WASHINGTON – The last time a top leader of a country with Vietnam on its passport came to the White House, Dwight Eisenhower was the president greeting him.
That was 1957, before most Americans had ever heard of Vietnam. What followed was a long and divisive war, the fall of South Vietnam to the North Vietnamese communists 30 years ago, and two decades without diplomatic or economic ties with the United States.
This week, the two nations come almost full circle as Vietnamese Prime Minister Phan Van Khai travels to the United States for a four-city visit that includes an Oval Office meeting with President Bush on Tuesday – the first by a top official of communist Vietnam.
“It’s just an extraordinary event for many of us who were on the other side in Vietnam before 1975,” said Frederick Brown, a U.S. foreign service officer in South Vietnam from 1968 to 1973 who now is associate director of the Southeast Asia Studies Program at Johns Hopkins University. “It shows you how much the United States has changed. But even more, it shows how much Vietnam has changed.”
The major shift in Vietnam has been in its economy, as the communist government has mostly shed state planning for a market-based approach. Khai will be accompanied by Vietnamese business officials, and economic issues will top his agenda as the nation presses for entry into the World Trade Organization.
The group, along with its umbrella organization, the U.S.-ASEAN Business Council, will be hosting a dinner for Khai in Washington on Tuesday and a business luncheon in New York on Thursday.
Khai will meet Monday with Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates and executives from Boeing and Nike in Seattle, the first stop of his trip, according to the Vietnamese Embassy in Washington. Khai also will ring the opening bell at the New York Stock Exchange on Thursday and meet later in Boston with the presidents of Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, ending the official part of his visit.
The most glaring omission in Khai’s itinerary is California. San Jose and Orange County are the largest Vietnamese emigre communities outside Vietnam – but places where he likely would have been met with large protests.
Bach Ngoc Chien, spokesman for the Vietnamese Embassy, said scheduling, not concern about protests, is why Khai is bypassing California, because “the majority of Vietnamese in America support the country.”
The most significant stop on the trip will be Khai’s White House meeting with Bush, timed to mark the 10th anniversary of the normalization of diplomatic ties between the one-time enemies.
Clinton met with Vietnamese President Tran Duc Luong in September 2000 at the United Nations Millennium Summit in New York City, then later that year became the first U.S. president to travel to Vietnam since the end of the war. But Khai will be the highest ranking Vietnamese official to visit the White House since the end of the war.
Considered a reformer from the south, Khai ranks No. 3 in Vietnam’s power-sharing hierarchy, though he has wielded considerable influence in liberalizing the country’s economy. In April, Khai also took the startling and unprecedented step of meeting with the head of an outlawed Buddhist church, raising hopes among even harsh government critics that Vietnam might move to ease restrictions on religious freedom.
“I think during the last 10 years the two countries have accomplished a great deal,” Khai said in an interview with The Washington Post Friday. “The purpose of my visit is to promote the relationship between the two countries to a higher plane.”
Khai said he would like Bush to “declare his support” for Vietnam’s accession to the WTO and will push for permanent normal trade relations. Congress would have to grant that status to Vietnam, as it did with China in 2000, as part of the WTO process. Among the unresolved trade issues are U.S. concerns that Vietnam has been dumping low-priced shrimp on the market, threatening Gulf Coast shrimpers.
Just as with China, human rights issues complicate the trade picture. Under the so-called Jackson-Vanik Amendment to the 1974 Trade Act, Vietnam and several other countries are denied normal trading relations with the United States if they do not allow their citizens to emigrate freely. Clinton waived the amendment’s trade restrictions in 1998 and Bush has extended it.
But some lawmakers still are upset about Vietnam’s human rights record. Last month, several members of Congress wrote to Bush urging him to “convey to Prime Minister Phan Van Khai our deep concern over the conditions of human rights and religious freedom in Vietnam.”
Brown of Johns Hopkins said Vietnam will “never be able to live up to everything we want” on human rights and religious freedom. Still, he added, the United States has important strategic reasons for continuing to encourage the development of Vietnam’s economy as a stable and growing part of the overall Asian economy and also as a regional counterbalance to China.
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