TWO SIDES ON “NORMAL:” A COMPARISON OF EIGHT VIEWS ON U. RAPPROCHEMENT WITH VIETNAM, 1989-1995 By Nathan Robert Clason A THESIS Submitted to Michigan State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of History–Master of Arts 2017 ABSTRACT TWO SIDES ON “NORMAL:” A COMPARISON OF EIGHT VIEWS ON U. RAPPROCHEMENT WITH VIETNAM, 1989-1995 By Nathan Robert Clason This thesis is a comparative study of the views of eight entities regarding the prospect of normalization of diplomatic relations between the United States and the Socialist Republic of Vietnam from 1989-1995. It first describes the views and actions of five entities in favor of normalization.
These include the four US presidential administrations from Carter to Clinton, the Vietnamese Communist Party, the Senate Select Committee on POW/MIA Affairs (1991- 1993), US Senators John McCain and John Kerry, and US businesses. It then examines the views and actions of three entities opposed to normalization. These include Ann Mills Griffiths, the Executive Director of the National League of POW/MIA Families; Texas billionaire Ross Perot; and politicians such as Robert Dornan and Vietnamese Americans from Orange County, California. By using a comparative approach, this thesis identifies several strange political alliances and enmities that would not have been clear in a more linear history.
It includes a review of Vietnamese Communist Party documents that challenges some of the conclusions of the earliest diplomatic histories about normalization. It uses primary sources from key Senate Hearings to challenge elements of cultural histories about the myth of live US prisoners of war abandoned in Southeast Asia, and it personalizes the views of Ann Mills Griffiths and some Vietnamese Americans to give better context to their ardent opposition to normalization. TABLE OF CONTENTS INTRODUCTION. 1 CHAPTER 1: People, Organizations, and other Entities in Favor of Normalization.
16 US PRESIDENTIAL ADMINISTRATIONS. 17 THE SOCIALIST REPUBLIC OF VIETNAM. 32 THE SENATE SELECT COMMITTEE ON POW/MIA AFFAIRS 1991-1993. 42 NEOLIBERALISM GREETS THE NEWEST “ASIAN TIGER”.
49 JOHN MCCAIN AND JOHN KERRY. 64 CHAPTER 2: People and Groups Opposing Normalization. 71 ANN MILLS GRIFFITHS. 74 NORMALIZATION, ROSS PEROT AND THE 1992 ELECTION.
86 POLITICAL UNANIMITY AND PAINFUL SILENCE IN ORANGE COUNTY. 135 iii INTRODUCTION The history of normalization between two erstwhile enemies, the United States and what is now known as the Socialist Republic of Vietnam (SRV) has yet to merit fractional representation among the host of textbooks and histories of the Vietnam War that grace the shelves of libraries across the United States and undoubtedly, the libraries of Vietnam. Many short chapters or sections can be found tacked on to the end of books on the memory of the Vietnam War or as a poignant epilogue to what was undoubtedly a most troubling period for both nations. While there are several complete works devoted to the history of the events leading up to the formal establishment of diplomatic relations on July 12, 1995, the majority of these were written by participants in the events themselves or are devoted to explaining the diplomatic context of the events.
While perhaps not unique to this event, the progress made towards normalization by successive US presidential administrations, beginning with Jimmy Carter, provided an ongoing opportunity for diplomats, pundits, historians, businessmen, Prisoner of War/Missing in Action (POW/MIA) advocates, Vietnamese Americans, veterans, concerned citizens, and politicians to hypothesize on the meaning of normalization well before the event occurred. The events preceding normalization included a series of government reports and investigations from 1976 forward that all expressed skepticism about the possibility of live POWs or US Soldiers Missing in Action in Southeast Asia. 1 They encompassed the 1986 death of the Vietnamese Communist Party Secretary General Lê Duẩn and the subsequent political reforms and Politburo shakeup in 1. For the duration of this thesis I will generally use the unfortunate conflation of these two terms – POW/MIA as it relates to US concern for the fate of those unaccounted-for after the Vietnam War.
This conflation has been written about extensively by H. Bruce Franklin, and Michael J. The series of government reports will be addressed later in the body of this thesis.2 The 1989 Vietnamese withdrawal from Cambodia partially removed an obstacle to normalization during both the Carter and Reagan Administrations. The fall of the Berlin Wall that same year and the subsequent demise of the Soviet Union in 1991 arguably isolated Vietnam both politically and economically, generating new foreign policy initiatives not only for the US and SRV, but globally.
A series of bizarre discoveries related to the possibility of live POW/MIAs in Southeast Asia in both 1991 and 1993 forced further US investigation and sustained the popular belief of a US government cover-up.3 Despite these many fits and starts, from 1989 to 1995 there were markers in place which could at least demonstrate progress towards normalization, if not the “ripeness” that some diplomats later claimed was responsible for eventual rapprochement between the US and Vietnam. The Final Interagency Report of the Reagan Administration on the POW/MIA Issue in Southeast Asia of 1989 which, like government reports before and after it, not only found it unlikely that Americans were being imprisoned against their will in Southeast Asia, but also absorbed some of the political consequences of such a conclusion for Reagan’s successor, George H. Bush’s inaugural address included the remark now ubiquitously cited regarding the legacy of the Vietnam War, namely that, “the final lesson of Vietnam is that no great nation can long afford to be sundered by a memory.” What follows, “a new breeze is blowing, and the old bipartisanship must be made new again,” is almost as universally left out, a 2. Diacritics for Vietnamese names, places and words will be provided when known or reasonably ascertained.
