19th century The first American to visit Vietnam was Captain Jeremiah Briggs of
The Fame, a commercial ship, set sail from
Salem,
Massachusetts and arrived at
Huế on May 23, 1803. The ruler of Vietnam at the time, Emperor
Minh Mạng, was not eager to allow foreigners to freely enter Vietnam and engage in trade. The emperor required that Americans follow Vietnamese laws, and only allowed them to do business in
Đà Nẵng,
Central Vietnam. After receiving this unwelcome message, Edmund Roberts and his delegation left Vietnam. Vietnamese account for the US delegation arrival was brief: Roberts returned to Vietnam for the second time on May 14, 1836, as his second attempt to establish relation with Minh Mang, but he succumbed to severe illness which halted his efforts. According to the ship doctor
William Ruschenberger, Minh Mạng sent an emissary to Đà Nẵng to see the American delegation. The emissary demanded Roberts to deliver the President's letter to him, which was refused, due to Roberts' illness and lack of adequate interpreters. The OSS and the Viet Minh cooperated together to fight
Japanese forces in French Indochina, and the OSS trained the Viet Minh, who gave the OSS agents shelter. The
People's Army of Vietnam, founded in 1944 in the mountains of northwest Vietnam, had been backed and supported by the OSS and trained by American military personnel, including Patti, who greatly respected the Vietnamese. The first commander of the PAVN was
Võ Nguyên Giáp, who was trained under the watch of the Americans. The relations between the Viet Minh and the OSS marked the beginning of American involvement in Vietnam. Later, Ho Chi Minh asked to set up an alliance with the United States, which was approved by U.S. president
Franklin D. Roosevelt with support from U.S. General
Dwight D. Eisenhower. Diplomacy was strained following further events in French Indochina, including the death of OSS officer
A. Peter Dewey, who was shot by Viet Minh fighters during the
1945 Vietnam uprising; the Viet Minh claimed they mistook Dewey for a French soldier, and Ho Chi Minh reportedly apologized to the U.S. and ordered a search for Dewey's body, though Vietnamese historian
Trần Văn Giàu reported that Dewey's body was dumped in a nearby river and was never recovered. The
emergence of the Cold War and desires to maintain good relations with France prompted the US not to recognize the Viet Minh government. However, at the time, U.S. President
Lyndon B. Johnson used both incidents as justification to take any necessary retaliatory measures; the U.S. Congress promptly passed the
Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, which authorized the deployment of American forces in Vietnam. soldiers burning a
National Liberation Front base camp during the
Vietnam War, 1968 The Gulf of Tonkin incident started American involvement in the
Second Indochina War, known in the
Western world as the "Vietnam War". For 11 years, the U.S., South Vietnam, and their allies fought North Vietnam, the
National Liberation Front, and their allies. Though the U.S. and South Vietnam used
air superiority,
close air support, and
Central Intelligence Agency-led intelligence operations to their advantage, North Vietnam and the Viet Cong made use of
guerrilla warfare, though their tactics gradually became more conventional as the war progressed. The Vietnam War was a massive undertaking for all involved: North Vietnam and the Viet Cong had around 690,000 soldiers by 1966, South Vietnam had a strength of 1.5 million soldiers by 1972, and the U.S. deployed a total of 2.7 million soldiers over the course of American involvement, peaking at 543,000 in April 1969. The U.S. spent roughly $140 billion ($950 billion in 2011) in direct expenses to South Vietnam to build infrastructure, train an army and police force, and modernize the country. Casualties and destruction caused by the war were immense, with the conflict killing between 1.3 million and 3.4 million people, a combined total of combatants and non-combatants from both sides. American society was greatly polarized by the war, which coincided with the height of the
counterculture phenomenon and
civil rights movement;
opposition to American involvement in the Vietnam War was related to these movements, but was a major and significant movement in its own right. American sympathies toward and perspectives on Vietnam depended on political stance, and the U.S. government itself experienced divisions between pro-war and anti-war politicians. from 1965 to 1968 To the United States, the Vietnam War was a Cold War conflict of political ideologies. Though the U.S. outwardly intervened in the interests of freedom, determination, and sovereignty, this was only when communism was not a major factor. However, North Vietnam was a communist country with relations to communist
China and the
Soviet Union, and was already surrounded and assisted by communist organizations elsewhere in Indochina such as the
Khmer Rouge and the
Pathet Lao, providing credence to the idea that communism was a global and monolithic force. By defeating North Vietnam, communist "tyranny and aggression" could be contained, and the security of Indochina could be preserved, with a unified Vietnam under Southern rule serving as a bulwark against communism in the region. To North Vietnam, the war against the U.S. was simply an extension of their greater war for independence. In their view, the U.S. had merely replaced the French's role as another major-power colonialist obstacle to independence, Vietnamese reunification under Northern rule, and the rise of communism and postcolonial states in Indochina.
