We’re here to celebrate the 15 years of normalized relation between Vietnam and the United States. Mr. Ambassador, how is Vietnam in your eyes during those years?
The 15 years have been amazing time as we have come a long way. Back when we first started relations in 1995, our 2-way trade was about US$450 million. Over 15 years, it has grown to 15.4 billion. Additionally, back in 1995, there was zero foreign direct investment from the United States and last year, the United States was the number one foreign investor in Vietnam.
One of the other areas that I have been working on, as you know, is education. And back again, in 1995, there were less than a hundred students from Vietnam studying in the United States. Today we have almost 13 thousands and Vietnam now ranks number 8th in the number of students in the U.S. The Embassy had provided nearly one thousand scholarships worth US$75 million.
What are the benefits that you see in this normalized trade relations?
Probably the biggest benefit was the opening up of our two markets together. That gave Vietnamese companies an opportunity to reach the world-largest market of several hundred million people. Following on this simple opening up was then the negotiation of the Bilateral Trade Agreement or the BTA. After we did the BTA and then followed with that on with the WTO.
The first time I came to Vietnam was in 2006, which was Vietnam’s APEC year and I was the American Ambassador for APEC and the head of our APEC delegation. During 2006, I was coming to Vietnam quite often and it was really surprising. The first meeting that we had with Vietnamese officials was very tentative and we were wondering “Oh my God this sounds pretty bureaucratic. How is it here going to go?” But the Vietnamese team just went up the learning curve extremely quickly. And we ended up having one of the best APEC years ever.
But Vietnam didn’t stop there. In 2007, Vietnam joined the World Trade Organization. And after that in 2008, 2009, Vietnam became the nonpermanent member of the UN Security Council and began playing a big role on the world stage and again this year, Vietnam is the chair of ASEAN.
Mr. Ambassador, a lot of bilateral agreements and governmental decisions have played a great part in strengthening trade relations between Vietnam and the United States. What is your assessment of the effectiveness of the commitments to the agreements by both sides?
When you talked about the BTA and/or the WTO, I think that both governments have taken that commitment extremely seriously. With expanded capacity the government of Vietnam understood exactly what kind of commitment that was getting into it at that time. And it has worked very hard to try to implement those. Additionally, we also have another agreement between our two countries called the Trade and Investment Facilitation Agreement, the TIFA. And under the TIFA we meet once or twice every year and we talk about issues like implementation of the agreement plus any other trade issues that come up. We’ve taken those commitments seriously and I think, we’re taking it to the next level now.
The Transpacific Partnership ought to be, and will be, the 21st century trade agreement. It will be the goal standard of all free-trade agreements around the world. With the TPP, Vietnam is going to be one of the founding members and can help set the rules for all other people that will come in later on. Vietnam is one of the two developing countries within the Transpacific Partnership framework. And as a result, it is going to be a model for other developing economies.
Your Secretary of Defense will come to Vietnam in the framework of ASEAN Defense Ministerial Plus this October. The bilateral military relation seems expanding?
The military cooperation has grown fantastically over the past 15 years. It's certainly a part of Vietnam's desire to integrate into the global community to have also better military relation with all of its neighbors.
I think it's significant that Defense Minister Phung Quang Thanh visited Washington at the end of last year and that our Secretary of Defense has indicated that he is delighted to be coming to the ASEAN Defense Ministerial Plus in October this year. We have a very expanding military relationship based on English language training for Vietnamese defense personnel, search and rescue training in which we hope to move to some joint operations. At some points we talk about peacekeeping and Vietnam has been in an observer in many of many peacekeeping exercises conducted within the region. We work on military medicine and that one is a particularly useful field.
We are working closely with the Government of Vietnam now on a formal ship visit which we hope would take place sometime in August and again, we hope it will be a special ship visit to commemorate 15th anniversary.
How does the Embassy celebrate 15th anniversary?
On the occasion of this special anniversary, we take the opportunity to look back over the past 15 years to reflect upon our shared accomplishments, take pride in our joint progress and express appreciation for our shared friendship and cooperation.
To help mark this occasion, the Embassy and Consulate sponsored a logo contest to ask the Vietnamese public to submit ideas for an image that represented the importance of U.S.-Vietnamese relations and it gives me great pleasure to unveil the winning submission here today.
After reviewing over 100 different images, I chose the image you see here of the kite as the one that best symbolizes the hope for even loftier and more successful relations between our two countries in the future.
We have already completed a long list of other events this year including a recent American music concert at the Opera House that featured the works of George Gershwin; a two-week hip-hop program that showcased this uniquely American art form in several cities in Vietnam; and the Southwest Chamber music exchange program which brought 20 musicians from the U.S. for two weeks to do master classes and performances in Vietnam followed by 20 Vietnamese musicians traveling to the U.S. to do similar programs.
On July 8 and 9, the Vietnam Center at Texas Tech University and the Diplomatic Academy of Vietnam are co-hosting a conference to discuss the past, present and future of U.S.-Vietnam relations. From the U.S. side, we will welcome Senator Jim Webb as our keynote speaker and he will be joined by Desaix Anderson, the first Chargé d’affaires here in Hanoi and Ambassador Pete Peterson, the first U.S. Ambassador in Hanoi as well as a whole host of scholars and experts to share their views on the relationship.
In addition to the conference next week, in the coming months we look forward to the unveiling of the newly restored O Quan Chuong Gate that the U.S. government is supporting with a donation of $75,000.
Source: Vietnam-USA Magazine's special edition: Vietnam-US: New Chronicle published in July, 2010
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