Vietnam
Nearly fifty years since the end of the Vietnam War, and more than a quarter century since the normalization of U.S.-Vietnam relations, Vietnam is emerging as a rising power at the heart of the Indo-Pacific region and as an increasingly important U.S. partner. The U.S. Institute of Peace engages in research and dialogue examining the extraordinary arc of U.S.-Vietnam relations, including efforts to come to terms with our difficult history. In August 2021, USIP launched the Vietnam War Legacies and Reconciliation Initiative to support public education, government-to-government and people-to-people dialogue among Vietnamese and Americans.
Learn more in USIP’s fact sheet on the Current Situation in Vietnam.
Featured Event
Recent Analysis
- Biden’s Trip to Vietnam Highlights Two-Way Partnership
- Piecing Together the Fragments of Memory to Find Vietnamese War Dead
- It Is Time to Account for All Missing Vietnamese
Featured Publications
Andrew Wells-Dang on Youth’s Role in the Future of U.S.-Vietnam Reconciliation
The legacies of the Vietnam War were once an obstacle to U.S.-Vietnam relations. But today, addressing those legacies has become “key foundation” for bilateral cooperation, says USIP’s Andrew Wells-Dang. And as ties continue to grow, youth from both countries “have a new vision for how our countries can work together.”
Pathways to Reconciliation: How Americans and Vietnamese Have Transformed Their Relationship
The road to reconciliation between the United States and Vietnam has not been a straight or easy one. In the years following the Vietnam War, citizen diplomats—veterans, families of the missing, humanitarians, Vietnamese Americans, and others—led the way, reaching across geopolitical and ideological lines. Governments eventually followed, and the two countries normalized diplomatic relations in 1995. This report draws on the theory and practice of reconciliation to identify lessons for strengthening the US-Vietnam partnership and advancing reconciliation between other postconflict countries.
In Vietnam, Excavating the Past Can Help Heal the Losses of War
Since 2021, USIP’s Vietnam War Legacies and Reconciliation Initiative has contributed to stronger U.S.-Vietnam relations through research, communications and exchange about ongoing legacies of war in Indochina. One of our priorities is the location and identification of missing persons from all sides of the war — work that is being led by American and Vietnamese citizens together with both countries’ governments. An estimated 300,000 Vietnamese families are still waiting for information about the location of their loved ones lost in the war.
Current Projects
Southeast Asia in a World of Strategic Competition: An Essay Series
Great power rivalry between the United States and China is frequently described in bilateral terms, with regions of the world — including Southeast Asia — merely serving as arenas of competition. But this framing ignores the agency of third countries in managing the risks and opportunities presented by this competition. To explore these countries’ agency and the corresponding policy options, this USIP essays series includes contributions from 10 Southeast Asia-based experts. Each essay provides one country’s perspective on how the members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) perceive and respond to strategic competition between the United States and China.
Vietnam War Legacies and Reconciliation Initiative
In 2021, the U.S. Institute of Peace launched a multiyear project to foster greater dialogue both in and between the United States and Vietnam on war legacy issues and reconciliation. This project stems from the U.S. Congress’s landmark 2021 authorization for the U.S. government to assist Vietnam in identifying its missing personnel, following decades of Vietnamese cooperation to help the United States conduct the fullest possible accounting of U.S. personnel. This project will support this bilateral initiative while also engaging in the work that remains to addresss legacies of war — including the continuing impacts of Agent Orange and unexploded ordnance — and to deepen reconciliation.
Vietnam Wartime Accounting Initiative
The Vietnam Wartime Accounting Initiative (VWAI) focuses on accounting for and recovering the remains of Vietnamese personnel killed or missing from the Vietnam War. The initiative is part of a broader effort by the U.S. Department of Defense, working in collaboration with Vietnamese authorities, to provide closure to families of the missing and to promote reconciliation between the two countries. The U.S. Institute of Peace (USIP), as part of its Vietnam War Legacies and Reconciliation Initiative, launched in 2021, is dedicated to addressing these enduring impacts by fostering collaboration between the U.S. and Vietnamese governments on public communications, policy dialogue, and people-to-people exchange.