Episode 61. Vietnam & The US: Legacy and Partnership with Admiral Scott Swift and Ambassador Ted Osius

Episode Transcript:

Amb. McCarthy (00:00): From The American Academy of Diplomacy, this is The General and the Ambassador. Our podcast brings together senior US diplomats and senior US military leaders in conversations about their partnership and their joint work in different parts of the world to advance US foreign policy interests. I am Ambassador Deborah McCarthy, the producer and host. The General and the Ambassador is a production of the American Academy of Diplomacy in partnership with UNC Global at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Today, we will talk about US diplomatic and military engagement with Vietnam, with Admiral Scott Swift and Ambassador Ted Osius. They worked closely together during a dynamic period in US-Vietnamese relations. Admiral Scott Swift served as the Commander of the US Pacific Fleet from 2015 to 2018, just prior he served as Director of Navy Staff in the Office of the Chief of Naval Operations. In his 40 year career as a Navy pilot, he commanded at all levels and participated in combat operations Praying Mantis, Southern Watch, Enduring Freedom, and Iraqi Freedom. Currently, he is a Senior Fellow at the Center for Naval Analysis, a Research Affiliate at MIT, and an adjunct professor at the US Naval War College. He is also the founder of the Swift Group. Ambassador Ted Osius served as the US Ambassador to Vietnam from 2014 to 2017. He is only the second out gay US career diplomat to have achieved the rank of ambassador. Among his senior positions in a 30 year diplomatic career, he served as Deputy Chief of Mission in Indonesia, Political Minister Counselor at the US Embassy in India and Senior Advisor on Asia and Trade to Vice President Al Gore. Most recently, he was the Vice President for Government Affairs and Public Policy at Google Asia Pacific. Currently among his many activities, he is the proud author of the soon to be released book "Nothing is Impossible: America's Reconciliation with Vietnam." Admiral Swift, Ambassador Osius, a warm welcome and thank you for joining the show. I want to start with some background information for our listeners. US-Vietnamese relations were practically non-existent for 15 years after North Vietnam's victory over South Vietnam in 1975. There were many obstacles to reestablishing relations, including the legacy of the war, the fact that Vietnam had a communist government and a close relationship with the Soviet Union, Vietnam's invasion of Cambodia, and a lack of cooperation on the important issue of US POW/MIA. Under President Clinton, steps were taken to normalize the relationship leading to the full restoration of diplomatic relations in 1995. Ambassador Osius, your first diplomatic assignment of Vietnam was at that pivotal time. What led to the renewal of relations and what was it like to serve in Vietnam at that moment?

Amb. Osius (03:17): The key breakthrough actually occurred in 1992, on a night flight, an overnight flight, and a former Navy pilot, Senator John McCain, happened to be seated across the aisle from a former Navy swift boat captain, Senator John Kerry. They were kind of knee and knee on this flight to the Middle East. They decided to talk and one was a Democrat and one was Republican, but they both had really rough experiences in Vietnam. And they spent the whole night talking about what had happened to them and their views on it and what needed to happen going forward. And they concluded that it was time for America to move on and they thought the way to do that was to really look into the issue of whether there were still Americans in Southeast Asia. And where the remains of servicemen might be. They agreed at that moment to set up a select committee on POW/MIA affairs. And this was an issue that had really divided the nation for some years, but they made a bipartisan decision to come together. Really look deeply into the question and to collaborate on this important mission because they thought bringing the two countries together would be good for both. This was actually a challenge for president Bill Clinton, because he was thought of as a draft dodger. Full diplomatic relations between the United States and Vietnam was kind of hard for him to do, especially with cover from Senator McCain. After the midterm elections in 1994, when the Republicans were in charge of Congress, with the support of McCain, Clinton made the big decision to normalize relations in 1995. And it was a really exciting period. Just as he made that decision, I was starting my language classes, I was starting to study Vietnamese, and you asked what it was like, and I'll tell you Vietnam, at that time, it was really, really, really exciting to be there in those early years, because everything we did was like the first time in 22 years, that such a thing had been done. So I biked all over the country. I spoke Vietnamese, so I found myself very welcome everywhere I went. And this was also a surprise. I thought, look at this country devastated by war. How could Americans, especially official Americans, be so welcome? But we were. We were on a bike trip from Hanoi to Saigon, which is a long bike ride it's 1200 miles. Halfway in the middle at the DMZ, I stopped my bike and was kind of looking out over the landscape. And I saw all of these ponds. Clearly they were where bombs had been dropped. And I was talking to a woman who was standing next to me and I said, what are those ponds? And she said, well, that's where the Americans dropped their bombs. And she started to talk about how many people in her village and in her family had been killed. I was, you know, kind of feeling worse and worse as we have this discussion. And I thought I've got to fess up. I said, "Well, I'm an American diplomat and I'm so sorry for your losses." And she looked at me and she said (a phrase in Vietnamese). That's very familial, intimate language for, "We are brother and sister today." And I was just, could never forget that statement because it said so much about the willingness of the Vietnamese people to move beyond the past, to reconcile and to be friends with their former enemies.

