Late Senator McCain envisioned Vietnam-US friendship: diplomat

As President Joe Biden and his delegation paid a tribute at the late senator's memorial in Hanoi during a state visit on Monday afternoon, ambassador Ha Huy Thong said he should be remembered as a strong American advocate of normalizing relations with Vietnam.

During Biden's two-day visit that ended Monday, Vietnam and the U.S. upgraded their relations to Comprehensive Strategic Partnership, 10 years after establishing a Comprehensive Partnership.

Thong, former vice chairman of National Assembly’s Foreign Affairs Committee who was head of an outpost team for Vietnam’s first communication agency in the U.S. in 1994 - 1995, said that McCain had often spoken positively about the prospects of relations between the two former foes.

McCain was a 31-year-old Navy lieutenant commander when his Skyhawk dive bomber was shot down by the Vietnamese in Hanoi on October 26, 1967. He parachuted into Truc Bach Lake, was captured and put interred at Hoa Lo Prison for five years, before being freed following the 1973 Paris Accords.

Hanoi then built a John McCain memorial in the form of a monument and plaque beside the lake, which has become a tourist attraction and been visited by many U.S. leaders.

McCain returned to the place several times himself, including one in 2017, a year before he died of a brain tumor.

(From L) Senators John Barrasso, John McCain and Chris Coons at the memorial that marks McCain's capture during the Vietnam War by the Truc Bach Lake in Hanoi, June 2017. Photo by Twitter/John McCain

The war veteran then started his political career and became a senator, at which point he dedicated efforts to improve the Vietnam – U.S. relations.

He, together with Senator John Kerry, who also fought in the war and protested it, were pioneers to trying to clear distrust between the two countries after the war.

Thong said McCain had a global vision. "He had said that the U.S. and Vietnam could normalize relations to show the world that if the two sides could do that, any two countries who have been at war can normalize relations.

"His statement was not only valuable for the years before Vietnam and the U.S. normalized relations, but it has its full value now that the world is facing conflicts."

Thong said McCain's words could be one of the factors that catalyzed the normalization between the two countries in 1995.

On February 3, 1994, President Bill Clinton invited McCain and Kerry to attend a ceremony announcing the lift of the U.S. embargo on Vietnam and the establishment of diplomatic ties with the country at communication level first, and then embassy level.

US President Joe Biden visits the John Sidney McCain III Memorial in Hanoi on September 11, 2023. Photo by AFP

President Biden, in a press conference with Vietnam’s Party leader Nguyen Phu Trong to announce the upgrade of ties to Comprehensive Strategic Partnership on Sunday, also praised McCain and Kerry for their contributions to the countries' relations.

He also mentioned McCain during a Monday lunch with President Vo Van Thuong, as well as Kerry, who was with Biden during his Vietnam visit, for the role they played in a "50-year arc of progress."

"Where there was darkness you all found light," Biden said.