Lan Anh: Building a foundation for close U.S.-Vietnamese relations

By Lan Anh

On the night of May 22, President Obama landed at Noi Bai International Airport to start his official visit to Vietnam. U.S. Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush had also visited Vietnam while in office.

The American War in Vietnam was a long and sad chapter but that conflict ended 41 years ago.

President Obama’s visit to Vietnam  was a dramatic turning point as the two countries establish stronger ties  to promote the development, peace and security of the both countries, the Asia/Pacific region and the wider world.

Vietnam has spent  much blood,  wealth and time defending itself from invadersto regain and preserve its independence.  The country  has constantly faced threats to its freedom, sovereignty and territorial integrity.

But, overcoming the sorrow of historical events, and some missteps in its economic-development strategy, Vietnam has  today achieved remarkable improvements in the economic and other aspects of its development. It has great potential strengths from its location and its population of 100 million, (making Vietnam the 13th most populous nation) including its large number of young people who are very receptive to new technology. It is also playing an increasingly important role in global economic development.

Meanwhile, Vietnam preserves many of its ancient traditions while it stays open to learning and accepting the best aspects of cultures and values all over the world.  

Vietnam has become an inspiring story of a country in transition.  A nation that suffered the sorrow of  a long war with the U.S., Vietnam has since normalized the relationship with America and is taking steps to improve it further.  Vietnamese-U.S. relations are now a world-recognized symbol of reconciliation and of progress toward a peaceful, more secure and developed world.

America has the  world’s largest economy and is the global military superpower.  Thus,  the U.S. plays a crucial role in preserving stability around the Earth. American military power can be deployed quickly to any place in the world.  Further, America is the innovation hub of the planet. It’s where leading technologies are constantly being invented and refined with great international impact.

Since World War II, the U.S.  has led the establishment of a network of multilateral organizations  -- most notably the World Bank, the  International Monetary Fund (IMF) and such regional  security organizations as NATO. In part becase of these organizations, the U.S. has strong allies around the world.

These factors are crucial parts of the foundation for stronger Vietnamese-U.S. relations.

Prof. Thomas Patterson, a leading Harvard scholar on politics, press and public policy,  and a co-founder and director of The Boston Global Forum (BostonGlobalForum.org), said that the bases for a strong and sustainable relationship between  the U.S. and Vietnam are trust and respect for each other and mutual understanding of each other’s needs and values. Despite some inevitable differences, the two countries have many shared goals, which include building their own and each other’s prosperity, friendly cultural exchanges and peace and security in the South China Sea (called in Vietnam the East Sea). Strong andfriendly U.S.-Vietnamese relations will foster the strong growth of the two countries in the Pacific Era.

The U.S. can help Vietnam with capital and advanced technology so that Vietnam can continue growing its knowledge and innovation economy via such technology solutions as  artificial intelligence (AI) and network security.

After the Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement (TTP) comes into effect, Vietnam’s GDP is projected to increase to $23.5 billion in 2020 and $33.5 billion in 2025. Its exports are projected to rise by  $68 billion by 2026.  Under the TPP, big markets,  such as the U.S., Japan and Canada, willeliminate tariffs for goods imported from Vietnam, which will obviously give its exporting activity a big boost..

Meanwhile Fulbright University Vietnam has officially been granted approval to open. This  is a milestone  in the journey of  cooperation between U.S. and Vietnam in education. Further, the University of California at Los Angeles ( UCLA ) will soon work with Vietnam to carry out new initiatives in global citizenship education.

To establish itself as a major global player, Vietnam needs to be independent  of bigger countries so that it can strategize its  path ahead while following universal standards and values. Vietnam will raise its visibility in  the world with a loving,  tolerant and generous attitude.

Vietnam has overcome sorrow and loss to make peace with other countries that caused it pain. Hence, Vietnam has become a symbol of reconciliation and can play an important role in preserving  international peace and security in the Asia/Pacific region and around the world.  

For example, Vietnam can contribute to the effort to resolve conflicts between the U.S.  and Russia,  between Europe and Russia,  between China and Russia,  between the U.S.,  Japan and North Korea,  and between the U.S. and China. Vietnam could also become a centerfor finding solutions to conflicts in the Middle East and forhelping North Korea integrate with the rest of the world (as when Vietnam helped Myanmar reintegrate). And it can be a pioneer in building harmony and security in online space in South East Asia and around the world. This can include educating people  to be responsible online citizens in Internet era; teaching them to respect each other’s culture, knowledge and morality, and  promoting initiatives for global citizenship education.

Building strong Vietnamese-U.S. relations, as well as the other initiatives cited above, can’t be completed overnight but the path to a brighter future is opened. Tomorrow has started today.

Lan Anh is a journalist for VietNamNet.

John Kiriakou: Pride's big role in Greek crisis

Greece is in dire straits. As a Greek American, it hurts me to watch.

Without emergency loans from its European partners, Greece will default on its debts and likely be forced out of the Eurozone. That means tougher times ahead for Greece, Europe, and international financial markets.

In exchange for a short-term loan, European powers led by Germany want the Greek government to impose brutal new austerity measures on its people. So why won’t Greece take the deal?

First, some background: Past Greek governments are largely to blame for the country’s fiscal woes.

In 1981, Greek Prime Minister Andreas Papandreou famously told his finance minister to “spend it all.” And that’s exactly what he did.

Greece became the first European country to allow all workers to retire with a full pension at the age of 55. A worker in a “dangerous industry” could retire even earlier. But “dangerous industries” ended up including everybody from hairdressers to radio disc jockeys.

In the meantime, the government hired everybody who wanted or needed a job. The public sector ballooned to unsustainable levels, and practically everybody was retiring early at full pension.