Amb. McCarthy (06:41): That is extraordinary. Well, I wanted to move forward to more recent times. In 2013, President Obama and his Vietnamese counterpart announced a comprehensive partnership to broaden the relationship. For the United States, this was part of a deliberate policy to deepen US engagement in the Asia Pacific region. Among other aspects, the comprehensive partnership called for increased defense cooperation. In the defense relationship, there are legacy issues from the war, as well as new areas of mutual interest. And I wanted to dive into these legacy issues to start. One legacy issue is addressing the effects of Agent Orange, which was sprayed over Vietnam by the US between 1961 and 1971. Since 2007, Congress has appropriated over 380 million for dioxin removal and related healthcare services. For both of you, what is Agent Orange and what were its effects?

Amb. Osius (07:40): Agent Orange is an herbicide. It's a chemical defoliant that was used to clear brush and forest where the enemy forces were hiding. And there's a highly toxic product of the manufacture of Agent Orange called dioxin, and dioxin has been demonstrated to have long-term harmful physical effects on people exposed to it. And it's linked to birth defects. It stays in the system, actually carries on from generation to generation, but during the first years of diplomatic relations, including when I was serving under Ambassador Pete Peterson, American officials were urged not to talk about it, especially not publicly because there was a lot of concern that if we talked about Agent Orange, then we'd be liable. The government didn't want to face culpability for the birth defects and the disfiguration and what was happening to people in Vietnam. We were much quicker to respond to the effects that it had had on Americans who had served in Vietnam. It became clear over time that the medical problems that people were facing, both that veterans were facing and the Vietnamese were facing, were linked to dioxin.

Adm. Swift (08:50): Let me play off the Ambassador's comments in a broader context, not just with Vietnam and not just with the Vietnamese people. And I'll frame it in this context that where there's instability, uncertainty, there's opportunity. And when you're building relationships, it's in those areas that you can create the most velocity, the speed with a vector, a direction that you're going, that's positive, that both countries want to end up. It's difficult to find those places, which is why my habit was in visiting a country, I would visit the embassy and hopefully the ambassador first, if the ambassador was there, to have a deeper understanding of the specifics of the challenges of the country that I was visiting. To the Ambassador's point of the challenges with Agent Orange, from a legal perspective, that's not uncommon. And what I have found, ambassadors have been great partners where we have been able to frame challenges as opportunities to the greater good. And so, yes, there's legal implications, but what's the right thing to do? I've found Ambassador Osius to be a great partner in that way. So start where there is a common challenge and one that stretches the limits of the current relationship. That's how you grow a relationship. So Agent Orange was indiscriminate in who it affected. It was affecting US military and still is today, as a matter of fact. I'm glad that we're much more open within our own country about treating veterans that are suffering from the ramifications of Agent Orange, but also the Vietnamese people as the Ambassador pointed out. It can be done from an academic perspective. It can be done from a medical studies perspective. It Can be done from a treatment perspective, that doesn't have to go into this legal domain that becomes more contentious. The other thing I'll say is that this is an opportunity to expand our thinking, this growing relationship between the United States and Vietnam, as to the impact beyond just the military. That's essentially on the US side where the focus is, but I'm confident that advisors, State Department personnel, NGOs, Australians, others that were very involved in the Vietnam conflict could come together in this rubric of Agent Orange in ways that are beneficial to building relationships beyond just that difficult problem.

Amb. McCarthy (11:10): I wanted to ask how the State Department, the Department of Defense have worked together to address the consequences of the use of Agent Orange?

