to the FY ‘75 DOD Authorization bill which would have reduced military
aid to South Vietnam to $750 (from the initial request of $1.6 billion)
Summer 1974
– Tiger Cage Vigil and Fast on the steps of the Capitol
August 1974 – Senate defeats Proxmire Amendment (46-45)
to the FY ‘75 DOD Authorization bill which would have cut military aid to South
Vietnam to $550 million
August 1974 – House passes Flynt-Giamo-Conte Amendment
(233-157) to the FY ‘75 DOD Appropriations Bill reducing U.S. military aid by
$300 million. NOTE – this was the
largest anti-war majority in the House to date on the question of U.S.
involvement in Southeast Asia. The vote took
place on August 6, 1974, exactly 10 years from the week that the House
unanimously adopted the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution giving the President
unlimited war-making authority.
September 29 – October 6, 1974 – International
Week of Concern for Saigon’s Political Prisoners
October 1974 – Senate passes Abourezk Amendment to
ban funding to train foreign police agencies through the U.S. AID Office of
Public Safety
October 1974 – Amendment to Foreign Assistance Act
limiting number of U.S. military personnel in South Vietnam to 2,500 passes
House (209-189) and Senate (46-45).
December 1974 - Pastoral lettter by 36 US religious leaders
January 1975 – Nixon asks Congress for $300 million in
supplemental military aid for South Vietnam and $222 million for Cambodia
January 25-27 1975 – Assembly to
Save the Peace Agreement held at Georgetown University in Washington, DC
January 1975 – Gallup Poll shows that 8 out of 10
Americans oppose military aid
April 1975 – The American War Ends in Cambodia on April
17 and in Vietnam on April 30
* List of participants in the Germantown, Ohio conference, created by a right wing surveillance organization with errors https://keywiki.org/Indochina_Peace_Campaign
The Evaluation by Graham Martin, the last US Ambassador to South Vietnam, of the impact of the Assembly to Save the Peace Agreement:
World Order After Viet Nam
"World Order After Viet Nam"
Webinar presentation by Dr. Richard Falk, comment by Dr. Christian Appy
Monday, January 26
For youtube video, click here
To share, copy and paste https://youtu.be/vGLcJfM2QS8
Vietnam Peace Commemoration Committee
Cosponsors
- The Ellsberg Initiative for Peace and Democracy, University of Massachusetts, Amherst
- Institute for Policy Studies, Washington D.C.
Richard Falk is Albert G.
Milbank Professor Emeritus of International Law at Princeton University where
he was an active member of the faculty for 40 years (1961-2001). Chair
of Global Law, Faculty of Law, at Queen Mary University London(2021-2025).
Falk served as UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights in Occupied
Palestine (2008-2014). His most recent books written in collaboration
with Hans von Sponeck are Liberating the UN: Realism with Hope(2024); Genocide
in Gaza: Global Voices of Conscience co-edited with Ahmet Davutoglu and Patriotism
to the Earth written in association with Sasha Milonova (2025). His
memoir, Public Intellectual: The Life of a Citizen Pilgrim was
published in 2021. He was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize several
times since 2008. He currently serves as President of the Gaza Peoples Tribunal.
Christian
Appy is director of the Ellsberg Initiative for Peace and Democracy and a
professor of history at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst where he has
received the Chancellor’s Medal, the Distinguished Teaching Award, and the
Distinguished Graduate Mentor Award. He is the author of three books about the
Vietnam War--American Reckoning: The Vietnam War and Our National
Identity (Viking, 2015), Patriots: The Vietnam War Remembered from All
Sides (Viking, 2003), and Working-Class War: American Combat Soldiers and
Vietnam (University of North Carolina Press, 1993). He is currently working
on a book about Pentagon Papers whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg.
CHAT
Support this program by donating here https://donorbox.org/fund-for-reconciliation-and-development
19:42:57 From Todd Pierce to Hosts and panelists : Kudos to Richard for calling out “Realism” for what it actually is, as the militaristic doctrine behind the US attack on Venezuela, to include the “Diplomacy of Violence” as Thomas Schelling promoted back in the day for US aggression during the Cold War. Unfortunately, prominent antiwar activists in their ignorance have adopted and amplified Realist doctrine while falsely promoting it as good for “Peace,” while being too stupid to recognize it as the “theory” behind “Realpolitik,” so popular in Germany 1933-1945, in pursuit of Germany’s “interests” in Poland, France, the USSR, etc. As Stephen Miller makes a point of, we’re doing the same in the many countries we are conquering, “Pursuing our interests,” as defined by us. Hardly conducive to “Peace.”
