Murray Hiebert‏ and Phuong Nguyen

Ahead of President Barack Obama’s visit to Vietnam in late May, officials and analysts in both Washington and Hanoi have been talking about whether the United States should fully lift the ban on the sale of lethal weapons to Vietnam that was imposed when the Vietnam-American War ended in 1975. The issue has been given added urgency as bilateral relations have increasingly warmed and in light of shared U.S. and Vietnamese interests in preserving maritime security in the South China Sea (Vietnam's East Sea).