Editor's Note: (Richard Fontaine is president of the Center for a New American Security in Washington, D.C., and former foreign policy adviser to Sen. John McCain. The views expressed are his own.)
(CNN) Traveling to Vietnam with Sen. John McCain a few years ago, it was clear to me just how far the relationship between two former enemies had come.
Viewing the dark cells of Hoa Lo Prison -- the "Hanoi Hilton" that housed American prisoners of war -- invited memories of a long and bitter war. A statue of McCain that stands beside Truc Bach Lake in central Hanoi marks the spot where his A-4E Skyhawk was shot down in 1967. Visiting Haiphong recalled the intensity of conflict in that once-embattled harbor.
Among the population, however, and in the corridors of Vietnamese government, the gaze was toward the future and not the past. Now, as President Barack Obama prepares for the first presidential visit to Vietnam in a decade, he will encounter a country undergoing rapid change and seeking ever-closer ties to the United States. That's an opportunity Washington should not let pass by.
The pace of change in Vietnam presents a few historical ironies. One of these emerged a year ago when Nguyen Phu Trong, general secretary of the country's ruling party, made a visit to Washington. I attended an address Trong delivered at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce following his meetings at the White House. It's unlikely that I was the only participant who marveled at the sight of the Communist Party's general secretary -- who once studied in the Soviet Union and edited his country's Communist Review -- calling for free trade at a bastion of market capitalism.
Such is the new Vietnam. A member of the Trans-Pacific Partnership, it boasts an economy growing near 7% annually, with exports growing faster still. It has a large and increasingly connected youth population. And amid its growing regional heft, Vietnam has a leadership that, like the United States, watches China's assertiveness with growing concern.
That's why Obama's visit makes so much sense, and represents another step on the path from war, through normalization, and to partnership. But what happens after the president departs Vietnam will be more important still.
The administration is expected to announce a repeal of the ban on lethal arms sales to Vietnam, a welcome step that would build upon the 2014 decision to lift restrictions on sales of weapons related to maritime security.
Given Vietnam's legacy Russian systems and limited defense budget, Washington should help bolster its defense capabilities by ensuring that Vietnam receives assistance under the new, $425 million Maritime Security Initiative as well as other financing programs. Hanoi's acquisition of radars, surveillance drones, reconnaissance aircraft and other systems would enhance its maritime domain awareness and its ability to secure its littoral areas.
The events of 2014, during which a Chinese offshore oil drilling rig sailed well inside Vietnam's exclusive economic zone, demonstrated the need for maritime-related assistance to Vietnam.
Before the rig withdrew, Chinese vessels repelled Vietnamese efforts to interdict its operations, rammed Vietnamese boats and succeeded in sinking one. Given China's threats to freedom of navigation and efforts to claim much of the South China Sea as its own, the United States has an interest in helping partners like Vietnam deter new provocations.
The ability of the U.S. Navy to access ports in Vietnam will likely be under discussion during the President's visit, and in its aftermath Washington should encourage the opening of those ports not only to American vessels, but also to those of other friendly militaries. Vietnam has established an international facility at Cam Ranh Bay, one of Southeast Asia's finest deep-water ports and a major U.S. military hub during the war. Washington should seek the ability to operate out of Cam Ranh and encourage its further development as a regional locus for naval operations. The visit earlier this year of two Japanese destroyers is but one example of what is possible.
Vietnam has a broader role to play in the Pentagon's recent embrace of networked security in Asia, a vision that supplements America's four bilateral alliances with a web of connections among partners and allies. Over the past year alone, Hanoi has beefed up defense ties with Japan, Australia, Singapore and the Philippines. These developments have a stabilizing effect on a region in which China is throwing around its ample weight.
Iconic photos of the Vietnam War
1960s photojournalists showed the world some of the most dramatic moments of the Vietnam War through their camera lenses. LIFE magazine's Larry Burrows photographed wounded Marine Gunnery Sgt. Jeremiah Purdie, center, reaching toward a stricken soldier after a firefight south of the Demilitarized Zone in Vietnam in 1966. Commonly known as
Reaching Out, Burrows shows us tenderness and terror all in one frame. According to LIFE, the magazine did not publish the picture until five years later to commemorate Burrows, who was killed with AP photographer Henri Huet and three other photographers in Laos.
Associated Press photographer Nick Ut photographed terrified children running from the site of a Vietnam napalm attack in 1972. A South Vietnamese plane accidentally dropped napalm on its own troops and civilians. Nine-year-old Kim Phuc, center, ripped off her burning clothes while she ran. The image communicated the horrors of the war and contributed to growing U.S. anti-war sentiment. After taking the photograph, Ut took the children to a Saigon hospital.
Eddie Adams photographed South Vietnamese police chief Gen. Nguyen Ngoc Loan killing Viet Cong suspect Nguyen Van Lem in Saigon in 1968. Adams later regretted the impact of the Pulitzer Prize-winning image, apologizing to Gen. Nguyen and his family. "I'm not saying what he did was right,"
Adams wrote in Time magazine, "but you have to put yourself in his position."