19:46:00 From Susan Scott to Hosts and panelists : Is Richard’s talk being recorded so we can send it on to others?
19:48:13 From Todd Pierce to Hosts and panelists : My only quibble with Richard is his reference to “NeoCons,” when in fact, something even more ruthless and horrible is the Right’s ideology now, “National Conservatism,” rhymes with National Socialism. With it combining Traditional Conservative with Israeli Settler Yoram Hazony’s National Conservatism. To be ignorant of that by now is to epitomize the “banality of evil” that Hannah Arendt warned us of. Here is a brief synopsis of National Conservatism: https://apnews.com/article/national-conservativism-conference-schmitt-a27e3b489dcf768dbebfc927f5e4a1d0. Quote: “Donald Trump’s victory was not just a win for his movement but for the ideas of the people in this room,” Missouri Sen. Eric Schmitt told the crowd. “National conservatism is an idea whose time has arrived.”
19:49:13 From Jim Barton to Hosts and panelists : I wish that my hope of global democracy in 2009, when Twitter seemed to promise a global community of democracy, came true. One thing I'll note that in 1937, with the rape of Nanking and the bombing of Guernica, looked very dark; but in 1945, there was a flowering of internationalism.
20:01:34 From William Tam to Hosts and panelists : What role do you see for targeted and selective general strikes?
20:01:47 Canadian PM at Davos https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=btqHDhO4h10
20:03:18 From Mike S Goodman to Hosts and panelists : We shouldn't forget that Ike's "military-industrial complex" address was made exactly two weeks after he broke diplomatic relations with Cuba!
20:03:41 From John McAuliff : Vietnam’s Leader Consolidates Power, Pledging ‘New Era of Prosperity’
To Lam, the head of Vietnam’s Communist Party, will also become president of the nation. His new stature comes with new risks.
By Damien Cave and Tung Ngo
Reporting from Hanoi, Vietnam
Jan. 23, 2026
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/01/23/world/asia/vietnam-lam-power-congress.html?unlocked_article_code=1.HVA.8a2P.xKj7W2WRijBp&smid=url-share
20:04:14 From Terry Murray to Hosts and panelists : Richard Falk - As a Canadian, I apologize for your treatment when entering the country. -Terry Murray, Toronto
20:06:08 From Robert Shaffer to Hosts and panelists : And that NYT article on Vietnam today quoted Hai Hong Nguyen, who appeared on a VPCC webinar in March 2025.
20:06:59 From Mark Pavlick to Hosts and panelists : https://www.thelancet.com/journals/langlo/article/PIIS2214-109X(25)00278-5/fulltext
20:07:57 From Joe Volk to Hosts and panelists : Richard and Chris, Many thanks for your in depth analysis and insights. Much appreciated — Joe Volk
20:10:28 From Paul Hubers to Hosts and panelists : How might the World BEYOND War movement in, say, the U.S. & India make a difference?
20:10:30 From Todd Pierce to Hosts and panelists : Here are the main ideologists of National Conservatism: https://www.vox.com/21355993/trump-israel-yoram-hazony-nationalism-tikvah, and Willmoore Kendall of the 1950s Conservative Movement with William Buckley , James Burnham, Brent Bozell, and Frank S. Meyer, all admirers of Fascism and promoters of it, while calling it “Conservatism” instead of Fascism, but identical by the political theory of each: https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/07/willmoore-kendall-writing-relevant-to-modern-conservatism-populism/. Remaining ignorant of this is akin to those who chose not to pay attention to the political theory behind Mein Kampf.
20:15:18 From jerry simotas to Hosts and panelists : The obsession with Trump to the exclusion of democrat/liberal corruption and belligerence does nothing to improve or grow the moribund peace movement which collapsed with the election of Obama, hardly a champion of peace having launched 7 invasions in all 8 years of his presidency. The "peace" activists caved in to Obama showing the weakness of their resolve.. As a veteran for peace I no longer squander my time with uninspiring "activists" who do little to expose the costs of war but rather carry out the VFP mission on my own.
