THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL | APRIL-MAY 2025 31 THE LAST STEPS OF NORMALIZATION Reflections of the U.S. Ambassador to Vietnam, 2001-2004 ON THE U.S.-VIETNAM RELATIONSHIP Completion of the normalization process got a boost when Vietnam’s leadership determined that “the triangle” (Vietnam, China, U.S.) was out of balance. BY RAYMOND BURGHARDT Ray Burghardt was U.S. ambassador to Vietnam from December 2001 to September 2004. He began his Foreign Service career as a political officer at U.S. Embassy Saigon in the early 1970s. He served as chairman of the American Institute in Taiwan (AIT) from 2006 to 2016; AIT director in Taipei from 1999 to 2001; deputy chief of mission in Manila and Seoul; consul general in Shanghai; and National Security Council senior director for Latin America. George W. Bush nominated me to be the second U.S. ambassador to a unified Vietnam. I would return after 28 years to the country where I began my Foreign Service career during the war, first seconded to USAID and then as a political officer. I knew that the chief advocate for my nomination was Deputy Secretary of State Rich Armitage, whom I accompanied in March 1982, when he was a deputy assistant secretary of Defense, on one of the first missions to negotiate normalization of relations. The process would take 13 more years until ambassadors were exchanged. For both me and my wife, Susan, who had been with me in Saigon from 1970 to 1973 as manager of the USO’s “Call Home Service” for the U.S. military, return to Vietnam prompted many emotional moments when we felt as if we were picking up the thread of the long story of U.S.‐Vietnam relations. As I prepared for confirmation in fall 2001, the message I received from Senator John McCain and Senator John Kerry, the two senators who had been the strongest advocates for restoring U.S.‐Vietnam relations, was that Pete Peterson, the first postwar ambassador, had made a great start, and now my job was to complete the process of normalization. A Step-by-Step Process Our bilateral relationship had developed in identifiable stages, the work of which continued as new areas of cooperation were added. Three important areas weren’t there yet: military-to-military relations, law enforcement cooperation, and an intelligence liaison relationship. These would be tough, the most sensitive issues. They involved the people on both sides FOCUS
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