U.S.-Vietnam Post-War Reconciliation: A Work in Process

This year marks the 45th anniversary of the official reunification of North and South Vietnam following the cessation of the Vietnam War. On 2 July 1976, the two formerly separated halves of the country were politically joined as the Socialist Republic of Vietnam (SRV). This followed a long Cold War contest for international legitimacy between the Soviet- and Chinese- backed Democratic Republic of Vietnam (North Vietnam) and the United States-backed Republic of Vietnam (South Vietnam) since 1954. 

From the fall of Saigon in 1975 until the early 1990s, the U.S. maintained an economic embargo on Vietnam and withheld diplomatic recognition of the SRV. Over 1.6 million refugees fled Vietnam, the majority eventually resettling in America. Reconciliation between the U.S. and Vietnam, while seemingly “resolved” following the formal normalisation of bilateral diplomatic relations on 11 July 1995 and the conclusion of the U.S.-Vietnam Bilateral Trade Agreement in 2001, has in actuality been a slow ongoing process. It was only after the U.S. granted Permanent Normal Trade Relations status to Vietnam in December 2006 that Hanoi could accede to the World Trade Organization. Foreign direct investment (FDI) has since surged, contributing to Vietnam’s achievement of a per capita GDP of US$2,715 in 2019, ten times its 1995 level. Many pundits declare that Vietnam’s economic boom has turned its people’s gaze towards the future rather than the past. 

NYSEAN Member Dr. Ivan V. Small writes for Fulcrum.

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