20:21:47 From Jim Barton : I was the lead founder of the Boston Alliance Against Registration and the Draft in 1979 (not 1969). At the time, Peter Barnes wondered if that activism was a great idea. In 2004, when I saw Michael Moore's film about Iraq, I began to agree with him.
20:22:27 From Jim Barton : I wish that my hope of global democracy in 2009, when Twitter seemed to promise a global community of democracy, came true. One thing I'll note that in 1937, with the rape of Nanking and the bombing of Guernica, looked very dark; but in 1945, there was a flowering of internationalism.
20:27:32 From Dr W Brown to Hosts and panelists : Important to keep in mind that the US is not a true democracy. It never was in the past and very doubtful it ever will be.
This deeply underlies many of the chronic abuses of US hegemony over many many decades. Dr. Brown
20:27:40 From Farshid Moghimi to Hosts and panelists : Unfortunately, part of Iranian oppositions outside Iran and some people inside iran, wishing for a regime change by USA. Sanction created a lot of problem in Iran, but also a lot of corruptions by Iranian government official added to these crisis.Unofficial number of people killed during last few weeks in Iran is 37,000 and 300, 000 wounded. Iran called all of them spy or foreign agents, which people of Iran strongly rejected. Regime of Iran since 1980 put most of people with leftist ideas either in jail or executed. What I experienced from US left is calling government of Iran anti-imperialit , because their dispute with USA. Most of anti-imperialists activists in Iran, either are in jail or perished by the government, 1988 more than 4000 political leftist people in the jail were executed by order of Khomeini.
20:29:25 From Paul Cox : The end of the Empire will not be pretty.
20:31:50 From Peter Feld to Hosts and panelists : I took Professor Mendlovitz’s World Order class at Columbia in 1981 and am very glad to hear this current perspective.
20:31:52 From Phillip Josselyn to Hosts and panelists : Would be interesting to know what you guys think of BRICS?
20:34:00 From Maple O : Our ongoing protesting made a huge difference, maybe all...long live Kent State martyrs. Long live #AaronBushnell
20:35:08 From Romina Beitseen : Thank you to all organisers and speakers. Well presented and informative.
20:35:11 From Anne Stevens to Hosts and panelists : Thank you John.
20:35:35 From William Short : Please visit amatterofconscience.com/podcast
20:35:37 From Maple O : Bless the draft card burners of all generations and 'countries', including brave Israel youth peaceniks.
20:35:45 From Martha Winnacker to Hosts and panelists : These webinars have been profund. Thank you
20:35:51 From Joel Schwartz to Hosts and panelists : thanks all. great program.
20:35:51 From Paul Hubers to Hosts and panelists : 🌻🌻
Q & A
Would you please tell us a bit about the intellectual and activist aspirations of the WORLD ORDER MODELS PROJECT, which you founded some decades ago with the late great Professor Saul Mendlovitz? The suggestion in the very name, that there might be ALTERNATIVE models of world order to the Westphalian sovereign state system, has long helped me expand my own future historical
imagination."
I’d be grateful if the panelists might comment on the contribution of Telford Taylor during the Vietnam War. Thank you.
What if rebuilt Gaza has a great GDP like Vietnam 50 yrs. from now ? This is a dangerous precedent to adapt to a comparison between the two.
What about Victoria Nuland and Geoff Pyatt in Kiev? Many who support Palestine condemn Russia and and fail to acknowledge THAT coup. The Ukrainian one the US did.
Even given the lack of historical undersptanding by US policy makers about the Vietnam-China antagonisms during the war, have you been surprised by the extraordinary cooperation between the US and Vietnam after the war on matters of military strategic alliance and the growing role of Vietnam exports trade w the US— and hello from Alex Knopp, Honey Knopp was my mother who admired her coopertive work with you during the war. Thank you.
What arguments should be used to promote diplomatic solutions over the use of military power?
What is your evaluation of the BRICS+ and their impact on global finance and the ability to enforce sanctions?
To what extent has the end of the draft dampened the spirit for activism at the Vietnam-era level?
FRD Presentation for the 30th Anniversary of Normalizaion
“The Participation of the Fund for
Reconciliation and Development (FRD) in the Normalization Process” - Mr.
