Obama Faced With Legacies Of Vietnam War
While President Barack Obama is making a trip to Vietnam and Japan in order to build stronger economic and security ties with Asian-Pacific allies who are worried about a rising China, he is also coming face to face with the legacies of the Vietnam and World War II wars.
His first halt during his weeklong Asia trip is Vietnam. This is the third sitting president to visit Vietnam since the end of the war. It is four decades after the fall of Saigon, and two decades after President Bill Clinton built up links again with Vietnam. Obama is now eager to improve relations with a rising country and an expanding middle class, which seems to be a promising market for U.S. goods and looks like a foil to China in this area.
At Hanoi late Sunday, Obama will call for stronger commercial and security ties, along with a reference to the 12-nation trans-Pacific trade agreement that has been stalled in Congress and is facing some opposition from other 2016 presidential candidates. Vietnam hopes that the President will also take forward the elimination of the war legacy and the U.S. partial embargo on selling arms to Vietnam. Even though the idea is being debated, there appears to be some concern in the US about "Vietnam's human rights record."
Meanwhile, many American groups are also forcing Obama to probe into "unfinished business" regarding the fates of more than 1,600 U.S. servicemen who never came back from the Vietnam War. Relatives of those military members have asked Vietnam to help in locating the many victims who might have been shot down or died as POWs in the war.
On the other hand, Vietnam has for long affirmed that it has been helping the US to get back its missing personnel and denied that it has held any more POWs after the war.