T-54 tank, destroyed by
Army of the Republic of Vietnam soldiers, 1972 In 1969, with the Vietnam War becoming increasingly unpopular in the United States, U.S. president
Richard Nixon enacted a plan of "
Vietnamization", where U.S. military forces withdrew from combat roles and instead only provided intelligence, support, and logistics, with the end goal being a self-sufficient South Vietnam capable of fighting the conflict themselves. By 1972, U.S. forces had largely withdrawn, and their operations were limited to air support, artillery support, advisors, and
materiel shipments. On 27 January 1973, the
Paris Peace Accords were signed by the U.S., North Vietnam, South Vietnam, and Viet Cong representatives. The Accords called for a ceasefire, withdrawal of all U.S. forces, continuance in place of North Vietnamese troops in the South, and the eventual reunification of Vietnam "through peaceful means". In reality, once the last U.S. combat troops left Vietnam in March 1973, and the U.S. was effectively barred from providing military assistance in Indochina under the 1973
Case–Church Amendment, there was no effective way to prevent North Vietnam from overwhelming South Vietnam's defenses, and the Accords proved unenforceable. North Vietnam and South Vietnam continued to fight for two more years, from 1973 to 1975, but South Vietnam, having to fight without the American support to which it had become accustomed, and lacking the financial support to pay its troops or supply them properly, suffered severe losses of personnel and territory to North Vietnamese forces. In March 1975, North Vietnamese General
Võ Nguyên Giáp of North Vietnam, planning to test American resolution, sent General
Văn Tiến Dũng to launch an
attack on Buôn Ma Thuột; when the U.S. Congress blocked attempts to support South Vietnam, Giáp launched a full-scale invasion of South Vietnam, and by late April, North Vietnamese forces had surrounded the South Vietnamese capital of
Saigon. The U.S. launched
Operation Frequent Wind, sending U.S. Navy
Task Force 76 to evacuate Saigon before North Vietnamese forces could capture the city, initially only to evacuate American embassy staff but eventually accepting South Vietnamese civilians and military personnel as they boarded evacuation flights or flew their own aircraft to the evacuation fleets, to the point that aircraft that were not being used had to be pushed off
aircraft carriers to make space for more. In Operation Frequent Wind, a total of 1,373 Americans and 5,595 Vietnamese and third-country nationals were evacuated by helicopter, and the total number of Vietnamese evacuated by Frequent Wind or self-evacuated and ending up in the custody of the United States for processing as refugees to enter the United States totaled 138,869. Shortly after,
North Vietnamese forces captured Saigon, ending the Vietnam War with a decisive North Vietnamese victory and initiating the
reunification of Vietnam into the modern
Socialist Republic of Vietnam. Saigon was renamed to
Ho Chi Minh City, but the capital of Vietnam remained in
Hanoi.
Agent Orange s resulting from the use of
Agent Orange "
Agent Orange" was a
herbicide and
defoliant used by the U.S. as part of
Operation Ranch Hand, a
herbicidal warfare program initiated by the U.S. military. Developed from 1962 to 1971, Agent Orange consists of a fifty-fifty mixture of
2,4,5-T and
2,4-D, over 20 million gallons of it were produced by the U.S. over the course of the war. Agent Orange was primarily intended to destroy the foliage used as concealment by North Vietnamese soldiers. The 2,4,5-T used to produce Agent Orange was later discovered to be contaminated with
2,3,7,8-Tetrachlorodibenzodioxin, an extremely toxic
dioxin compound. Agent Orange's use led to the deaths of thousands of people, the destruction of over 3.1 million hectares (31,000 km2 or 11,969 mi2) of Vietnam's forests, and up to a million Vietnamese and Americans alike experiencing
birth defects,
disabilities, and health problems resulting from the toxic chemicals used in Agent Orange. The
Viet Nam Red Cross Society estimates that up to 1 million people are disabled or have health problems due to the effects of Agent Orange, but the U.S. government has dismissed these figures as unreliable and unrealistically high.
