From Deadly Enemies to Comprehensive Strategic Partners
The Twenty Year Transformation of
US-Viet Nam Relations
Potential Implications for US-Cuba
Relations
Programa del
evento XXI Edición de la Serie de Conversaciones
“Cuba en la
Política Exterior de Estados Unidos de América”.
El Centro de
Investigaciones de Política Internacional (CIPI)
con el coauspicio del Instituto Superior de
Relaciones Internacionales (ISRI)
Hotel Nacional, Havana, December
17-19, 2024
Our two countries' partnership is guided by very simple but
powerful principles. The United States
supports a strong independent prosperous and resilient Viet Nam and we respect
each other's sovereignty, territorial integrity and political systems. Together we are achieving ambitious goals.
that will bring prosperity to both of our peoples now and long into the future.
--Ambassador to Viet Nam Marc Knapper at the US Institute of
Peace, October 10, 2024[1]
 |
| Major Alison Thomas and the OSS Deer Team. Ho Chi Minh to his left. Võ Nguyên Giáp to his right. |
Relations
between the US and revolutionary Viet Nam began on a positive note in the
closing days of World War II. The Deer
Team of the Office of Strategic Services led by Major Alison Thomas parachuted in
to the base in Tan Trao to collaborate with Ho Chi Minh and Võ Nguyên Giáp.
Their initial mission was the rescue of US pilots whose planes were
damaged while on anti-Japanese bombing runs in China. The strategic purpose was to provide supplies
and equipment to enable the Viet Minh to interfere militarily with transfer of
Japanese troops from occupation duties in Viet Nam to China and ultimately to
the defense of Japan. In effect the US
provided the first foreign military training and assistance to Ho Chi Minh and
an OSS medic may have saved Ho’s life from malaria.[2] (The Vietnamese credit his recovery to traditional
medicine/herbs provided by an ethnic minority person.[3])
Japan’s surrender led to the OSS
following Ho into Ha Noi where Archimedes Patti, another OSS operative, also connected
with him. Reflecting the comradely
relationship, Viet Nam’s Declaration of Independence of September 2, 1945, incorporates
famous language from the US Declaration.
Ho wrote
several letters to President Truman, and sent messages through Deer Team
members, as recounted during their return to Viet Nam that my organization hosted
in 1995 with support from the Ford Foundation.
Ho sought a relationship with the US that would preclude the return of
French colonialism. Unfortunately President
Franklin Roosevelt who opposed the restoration of colonialism had died. President Truman gave priority to
strengthening Charles de Gaulle against the French Communist Party. This led the US to side with France,
eventually funding 80% of its failed war.
France’s
defeat was ratified in the Geneva Agreement of July 1954. The US refused to sign and sought to make the
temporary division of the country permanent by supporting an anti-communist
South Vietnam led by Ngô Đình Diệm. He
and the US rejected the treaty mandated reunification election of 1956. Diệm’s effort to eliminate southern
supporters of the Viet Minh created an escalating conflict with the north and
growing US intervention with advisors and military aid under Presidents
Eisenhower and Kennedy and large scale ground battles and air war under
Presidents Johnson and Nixon.
The
consequence of thirty years of US political, economic, intelligence and
military intervention was the death of 58,000 US soldiers, an estimated two to
three million south and north Vietnamese civilians and military, and as many
Lao and Cambodians if one includes the devastation of the Khmer Rouge whose
victory can be attributed to the Nixon-Kissinger expansion of the war. The civil and economic infrastructure and
rural life were devastated with still enduring environmental and health
consequences from land mines, unexploded ordnance and defoliants such as Agent
Orange. Centuries old rural communities
were destroyed to dry up the sea in which the guerilla fish swam, a methodology
the US learned from Spanish strategy in Cuba.