Amb. Osius (11:19): When we started out in the mid nineties, there was no trust. And so we had to find areas where we could do what the Admiral described and build trust, do things together that would build trust. So this was a crucial area because it was so important to the Vietnamese, the cleanup of Agent Orange. Very important to us, really foundationally important was making sure that we had the fullest possible accounting of our service men lost during the war. There was kind of a little bit of a trade-off here. The Vietnamese would give us full cooperation on the POW/MIA challenge, but they asked for help in cleaning up Agent Orange. Starting in the nineties, a lot of very good scientific research was done. The Admiral mentioned Canadians, Australians, it was international research that was done. And the first breakthrough was understanding that it wasn't everywhere, but yes, there been defoliant that had been sprayed in a lot of places, but most of it had dissipated. It was really concentrated in three places, in Phuket, in the former air base at Danang, and the former air base at Bien Hoa. And so the United nations kind of fenced off the area in Phuket and covered it over and eliminated any possibility of leakage. But that was the smallest of the three places where there was a high concentration of dioxin. The US Agency for International Development focused on the Danang airport and cleaning up the dioxin that was left in the ponds and in the soil near the Danang airport. It was costly. It took a number of years to do, but it was successful. And I was able to participate in that process and even at the end kind of sink my hands into the dirt. And I have small children, I would not have put my hands into this soil if it weren't absolutely clean. The biggest toughest challenge was the Bien Hoa airbase, which had an enormous amount of Dioxin. And it was still leaking into the water where people were fishing and eating ducks. And so it was still affecting people. Finally, it took some time, but an agreement was reached where US Agency for International Development would pay for half of the cost of the cleanup and DoD would pay for the other half. So it was a good Washington compromise, bureaucratically difficult. It took longer than I wish it had to reach that decision, but it was a big investment. So the civilian and military agencies decided to tackle it together and each contributed half, and that process is underway. So Bien Hoa will be cleaned up the way that Danang was cleaned up.

Amb. McCarthy (13:51): Well, you mentioned the issue of finding the remains of missing servicemen as a top priority. In our series, we've done a podcast which describes the absolutely incredible work done by the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency in cooperation with the State Department across the globe to find and identify remains. In the context of Vietnam, how cooperative has the government of Vietnam been in recent years on this issue?

Amb. Osius (14:17): Well, extremely cooperative and really from the beginning, at least from 1996, when I was there, it was the foundation. The first Charge d'Affairs Desaix Anderson, and then the first Ambassador, former POW Pete Peterson, both made it absolutely clear to political officers like myself and other members of the embassy team. This is number one, this is challenge number one. Everything else builds upon success in this area. So we have to absolutely devote our resources. And the Vietnamese, let us go really wherever and whenever we wanted. There were some slight limitations on disputed border areas, but otherwise we would say, you know, "We've got a lead we want to follow up in this area," and they'd say, "Okay, go to it." And they were very cooperative from day one. Understanding of course, that this was so important to the United States, that the things that Vietnam wanted like a normal economic relationship and greater integration into the world economy would all become possible. If we could have cooperation in this crucial area. So they made the archives open to us. They shared information that they could find. And over time we were able to share information with the Vietnamese on those whom they had lost.

Adm. Swift (15:27): This is a great point the Ambassador made if I can tag on it, I call it the cascading effect of positive outcomes. The Ambassador mentioned how important it is to build relationships. And certainly if you're a Foreign Service Officer or a political appointee within the State Department, this is core to your activities. It wasn't until I became more senior in the military before I realized how it was important in executing my tasks and missions and how I characterize it is that the most important thing that I ever did in my military career was build relationships. The most important by-product of relationship is trust. And it's also the most perishable. If you're not building trust, it's decaying, it's something that needs constant attention. And once you burn an element of a trust bridge, it's very difficult to regain it. That's why these consequential issues are so important to focus on. And so as the Ambassador pointed out, we've had great success with the recovery of missing in action and those that have been killed in action in Vietnam. And as you mentioned, this agency is largely a military agency. There's civilians in it, there's archeologists in it, but it's largely military. It's military that provides the muscle, if you will, behind it, the transportation, logistics, the care and feeding of these groups in the field. The key is to integrate these groups within the country that you're operating in. But as you can fully understand, from a Vietnamese perspective, great suspicion about what's really behind this. Are they really interested in recovering these lost soldiers, sailors, airmen, marines, and it's through the Ambassador's leadership, as he pointed out, that the embassy was able to convince the Vietnamese that no, this was important. Then it becomes a communal project that there's benefit to both sides. In addition to that, it spreads beyond that into not only the adjoining countries, but other countries where we have the same challenges. Now we can use Vietnam as the example and the Vietnamese become an advocate for these activities that occur, in my experience, certainly around the Pacific.

