FOREIGN
RELATIONS
During
the second Indochina war (1954-75), North Vietnam balanced relations
with its two major allies, the Soviet Union and China. By 1975,
tension began to grow as Beijing increasingly viewed Vietnam as
a potential Soviet instrument to encircle China. Meanwhile, Beijing's
increasing support for Cambodia's Khmer Rouge sparked Vietnamese
suspicions of China's motives.
Vietnamese-Chinese
relations deteriorated significantly after Hanoi instituted a
ban in March 1978 on private trade, mostly affecting Sino-Vietnamese.
Following Vietnam's December 1978 invasion of Cambodia, China
launched a retaliatory incursion over Vietnam's northern border.
Faced with severance of Chinese aid and strained international
relations, Vietnam established even closer ties with the Soviet
Union and its allies in the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance
(Comecon). Through the 1980s, Vietnam received nearly $3 billion
a year in economic and military aid from the Soviet Union and
conducted most of its trade with the Union of Soviet Socialist
Republics (U.S.S.R., or Soviet Union) and other Council for Mutual
Economic Assistance countries. However, Soviet and East bloc economic
aid ceased after the breakup of the Soviet Union.
Vietnam did not begin to emerge from international isolation until it withdrew its troops from Cambodia in 1989. Within months of the 1991 Paris Agreements, Vietnam established diplomatic and economic relations with ASEAN as well as with most of the countries of Western Europe and Northeast Asia. China reestablished full diplomatic ties with Vietnam in 1991, and the two countries continue their joint efforts to demarcate their land and sea borders, expand trade and investment ties, and build political relations.
In the past decade, Vietnam has recognized the increasing importance of growing global economic interdependence and has made concerted efforts to adjust its foreign relations to reflect the evolving international economic and political situation in Southeast Asia. The country has begun to integrate itself into the regional and global economy by joining international organizations. Vietnam has stepped up its efforts to attract foreign capital from the West and regularize relations with the world financial system. In the 1990s, following the lifting of the American veto on multilateral loans to the country, Vietnam became a member of the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, and the Asian Development Bank. The country has expanded trade with its East Asian neighbors as well as with countries in Western Europe and North America. Of particular significance was Vietnam's acceptance into the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) in July 1995. In recent years, Vietnam’s influence in ASEAN has expanded significantly. In addition, Vietnam joined the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum (APEC) in November 1998 and hosted the ASEAN summit in 2001 and APEC in 2006. In October 2007, Vietnam was elected for the first time to the United Nations Security Council, to serve a two-year term starting on January 1, 2008.
While Vietnam has not experienced war since its withdrawal from Cambodia, tensions have periodically flared between Vietnam and China, primarily over their overlapping maritime claims in the South China Sea. Vietnam and China each assert claims to the Spratly and Paracel Islands, archipelagos in the potentially oil-rich area of the South China Sea. Malaysia, the Philippines, Brunei, and Taiwan also claim all or part of the South China Sea. Over the years, conflicting claims have produced small-scale armed altercations in the area; in 1988, 70 Vietnamese sailors died in a confrontation with China in the Spratlys. China's assertion of "indisputable sovereignty" over the Spratly Islands and the entire South China Sea has elicited concern from Vietnam and its Southeast Asia neighbors. Tensions escalated in the latter half of 2007, as China pressured foreign oil companies, notably BP, to abandon their oil and gas exploration contracts with Vietnam in the South China Sea. Press reports in July 2008 also cited Chinese pressure on U.S. firm ExxonMobil to drop an exploration agreement with Vietnam in the same waters. Vietnamese students staged several anti-China demonstrations in response, prompting a warning from the Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman that Hanoi's failure to quell the demonstrations was harming relations. China's efforts in the summer of 2009 to strictly enforce its unilateral fishing ban in disputed waters led to the detention for several weeks of more than two dozen Vietnamese fishermen.
In contrast, Vietnam has made significant progress with China in delineating its northern land border and the Gulf of Tonkin, pursuant to a Land Border Agreement signed in December 1999, and an Agreement on Borders in the Gulf of Tonkin signed in December 2000. The two sides completed demarcation of their land border in December 2008 and have reached understanding on maritime boundaries in the mouth of the Tonkin Gulf.
U.S.-VIETNAM
RELATIONS
President Bill Clinton announced the formal normalization of diplomatic
relations with the Socialist Republic of Vietnam on July 11, 1995. Subsequent to
President Clinton's normalization announcement, in August 1995, both nations
upgraded their Liaison Offices opened in January 1995 to embassy status. As
diplomatic ties between the nations grew, the United States opened a consulate
general in Ho Chi Minh City, and Vietnam opened a consulate general in San
Francisco. In 2009, Vietnam opened a consulate in Houston; the United States
received permission to open a consulate in Danang.
U.S. relations with Vietnam have become increasingly cooperative and broad-based in the years since political normalization. A series of bilateral summits have helped drive the improvement of ties, including President George W. Bush's visit to Hanoi in November 2006, President Triet's visit to Washington in June 2007, and Prime Minister Dung's visit to Washington in June 2008. The two countries hold an annual dialogue on human rights, which resumed in 2006 after a two-year hiatus. Vietnam and the United States signed a Bilateral Trade Agreement in July 2000, which went into force in December 2001. In 2003, the two countries signed a Counternarcotics Letter of Agreement (amended in 2006), a Civil Aviation Agreement, and a textile agreement. In January 2007, Congress approved Permanent Normal Trade Relations (PNTR) for Vietnam. In October 2008, the U.S. and Vietnam inaugurated annual political-military talks and policy planning talks to consult on regional security and strategic issues. Bilateral and regional diplomatic engagement expanded at ASEAN, which Vietnam will chair in 2010, and continues through APEC. The two sides have consulted regularly on a broad range of international issues at the UN Security Council, where Vietnam has a seat (January 2008-December 2009) as a non-permanent member.