US
intervention came to a disastrous end on April 30, 1975. The collapse of the US client state began a
mass outpouring of refugees, eventually totaling 1.3 million. By chance, I witnessed the other side of
history, arriving in Ha Noi for the first time on that day as a representative
of the American Friends Service Committee, the Quaker peace and humanitarian
organization.
The failure
of the US must be attributed primarily to historical righteousness, political
determination and military capability of the Vietnamese as well as the weapons and
propaganda support they received from Russia and China. An important factor was the restraining influence
of US public opinion, the disillusion of elites in universities and the media.
and the collapse of military morale. The mobilization of opposition by a broad and
diverse antiwar movement was both a reflection and motivation of social change,
including a decisive grass roots campaign to press Congress to restrict US bombing
and military aid to Cambodia and South Viet Nam
Refusal to recognize the weakness of its Saigon allies led to an infamous emergency withdrawal by the US. The government was traumatized by the first US loss of a war and the damage to its international prestige. A generation of American military and political leaders and diplomats had invested years of their lives and formed friendships with people who died, became refugees or were imprisoned in reeducation camps. The US evacuated 125,000 Vietnamese in the first year. but that population grew substantially as transit camps in Asia were emptied and special arrangements were made for American fathered children and for families of men released from reeducation camps. [4]“roughly doubling in both the 1980s and 1990s, to 988,000 by 2000.” The continuing flow of boat people and repression of Saigon military and government officials moved US public opinion from being antiwar and pro humanitarian assistance to indifferent if not hostile. The negative personal experiences of the losing side were widely diffused to the churches and civic organizations that sponsored refugees, many previously involved in the peace movement.
While a
fringe group of US military, and presumably US intelligence, harbored fantasies
of reversing the loss, there was broader sentiment to punish the Vietnamese for
winning. The Ford Administration
immediately extended a rigorous embargo from the north to the whole
country. It opposed Viet Nam’s
membership in the United Nations but it was achieved in September 1977 under
the Carter Administration. (Since then
Viet Nam has been elected twice to a seat on the Security Council.)
The Carter
Administration initially moved to open the door with Viet Nam but then backed
away. A commission led by former UAW
President Leonard Woodcock visited Vietnam and Laos in March 1977. Their goal was to obtain information on US
Missing in Action (MIAs) and to explore normalization of relations. Vietnamese insistence that normalization
required $3.3 billion of US reconstruction aid as promised in the Peace
Agreement was unacceptable to the US., characterizing it falsely as war
reparations. The Vietnamese came to
regret their position and were looking for a way out of this box but that was
frozen when my friend David Truong was arrested on inflated espionage charges. Viet Nam’s first ambassador to the UN, Đinh Bá Thi, was labeled as an unindicted co-conspirator
and expelled. Then Foreign Minister
Nguyen Co Thach removed the aid linkage in successful normalization discussions
with Richard Holbrooke in New York in September 1978. However the Carter Administration backed away
from the deal because of the influence of National Security Advisor Zbigniew
Brzezinski. He saw Viet Nam through the
lens of normalization with China as part of his strategy against the Soviet
Union.
We witnessed
renewed but indirect US-Vietnamese military confrontation in the Third
Indochina War. Viet Nam suffered
horrific border attacks by Cambodia’s ultra left Khmer Rouge (KR), a close ideological
and military ally with Viet Nam’s age-old nemesis China. After Viet Nam invaded, the KR quickly
retreated toward the Thai border. China
punished Viet Nam by a month long failed but very destructive cross border invasion
in February-March 1979. The US and its allies in Southeast Asia in effect
supported the KR against Viet Nam, enabling it to hold on to Cambodia’s seat in
the UN and providing military aid, ostensibly to Royalists and Republicans (the
non-communist opposition) during the Reagan and Bush Administrations.
The
traditional peace churches (Quakers, Mennonites, National Council of Churches)
and a network of former activists that had provided humanitarian aid during the
war renewed assistance with contributions of food and medical supplies by 1977,
including in larger scale to post-KR Cambodia, and pressed for normalization of
relations. The still interested remnants
of the antiwar movement waged a fruitless campaign despite some support in
Congress to unseat the Khmer Rouge from the UN.