Amb. Osius (17:27): Just one story to illustrate the Admiral's point. This is actually about how veterans have contributed to this process. There was a veteran named Bob Conner, Air Force vet, who discovered in 2017 when he was helping his granddaughter do a project on Vietnam, that there were Vietnamese looking for the remains of their soldiers in the Bien Hoa airbase, where he had served. And he actually remembered where bodies had been buried, a large number of bodies. And so he and his commanding officer reached out to the Vietnamese who were making this search. And they said, we think we know where they are. And then they actually went to Ho Chi Minh city and were met by senior officials there, went out and eventually they found, I think the remains of 150 soldiers. This project began to grow because they had information that the Vietnamese needed. And then it turns out that the Vietcong had a lot of information that Americans were still looking for with regard to missing servicemen. So there became a kind of virtuous cycle where veterans and former Vietcong were sharing information with each other and bringing closure to American families and bringing closure to Vietnamese families. In the Vietnamese tradition, if your remains are not found and not buried then your soul wanders forever. And so it's important in our culture to bring closure to families. And I saw this many times during my service, how meaningful that was, and it's really important to the Vietnamese as well.

Adm. Swift (18:58): What I am seeing as these veterans are returning, many times they need assistance because of their age or ailments, and we're seeing the families connect with other families in Vietnam. So you've got this continuum that's occurring. That goes back to why relationship building is so important. That's not just in the moment. If you've got skilled practitioners like the Ambassador, they can turn these moments into a continuum, which is what I'm seeing in Vietnam today.

Amb. McCarthy (19:24): Well, I wanted to turn now to another element that has added some dynamism and impetus to the deepened relationship with Vietnam, and that is China and China's actions in the South China Sea. Vietnam and China have competing territorial claims and flare ups have occurred between them. As a result both the Obama and the Trump Administrations prioritized bilateral maritime assistance to Vietnam. In March, 2018, the Carl Vinson made the first port call to Vietnam by a US aircraft carrier since the Vietnam War. Let me start with you, Ted. What obstacles did you encounter in trying to deepen the security relationship with Vietnam?

Amb. Osius (20:07): Well, this is something that the Admiral and I discussed a lot when we were both serving and focused on the relationship with Vietnam. And the Admiral mentioned that trust is a by-product of relationships. It took time to build the trust and to build the relationships that we needed to have a true security relationship. And we had to overcome suspicions. And we had to overcome the past in many ways, because many of the people we were working with had fought against us years and years before. So we had to build trust step-by-step starting with reciprocal visits. And I remember in 1996, Kurt Campbell, who now is this very senior advisor to the President, he was Deputy Assistant Secretary for Defense for Asia. And he came to Hanoi and I was his control officer, which means I managed his visit. He said, what we need is, we need reciprocal visits. We need to set up these visits, a pattern of visits so we can grow to trust one another, we can understand one another better. And the pattern continued from that point till today, the back and forth of visits at fairly senior levels. The first really big visit was from the Defense Minister of Vietnam to Washington. We started doing things together. This is, again, this trust process. We eventually, the things that we did together led to us doing things together, out in the world, like UN peacekeeping and humanitarian assistance and disaster relief. I remember a visit by Secretary of Defense Ash Carter while I was Ambassador, he and the then Defense Minister had a dinner. The dinner kind of rolled on and there was dancing and there was a fair amount of red wine, and it got kind of jolly. At a certain point, Secretary Carter asked the Defense Minister, "So how did you meet your wife?" I don't know how this came up, but he said, "Well, she picked shrapnel out of my hip." Obviously that was a result of him fighting us. So then the scotch came out and the evening went on further. And finally the Defense Minister, feeling very relaxed, turned to the Secretary and said, "You know, if we'd had a dinner like that back then there never would have been a war." And it's true. That visit and others led to a really big breakthrough, which was the visit by the Secretary General of the Communist Party to the Oval Office, he was hosted by President Obama in the Oval. And this was a first and a big deal. Probably the most consequential thing that I helped make happen when I was ambassador. It led to a series of breakthroughs in the security relationship, because from that moment on, it was deemed okay to work closely with the Americans. And from that moment on Vietnam really began having more activities with the United States than with any other country.

Amb. McCarthy (22:50): Well Scott, if I can follow up, how does Vietnam fit into the US Military's broader Pacific strategy?