Prisoners of war and missing soldiers Following American withdrawal from the Vietnam War in 1973, the U.S. listed about 2,500 Americans as
prisoners of war (POW) or
missing in action (MIA), but only 1,200 Americans were reported to have been killed in action with no body recovered. Only 591 American POWs were returned during
Operation Homecoming in early 1973. Many American MIAs were pilots who were shot down over North Vietnam or Laos. Investigations of these incidents have involved determining whether the men involved survived being shot down; if they did not survive, then the U.S. government considers efforts to recover their remains. The U.S. POW and MIA issue greatly affected attempts at normalizing diplomatic ties between the U.S. and Vietnam in the aftermath of the Vietnam War. As of 2007, the U.S. government listed 1,763 Americans unaccounted for in
Southeast Asia, including 1,353 in Vietnam. Since 1973, 883 Americans have been accounted for, including 627 in Vietnam. Additionally, the
U.S. Department of Defense has confirmed that of the 196 individuals who were officially considered "last known alive", the U.S. government has determined the fate of all but 31. The U.S. considers achieving the fullest possible accounting of Americans missing and unaccounted for in Indochina to be one of its highest priorities with Vietnam.
Severance of diplomatic ties and attempts at normalization Following the Vietnam War, Vietnam pursued the establishment of diplomatic relations with the United States. This was initially to obtain US$3.3 billion in reconstruction aid, which U.S. president Richard Nixon had secretly promised after the Paris Peace Accords were signed, in the form of a letter offering a specific figure. In June 1975, Vietnamese Premier
Phạm Văn Đồng, speaking to the
National Assembly, invited the U.S. to normalize relations with Vietnam and to honor its commitment to provide reconstruction funds. Representatives of two American banks—the
Bank of America and
First National City Bank—were invited to
Hanoi to discuss trade possibilities, and American oil companies were informed that they were welcome to apply for concessions to search for oil in Vietnamese waters. However, the U.S. government neglected Đồng's call for normalized relations, because it was predicated on reparations, and the American political climate in the wake of the war precluded the pursuit of such an outcome. The U.S. also applied a
trade embargo against Vietnam in 1975. In response to Vietnam, the administration of U.S. president
Gerald Ford imposed its own precondition for normal relations by announcing that a full accounting of American POWs and MIA, including the return of any remains, would be required before normalization attempts. No concessions were made on either side until U.S. president
Jimmy Carter softened the American demand from a full accounting to simply the fullest
possible accounting, and dispatched a diplomatic mission to Vietnam in 1977 to initiate normalization discussions. climbs a rope ladder to the deck of the
USS White Plains, 1979 Although Vietnam was initially adamant about American economic assistance (their first postwar economic plan counted on the amount promised by President Nixon), the condition was dropped in mid-1978, when Vietnamese Foreign Minister
Nguyễn Cơ Thạch and the U.S. government reached an agreement in principle on normalization, but the date was left vague. When Thạch urged November 1978, the U.S. government was noncommittal: at that time, the U.S. was preoccupied with a large influx in
Vietnamese boat people, and they were already attempting to normalize
relations with China;
relations between Vietnam and China were strained at the time—eventually deteriorating into the
Sino-Vietnamese War in 1979—and the U.S. did not wish to risk their relations with China by normalizing relations with one of China's enemies. The Vietnamese government responded by
formalizing their relations with the
Soviet Union. Their original hope, however, had been to gain both diplomatic recognition from the United States and a friendship treaty with the Soviet Union, as a double guarantee against future Chinese interference. In the U.S., the issue of normalizing relations with Vietnam was complicated by the
Cambodian–Vietnamese War, the Vietnamese refugee crisis, and the unresolved POW and MIA issues, with U.S. President
Ronald Reagan continuing to enforce the trade embargo and barring normalization as long as Vietnamese troops occupied Cambodia. Any efforts to improve relations remained closely tied to the U.S.' willingness to honor its 1973 aid commitment to Vietnam and Vietnam's failure to account for the whereabouts of American MIAs in Indochina. Beginning in mid-1978, however, Vietnam dropped its insistence that the MIA and aid questions be resolved as a precondition for normalization, and stopped linking the MIA issue to other unresolved matters between the two countries. Vietnamese leaders contrasted their restraint on the MIA issue with its alleged political exploitation by the United States as a condition for normal relations. As additional signs of goodwill, Hanoi permitted the joint U.S.-Vietnamese excavation of a
B-52 crash site in 1985, and returned the remains of a number of American service members between 1985 and 1987. Vietnamese spokesmen also claimed during this period to have a two-year plan to resolve the MIA question, but did not reveal details. Although Vietnam's
Sixth National Party Congress in December 1986 officially paid little attention to restoring diplomatic relations with the U.S., the report of the Congress noted that Vietnam was continuing to hold talks with the U.S. on humanitarian issues, and expressed a readiness to improve relations. Although ambivalent in tone, the message was more positive than the 1982
Fifth National Party Congress report, which had attributed the stalemated relationship to American "hostile policy." The improved wording was attributable to the influence of newly appointed Party General Secretary
Nguyễn Văn Linh, who was expected to attach high priority to expanding Vietnam's links with the West. Despite signs of improvement, in mid-1987, the Vietnamese government, having determined that cooperation had gained few concessions from the U.S., reverted to its pre-1978 position linking the aid and MIA issues. However, a meeting between Vietnamese leaders and Reagan's special envoy on MIAs, General
John William Vessey Jr., in August 1987 yielded significant gains for both sides: in exchange for greater Vietnamese cooperation on resolving the MIA issue, the U.S. agreed to officially encourage charitable assistance for Vietnam. Although the agreement fell short of Hanoi's requests for economic aid or war reparations, it marked the first time that the U.S. had offered anything in return for Vietnamese assistance in accounting for the MIAs, and was an important step toward
rapprochement.