I reported in
substantial detail the ground-breaking atmosphere-creating role of US non-governmental
organizations (NGOs), Viet Nam veterans, foundations, universities and businesses
in a 2022 paper for the US Institute of Peace “Reconciliation Between Peace and
Normalization, 1975-1995”.[5]
In addition to the substantive value of
aid and educational exchanges, the growing presence created trust and
understanding that Americans were more than invaders and destroyers and
Vietnamese were more than revolutionary terrorists. From 1986
to 1992 there were 70 to 100 NGOs
operating in Vietnam providing $20 to $30 million annual assistance. In 1990 the first US NGO, the Mennonite
Central Committee, was able to open an office with staff in Ha Noi. By 1994, the year before normalization, 210
international NGOs, largely American, had authorized programs in Vietnam, sometimes
with in-country staff. We held ten
international NGO conferences beginning in 1989 with the last two in the
region, 1999 in Cambodia and 2001 in Laos. They increased the benefit of the NGO
contribution and opened doors for new organizations to work in Indochina. They
also provided the first opportunities for people from Indochina to talk about dangerous
war legacy problems of land mines, unexploded ordnance and Agent Orange. Indispensable pioneering support was provided
by the Christopher Reynolds and Ford Foundations, both of which later funded
programs for US-Cuba normalization.
We brought
many of the practitioners from both countries together in 2020 for a two part
binational zoom described in the appendix “Normalization of Viet Nam - US
Relations, Reflections from the Ground Up:
The Contribution of NGOs and Peoples Organizations from 1975 to 1995” available on our youtube channel.[6]
At the
official level cooperative gestures were also undertaken. Ha Noi authorized the
joint excavation of a B-52 crash site in 1985, and returned some remains
between 1985 and 1987.
In 1987 President
Reagan appointed retired chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General John Vessey
as a special emissary to Vietnam on the question of American service personnel
missing from the Vietnam War.
There were three
preconditions for normalization of US Viet Nam relations.
The US
required the end of Viet Nam’s occupation of Cambodia and the fullest possible
accounting of remains of 2,646 Missing in Action (MIAs). The right wing in the US had fostered the
myth that Viet Nam still held living US prisoners of war. However for most US leaders, the real issue
was locating and retrieving military remains, largely of airmen who died in
combat.
The
Vietnamese had again linked provision of reconstruction aid to cooperation on
MIA remains.
Notable
is that the US made no demands about Viet Nam’s governance or sovereignty
despite ideological disagreement about democracy and human rights and lingering
hostility toward the victors.
The moral
dimension of Vietnam’s precondition was resolved symbolically during
discussions between General Vessey and Foreign Minister Nguyen Co Thach in 1987. The linkage was acknowledged between two
humanitarian issues, MIAs and aid. The
method of addressing the latter was US government support for symbolic private assistance
through more mainstream US NGOs that had no previous post war role.
The living
POW story was effectively discredited by hearings in 1991 and 1992 of the
Senate Select Committee on POW/MIA Affairs led by two pro-engagement US
veterans John Kerry and John McCain who overcame the objections of Senator Bob
Smith, an anti-normalization veteran.
The Third
Indochina War ended with the Paris Conference on Cambodia and a Peace Agreement
in October 1991 Viet Nam had withdrawn the last of its forces
by September 1989 and the US ended its support for the KR in July 1990.
In effect
Viet Nam was prepared to take the risk of giving up the special relationship
achieved with Cambodia at a heavy cost in military casualties and national
expenditures in order to obtain economic and diplomatic normalization with the
US. (There was a later cost as Cambodia, despite
China’s long support for the Khmer Rouge, accepted substantial Chinese
investment and opposed cooperation by the Association of Southeast Asian
Nations, ASEAN, against Beijing’s aggression in the South China Sea.)
