Those wanting continued cooperation on the MIA issue should want the United States to normalize diplomatic relations with Vietnam. Last year Bill Clinton lifted a 19-year trade embargo. Since then the record has been clear: warmer contacts mean that Americans get more information about MIAs. One year of friendly cooperation has worked better than 19 years of acting like a sore loser. Yet if the summer passes with no decision on norrealization, the onset of the long American election season could mean a delay of nearly two years. That would be bad for U.S.-Vietnam relations-and thus for MIA progress. Clinton knows this, and so may decide soon. And a positive decision on normalization might not turn out to be a total political loss for him. While the publicity would remind the world of his own Vietnam draft avoidance, the president would also look resolute in the face of heavy sound-bite fire.
In the meantime, Americans and Vietnamese are going to unbelievable lengths to solve the MIA puzzle. Any rumor or “sighting”-however obviously phony-is checked out. For weeks, divers have been searching off Vietnam’s southeastern coast for the wreckage of two American B-52s. Earlier this year, 14 Americans and 100 Vietnamese filled 4,000 sandbags to dam a stream near the Cambodian border, then excavated 20 tons of mud by hand shovel to unearth the wreckage of an American F-4 fighter. Sometimes searchers find bone fragments; more often they don’t. Younger Vietnamese seem sympathetic to all this but a bit perplexed by the American obsession with the war. Their own concerns are economic. English is the language of choice, the dollar the semiofficial currency, and jobs with American companies are coveted because the bosses are reputed to be nicer.
The Vietnamese are still poor, with huge problems of infrastructure and red tape. But they live in Southeast Asia–the world’s most dynamic economic region–and are looking to the future. Across the Pacific, at least some Americans still look to the past. Senate Republican Majority Leader and presidential candidate Bob Dole is cosponsoring a bill with New Hampshire Sen. Robert Smith (a Vietnam veteran with a weakness for believing kooky MIA stories) that would effectively delay normalization for years. But conservative GOP Sen. John McCain, who was imprisoned for five and a half years as a POW in Hanoi, is teaming with fellow Vietnam vet John Kerry to push a Senate resolution backing diplomatic recognition. Both measures could come to a vote as early as next week.
While concerned about human-rights abuses in Vietnam, McCain is a convincing advocate for normalizing relations. He believes that the United States has essentially three reasons for doing so: first, a strategic interest in boosting Vietnam as a balance against Chinese expansionism (the Vietnam-ese want a stronger U.S. presence m the region for the same reason); second, an interest in participating in a rapidly growing economy; and third, simple credibility on the MIA issue. The Bush administration pledged to normalize relations if the Vietnamese cooperated on MIAs–and they have. “Do we keep our commitments as a nation?” McCain asks. “Isn’t it time we tried to put this behind us?” As for Ross Perot’s claim of live POWs, McCain says: “He’s nuttier than a fruit-cake–and that’s on the record.”
If passed, the McCain-Kerry resolution would give Clinton the political cover he needs to normalize. NEWSWEEK has learned that under one contingency plan, Secretary of State Warren Christopher, who last week publicly supported normalization, would travel to Vietnam in July and announce the decision just before a regional security meeting in Brunei. The president received yet more cover last week when the 2.2 million-member Veterans of Foreign Wars (VFW) issued a statement saying the group would not oppose normalization “if it will further the process leading toward the fullest possible accounting” for the missing.
And it will. This is the central point that some families of MIAs have not fully grasped. For years, Hanoi officials were not forthcoming on what they knew about the remains of American servicemen. The United States needed a trade embargo as a stick. But nowadays the carrot is working better. When information is released to visiting American delegations, it usually reflects information gathered from the local level. According to American officials on the ground in Vietnam, normalization would help keep this vital stream of memories and obscure documents going.
“A lot of the progress made in the future will rest on the cooperation of the people of Vietnam,” says Lt. Col. Melvin Richmond, commander of the American MIA team based in Hanoi. “We need Vietnamese veterans to get their diaries out, and that takes some level of trust.” Early this year, for instance, Gen. Tran Van Tra, one of North Vietnam’s senior field commanders in the South, finally agreed to sit down with an American MIA expert and tape-record his recollection of the North Vietnamese POW system. With General Tra’s help, Vietnamese veterans groups are beginning to cooperate.
When Clinton lifted the trade embargo, everyone expected a furor; it never materialized, even in conservative parts of the United States. Still, the unexpected dust-up over Robert McNamara’s memoirs suggests that with a subject as emotional as Vietnam, nothing is predictable. Were Clinton to recognize Vietnam this summer, he might briefly reopen some old wounds. But before long, the decision and all that flowed from it would begin at last to heal them.
