TedOsius. Nothing Is Impossible: America's Reconciliation with Vietnam. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2022.

Ted Osius' "most consequential accomplishment" (165) as United States ambassador to Vietnam from 2014 to 2017 was arranging the visit of the General Secretary of Vietnam's Communist Party, Nguyên Phú Trong, with President Barack Obama in the Oval Office in July 2015.Arranging the visit had not been easy.Trong was suspicious of the United States, suspecting that the Americans wanted regime change.Furthermore, Oval Office visits were for heads of state, not party leaders.National Security Adviser Susan Rice opposed the visit.But Secretary of State John Kerry was able to override Rice's objections."I got beat up for making the case," Kerry later said (150).Why was Trong's visit so consequential?Because nothing was more important to Ambassador Osius than reconciling with Vietnam.Vietnam's hoped-for entry into the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), then being negotiated, would be a major step in that reconciliation.To enter the TPP, Vietnam would have to make human rights concessions, most notably agreeing to "free assembly for Vietnamese workers" (151).Furthermore, Vietnam's security connections with the Americans had increased as China became increasingly assertive.Only Trong could ensure that the growing US-Vietnam partnership would last.The meeting was a great success.Scheduled for 45 minutes, it lasted 90 minutes.Obama and Trong made significant commitments."Trong's commitment on workers' rights was the biggest human rights concession Vietnam had ever made" (165), writes Osius in this memoir and history of work to reconcile the two former wartime enemies.Osius joined the Foreign Service in 1989, and, after diplomatic relations were restored in 1995 during the Bill Clinton administration, at his request he was posted to Vietnam in 1996 as a political officer.He learned Vietnamese, which he practiced with bar girls who were "happy to be paid for doing nothing more than talking" (21).The American embassy pursued reconciliation.The United States hoped to upgrade cooperation on locating the remains of American soldiers.Vietnamese officials, too, were eager to increase cooperation, among them the incomparable Nguyên Có Thąch.(Thąch, Vietnam's foreign minister in the 1980s, had only recently emerged from five years of house arrest, imposed, writes Osius, due to pressure from China, which considered him too pro-American.)Osius also championed close contacts with ordinary Vietnamese.Among his early initiatives in 1997 was the first in what became a string of long-distance bicycle rides, allowing him to converse directly with ordinary people and learn their concerns.Later, as ambassador, he continued those rides.

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