Later on, conservative governments jumped on the bandwagon too, handing fat government benefits to their supporters. Tax evasion ran rampant and the entire political system was corrupted.

The system was bound to collapse, and collapse it did. A few years ago, Greece’s neighbors and the International Monetary Fund loaned the country money to make ends meet.

But instead of eating the losses on their banks’ bad investments, the Europeans — and especially the Germans — demanded harsh austerity cuts that shredded Greece’s social-safety net, gutted the public sector, and plunged the country deeper into despair.

Fed up with the resulting poverty and unemployment, Greeks rejected their mainstream political parties in the last election and replaced them with the left-wing Syriza party. Led by Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras, Syriza campaigned on protecting Greece’s now-huge underclass from Europe’s dictates.

Why would the Greeks risk losing everything by not continuing with a well-defined program of pension cuts and layoffs?

The answer isn’t hard to understand.

First, Syriza rejects balancing the budget on the backs of the poor. Over 40 percent of Greeks now live at or under the poverty level. Middle-class people who worked all their lives have been thrown out of their jobs and have no hopes of getting another. Unemployment for young Greeks hovers around a whopping 50 percent.

Tellingly, suicides in Greece are up over 35 percent since the economy fell apart in 2009, and a “brain drain” of educated professionals to other countries is running apace.

Second, Europeans are ignoring the concept of saving face. The European ultimatum to Greece doesn’t respect the country’s election results or allow the government to claim even a partial victory. Add in the Greeks’ lingering resentment toward the Germans over Nazi atrocities in World War II, and you get an even more difficult situation.

There’s still hope for a last-minute breakthrough. If that doesn’t happen, though, the money will dry up and the Greek economy will fall further apart. Yet compared to endless austerity, that might not be the end of the world.

It may be ugly for a while: Stock markets will slide, Greece will have to re-invent its currency, and the economic depression Greece has endured may last several years longer. But the Greeks will survive, and so will everybody else.

And despite their pain, the poor will know that their government did this for them. The Greek people will know that they weren’t beholden to the Germans or to the International Monetary Fund.

It’s not just about the money. It’s about pride.

John Kiriakou is an associate fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies,  former CIA counterterrorism officer and former senior investigator for the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. This piece originated at OtherWords.org.

Llewellyn King: Europe faces a disastrous winter

  BURGENLAND, Austria

There is another world crisis brewing – and one for which President Obama cannot be blamed. The Europeans and have made a mess of things, and now the wolves are at the door.

The first snarling wolf is deflation. Europe’s economies are so weak, so close to recession, that the very real danger of deflation – falling prices – has its economists petrified. It ought also to have its politicians in anguish, but whether it does is less clear.

Europe’s big-driver economy, Germany, as well as France and Italy, are on the edge. The German miracle is ailing, and Berlin may have been writing the wrong prescriptions for the rest of the 18 countries that share the euro as their currency. It has been aided in this effort by the International Monetary Fund.

That prescription, which often seems to harm the patient, as in Greece and Spain, is for austerity – which appears to work better on paper than in the real world. Germany worries about profligate borrowing throughout the European Union. But if the German economy is to escape recession, Chancellor Angela Merkel may have to borrow some money herself and inject it into infrastructure spending to keep Germany competitive and its workers on the job.

The European Central Bank (ECB) has been slow to institute a badly needed program of buying qualified bonds, known as quantitative easing. In the United States, the Federal Reserve, in a program that is now ending, has pumped more than $1 trillion into the economy and helped pull the economy out of recession. But ECB has been timid because it has no clear direction from the European political establishment — pointing up how cumbersome and directionless the European Union structure has become. It has a parliament, which has no power, and is increasingly attracting members who are actually opposed to the European project.

The European Commission has arguably too much power centered in the bureaucracy in Brussels, but no clear direction form its controller, the Council of Ministers. Trouble is the ministers can disagree and veto needed courses of action.

The economic crisis points up the ungovernable nature of Europe and its present institutions. If Washington is gridlocked, Europe is by structures that cannot deal with crisis and what often appear to reflect as many policies as there are members (28) in the EU.

But it is not just the economic wolf that is at Europe’s door. The Russian bear is there, too. Already there is an undeclared war raging in Ukraine.

At the Association of European Journalists' meeting here, a spokesman from the Ukrainian government, who asked not to be identified by name, expressed the sense in Ukraine that it has been betrayed by E.U. bungling.

“Europe sees Ukraine as its European neighborhood partner. But in Ukraine, the truth is different: Ukraine’s view is that Europe let us down. We are hurt, bleeding. We have been betrayed by a neighbor that, six months ago, we saw as a brotherly nation,” he said.

What was not said was that Europe may freeze this winter if the Putin regime -- a growling wolf -- wants to punish Ukraine and its neighbors. Europe is hopelessly dependent on Russian gas, which is used mostly for heating. Germany gets 40 percent of its gas from Russia, and Finland, Estonia, Latvia and Slovakia get 90 percent. Russian gas makes its way -- largely through Ukraine -- down into Italy, and even the United Kingdom has some small exposure.

If the gas goes off, Europe freezes and its economies go south in an avalanche. The most hopeful thing for Europe this winter is that with the world oil price falling, Russia’s own fragile economy may dictate that it keeps the gas flowing -- but it will force up the price where it can.

Washington, with a new Congress, might want to brace for Europe’s winter of crisis and disaster. If Europe goes into severe recession, can the U.S. economy escape major harm? The new Congress will be on a sharp learning curve.

Llewellyn King (lking@kingpublishing.com) is executive producer and host of “White House Chronicle” on PBS and a longtime international publisher, editor, writer and business consultant.