Adm. Swift (22:57): I think the first place in answer to your question, is to deepen our understanding. With Vietnam and with other countries, I think we need to be very careful about pressuring them to pick sides, and this is to your question, between the US and China. The other statement that I'll make is I am concerned that we lead too much with our military foot, with respect to China. I'm pleased to see the comments that the Secretary of Defense is making and Secretary Blinken is making. And I go back to General Mattis and his comments when he was Secretary of Defense. And his focus was always, in dealing with North Korea at the time, that the State Department is in the lead. DoD is in support of the State Department. That was framing the context. We need to be careful about picking sides. The flip side of that coin is how do you do that as you set the example and I think in this case, Vietnam is setting the example. Vietnam, I think, is doing a job that is one to be emulated by others in the region about how to deal with a very powerful authoritarian government that is so proximate to them as a nation, politically, diplomatically, economically they're in a very difficult situation. It was under the Ambassador's leadership that was able to thread that needle and get to a place that we could have something as strategically militarily imposing as a carrier visit Vietnam. To put it in the right context, success was achieved when we saw what the reaction was, not from Vietnam, but from China and other countries in the region. Our partnership is I think a challenge, more challenge than it ever has been, because of uncertainty of the signals that we're sending as a nation. What's important to us as a nation, but that uncertainty has not been reflected of this gravitational pull that China is trying to create of friends, allies, and partners being drawn to it. Now you don't have a model that naturally attracts people. Democracy does. We clearly are on the high terrain here. So I would suggest that we need to lead with diplomacy. We need to lead with state craft. There's plenty of opportunity for military support in those efforts, as is represented by the great experience I had working with the Ambassador when he was in position there in Vietnam. There was a wealth of things that we did in country. All of them were actions that were in support of his efforts. I'll give a quick example. I visited Danang and it was suggested by the embassy that we take a road trip to Hue City, which we did. And the reason that the road trip was important is because that road is so strategically significant in the history of the Vietnamese people. It enabled us to stop along the way and have conversations with the people of the country. We were in our military uniforms, but you know, we're clearly military representatives, but we were asking questions about drying rice on the road, or asking questions about access to water. We're asking questions about their future, education, all those things that anybody from a US perspective, cultural perspective would be asking the same things. This is the approach that we should take with countering those that have alternative forms of government that are, in my opinion, antithetical to the great strength and prosperity that we've enjoyed since the end of World War II. There are places that they need to be confronted and called out, but that's a diplomatic mission. The backstop is the military.

Amb. McCarthy (26:25): I wanted to persist in this line of questioning, however, and talk a little bit more about threading the needle because China and Vietnam have an extremely long history, extending thousands of years. Ted, can you help us understand the historical context of this relationship and how, without asking them to take sides, you were able to understand this relationship and yet persist on the diplomatic side in deepening this comprehensive partnership?

Amb. Osius (26:56): It is important to understand a nation's history and twice in the 10th century and then once in the 13th, the great military leaders of Vietnam were forced to push back against encroachment from the north. The Bach Dang river is very famous in Vietnam's history because that's the place where Ngo Quyen and Le Hoan and Tran Hung Dao, all generals who became emperors later on, defeated Northern aggressors. In three instances, in three centuries, these great generals took iron tipped, wooden stakes, huge iron tipped, wooden stakes, and sunk them into the mud of that river and then lured the enemies ships back during high tide. And then the weight of the enemies ships impaled them on those stakes. This happened three times. They learned something from that experience. And I would say that, you know, going forward Ho Chi Minh and General Giap remembered that lesson and used it against the French and then against the United States. When you have a more powerful opponent, you use the opponent's own weight for self impalement. This is a strategy that really the Vietnamese used, as I said, first in response to the Chinese, because for 11 centuries, China was the single most important determinant of Vietnam's foreign policy. It's been a threat to Vietnam from its birth as a nation to the present. Other countries like France and the United States would come and go, but China was always there and always a huge factor in Vietnamese thinking.

Amb. McCarthy (28:35): And you both visited the Bach Dang river, where there are three statues to those who impaled the enemies so to speak.

Amb. Osius (28:43): We did. I visited the Admiral twice in Hawaii, and we talked about the ways that we could collaborate, build trust with the Vietnamese. And on one of his visits to Vietnam, we had this fortuitous experience. We followed the advice of the Defense Attache at the time, Colonel Tuan T. Ton, and we went to the Bach Tong River and we paid respect to these three great generals. And it was only a month later, after the Admiral and I went there, that president Tran Dai Quang, I'd been talking with him about the idea of an aircraft carrier visit, but it was after that visit to the Bach Dang river, that Tran Dai Quang asked President Trump if the United States would bring an aircraft carrier to Danang. I think there's a direct connection. The Admiral understood why it was important to show appropriate respect to the military traditions of another country. We went there together. We showed respect and then good things came as a result.

