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. Osius traces the reconciliation efforts back primarily to the “improbable friendship” of Vietnam veterans John McCain and John Kerry that began with a joint congressional trip in 1991 to the Persian Gulf. The two men from different political parties found common ground about the need for improved relations. Though Osius acknowledges that this trip only “accelerate[d]” the reconciliation, he writes little of previous efforts by organizations such as the U.S.-Indochina Reconciliation Project (now the Fund for Reconciliation and Development) to restore relations. He recounts briefly how National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski derailed efforts to establish diplomatic relations in 1978 just when they were on the verge of success, but he does not question whether that was a well-advised decision. To be sure, Osius clearly thinks the war itself had been a tragic mistake, and he highlights former Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara's damning statement in 1997 that he knew “nothing about Vietnam” (60). For the Vietnamese, remediation of dioxin contamination from Agent Orange used in the war was a major concern. Dioxin produced horrific birth defects, despite early denials that the chemical endangered humans. Indeed, dioxin's effects continue, so that even today severe birth defects occur. Eventually the U.S. government came to accept some responsibility for impacted American veterans, with the list of diseases thought to have resulted from exposure growing every year. But, fearing liability claims, it refused to accept responsibility for the damage done to the Vietnamese people. In the twenty-first century more pressure grew for the United States to address the impact of dioxin in Vietnam. Osius credits Senate staffer Tim Rieser and the Ford Foundation's Charles Bailey for their work on dioxin awareness. Some progress occurred under President George W. Bush, and limited appropriations were approved during the Obama administration, especially for remediation of the heavily contaminated former American air base at Đà Nâng. But it was Senator Patrick Leahy who first secured significant congressional funding in 2015 for remediation. Less controversial were calls for the United States to assist in removing unexploded land mines and ordnance, which even after the war ended have killed some 40,000 people and injured tens of thousands more. That effort continues together with other countries and NGOs. Osius was one of only two openly gay U.S. ambassadors at the time, during the Obama administration. Married to Clayton Bond, a cousin of Julian Bond, the couple adopted two Mexican American children from Texas while he was ambassador. (More discussion about the adoptions would have been welcome.) Uncertain how his relationship would be received in Vietnam, Osius encountered few difficulties; he participated in Vietnamese Pride parades and counseled gay young people. By the time Osius left Vietnam in 2017, reconciliation had come a long way. Polls indicated that large majorities of Vietnamese considered the United States Vietnam's closest foreign friend. Osius had contributed to this development by respecting the Vietnamese and addressing issues important to them. In 2018 Vietnam presented Osius, now retired, with its Order of Friendship award for his efforts to foster friendship between Vietnam and the United States, despite the possibility that the new President, Donald Trump, would be upset because Osius was now openly criticizing his administration. Trump had, in fact, made reconciliation difficult. When Osius accompanied Vietnam's Prime Minister Nguyên Xuân Phúc to the White House to meet the new American president, the meeting was akin to that portrayed in the recent film, Don't Look Up. “Nothing could have prepared me for the strangeness” of the meeting, Osius writes (238). Trump disdained the State Department. “A sense of vindictiveness pervaded the new team. Experienced foreign policy practitioners … were not welcome,” Osius observes (235). The new U.S. immigration policy was “racist, vindictive, and un-American.” Vietnamese immigrants who had committed even minor crimes in the distant past were sent back to Vietnam. Even some Amerasians, whose fathers were Americans during the Vietnam War and whom President Ronald Reagan had given special immigration status, were deported. The most damaging policy decision, in Osius' view, was Trump's refusal to join the TPP. Vietnam responded by abandoning its human rights commitments. “China, the clear winner in America's abandonment of the TPP, moved swiftly into the leadership vacuum” (252). Yet, reconciliation did not entirely disappear. In 2018, the Đà Nâng airbase remediation was completed, and the same year the United States agreed to fund the cleanup of the much larger Biên Hòa air base. Education ties continued to flourish, and Vietnam hosted the abortive summit where Trump met Kim Jong-un of North Korea. And in May 2020 a Vietnam Airlines Boeing Dreamliner flew from Hanoi to San Francisco for the first time. Like all memoirs, Nothing is Impossible should be read critically. The historical sections of the book are sometimes skimpy. Except for his scathing critique of the Trump administration, Osius makes few criticisms about U.S. policy in the postwar era. Underappreciated are the contributions of alumni of the peace movement, religious groups, NGOs, some Vietnamese American groups, and activist veterans who pressed for normal relations and responsibility for war legacies. But this is an important book about reconciliation, one that credits the Vietnamese as well as the Americans. It properly highlights the importance of respect in building a trusting relationship. Osius' openness about LGBTQ issues is welcome, and the narrative is engaging and accompanied by several well-chosen photos of official actions, informal contacts with Vietnamese, and family. Those interested in Vietnam's relations with the United States, especially since the reestablishment of diplomatic relations, will want to read this fine book. Kenton Clymer is Distinguished Research Professor Emeritus at Northern Illinois University. A graduate of Grinnell College and the University of Michigan, he is the author of several books about United States relations with South and Southeast Asia. His most recent book is A Delicate Relationship: The United States and Burma/Myanmar Since1945 (Cornell University Press, 2015).

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