Defense Secretary Mark Esper and his Vietnamese counterpart this week traded items pertaining to one another’s soldiers missing from the Vietnam War. The trade occurred during Esper’s Nov. 19-21 visit to Vietnam.
As part of the visit, Esper toured the Hoa Lo “Hanoi Hilton,” one of 13 Vietnamese prisons where Americans were held captive during the war. During the tour, Defense Minister General Ngo Xuan Lich gave Esper identification cards belonging to several missing Americans. In return, Esper gave the Vietnamese a map and a narrative of where the U.S. military believes a dozen or so of their soldiers may be buried.
“We often talk about it in the United States, accounting for our own missing in action, and tend to forget they have a lot of their own missing in action,” Esper later told reporters.
“It was a chance for me to honor our POW’s who spent years there in some very tough conditions,” Esper said. “I was not aware of how much the Vietnamese had suffered at the hands of the French for many decades before that … It helps enrich your understanding of the history of Vietnam and how they came about this all.”
Esper noted that he has some ties to Vietnam, in that he worked on the staff of Sen. John McCain, who was a prisoner of war in the Hanoi Hilton, and his uncle, who “was pretty well-known in the country.”
George Esper was a correspondent for the Associated Press, who spent 10 years covering the Vietnam War and the subsequent fall of Saigon. Esper senior died in 2012 at the age of 79.
Esper doesn’t necessarily consider Vietnam an ally, but on his just-concluded visit to the communist country, he noted that increasingly U.S. and Vietnamese interests align, especially when it comes to containing China.
“They are very in line with where we are in terms of enforcing international rules-based order, you know, talking about sovereignty and all,” Esper told reporters in Hanoi as he prepared to board his plane to return to Washington.
“We share — clearly not all the same things — but many of the same things in terms of the practicality of dealing in the neighborhood that’s getting tougher and tougher.”
In a speech to students at Hanoi’s Diplomatic Academy of Vietnam, Esper accused China of bullying Vietnam and other smaller countries in the region.
“China’s unilateral efforts to assert illegitimate maritime claims threaten other nations’ access to vital natural resources, undermine the stability of regional energy markets, and increase the risk of conflict,” Esper said in his remarks.
On his visit this week, Esper announced that the U.S. has decided to give Vietnam a second Coast Guard cutter so it can step up patrols in disputed parts of the South China Sea.
Like many who visit Vietnam, Esper noted the warmth the Vietnamese show to their former foes.
“It’s real, and it’s genuine, and I just think it was reflected in how graciously they hosted our delegation,” Esper told reporters traveling with him. “It’s surprising. It’s 25 years since we’ve re-established diplomatic relations. I don’t sense they have any hangups about what happened during the Vietnam War.”
