Most Americans over thirty-five remember seeing the famous televised image of the helicopter lifting the last Americans off the embassy roof in Saigon. That April 30, 1975 day closed the last chapter of a long and frustrating war. It was also the first war the United States undeniably lost. Over 58,000 Americans died in the struggle. Vietnamese losses – North and South – were twenty, perhaps fifty times higher. A legacy of bitterness, sorrow, and much finger pointing quickly emerged in the Pentagon, Congress, and around the country. In the South of a newly reunified Vietnam, some former officials were executed and massive re-education camps were instituted by a gloating, victorious North.

Few at that time could have imagined that in twenty years normal diplomatic relations between the U.S. and a still-communist Vietnam would be established. Fewer still could have anticipated that a former Air Force pilot who spent over six years as a POW in Hanoi would be America’s first ambassador to Vietnam. Ambassador Douglas B. “Pete” Peterson now resides “comfortably,” he says, among his former captors.

Talks are underway to grant Vietnam normal trade relations (NTR). Although existing law requires an annual review, NTR would accelerate trade that already exceeds $1 billion. Permanent NTR, according to U.S. Trade Representative Charlene Barshefsky, must await Vietnam’s accession to the World Trade Organization, which is still some years away. Nevertheless, U.S. direct investment is expected to become substantial. Tourism, especially among veterans and students, grows yearly.

WHY RAPPROCHEMENT? WHY NOW?

U.S.-Vietnam rapprochement demonstrates that under certain circumstances former belligerents can put their armed struggle behind them. In other circumstances, mutual hostility endures, as with Iran, Iraq, Yugoslavia, or Cuba.

What explains this? The answer is a bit complex. To make peace, the strategic environment between former belligerents must have become benign: that is, threats to important interests have to disappear. Furthermore, the old antagonistic foreign policies of the two sides must be replaced by a recognition of the importance of their mutual interests and growing interdependence. These are slow processes, but they allow time to heal wounds and open the path to reconciliation, which invariably begins with a series of constructive and highly symbolic signals.

U.S.-Vietnamese relations followed the pattern above.

The end of the Cold War largely disconnected Hanoi from its Soviet patron and its $1.6 billion annual aid. The Vietnamese never did like the Russians, whom they found to be standoffish and arrogant. Simultaneously, with the Cold War’s demise, the United States had little reason to continue to recognize the brutal Khmer Rouge as the government of Cambodia, with whom it had maintained relations to counter and combat the Vietnamese-backed government of Premier Hun Sen in Phnom Penh. The U.S. policy had been to bleed the Soviet economy and to isolate Vietnam. Reversing course, the U.S. sought a deal with Hanoi to end its occupation of Cambodia. In 1989 most Vietnamese forces left Cambodia. In 1991 Washington joined with Vietnam, Russia, China and 13 other states in a UN-brokered settlement to end the Cambodian civil war. Under the UN Transitional Authority in Cambodia, a coalition government in Phnom Penh was installed, all remaining Vietnamese troops and advisors went home, and a rough peace returned to the former killing fields. With the Vietnamese-Russian alliance disintegrating, few conflicting strategic interests divided Hanoi and Washington. The strategic environment became placid. (This pattern has many precedents. For example, forty-five years earlier, U.S. relations with Germany and Japan shifted when these former enemies were needed as allies and economic partners.)

The second important factor in U.S.-Vietnam rapprochement – conditions of fading antagonism amidst mutual interests and growing interdependence – can be dated to 1986-87 when Vietnam began its “Doi Moi” (renovation) efforts to create a market economy “with socialist characteristics.” Hanoi opened trade with and encouraged investments from Japan, Singapore, Germany, Taiwan, Hong Kong, France, and South Korea – all friends or allies of the United States. Calls for tightening or even maintaining U.S. economic sanctions eased and then faded from American political rhetoric. The main impetus remained the recovery of the remains of U.S. soldiers still listed as missing in action (MIA). Getting results in this area required opening contacts with Vietnam.

Time does heal wounds under non-threatening circumstances, and even more so under conditions of interdependency. Vietnam wanted to enter the global market and join regional organizations such as the Association of Southeast Asian Nations and the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum. Hanoi also wanted to establish relations with the U.S. as a possible counter to growing Chinese power, a hedge reflecting its historical tensions with Beijing. The two communist states fought a border war in 1979 and still contend over control of the Spratly Islands in the South China Sea. Hanoi’s agenda needed U.S. cooperation. The “first priority” for the U.S., according to a high ranking American trade official, “has been a full accounting for American service personnel listed as Missing in Action in the aftermath of the Vietnam War.” Additional U.S. interests delineated by the same official included “regional stability and growth, open markets, human rights, and the rule of law.” This agenda required Vietnamese cooperation.

