The Trump administration has told its senior diplomats in Vietnam not to take part in events marking the 50th anniversary of the end of the war.
Four U.S. officials who insisted on anonymity to describe sensitive diplomatic decision-making said that Washington had recently directed senior diplomats — including Marc Knapper, the U.S. ambassador to Vietnam — to stay away from activities tied to the anniversary on April 30.
That includes a hotel reception on April 29 with senior government leaders and an elaborate parade the next day — gatherings hosted by Vietnam in Ho Chi Minh City, also known as Saigon, where the war ended with South Vietnam’s surrender.
Veterans returning to Vietnam have also been told they’re on their own, for public discussions they organize on war and reconciliation, and anniversary events. For many, it amounts to a sudden reversal after months of anticipation.
“I really don’t understand it,” said John Terzano, a founder of the Vietnam Veterans of America Foundation who served two tours in Vietnam and has attended anniversary events for decades. “As a person who has dedicated his life to reconciliation and marveled at how it’s grown over the last 20 years or so, this is really a missed opportunity.”
“It really doesn’t require anything of the United States to just stand there,” Mr. Terzano added, in an interview after landing in Hanoi. “This is all ceremonial stuff — that’s what makes it sound crazy and disappointing.”
State Department and embassy officials did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
A half-dozen people with knowledge of the directive said it was not clear where it originated or why it had been issued.
April 30 is the 100th day of Mr. Trump’s second term. Some U.S. officials speculated that a Trump appointee or a State Department leader feared drawing attention away from that milestone with events that might highlight America’s defeat in a war that Mr. Trump managed to avoid.
In 1968, a year when 296,406 Americans were drafted into military service, Mr. Trump received a diagnosis of bone spurs in his heels that led to a medical exemption.
Regardless of the reasoning for Washington’s retreat from the 50th-anniversary events, it adds another blow to decades of painstaking diplomacy by Republican and Democratic administrations, which had sought to both heal the war’s wounds and build a strategic partnership for countering China.
Mr. Trump had already frozen U.S.A.I.D. money allocated for addressing the legacy of the war. Even after officials restored some of it, many programs — for finding missing soldiers and demining old battlefields, for example — are still struggling with layoffs and uncertainty.
The foundation of bilateral relations, built by veterans from both sides, has essentially been weakened.
It was their emotional and physical hard work, with visits and civil society partnerships in Vietnam, that had persuaded former enemy governments to work through complicated issues like unexploded ordnance, soldiers missing in action and the toxic legacy of Agent Orange and other American herbicides.
The momentum of postwar bonding led in 2023 to a new level of strategic partnership between the two nations. And the work had been on track to expand, until Mr. Trump’s approach to the world, pugilistic and allergic to the acknowledgment of errors, strained relations.
“It’s taken decades to build the current level of mutual trust and cooperation between the United States and Vietnam,” said George Black, the author of “The Long Reckoning,” a study of U.S.-Vietnam relations after the war. “And the whole process has been underpinned by our willingness to deal with the worst humanitarian legacies.”
Mr. Knapper, the son of a Vietnam veteran who was sworn in as the U.S. ambassador in 2022, had embraced his diplomatic mission. As of a few weeks ago, he had been expected to attend the main anniversary events on April 29 and 30 alongside delegations from other countries, including Australia and the Netherlands.
He has often led ceremonies in which the United States gave artifacts from the war back to Vietnamese military families, and repatriated the remains of what were believed to be missing Americans.
In an essay for this month’s Foreign Service Journal, he wrote about traveling to Vietnam with his father and son in 2004, describing the trip as “a clear reminder of the sacrifices on both sides and the enduring importance of reconciliation.”
“As ambassador,” he added, “I believe that to truly strengthen our ties, we must engage deeply and directly with the people and leaders of Vietnam.”
With that goal in mind, before Mr. Trump took office, the two countries had planned to show off their hard-earned bond in a new exhibit at the War Remnants Museum in Ho Chi Minh City.
The museum, Vietnam’s most visited cultural institution, chronicles American war atrocities. Under the plan, one of its wings was to be transformed: Design blueprints aimed for a lively introduction to the activists and officials who helped forge a model of postwar recovery.
Organizers had hoped the ambitious exhibit would open this month, or at least by July 11, the 30th anniversary of the restoration of American diplomatic relations with Vietnam.
But it’s now in limbo. The project was funded by U.S.A.I.D., while the United States Institute of Peace managed the details. The Trump administration has dismantled both agencies.
“Reconciliation is in our economic, geopolitical and moral interest,” said Andrew Wells-Dang, a senior program officer at the peace institute who oversaw the museum project until he was fired a few weeks ago.
“U.S. government and nongovernmental partners alike,” he added, “are reeling from the effects of the new administration’s actions, leaving our Vietnamese colleagues distraught and confused.”
Vietnamese officials did not respond to requests for comment about the anniversary. But they have repeatedly nudged the United States toward responsibility for the war’s lingering impact, with some success. After high-level discussions, the Defense Department recently restored money it had set aside for war legacy issues, even though its administrative partner, U.S.A.I.D., is gone.
As a result, the cleanup process for contamination from Agent Orange at the Bien Hoa air base has been revived, at least for this year.
Mr. Trump’s tariffs, however, have added another layer of vexation. With a rate set at 46 percent for Vietnam — above nearly every other country — some U.S. officials thought Vietnam might disinvite diplomats to the anniversary events.
That did not happen. The tariffs are now paused, and the two countries are locked in negotiations, with Vietnam seeking a reprieve and U.S. officials pushing Hanoi to decouple from China.
Vietnam has often made clear that it would like to find room for its fierce independence and pursuit of prosperity.
The Chinese leader, Xi Jinping, recently visited Hanoi. The anniversary events could have provided a way for the United States and Vietnam to show that, despite a brutal war, they are still close strategic partners.
Instead, Vietnam is left to wonder how much it will now be asked to endure from its former adversary.
Mr. Terzano said that in a proud nation that cares deeply about symbolism, the U.S. decision to avoid the events looks “petty and nonsensical.”
He argued that the absence would strengthen the world’s gathering storm of doubt about America.
“You take a look at the chaos that has transpired,” he said. “Nations around the globe are all questioning: ‘Where is the U.S.? What does it mean?’”
Damien Cave leads The Times’s new bureau in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, covering shifts in power across Asia and the wider world.
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