They will be omitted for Vietnamese-American names if spelled in the original text without diacritics. The two events were the publication in major US newspapers of a series of photos that appeared to be live POWs in Southeast Asia in July 1991 and the discovery by Australian scholar Stephen Morris of documents in Soviet archives seeming to prove that North Vietnam had held back hundreds of prisoners after Operation Homecoming in 1973. The photos were proved bogus and the documents unreliable. Edwin Martini, Invisible Enemies: The American War on Vietnam, 1975-2000 (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2007), 170, 185-86; Lewis M.
Stern, Defense Relations Between the United States and Vietnam: The Process of Normalization, 1977-2003 (Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland and Company, 2005), 26. 2 particularly disappointing omission considering the enormous significance of bipartisanship to the ongoing efforts to establish ties with the SRV. 4 Bush, through Secretary of State James Baker, provided the Vietnamese with a “Roadmap” towards normalization in April 1991 that, while frustrating for the SRV, at least demonstrated willingness to establish diplomatic ties if the Vietnamese provided the quid pro quo of forward progress on a Cambodian peace settlement and expanded cooperation on the recovery of POW/MIA investigations. Some degree of good faith was established that same month in the form of US prosthetic donations for Vietnamese amputees and was maintained by the efforts of the new personnel in the 7th National Party Congress seated in the SRV in June.
A mere six months later, and during an ongoing investigation of a Senate Select Committee on POW/MIA Affairs that had been convened after the publication of photos appearing to depict live US prisoners in Southeast Asia, Bush allowed some businesses to sign tentative contracts in the SRV. By April of 1992, Bush had eradicated existing restrictions for telecommunication with Vietnam and allowed Vietnamese Americans to begin sending money directly to their relatives. The conclusion of the Senate Select Committee convened in 1991 to investigate, yet again, the possibility of live POWs in Southeast Asia, found that “no compelling evidence suggests the possibility that a POW may have survived to the present,” was published in January 1993. This report served as a critical, and perhaps final turning point for the POW/MIA issue 4.
Bush’s inaugural address is cited directly from http://www.com/news/george-hw-bush- inaugural-address-1989/ but cannot be avoided in any survey of literature related to the memory of the Vietnam War or establishing diplomatic ties. See for example David E.-Vietnam Relations: The Domestic Context of Normalization., University of South Carolina, 1996; H. Bruce Franklin, Vietnam and Other American Fantasies (Amherst, University of Massachusetts Press, 2000), 26; Robert D. Schulzinger, A Time for Peace: The Legacy of the Vietnam War (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006), 43; Michael J.
Allen, Until the Last Man Comes Home: POWs, MIAs and the Unending Vietnam War (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2009), 261. Bi-partisanship will be addressed in the section on John McCain and John Kerry. 3 that had dogged efforts to normalize relations from the end of the Vietnam war. The newly- inaugurated Clinton, with support not only from veterans like John Kerry and John McCain on the Select Committee itself, but also from other veteran organizations, was able to overcome opposition from the National League of POW/MIA Families (the League) and other POW/MIA activists to remove existing US-led barriers to international lending to the SRV in July 1993.
This progress towards normalization, albeit choppy, was recognized and appreciated by the SRV’s Deputy Prime Minister Phan Văn Khải and followed by a 62-38 Senate vote to lift the longstanding embargo between the two nations in late January 1994, a move approved by Clinton a mere week later. Ongoing resistance to normalization by the League and some veteran groups was in some cases whittled away by including such entities on trips to Vietnam that same year. After the embargo was lifted, League representatives visited Vietnam in March, and leaders from several veteran organizations did so in July. While the League’s opposition was never diluted, by the time Clinton officially announced normalization in July 1995, some of the largest veteran groups either supported normalization or at least stopped resisting it.
When Clinton made his announcement, he did so with the outspoken support of key Vietnam vets in Congress such as McCain, Kerry, Bob Kerrey and others. 5 This thesis does not attempt to narrate the brief history outlined above in a linear methodology. It rather employs a comparative approach of eight entities and their perspectives and actions regarding the possibility of normalizing relations between the two countries. Most of these entities played important roles in advocating for or against normalization.
Those generally viewed as favorable towards normalization include the four presidential administrations from 5. Stern, Defense Relations, 28, 42; Allen, Until the Last Man Comes Home, 286. Although this thesis will not attempt a detailed recreation of normalization, many more details on key events leading up to normalization are available in the Appendix. 4 Carter to Clinton who played some role in moving the proverbial ball forward; the 1991-1993 Senate Select Committee on POW/MIA Affairs on which both John McCain and John Kerry served; and businesses who successfully lobbied for increased corporate access to the growing market in the SRV, which was itself a qualified advocate of normalized relations.
Those who opposed normalization include Ann Mills Griffiths, the long-time director of the National League of POW/MIA Families, who remained a vocal opponent of normalization before, during and after it occurred. Ross Perot is included as an opponent of normalization as well. This is not because his views on the subject were necessarily well articulated, but rather because some historians have attributed his 1992 entrance into the election as vitally connected to his influence within the POW/MIA community, which was generally opposed to normalization. If, as some have assessed, Bush lost the 1992 election due to Perot’s entrance into the race, it would thus seem that the relationships between Perot, the POW/MIA movement, normalization, and George H.
Bush’s loss may deserve more attention than it has received thus far.