WHY NOT RECONCILIATION ELSEWHERE?

Conditions favoring rapprochement are absent in other parts of the world. The strategic environment remains competitive – even hostile – between the U.S. and Iraq and Iran because they threaten the U.S.-Israeli strategic partnership, although Iran seems to be moderating its hostility (thus beginning Iran’s process of rapprochement with the U.S. and eventually with Israel). Milosevic’s Yugoslavia continues to obstruct U.S. peacekeeping and peace making operations in Bosnia and Kosovo, and Secretary of State Madeleine Albright actively pursues the Yugoslav leader’s removal. Cuba routinely votes against the U.S. in the UN and maintains its hostile propaganda towards Washington. With the votes of anti-Castro Cuban-Americans in Florida and New Jersey in mind, U.S. officials return the hostility.

Mutual vindictiveness still burns brightly with Iran over American hostages, who continue to sue Iran. In March, a federal judge ordered Iran to pay journalist Terry Anderson $324 million for damages he sustained from Iran-supported hostage-takers in war-torn Lebanon. Other judgments in the hundred of millions have been awarded – but not collected – to Americans who had been held in Teheran and Beirut. Furthermore, the State Department still lists Iran as a state sponsor of international terrorism. So far, Iran has refused to open a dialogue with the United States. Iraq, another designated terrorism sponsor, continues to shoot at U.S. and British warplanes enforcing the two “no-fly” zones. In response, the U.S. bombs radar and anti-aircraft sites.

Cuban-American relations simmer over boat lifts, the downing of civilian aircraft, nationalized property, and most recently have become embroiled over the custody of a six-year old Cuban child found floating off the Florida coast.

Until the strategic environment is changed in each case, the antagonism will continue.

THE RAPPROCHEMENT WITH VIETNAM

Vietnam opened the door in 1987 by agreeing to work with Washington in accounting for missing soldiers. The next year, Vietnam invited U.S. representatives to Hanoi – including war veterans such as Senator Larry Pressler (R-SD) – to accept the remains of 27 MIAs. As mentioned above, Vietnam cooperated in the Cambodian settlement. In response, President Bush in 1991 and 1992 authorized organized travel and commercial sales of food and medicine to Vietnam and opened communication links. Step-by-step signals and gestures continued. President Clinton authorized international lending to Vietnam in 1993 and allowed American firms to join in development projects. After full Vietnamese cooperation in accounting for the MIAs and a 62-38 vote in the Senate to lift the trade embargo, the President removed the embargo in 1994. Over the fading objections of veterans groups and MIA families, many ex-POWs – including Senator John McCain and Ambassador “Pete” Peterson – supported opening diplomatic ties. Finally, in 1995 President Clinton normalized relations.

When Secretary of Defense William Cohen visited Vietnam in March of this year, the Vietnamese military band – as reported in the Washington Post – played “a respectable, even spirited rendition of the Star Spangled Banner.” Speaking with reporters after his meetings in Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City (formally Saigon), Cohen stated, “There’s a willingness to forget about the past – or, I should say, to not dwell on the past. They have been cooperative. I will express our thanks. It’s a very important element of our relationship, that is, giving a full account of the missing in action.” The comments of Ambassador Peterson reflected the mood of the talks. “Here we are, two nations standing side by side with essentially the same purposes, the same goals, and that is to maintain peace, and then through that peace to bring prosperity.”

Earlier, the commander of the Ho Chi Minh City military district, Lt. Gen. Phan Trung Kien, told Cohen that he “was happy to put aside the past and look to the future.” Old “warriors,” he said, are the ones most interested in peace.

There is even talk of a U.S. warship sometime soon making a port call at the former American naval base on Cam Ranh Bay.

CONCLUSIONS

The key to any restoration of normal diplomatic relations is the existence – either by a withdrawal of competing interests or the intentional creation by former antagonists – of a benign security environment which allows political healing to begin. Both sides must send clear signals followed by a delicate set of reciprocal steps that overcome previous hostility. Both sides must be willing to put current interests favoring the restoration of relations before the past history of violent conflict. Both sides require leaders willing and able to risk these first steps when they judge that the timing and conditions are ripe for reconciliation.

Difficult problems for rapprochement remain with Iran, Iraq, Yugoslavia, Cuba, Libya, Sudan, and North Korea, but the pattern typified by the establishment of U.S.-Vietnamese relations can serve as a template for each case.

Callouts:

“U.S.-Vietnam rapprochement demonstrates that under certain circumstances former belligerents can put their armed struggle behind them.”

“There’s a willingness to forget about the past – or, I should say, to not dwell on the past.”

(See CDI’s ASIA FORUM web page for links to related documents and more information on Asian defense organizations, budgets, and forces.)
 

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