John McAuliff, Executive Director of the Fund for Reconciliation and Development
(online)
(i) Clarify the key
highlights and major features of Vietnam–U.S. people-to-people relations over
the past 30 years; identify the differences between Vietnam–U.S.
people-to-people relations during the 1995–2025 period and those in the periods
before 1975 and from 1975 to 1995.
Steps toward normalization:
1) 1965-1975 A small but influential sector of the antiwar movement became directly involved with Vietnamese from the DRV and the National Liberation Front at meetings in Canada, Bratislava, Paris and Stockholm. During the war approximately 200 activists and significant cultural figures visited Ha Noi and connected with NLF linked students and Third Force leaders in Saigon. These relationships led to the creation of the Peoples Peace Treaty in 1971 and a campaign for its adoption throughout the US. Much of the antiwar movement was cautious about too close an association with the “other side” because it might be considered disloyal. Broader public opinion was uncomfortable with NLF flags in protests.
1975-1985 A delegation of activists from the Indochina Peace Campaign and the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC), including myself, arrived in Ha Noi the day the war ended, remaining for two weeks. Quaker and Mennonite staff posted to Saigon stayed there for some months after liberation. Most organizations and activists that had been involved in the broad movement against the war greeted April 30th with feelings of achievement and relief and went on to other concerns like nuclear weapons and Central America.
1985-1995 Wider sectors of US and Vietnamese society became engaged with each other creating the foundation for normalization. The US-Indochina Reconciliation Project of the Fund for Reconciliation and Development, our organization, began in 1985 organizing twice a year delegations that introduced professors, academic institutions and foundations that followed up their own programs of cooperation. The delegations were hosted first by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, then by Vietnam Tourism, and finally by the Viet Nam USA Society.
FRD coordinated ten conferences between 1989 and 2001 in partnership with the Viet Nam Union of Friendship Organizations that brought US NGOs together with counterparts from Viet Nam, Laos and Cambodia leading to many new collaborative programs. The goal was both to provide assistance and to foster normal relations. By 1994 210 international NGOs, largely American, had authorized programs in Vietnam registered with PACCOM, sometimes with in-country staff. Veterans created a variety of binational programs in literature, the arts and humanitarian assistance. Mainstream US academic institutions established research and training projects. The business community’s interest and support took institutional form with the launching of the US-Vietnam Trade Council in 1989. A growing number of US sponsored Vietnamese expert delegations visited the US and regional countries.
An agreement negotiated by General John Vessey and Foreign Minister Nguyen Co Thach in August 1987 took reconciliation to a governmental level as each side acknowledged the other’s humanitarian needs; humanitarian assistance was officially encouraged from new American private sources. US Senators who were veterans played a higher level role, enabling Fulbright scholarships in 1992, overcoming myths of living POWs, and creating the political environment for President Clinton to end the embargo and normalize relations.
(ii) Identify the current contextual factors that affect
Vietnam–U.S. people-to-people relations, including both favorable conditions
and challenges.
The objective interests of the two countries and their economic institutions provide an important motive for people-to-people relations. The goal of the US to contain China, especially in the East Sea, coincides strategically with Viet Nam’s concern for its independence and sovereignty. Methods of achieving these ends may have tactical differences, including links to the more volatile China-Philippines conflict. Family relationships are an enduring bond, regardless of reasons and timing of emigration. Marriages between Americans and Vietnamese are building new lifelong ties.
The US will have difficulty understanding how Viet Nam can seem to have warm Party to Party and ideological bonds with China at the same time that there is open conflict over territorial control. Our countries also have very different visions of human rights and democracy. In the current context, the US sets these differences aside. However, it is also possible that liberal or conservative self-righteousness and regime change arrogance can reemerge. The unpredictability of the current US Administration creates additional challenges in both countries.
(iii) Determine the partners, content, formats, and measures
to promote Vietnam–U.S. people-to-people exchanges in the current period.
1) 1) Continue to work with the diminishing number of
Viet Nam war era activists and veterans to connect or reconnect their personal
histories with Vietnamese war legacies and current reality.
4) 4) Over the next ten years create sister city
partnerships between every Vietnamese province and US state. These can become vehicles for many levels of
long term relationships with visits and social friendships and collaborations
professionally, culturally and economically.
High school and college level student exchanges should be facilitated
and perhaps even subsidized and involve local hosts in both countries.
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