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US and Vietnam Strengthen Ties as Secretary Blinken Visits Hanoi

by Ryan Lee
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Fifty years after the U.S. had to remove its soldiers from South Vietnam, Secretary of State Antony Blinken traveled to Hanoi (the capital of Vietnam) on Saturday to try and improve the relationship between America and its past enemies. He’s doing this in an effort to stop China from getting too powerful in the Indo-Pacific region.

Blinken, who’s an important person in the United States, and the Prime Minister of Vietnam recently got together to talk about how they can improve their relationship. This meeting happened only two weeks after the 50th anniversary of when U.S troops were pulled out of Vietnam, which ended America’s military activities there.

Recently, the U.S. government started building a huge $1.2 billion embassy in Vietnam’s capital city which it hopes will make the relationship between the U.S. and Vietnam even better than when the two countries first resumed diplomatic relations in 1995.

The USA thinks of Vietnam as important to their plans and wants to strengthen its power in the area. The U.S. has used Vietnam’s disagreements with China, which is bigger than them, as a way to increase America’s influence. The Secretary of State even said that they hope to make the relationship between them even stronger.

Chinh said that Vietnam and the U.S have had a strong relationship, and they both want to continue making it even better. He also mentioned that the Vietnamese government really wants to improve the friendship between their two countries.

Vietnam has some disagreements with China over the South China Sea and its boundaries. To help, the United States is giving diplomatic support to countries like the Philippines and Taiwan, which are both countries that China says they control.

Just last month, China was not happy because a U.S. Navy ship sailed around the Paracel Islands two days in a row. This angered Beijing because they believe this area belongs to them and going into it was a violation of their rules. The Paracels are fought over by China, Taiwan, and Vietnam – all three countries want the islands for themselves.

American leaders don’t like to only talk about China when they visit a country in Asia. Instead, they talk about strengthening friendships with other countries. Then, they usually mention worries connected to China which everyone in the region can understand.

Dan Kritenbrink, a former U.S. ambassador to Vietnam and current State Department diplomat, said that Washington and Hanoi both want the Indo-Pacific region to be a place where everyone is equal, no one is bullied or treated unfairly, countries can trade easily with each other but also fairly, and issues are handled peacefully according to international laws.

It has been 50 years since the U.S. military left Vietnam on March 29, 1973. But now, the American government is trying to establish a stronger relationship with them again. This comes as the U.S. plans to pull out its troops from certain places and gets criticized for how it ended their stay in Afghanistan 2 years ago.

People have said the events in Afghanistan are like those from the Vietnam War, particularly for the Afghans that helped fight for 20 years but were left behind when Joe Biden ended America’s involvement in 2021.

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