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United States President Barack Obama announced the end of the five-decade-long arms embargo on Vietnam Monday while on his first visit to the communist nation. “The U.S. is fully lifting the ban on the sale of military equipment,” he said at a press conference.
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The ban has been in place since communist forces defeated the U.S. Armed Forces and sacked Saigon, which is now named Ho Chi Minh City, in 1975. The war in Vietnam lasted nearly 20 years, and saw the U.S. use chemical weapons and widespread bombing of civilian areas in neighboring, non-combatant Cambodia and Laos.
Over 3.6 million people were killed, over 5 million were injured, and it left close to 900,000 children orphaned while turning 200,000 women into prostitutes, apart from spraying millions of hectares with highly toxic pesticides that affected over 4 million people. The U.S. intervention also left a million women widowed and 11 million people displaced.
Former U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger has often been accused of war crimes for his role in planning and ordering these maneuvers.
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However, the Vietnamese people dealt the U.S. its first military defeat when the U.S. was forced to flee the country, and Vietnam was able to reunite its devastated country and begin rebuilding.
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"Vietnam very much appreciates the U.S. decision to completely lift the ban on lethal weapon sales to Vietnam, which is clear proof that both countries have completely normalized relation," Quang said through an interpreter at a joint news conference with U.S. President Barack Obama.
At the press conference, reporters asked whether the move to arm Vietnam was part of Washington's strategy to contain China's assertive moves towards the rest of Asia. Beijing has laid claim to roughly 80 percent of the South China Sea, which has irked Vietnam and neighbors.
"The decision to lift the ban was not based on China or any other considerations. It was based on our desire to complete what has been a lengthy process of moving towards normalization with Vietnam," Obama replied.
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