Vietnam's suppression of political dissent has continued to be a main issue of contention in relations with the United States, drawing criticism from successive administrations, as well as from members of Congress and the U.S. public. Since spring 2007, Vietnam's government has arrested dozens of political dissidents, and in 2008 and 2009 further tightened controls over the press and freedom of speech. Over the past year, two journalists were arrested and convicted in connection with their reporting on high-level corruption, and several journalists and editors at leading newspapers have been fired. Several Internet bloggers were also jailed after writing about corruption and protesting China's actions in the disputed Spratly and Paracel Islands; one was convicted and sent to prison.
In contrast, Vietnam has continued to make significant progress on expanding religious freedom. In 2005, Vietnam passed comprehensive religious freedom legislation, outlawing forced renunciations and permitting the official recognition of new denominations. Since that time, the government has granted official national recognition to a number of religions and religious groups, including seven more Protestant denominations, and has registered hundreds of local congregations. As a result, in November 2006, the Department of State lifted the designation of Vietnam as a "Country of Particular Concern," based on a determination that the country was no longer a serious violator of religious freedoms, as defined by the International Religious Freedom Act. This decision was reaffirmed by the Department of State in 2007, 2008, and 2009. Nevertheless, there is room for further progress. The government's slow pace of church registration and harassment of certain religious leaders for their political activism, including leaders of the unrecognized United Buddhist Church of Vietnam, were an ongoing source of U.S. concern, as was violence against the Plum Village order at Bat Nha Pagoda in Lam Dong.
As of September 15, 2009, the U.S. Government listed 1,731 Americans unaccounted for in Southeast Asia, including 1,319 in Vietnam. Since 1973, 915 Americans have been accounted for, including 649 in Vietnam.
Additionally, the Department of Defense has confirmed that of the 196 individuals who were "last known alive" (LKA) in Vietnam, the U.S. Government has determined the fate of all but 27. The Joint POW/MIA Accounting command (JPAC) conducts four major investigation and recovery periods a year in Vietnam, during which specially trained U.S. military and civilian personnel investigate and excavate hundreds of cases in pursuit of fullest possible accounting. Accessing restricted areas by using unilateral Vietnamese investigation and recovery teams has been a recent highlight of cooperation by the Socialist Republic of Vietnam, as was the June 2009 coastal search mission by the oceanographic survey ship USNS Heezen, the first of its kind. The U.S. would still like to see the provision of archival documents related to U.S. losses along the wartime Ho Chi Minh Trail, as well as more openness in general with regard to Vietnam’s wartime archives. The United States considers achieving the fullest possible accounting of Americans missing and unaccounted for in Indochina to be one of its highest priorities with Vietnam.
Since entry into force of the U.S.-Vietnam Bilateral Trade Agreement on December 10, 2001, increased trade between the U.S. and Vietnam, combined with large-scale U.S. investment in Vietnam, evidence the maturing U.S.-Vietnam economic relationship. In 2008, the United States exported $2.8 billion of goods to Vietnam and imported $12.9 billion of goods from Vietnam. Similarly, U.S. companies continue to invest directly in the Vietnamese economy. During 2008, the U.S. private sector committed $1.49 billion to Vietnam in foreign direct investment. Another sign of the expanding bilateral relationship is the signing of a Bilateral Air Transport Agreement in December 2003. Several U.S. carriers already have third-party code sharing agreements with Vietnam Airlines. Direct flights between Ho Chi Minh City and San Francisco began in December 2004. The Bilateral Air Transport Agreement was amended in October 2008 to fully open markets for cargo air transportation. Vietnam and the United States also signed a Bilateral Maritime Agreement in March 2007 that opened the maritime transport and services industry of Vietnam to U.S. firms.
The United States and Vietnam engage in a wide range of cooperative activities in the areas of peacekeeping, humanitarian assistance and disaster relief, search and rescue, maritime and border security, law enforcement, and nonproliferation. In June 2008, Prime Minister Dung announced plans to take part in the multinational Global Peace Operations Initiative (GPOI) to train international peacekeepers. Many of these topics are discussed in annual bilateral defense discussions. In April 2009, senior officials from Vietnam's Navy and Air Force toured the U.S. nuclear-powered aircraft carrier USS John C. Stennis, which was berthed in international waters 270 miles off the southern coast of Vietnam. In June 2008, Vietnam hosted a port call to Nha Trang by the hospital ship USNS Mercy, providing medical and dental treatment to over 11,000 Vietnamese patients. This followed Vietnam's hosting of visits by five U.S. Navy vessels in 2007, including a port call to Danang by the humanitarian supply ship USS Peleliu, whose personnel carried out numerous medical and engineering projects. Vietnam continues to observe multinational exercises such as the Cooperation Afloat Readiness and Training (CARAT), organized by the U.S. Pacific Fleet. An active partner in nonproliferation regimes, Vietnam also takes full advantage of expertise, equipment, and training available under the Export Control and Related Border Security (EXBS) program.
Principal U.S. Embassy Official
Ambassador--Michael W. Michalak
The U.S. Embassy in Vietnam is located at 7 Lang Ha, Ba Dinh District, Hanoi, Socialist Republic of Vietnam (tel. 84-4-850-5000; fax 84-4-850-5010).