An important
factor in Viet Nam’s reconciliation with the US was the Sixth Party Congress in
1986 that approved the policy of Đổi Mới (renovation),
to “transition Vietnam from a command economy to a socialist-oriented market
economy” … “eliminating the centralized
bureaucratic subsidy mechanism, shifting to a multi-sector economy, operating
according to the market mechanism with State management.” [7] Facing pockets of famine and seeking to guarantee
regime survival, under the leadership of veterans of the war in the south, General
Secretary Nguyen Van Linh (1986-1991)[8]
and Prime Minister Võ Văn Kiệt (1991-1997)[9]
, Viet Nam broke the stranglehold of Soviet tutelage and ideology. The country overcame 700% inflation with “the
average GDP growth rate accelerating to approximately 6.5 percent per year from
1990 until the Asian Financial Crisis of 1997”. Viet Nam quickly moved from rice shortages to
substantial exports.
An intrinsic
part of Đổi Mới was the decision that Viet Nam’s national interests were best
served by avoiding economic and political dependence on a single powerful
friend. Normal relations with China were
reestablished and were initiated with Western Europe, Japan, Australia and the
U.S. President Bush was moving in that
direction, but former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger threw a fit,
appropriately enough for a Chinese audience, in Hong Kong.
A year after
taking office, in February 1994, President Clinton (who had opposed the war as
a student) ended the embargo and the next year normalized diplomatic
relations. He was politically
enabled/pressured by Senators Kerry and McCaine. Among their actions was a sixty-two to
thirty-eight bipartisan Senate vote urging the end of the embargo adopted in
January 1994. 1995 witnessed not only
the establishment of significant bilateral relations with the US but
potentially as impactful multilateral regional relations when Viet Nam joined
its previous antagonist, the Association of South East Asian Nations, ASEAN. Normalization also reduced diplomatic opposition
by the US to Viet Nam and changed the tone of Vietnamese statements about the
US.
For full
normalization, further steps were necessary that required adjustment in
Vietnam’s economic and legal system
March 11, 1997 Agreed
to repay Saigon’s $140 million war debt (with the understanding that most of
the money would provide for advanced study in the US by Vietnamese and with
visiting professors from the US)
July 13, 2000
Bilateral trade agreement (BTA) signed,
effective December 10, 2001
November 7, 2006 Joined
the World Trade Organization
December 29, 2006
Permanent Normal Trade Relations established (a.k.a. Most Favored Nation)
As a result
today the US is Viet Nam’s largest export market totaling $93.43 billion in
2023. For years Vietnamese manufactured
clothing and shoes have been omnipresent in US stores, including all Samsung
cell phones. In January 2024 Prime
Minister Nguyen Tan Dung reported US investment ranked 6th but in
two years could be 1st.[10] Direct US investment is $7 billion and it
reaches around $9 billion if investment via a third country is added. In 2023
Viet Nam had 21,900 students in the US, its largest destination, ranking them as
the 5th biggest contingent worldwide.[11]
Most are family or self funded. The US is the fourth largest source of
tourists, the biggest from outside of the region despite the distance, 717,000 in
2023.[12]
The 2020
census shows 2.3 million Vietnamese immigrants and descendants living in the US,
by far the largest destination. Seven
hundred thousand to one million Overseas Vietnamese worldwide return every
year.[13] Some have found employment and spouses. Others are enjoying retirement back home. In the first years after the end of the war,
the Vietnamese American community was violently anti-engagement. Several Vietnamese Americans and a US
professor were killed for political reasons.
Protests took place every time we sponsored delegations to the US and at
shows of Vietnamese art organized by a veteran who was part of one of our twenty
group trips. While Vietnamese American
leaders objected to Clinton’s normalization, they had no power to stop it. Pop culture has seamlessly flowed between
Viet Nam and Vietnamese Americans for decades.