Adm. Swift (29:36): And to expand on that point for the audience, it's not a one and done relationship between the Ambassador and a spectrum of military components that can support his or her efforts and the country. I mentioned the trip to Hue from Danang. We visited the military commands in the area of Haiphong, you know, an area that's very important to Vietnam and the Vietnamese today, and also has a long history from a military perspective. As the Ambassador points out, it wasn't my idea or my staff's idea to make this visit. It came from the Ambassador's staff, out of the embassy. And when you're conducting these visits, they have to be sincere. These aren't just photo ops. You know, we spent the day there. You have to recognize the symbolism of the visits, where are those places that you can go, that can make a difference in the moment and create the opportunity for a sustained difference going forward, that building trust and relationship. It's the amalgam of all of those things I think that resulted in the carrier visit. It's the daily building of trust that the embassy team does on a regular basis. And then ensuring in my case, as the Naval Commander in the Pacific, that I continue to be integrated with those efforts, that my actions and my activities and my presence for the time that I was in the country did not become a distraction,

Amb. McCarthy (30:59): An area that has been a contentious issue in the relationship between the US and Vietnam is the issue of human rights. Vietnam is a one party authoritarian state and engages in selective repression of individuals and organizations that are viewed as threatening the party. Ted can you outline US concerns about human rights in Vietnam? And for both of you, what tools did you use to advance our human rights objectives in the country?

Amb. Osius (31:25): Well, first there's a disconnect between Vietnam's aspirations and its behavior. The constitution of Vietnam states that the state shall guarantee and promote the people's right to mastery, recognize, respect, protect, and guarantee human rights and citizens' rights. But then the laws don't necessarily reflect that. And certainly the behaviors of the Vietnamese police and security authorities do not reflect that commitment in the constitution. From my very first day at the embassy, I told the 900 people who worked for me, you are all human rights officers. And I had a little card that I carried in my shirt pocket. It was just that big. And it had on it our key asks on human rights, on two sides, who we wanted let out, and the substantive changes we thought that were needed for Vietnam to live up to its international commitments and its own domestic commitments, as stated in its constitution. I made sure that people saw me draw out that card. Everybody knew what it was. I made sure that the television cameras saw me referring to that card. And I made sure that everyone was a human rights officer. But even so we had limited success. The pattern that I inherited was not a good one, you'd have a big US visit coming up and the Vietnamese would let out two dissidents and they would go into exile to Dulles airport and be filmed there with their families. And then few weeks later, somebody else would be arrested. It was very frustrating experience. And I wanted to see if there wasn't a way to change that. So we focused very hard on changing laws and supporting Vietnamese efforts to change the laws so that they reflected the aspirations of the constitution and Vietnam's international commitments. Now this was slow unglamorous work and it didn't always work. Some of the laws that came through, even when I was there, did not reflect those aspirations at all, but we stuck to it. I can't pretend that we had as much success as I would have liked, but we had some,

Adm. Swift (33:26): My experience has been what's most important is not what you talk about. You have to talk about it, but it's how you talk about it. They may need to be private conversations with an emphasis that this is critically important. We can do these things now, but we are going to have to address this issue of human rights in a more public way. You can do it through academia. You know, the embassy would host forums. Some of them inside the country, some of them outside the country. You can team with other partners. I know from a military perspective, there are two countries that had a relationship that was somewhat challenged. And one of the countries had this concept that the way to build the relationship was through its military relationship. The relationship between the military leadership of the two countries. And I was asked the question by one of them, do you have recommendations of how we do this? And my recommendation is do it through Vietnam because they had an interest in Vietnam. It was honest. Both of these countries had a strong commitment to human rights. This was an area that they were working with the embassy in. And that relationship I would say is as good as it's ever been between those two countries because they came together based on the shared common interest that they had in supporting Vietnam moving forward. I'll give you an example that's a bit of a tangent, not connected with human rights, but it is connected with the international rules-based order. So you talked a little bit about the challenges that we have with territorial claims. We do not agree as a country, as the United States, with the mechanisms of the claims, legitimacy of the claims, of Vietnam or with China in the South China Sea. But the difference is, one China uses force and coercion to reinforce their claims, the Vietnamese are embracing discourse and dialogue. So that's an area that we have differences, but it's an area that we can collaborate on. That doesn't mean that we abandon our ideals, our own belief in UNCLOS and the international rules-based order, or our own belief in human rights. How do we frame this in a discussion as a true partner relationship that doesn't prevent that relationship from growing? That's the key of statecraft. That's the key of diplomacy. That's the key to the Ambassador going to staff to say, never forget, human rights needs to be front and center in our discussions. Maybe not publicly then maybe privately in some cases, but it needs to be front and center.

Amb. Osius (35:55): Actually the person who did it, I think very, very well, what the Admiral was talking about, speaking about human rights in a way that was palatable was President Obama in his meeting with Nguyen Phu Trong. He said, when talking about human rights, and he was very direct in his comments, but he said, "You need to understand this is just who we are." And this was in the context of a discussion with Nguyen Phu Trong about the Trans-Pacific Partnership, the massive trade agreement that Vietnam was poised to join. And the Communist Party was nervous about joining this partnership and what it would mean. But President Obama made it clear that if you're going to get the benefits of this economic relationship, you also have to live up to the standards that the international community expects.

