The Foreign Service Journal, April 2018

THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL | APRIL 2018 19 Respect, Trust and Partnership: Keeping Diplomacy on Course in Troubling Times BY TED OS I US Ted Osius is the vice president of Fulbright University Vietnam. He served as U.S. ambassador to Vietnam from 2014 to 2017. A founding member of GLIFAA, he was a U.S. diplomat in Indonesia, India, Thailand, Japan, the Vatican and the Philippines, and worked on Asian challenges from the White House, the United Nations and the State Department. W hen John Kerry swore me in as U.S. ambassador to Vietnam in 2014, I said it was a “dream come true” to be able to serve as America’s represen- tative in a country I have loved for more than two decades. A three-year tour as ambassador in Hanoi was the high point of my 30-year career in the Foreign Service and the honor of a lifetime. The high-water mark of that tour was hosting President Barack Obama during a history-making visit to Vietnam. In Ho Chi Minh City one mil- lion people turned out to welcome him, and I knew we had done something right. I am deeply grateful to the Foreign Service, not only for the privilege and joy of three decades of adventures (mostly in Asia), but also for my family. Thirteen- and-a-half years ago I met my future spouse in a business meeting of GLIFAA (formerly Gays and Lesbians in Foreign Affairs Agencies), an employee affinity group. By extension the Foreign Service gave us our 4-year-old son and 3-year-old daughter. A diplomatic career also allowed me the great privilege of serving something bigger than myself: the United States of America. So it was with mixed emotions that I decided in 2017 to resign and join a number of other senior Foreign Service officers headed for the exit. While each of us has a different reason for depart- ing, many of my friends and former colleagues are deeply worried about the policy direction of the current adminis- tration, as am I. I fear that some policies are diminishing America’s role in the world, and decided that I could not in good conscience implement them. Many of us who were determined to strengthen America’s role in Asia considered that abandoning the Trans- Pacific Partnership trade agreement was a self-inflicted wound. America left the playing field to those who do not share our values, and left American jobs there, too. Others grieved the U.S. abdication of responsibility regarding climate change, especially in a year marked by multiple storms so immense that they are sup- posed to happen only once in 500 years. A large number of colleagues voiced their dissent regarding the so-called “Mus- lim travel ban,” abhorrent in a country whose true strength derives from its diversity. What happened to the nation that welcomed “your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free”? SPEAKING OUT Closer to Home And then the outrages came even closer to home. I was asked to press the government in Hanoi to receive from the United States more than 8,000 people, most of whom had fled South Vietnam on boats and through the jungle in the years immediately following the war. The majority targeted for deporta- tion—sometimes for minor infractions— were war refugees who had sided with the United States, whose loyalty was to the flag of a nation that no longer exists. And they were to be “returned” decades later to a nation ruled by a communist regime with which they had never reconciled. I feared many would become human rights cases, and our government would be culpable. I assessed that this repulsive policy would destroy our chances of success in pursuing President Donald Trump’s other goals for relations with Vietnam: reducing the trade deficit, strengthening military relations and coping with regional threats to peace such as those emanating from North Korea. I voiced my objections, was instructed to remain silent, and decided there was an ethical line that I could not cross if I wished to retain my integrity. I concluded that I could better serve my country from outside government, by helping to build a new, innovative univer- sity in Vietnam. At a ceremony in the Treaty Room at State, with a portrait of Thomas Jeffer- son looking on, I had the opportunity to