A first Vietnamese American member of Congress has just been elected, a liberal
Democrat.
Although the
US rejects totally any legal obligation to address the legacies of war, it has
moved steadily to provide assistance to a growing number of the war’s
victims. That began with people who are
still being injured by land mines and unexploded ordnance. After years of denial, the US finally recognized
the long term impact of defoliants like Agent Orange. The initial step was remediation of locations
where it has been shown Agent Orange was dumped and is still contaminating the
soil. The first location was the air
base in Da Nang in central Viet Nam. The
second location is the former air base in Bien Hoa, near Ho Chi Minh City /
Saigon. USAID support for remediation
accomplished by superheating the soil is estimated to be $100 million for Da
Nang and $183 million for Bien Hoa. It
has been much harder to get the US to acknowledge responsibility for the
probable human victims of the spraying.
Both US veterans and Vietnamese civilians have an array of medical
problems associated with dioxin, an unintended and unnecessary component of Agent
Orange. The US accepts legal and
medical responsibility for American veterans but not for the Vietnamese. Dioxin
is also the cause of a variety of multigenerational serious birth defects. Aside from remediation work, assistance from
USAID is provided through American and Vietnamese NGOs and medical institutions.
The number
of US MIAs has been reduced substantially to 1,584. The Vietnamese estimate their number of MIAs
is around 250,000—100 times the original US total. While acknowledging that inequity for years,
the US has only begun to assist the Vietnamese by providing related data (e.g. identifying sites of mass graves after
combat) in the past two years.
What is
responsible for the US and Viet Nam achieving in 20 years what the US and Cuba
have not been able to accomplish in more than 60?
Veterans
3,403,000 U.S. military personnel were deployed to Southeast Asia
1964-1975 Some turned against the war -
in country or after returning to the US. Even those who didn’t had the country
imprinted in their identity. Multiple
more Americans were involved in the antiwar movement, often reshaping lives and
careers. For both parts of the generation,
normalization resonated positively.
Advocacy by pro-engagement veterans had a special impact on public
opinion.
Business
After the embargo was lifted and relations normalized, US entrepreneurs
and investors entered Vietnam. The first
decade was difficult for cultural and legal reasons. Some gave up but others, as individuals or as
corporations, are still there. They sponsored
an active lobbying group in Washington, the US-Vietnam Trade Council, that
worked closely with US government agencies and Congress and they created robust
US Chambers of Commerce in Ha Noi and Ho Chi Min City.
Geographic
location of immigrants The rapid outpouring of refugees
required transit camps in the region and in the US. Resettlement was structured through local
church and social service sponsors dispersed around the country that had frequently
been centers of peace activism.
Voluntary resettlement led to partial concentration in California, but
the size of the state and its dominant liberal politics minimized political
impact. In addition, most immigrants
were completely unfamiliar with how US politics worked, nor did they have
financial resources already here. Importantly,
the US had no desire to fund them to organize and arm against their home
country. A negotiated bilateral Orderly Departure
Program (ODP) assisted nearly 500,000 Vietnamese refugees to resettle in the US
between 1980 and 1994.[14] A total of “More than 1.3 million Vietnamese
immigrants resided in the United States in 2022.”[15]
Legal
sequence The US embargo of Vietnam followed the legal tradition of
being entirely created by executive authority.
As a result President Clinton
could eliminate It as the first step to normalize relations. Cuba’s embargo began in the same way but it
became law when Congress adopted the Helms-Butrton
legislation after the illegal flights by Brothers to the Rescue were shot
down. As a result, Presidents Obama and
Castro were in the anomalous position of normalizing relations while still
locked in an economic war.
China Tragically millions of lives, environmental degradation and
the loss of decades of economic development took place because the US failed to
understand the fundamental reality of Viet Nam’s three thousand year struggle
to be independent from China. A primary
reason for the US war was to stop the spread of Chinese dominance
to Southeast Asia and no country was a bigger obstacle to that than Viet Nam. For different reasons, Viet Nam and the US
have a shared concern with China’s emerging hegemonism over the South China
Sea, known as the East Sea by Vietnamese.