Rapprochement (left) at the
APEC Summit in Vietnam, November 2006 The influence of U.S. senators
John McCain and
John Kerry on U.S. president
Bill Clinton was instrumental in the U.S. government's 1994 decision to lift the trade embargo against Vietnam. Both Kerry and McCain were decorated veterans of the Vietnam War who served on the
Senate Select Committee on P.O.W./M.I.A. Affairs. In this role, they became intimately familiar with the issue of American MIAs, frequently traveling to Vietnam and coordinating with Vietnamese government officials. Although officials in the Clinton administration were ultimately in consensus to lift the embargo, the administration perceived they did not possess sufficient political credibility. Consequently, Kerry and McCain sought to use their widespread credibility on the matter to create an environment in which Clinton could lift the embargo. In 1993, Kerry and McCain accompanied Clinton to the
Vietnam Veterans Memorial, despite substantial opposition from veterans' groups. The U.S. embargo on Vietnam was eventually lifted on February 3, 1994. Formal normalization of relations was announced and occurred in 1995, when both countries opened
liaison offices that were later upgraded to formal embassies later in the year, with the U.S. later opening the
Consulate General of the United States, Ho Chi Minh City, and Vietnam opening a
consulate in
San Francisco. In 1997, the Vietnamese government agreed to formally drop its request that the U.S. honors its 1973 aid commitment and instead to pay off the debts of the South Vietnamese government, then amounting to $140 million, in order to be allowed to trade with the U.S. Following this, trade volumes boomed between the two countries. Also in 1997, Clinton appointed former POW and U.S. Congressman
Douglas "Pete" Peterson as the first
U.S. Ambassador to Vietnam.
21st century and a
lạc bird. President of the United States
Bill Clinton made a historic visit to Vietnam in November 2000. He was the first U.S. leader ever to officially visit Hanoi and the first to visit Vietnam since U.S. troops withdrew from the country in 1975. The annual Bilateral Human Rights Dialogue resumed in 2006 after a two-year hiatus. The U.S. and Vietnam signed a Bilateral Trade Agreement in July 2000, which went into force in December 2001. In 2003, the two countries signed a counter-narcotics Letter of Agreement (amended in 2006), a Civil Aviation Agreement, and a textile agreement. In January 2007, Congress approved
Permanent Normal Trade Relations (PNTR) for Vietnam. In July 2015, the United States hosted
Vietnamese Communist Party general secretary
Nguyễn Phú Trọng in the first-ever visit of a Vietnamese Communist Party General Secretary to the United States following a concerted effort by the
Obama administration to pursue warmer relations with Vietnam. On 27–28 February 2019, the
2019 North Korea–United States Hanoi Summit was held between North Korean Supreme Leader
Kim Jong Un and U.S. President
Donald Trump in Hanoi, Vietnam. During a visit to Vietnam on 10 September 2023, U.S. President
Joe Biden visited with General Secretary
Nguyễn Phú Trọng. Following this, the Vietnamese government recognized the relationship between the United States and Vietnam as a "Comprehensive Strategic Partnership," emphasizing the increasing importance of bilateral links between the countries. Biden said the aim of the agreement is not to reduce China's influence in Asia, but he is looking for economic growth and stability in Vietnam. In June 2024, the United States criticized Vietnam's decision
to host Russian President
Vladimir Putin. The U.S. embassy in Hanoi said that "no country should give Putin a platform to promote his war of aggression and otherwise allow him to normalize his atrocities." A senior U.S. diplomat held talks in Vietnam and said that the trust between the two countries was at an all-time high. On 18 January 2026,
Tô Lâm accepted the invitation from U.S. President
Donald Trump in his capacity of the
General Secretary of the Communist Party of Vietnam to join the United States-led
Board of Peace as a founding member. ==Human rights==