U.S. President Barack Obama continues his country's progress toward full normalization of relations with Vietnam. Last month, he made his first visit to Vietnam — the third by a sitting U.S. president since the restoration of relations in 1995 — and announced the lifting of the ban on lethal arms sales to that country. That decision was welcomed in Hanoi, noted with disdain in Beijing and jeered by some in Washington. It was, however, the right move. Nevertheless, the United States' and Vietnam's other diplomatic partners must remain attentive to its human rights practices and ensure that progress continues there as well.
The trajectory of U.S.-Vietnam relations has been nothing short of remarkable since North Vietnam forcibly reunited the country in 1975. Despite having fought a bitter war that left deep physical, psychological and social scars on both nations, the two countries had normalized ties by 1995.
Central to this relationship has been the perceived convergence of interests between Hanoi and Washington regarding views of China, which both see as an aggressive country committed to upending the East Asian status quo and rewriting the rules of the regional order. China and Vietnam both claim territory in the South China Sea, a dispute that exploded into open conflict in 1988 over Johnson Reef, which resulted in the deaths of more than 70 Vietnamese soldiers and sailors and the taking of prisoners who were held by China for nearly three years. In 2014, China sent an oil rig to drill near Vietnam's coast, which triggered another confrontation between the two countries at sea. That incident set off anti-Chinese riots in Vietnam as well.