China’s internationally judged illegal assertion of a nine-dash line is
the Monroe Doctrine on steroids. From
Viet Nam’s perspective. China is an existential threat to territorial integrity
and economic development that must be both appeased and resisted. Vietnamese contracted oil exploration is
blocked by China and fishing boats have been attacked and seized. From the US perspective, China is a
strategic threat to the regional balance of power and freedom of navigation.[16] The US and Viet Nam have elevated their
relationship to Comprehensive Strategic Partners. However Viet Nam has negotiated the same
status with China, Russia, India, Japan and South Korea.
Need for radical
reform There is an interaction of change
between two countries seeking reconciliation.
Nguyen Van Linh and Vo Van Kiet chose change not continuity, despite their Party’s historic achievement of freeing
and unifying the country. As leaders of
generational transformation, they reflected and led a movement for substantial reform. It was driven by internal needs and the
collapse of a centrally planned economy, leading to runaway inflation, the
failure of agricultural markets and inefficient state enterprise
production. Moreover, they understood
that solving internal problems required less ideologically encumbered
international relations to overcome encirclement and the cut-off of supplies
from the Soviet Union. They welcomed
advice, investment and financial assistance from Japan, Singapore, Australia, Western
Europe and the US, as well as from UN agencies and International Financial
Institutions like the World Bank and the Asian Development Bank.
A final
personal note, I am not Cuba’s only American friend with deep ties to Viet
Nam. Senator Patrick Leahy and his
former professional staff associate Tim Rieser, long standing supporters of full
normalization with Cuba, played a decisive role in enabling US assistance for
the victims of Agent Orange in Viet Nam.[17]
For
further information, jmcauliff@gmail.com
Phone or whatsapp 1-917-859-9025
*************************
Appendix I
Normalization
of Viet Nam - US Relations
Reflections
from the Ground Up
The
Contribution of NGOs and Peoples Organizations from 1975 to 1995
July 11, 2025
is the 30th anniversary of normalization of relations between the US and Viet
Nam in 1995. Although after the war ended there was never a Cuba style strategy
for regime change, the US maintained a punishing unilateral embargo until 1994
and took twenty years to diplomatically recognize the unified country.
In the first
months after the war ended, polls showed majority public support for
humanitarian aid to heal the wounds of war.
The Carter Administration appeared ready to normalize relations without
conditions, but the Vietnamese linked it to assistance for reconstruction, a
provision of the Paris Peace Agreement. The flow of boat people refugees and
internment of South Vietnamese military and government officials changed the
atmosphere in the US.
After Viet
Nam responded to Khmer Rouge attacks across its border by forcing them out of
power in Phnom Penh, the US provided military supplies and diplomatic support
to their military campaign against Vietnamese troops. Washington also did
nothing to oppose China's destructive invasion across Viet Nam's northern
border. Scholars describe this as the
Third Indochina War, a proxy battle between superpowers with China and the US
on one side and the Soviet Union on the other.
The unique
aspect of this history is that although Viet Nam won the war, the US was not
defeated in a larger sense, being still the pre-eminent world power. Normally
the victor is more powerful than the vanquished and sets the terms for post-war
normalization. In this case each side had to find its own reasons to overcome
bitter memories of loss of friends and family.
Faced with
these challenges non-governmental organizations in the US and mass
organizations in Viet Nam found ways to work together, begin to address
humanitarian problems and create a better climate for their governments to
change policy. This started with traditional peace oriented religious NGOs and
evolved through people to people dialog and exchanges to larger scale
government supported university and aid programs. The foundation and business
sectors assumed greater roles as the bilateral atmosphere improved.