Amb. McCarthy (36:40): The US pulled out of the TPP and the other signatories went on and created their own trade agreement. Ted, can you talk a bit about this deep trade investment relationship and what were the effects in your view of the US withdrawal of the TPP?

Amb. Osius (37:01): Well, first Vietnam gained a whole lot from its economic relationship with the United States in trade. In the time I was engaged with Vietnam, trade went from almost nothing in 1995 to $90 billion last year. And the United States helped that country transform from an isolated economy to one that was fully integrated and is a big part of the reason for its relative prosperity today. The TPP was about more than just trade. And I think the strongest human rights agreement we ever negotiated with Vietnam was the worker rights agreement that was a side letter in the TPP. And that was why it was so important for President Obama to engage directly with the Communist Party Chief, because he was the guy who could say yes. When we withdrew, that was one of the toughest days of my time as Ambassador, when we pulled out of TPP, because I had persuaded a lot of people, including the former Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung, to take great risks, to join the TPP. He was no longer Prime Minister, but I went and met with Nguyen Tan Dung and said, you know, "I'm sorry, we pulled out. You know, I know you took a lot of risks to join the TPP and I regret it." This was in a private conversation, but he was very practical, and the Vietnamese are always very practical and always forward-looking. And he said, okay, well that didn't work out. So what can we do with the Trump administration to make sure our economic relationship continues to flourish? It was very focused on the future and he strongly supported a visit by the next Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc to meet with President Trump in the Oval Office later that spring, which he did, he was the first Southeast Asian head of state or head of government to call on President Trump in the Oval Office. And I went with him. It was a very, very practical, nuts and bolts meeting. How can we keep moving forward on trade? How can we keep moving forward on the security relationship and other matters? And the relationship remained productive.

Adm. Swift (39:01): I was a big supporter of TPP as many in the military in the Pacific were from a policy perspective because of what was contained within it. But it became overcome, what I thought was excellent policy, became overcome by politics, you know, the politics of the election, national election that was going on at the time. But the benefit that came out of it is to your point, Deborah, about TPP-11 now, that Japan and Australia have stepped up into a leadership role and said, this is so important to the region, we need to pull it together. And so now the US is on the outside. We're not benefiting from workers' rights, labor standards, personal information protection, you know, all of those elements that are part of the treaty. So maybe the Vietnamese Prime Minister was setting the example is that, yes, we need to work hard today, reconciling the past, but have an eye to the future. So I'm hopeful that there will be a deeper understanding of how important foreign policy is, and the world is to us as a nation, our belief system, as a democracy, from an economic perspective, across the board, and perhaps TPP will be a lesson that hopefully we'll learn from.

Amb. McCarthy (40:12): The US Congress was heavily involved, as you mentioned, in paving the way for reconciliation in the nineties, and continues to play a very significant role in shaping US policy towards Vietnam and assistance levels. We also have 2.1 million Americans of Vietnamese origin, many of whose family members fled Vietnam. Can you each describe the role of Congress today in shaping the relationship with Vietnam?

Amb. Osius (40:43): The Vietnam caucus in the House or the House of Representatives has for a long time played a really important role in the relationship. It has a number of members from Southern California, where there's a high concentration of Americans of Vietnamese origin, people like Alan Lowenthal and Zoe Lofgren. There are big pockets, that you've mentioned 2.1 million, that's a large number of voters, and there are big pockets of Americans of Vietnamese origin in Seattle, in Texas, in Louisiana, Northern Virginia. And they're not captive to any one party. So members of the House of Representatives in particular are sensitive to their concerns, and they're actually more active politically than in the past. It's important for Congress because of the interests of constituents, but then there are some people, and I think of Senator Pat Leahy in particular, who have been very clear about the importance of dealing with the past, honestly. It's really Senator Leahy and his long time aide, Tim Reeser, my friend who supports him on the Senate Appropriations Committee, who pushed and pushed and pushed until there was a breakthrough on dioxin cleanup. Ambassadors came and went and Senator Leahy was always there pushing for us to do the right thing. And then a certain point pushing DoD and USAID to come together and do the right thing together. And he was very, very important when it came to cleaning up unexploded ordinance in that country and dealing with the medical effects of Dioxin.