A helicopter raises the body of an American paratrooper killed in action in the jungle near the Cambodian border in 1966. Henri Huet, a French war photographer covering the war for the Associated Press, captured some of the most influential images of the war. Huet died along with LIFE photographer Larry Burrows and three other photographers when their helicopter was shot down over Laos in 1971.
Legendary Welsh war photographer Philip Jones Griffiths captured the battle for Saigon in 1968. U.S. policy in Vietnam was based on the premise that peasants driven into the towns and cities by the carpet-bombing of the countryside would be safe. Furthermore, removed from their traditional value system, they could be prepared for imposition of consumerism. This "restructuring" of society suffered a setback when, in 1968, death rained down on the urban enclaves. In 1971 Griffiths published "Vietnam Inc." and it became one of the most sought after photography books.
Newly freed U.S. prisoner of war Air Force Lt. Col. Robert L. Stirm is greeted by his family at Travis Air Force Base in Fairfield, California, in 1973. This Pulitzer Prize-winning photograph, named Burst of Joy, was taken by Associated Press photographer Sal Veder. "You could feel the energy and the raw emotion in the air,"
Veder told Smithsonian Magazine in 2005.
This 1965 photo by Horst Faas shows U.S. helicopters protecting South Vietnamese troops northwest of Saigon. As the Associated Press chief photographer for Southeast Asia from 1962-1974, Faas earned two Pulitzer Prizes.
Oliver Noonan, a former photographer with the Boston Globe, captured this image of American soldiers listening to a radio broadcast in Vietnam in 1966. Noonan took leave from Boston to work in Vietnam for the Associated Press. He died when his helicopter was shot down near Da Nang in August 1969.
In June 1963, photographer Malcolm Browne showed the world a shocking display of protest. A Buddhist monk named Thich Quang Duc burned himself to death on a street in Saigon to protest alleged persecution of Buddhists by the South Vietnamese government. The image won Browne the World Press Photo of the Year.
Tim Page photographed a U.S. helicopter taking off from a clearing near Du Co SF camp in Vietnam in 1965. Wounded soldiers crouch in the dust of the departing helicopter. The military convoy was on its way to relieve the camp when it was ambushed.
Frenchman Marc Riboud captured one of the most well-known anti-war images in 1967. Jan Rose Kasmir confronts National Guard troops outside the Pentagon during a protest march. The photo helped turn public opinion against the war. "She was just talking, trying to catch the eye of the soldiers, maybe try to have a dialogue with them,"
recalled Riboud in the April 2004 Smithsonian magazine, "I had the feeling the soldiers were more afraid of her than she was of the bayonets."
In this 1965 Henri Huet photograph, Chaplain John McNamara administers last rites to photographer Dickey Chapelle in South Vietnam. Chapelle was covering a U.S. Marine unit near Chu Lai for the National Observer when a mine seriously wounded her and four Marines. Chappelle died en route to a hospital, the first American woman correspondent ever killed in action.
Mary Ann Vecchio screams as she kneels over Jeffrey Miller's body during the deadly anti-war demonstration at Kent State University in 1970. Student photographer John Filo captured the Pulitzer Prize-winning image after Ohio National Guardsmen fired into a crowd of protesters, killing four students and wounding nine others. An editor manipulated a version of the image to remove the fence post above Vecchio's head, sparking controversy.
For his dramatic photographs of the Vietnam War, United Press International staff photographer David Hume Kennerly won the 1972 Pulitzer Prize for feature photography. This 1971 photo from Kennerly's award-winning portfolio shows an American GI, his weapon drawn, cautiously moving over a devastated hill near Firebase Gladiator.
Hubert Van Es, a Dutch photojournalist working at the offices of United Press International, took this photo on April 29, 1975, of a CIA employee helping evacuees onto an Air America helicopter. It became one of the best known images of the U.S. evacuation of Saigon. Van Es never received royalties for the UPI-owned photo. The rights are owned by Bill Gates through his company, Corbis.
Associated Press photographer Art Greenspon captured this photo of soldiers aiding wounded comrades. The first sergeant of A Company, 101st Airborne Division, guided a medevac helicopter through the jungle to retrieve casualties near Hue in April 1968.
In addition to deepening security ties, there are other items that should fill the bilateral agenda after Obama departs Vietnam. The U.S. Congress must either approve the Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement or suffer a major setback to America's strategic position in Asia. Washington should be vocal both publicly and privately about human rights abuses in Vietnam, and push for greater religious freedom, basic liberties, and the release of political prisoners.
Vietnamese leaders should know that their brand of autocracy will place an inevitable constraint on closer ties with the United States. And the United States should demonstrate, in word and deed, that its presence and commitment to Asia is enduring.
Here the increasing warmth between the United States and Vietnam can prove particularly effective. At a moment of constrained defense budgets, rising Chinese assertiveness, and questions about the future trajectory of U.S. foreign policy, locking in the transformation of Vietnam from enemy to partner would say a great deal about American priorities. President Obama's visit represents the chance to begin writing that new chapter.
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