Vietnam
needed to rebuild from massive numbers of deaths and widespread destruction of
its economy and infrastructure as well as find ways to neutralize and integrate
people who had fought and governed for the other side. The US faced the problem
of massive refugee resettlement and the trauma of veterans. Rational
policy-making was hampered by resentment fueled myths of living POWs and
renewed suffering and anger caused by land-mines, unexploded ordnance and Agent
Orange.
Our webinars
will enable practitioners from both countries to speak personally about a
unique twenty year process in which two countries that suffered a long
destructive war overcame painful political and emotional conflict. They will
identify from their own experience how non-governmental and people-to-people
organizations on both sides helped to establish the human and institutional
groundwork for official relations.
Speaker
bios
https://vnpeacecomm.blogspot.com/2020/07/webinars-on-normalization-of-us-viet.html
The
American perspective
When: July
6, 2020 11:00 AM Eastern Time (US and
Canada)
See (and
share) it on line here
https://youtu.be/KLPGtx3oJ84
Moderator: John McAuliff (with Amb. Nguyen Tam Chien)
Overview of
the history of normalization: Murray
Hiebert, Far Eastern Economic Review
NGOs
(humanitarian aid): David Elder,
American Friends Service Committee
NGOs
(normalization movement): Susan Hammond,
U.S.-Indochina Reconciliation Project
Washington
dialog: Bill Nell, Aspen Institute
Veterans: John Terzano, Vietnam Veterans of America /
Foundation
Minh
Kauffman, Center for Educational Exchange with Viet Nam, Mennonite Central Comm
intermission (music videos)
Foundations: Mark Sidel, Ford Foundation
Business: Virginia Foote, US-Vietnam Trade Council
Universities: Allan Goodman, Institute of International
Education
Culture: David Thomas, Indochina Arts Partnership
Vietnamese
Americans: Hong-phong Pho
State
Department: Kenneth Quinn
********************
The
Vietnamese perspective
When: July
8, 2020 9:30 AM Viet Nam Time
See (and
share) it on line here
https://youtu.be/H1DgEy91A_c
Presented by
The Vietnam
Peace Commemoration Committee (VPCC)
director@ffrd.org
https://vnpeacecomm.blogspot.com/2021/10/history-and-future-of-vpcc.html
The
Vietnam-USA Society (VUS)
Appendix II
Annual
review of US-Viet Nam relations by the US Institute of Peace
First
Plenary October 10, 2024
https://youtu.be/yDsd1axbg2o?t=1754
9:00am -
10:15am ET: The U.S. Comprehensive Strategic Partnership with Vietnam after One
Year
Ambassador
George E. Moose, opening remarks Acting
President and CEO, U.S. Institute of Peace
Ambassador
Nguyen Quoc Dung, keynote remarks
Vietnamese Ambassador to the U.S.
Ambassador
Marc Knapper, keynote remarks (virtual)
U.S. Ambassador to Vietnam
Senator
Chris Van Hollen (D-MD), keynote remarks (pre-recorded) U.S. Senator from Maryland
Representative
Young Kim (R-CA), keynote remarks (pre-recorded)U.S. Representative from
California
Kit Norland,
moderator Diplomat, U.S Department of
State (ret.)
Jed
Royal Principal Deputy Assistant
Secretary of Defense for Indo-Pacific Security Affairs, U.S. Department of
Defense
Phan Anh
Son President, Vietnam Union of
Friendship Organizations
Michael
Schiffer Assistant Administrator of the
Bureau for Asia, U.S. Agency for International Development
Second
Plenary October 11, 2024
https://youtu.be/Haol8H0o89A?t=378
9:00am -
10:15am ET: Launch of USIP Peaceworks Report on Reconciliation
Ambassador
David Scheffer, moderator Professor of
Practice, Arizona State University
Andrew
Wells-Dang Senior Expert, Southeast
Asia, U.S. Institute of Peace
Carl
Stauffer Senior Expert, Reconciliation,
U.S. Institute of Peace
Ambassador
Pham Lan Dung, discussant Acting
President, Diplomatic Academy of Vietnam (like ISRI)
John
McAuliff, discussant Executive Director
& Founder, Fund for Reconciliation and Development
Pathways to Reconciliation: How
Americans and Vietnamese Have Transformed Their Relationship
By: Andrew
Wells-Dang, Ph.D.; Carl Stauffer, Ph.D.