Adm. Swift (42:14): H.B. Lee was my executive assistant when I was the Seventh Fleet Commander. Previous to that, he had commanded the USS Lassen, the first military vessel to visit Vietnam. That was back in 2009. He fled Vietnam on a fishing boat in 1975. He and his family were separated. I think he maintained contact with a sister in refugee camps in Thailand and Laos until they were finally able to gain the authorities to come to the US and eventually became citizens. This is who we are as a nation. So while Congress controls the speed of the relationship and the rate that it moves at, they can't control the overwhelming momentum of the citizens of the United States, wanting a deeper relationship with Vietnam. The majority of people in the country don't have a clear understanding of exactly what relationship we have or should have with Vietnam. But if you talk to Vietnam veterans, military veterans that fought in the war, they're returning in amazing numbers. There isn't a baked in animosity towards the Vietnamese people. And in fact, the veterans that I am most concerned about are Vietnam veterans, because they never received the homecoming that they deserve. They went in service of their country in a war that the nation broadly didn't want. And they're the ones that are being blamed for it. That is not happening when they return to Vietnam. That's not happening. When we see Vietnamese refugees that have been assimilated into the US culture, not just as citizens, completely assimilated into our culture and leading in consequential ways, whether it's in the Olympics or whether it's in the US military or State Department. There is a momentum behind an example that the nation is setting through its citizens of why the United States remains that beacon on the hill. And I think Vietnam is just another one of those countries that we can recognize in that deepening relationship. It needs to be managed carefully as the Ambassador did when he was there and the ambassadors continue to do since, but I'm very positive that Congress will continue to support as they are now. And in more meaningful ways, going forward to deepening the relationship with Vietnam.

Amb. McCarthy (44:43): Well, as a wrap up question, I want to ask the big question. Are there any lessons from Vietnam and the dramatic turnaround in the relationship in the last 50 years that you think can be applied to other relationships emerging from conflict like Iraq and Afghanistan?

Adm. Swift (45:02): There's two countries that come to mind. One is Japan and the relationship that we have from Japan, but Japan clearly lost the war. They were completely broken. MacArthur came in with all of his authorities, you know, essentially the authorities of the President of the United States, to rebuild Japan, which largely shaped it into the construct that it has now. Just the opposite happened with Vietnam. The Vietnamese were not defeated in that conflict. So this is statecraft. This is a diplomatic mission that we have been on since 1975 with Vietnam. So we need to set our expectations as such, but that doesn't mean that we can't gain the same relationship with Vietnam that we have with Japan. And in fact, some ways, because that process has been a step by step side by side, as we've moved forward in many ways, I think the relationships are even stronger there from a person to person perspective. As Ted has shared in his travels through Vietnam, as I've shared with my experience with Vietnam as well. So I am a strong advocate for the path that we're on with Vietnam and a highly confident that we are on the right path and that the relationship will continue to strengthen. And I think accelerate the rate that it's strengthening as we move forward.

Amb. Osius (46:25): I think a key lesson is one that Scott mentioned early on, which is trust is a by-product of relationships. Always remembering that. There was a presidential candidate once Ross Perot, who said, "Well, let's replace all those diplomats with fax machines. We don't need embassies. They're expensive." Well, for one thing, fax machines are not very relevant anymore, but I would argue that you can't build a relationship with a fax machine and you need relationships for the United States to succeed around the world, in achieving its aspirations. The Admiral mentioned a key member of his staff who had fled Vietnam as a young person, and I had two such people on my team, Colonel Ton, who I mentioned earlier, and Colonel Jackie Lee, who was born right next to the border with China. Now that he's become a Colonel he's made us all very, very proud. He's an extremely able officer. And my book is full of stories of these people who I think took great personal risks to bring about reconciliation between our two countries. I mentioned veterans, John McCain and John Kerry, but also people like Pete Peterson, the first US Ambassador to Vietnam who had been a POW in the Hua Lo prison for six and a half years, decided to leave his hate at the gate, as he put it, when he came back to build peace. He was the one who gave my book its title. He came to a conference at the 20th anniversary of normalization of diplomatic relations. He said, "I want you to remember that in US Vietnam relations, nothing is impossible."

Amb. McCarthy (47:57): Gentlemen, thank you so much. Thank you Admiral, thank you Ambassador, for sharing your knowledge, your wisdom, your experience, and also your incredible partnership in bringing about a humongous change in a relationship with a country with whom we were at war 50 years ago. Thank you.

Amb. Osius (48:17): Thank you, Deborah.

Adm. Swift (48:19): Thank you, Deborah.

Amb. Osius (48:20): And thanks Admiral.

Amb. McCarthy (48:22): This has been a new episode in the series, The General and The Ambassador: A Conversation. Thank you for listening. Our series is a production of the American Academy of Diplomacy in partnership with UNC Global at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. You can find our podcasts on all major podcast sites and on our website generalambassadorpodcast.org. Do follow us on Twitter and Facebook, and we welcome all input and suggestions. You can mail us directly at general.ambassador.podcast@gmail.com. Thank you for listening.