PANO – When the PAN’s reporters sent an email to ask Robert Brigham for an interview on his book “Argument Without End: In Search of Answers to the Vietnam Tragedy”, the Professor at Vassar University of the US immediately responds to the question of how they could have his private email address.

Having been told that former Vietnamese Ambassador to Panama and Costa Rica Hoang Cong Thuy, who also had been the Secretary General of the Vietnam-US Friendship Association for years had provided his email address, Prof. Robert Brigham accepted the an interview.

Prof. Robert Brigham, a well-known American historian, has an exceptional love to Vietnam with about fifty visits to the S-shaped country since 1980 as a member of the US-Indochina Reconciliation Project. Also since then, he has started lecturing and writing on the Vietnam War. His visits to Vietnam were not only to do research projects but also to meet his old friends.

Ambassador Hoang Cong Thuy and Prof. Robert Brigham have been close friends for about 20 years, the same as the “age” of the Vietnam-US relationship. They first met in 1995, when Vietnam and the US normalized their diplomatic ties, at an international workshop under the Oral History Project in Hanoi.

Ambassador Hoang Cong Thuy and Prof. Robert Brigham and his wife in a visit to Vietnam in 2014

It is a famous event at this time as it could draw the participation of ex-agents of the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) – the predecessor of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), and war veterans who had joined the Viet Minh (League for Independence of Vietnam) during the resistance War against French colonialists to celebrate the 50th foundation anniversary of the Vietnam-America Friendship Association (VAFA), now the Vietnam-US Association.

During his visits to Vietnam, Prof. Robert Brigham always found some free time to meet again Ambassador Hoang Cong Thuy and used to invite him to join a project related to Vietnam or just study some historical stories.

Ambassador Hoang Cong Thuy shared not many people knew that the US historian’s father is still missing in action during the Vietnam War, in spite of Vietnam’s great efforts in the search of the US servicemen missing during the war. Despite this fact, Professor Robert Brigham has always admired Vietnam, its history and people. That is the reason why he agreed to write the book “Argument Without End: In Search of Answers to the Vietnam Tragedy”, together with former US Secretary of Defence McNamara-the “architect” of the Vietnam War.

It was a surprise to Prof. Robert Brigham when he received an invitation by McNamara to join him and James Blight from the Brown University to write a book on Vietnam. Of course, Robert Brigham immediately accepted because it was a good chance for him to study more about Vietnam in general and the Vietnam War in particular.

The basic premise of "Argument Without End" was that there were missed opportunities to end the war earlier without any of the parties surrendering their basic geo-political objectives.

In his another book published earlier, McNamara held that the US military involvement in the Vietnam War was a tragedy. However, Prof. Robert Brigham was sure McNamara believed that there had been much to learn about negotiations, and how to get out of the spiral of escalation from the Vietnam War.

For Robert Brigham further said McNamara was one of the most curious policy makers he had ever met, and the former US Secretary of Defence really believed that people could learn lessons from the past and he wished the Vietnam War would provide something useful to their larger understandings of conflicts and negotiations.

To this day in the US, the phrase “the Vietnam War” has been considered a “scar” with smoldering pain that people do not want to touch. Robert Brigham admitted that the war remains the watershed event for many US middle-aged people like him. It was the conflict which all other US foreign policies should use to compare with and will always have a dominate role in US decision making.
Realizing that the Vietnam War is a mistake, Robert Brigham has been making great effort to contribute to the Vietnam-US relationship normalization process. He usually holds training courses on Vietnamese language and culture for Americans and Vietnamese American youths as well as organized tours to Vietnam for the Americans to help them know more about Vietnam and to promote the bilateral relations between the two peoples.

In April, when Vietnam was holding an array of activities to celebrate the 40th anniversary of South Liberation and National Reunification (April 30th), many American war veterans returned to the country – where they had participated in battles during the war. Some of them at first were afraid of the come-back but the hospitality of Vietnamese people left strong impression on them.

Ambassador Hoang Cong Thuy told that at a workshop on the reconciliation between the two countries in Alaska, an American veteran had questioned him why Vietnamese people have an immensely kind and generous heart like that.

Thuy immediately explained that as for Vietnamese conception, hostility could never stop hostility but love and compassion could do. Besides, Vietnam had experienced many wars for the national independence. If Vietnamese people kept hostile to their former invaders, they would never have friends and partners. For these reasons, Vietnam and the US should shut down the past and look towards the future.

The final victory of the Vietnamese people and soldiers on April 30th 1975 marked the end of the fierce war which had claimed lives of about three millions Vietnamese people and over 58,000 Americans. Forty years after the peace restoration in Vietnam, the US has been consolidating its comprehensive relations with Vietnam. Last year, Washington partially lifted a prolonged ban on lethal weapon sales to Hanoi. Besides, Vietnam is one of 12 countries participating in the progress of negotiations on the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), headed by the US.

The presence of American veterans in Vietnam as well as warm reception to them by Vietnamese people signaled the developing relations between the two countries, especially since the normalization of bilateral relationship in 1995. Actually, the Vietnam War is certainly the story of the past.

However, in order to enjoy these fruits today, many people, including Ambassador Hoang Cong Thuy, Prof. Robert Brigham, US Army’s Lieutenant Colonel Julian Tran, Senior Colonels Dao Xuan Kinh and Nguyen Huu Luong from the Vietnam People’s Army, and historian Marci Reaven and so many others from both sides have been exerting every effort to heal the pain of the war and to turn hostility into friendship.

Their efforts serve as a bridge connecting between the past and the present, and open a bright future of the Vietnam-US relations.

Robert Brigham concluded his email by saying that he was very happy to see that Vietnam and the US enjoy mutual respect and friendship today. He believed that this relationship would further develop as the two countries have changed from trade partnership into security partnership. This signals a firm foundation for the development of the bilateral relationship.

Reported by Ngoc Ha - Lam Toan

Translated by Van Hieu

Part I: War is only the journey of the past

Part II: Journey of healing