Appendix III
Introduction
to verbal summary
Thanks to
CIPI and to Ambassador Cabanas.
You may
remember my remarks last year about the connection between Cuban and Irish
Nationalism in 19th Century New York. My
daughter gave me this t shirt from Sinn Fein in Belfast, Northern Ireland
honoring Che Guevara and Bobby Sands
As I said
from the floor on the first day, we face a critical situation in both countries
President Trump
could create deep social and political problems for both the people of the US
and of Cuba. Or maybe he will want to become
a contemporary Nixon in China or his friend Presidend Putin will suggest the
benefits of reconciliation with Cuba. We
will begin to know in a month
On this trip
I came first to Holguin and Santiago and then took the 16 hour bus trip to
Havana.
I joined
with Cuban friends in rotating six hour apagones every day in both cities. I heard deep unhappiness with the situation
of daily life, including the concerning and unexpected words “Hay Hambre”. I did not see a country on the verge of
collapse, but I did hear many calls for major reforms.
Hopefully
this summary and excerpts from my paper will be useful to finding a positive
way forward for both our countries.
Appendix IV
 |
Cora Weiss, Kevin Bowen (in absentia) and John McAuliff receive Viet Nam’s national Medal of Friendship from General Secretary and then President To Lam in New York two days before his visit to Cuba.[18] |
This paper was shared with and corrected by Vietnamese friends. However, the contents and conclusions are entirely my own. -- John McAuliff
[1] https://youtu.be/yDsd1axbg2o?t=3476 Full USIP annual review of US-Viet Nam
relations in Appendix II
[2] https://vnpeacecomm.blogspot.com/2024/12/the-oss-and-viet-minh.html
[3] https://www.sggp.org.vn/lan-bac-om-o-tan-trao-post222467.html
[4] https://www.migrationpolicy.org/article/vietnamese-immigrants-united-states
[5] It
can be read on line at
https://vnpeacecomm.blogspot.com/2022/10/mcauliff-paper-for-usip-on.html
[6] https://vnpeacecomm.blogspot.com/2020/07/webinars-on-normalization-of-us-viet.html
[7] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C4%90%E1%BB%95i_M%E1%BB%9Bi
[8] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nguy%E1%BB%85n_V%C4%83n_Linh
[9] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/V%C3%B5_V%C4%83n_Ki%E1%BB%87t
[10] https://vietnamembassy-usa.org/relations/us-be-top-investor-vietnam-two-years
[11] https://vietnamnews.vn/society/1636623/vietnamese-students-at-us-colleges-universities-rise-by-5-7-in-2022-23.html
[12] https://vietnamtourism.gov.vn/en/post/19434#top
[13] https://en.vietnamplus.vn/workshop-discusses-attraction-of-ov-resources-for-tourism-development-post265863.vnp
[14] https://vi.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ch%C6%B0%C6%A1ng_tr%C3%ACnh_Ra_%C4%91i_C%C3%B3_tr%E1%BA%ADt_t%E1%BB%B1
[15] https://www.migrationpolicy.org/article/vietnamese-immigrants-united-states
[16]
December 15, 2024 published by the
United States Indo-Pacific Command https://ipdefenseforum.com/2024/12/beijing-extends-its-coercive-campaign-against-neighbors/
[17] https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/16/magazine/laos-agent-orange-vietnam-war.html
[18] https://vnpeacecomm.blogspot.com/2024/12/medal-of-friendship-for-bowen-weiss-and.html
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