U.S. Ambassador to Vietnam Marc Knapper shared his insights on how Vietnam and the U.S.’s diplomatic elevation in 2023 will open up opportunities for both countries in the years to come.

Ambassador Marc Knapper:

“It has been a spectacular year for the U.S.–Vietnam relationship. Starting off in the beginning of the year, we were very much looking forward to celebrating the 10-year anniversary of our comprehensive partnership, of course with the hope that we would be able to upgrade our relationship to the next level over the course of the year. We had so many visitors from Washington, with a quarter of the U.S. cabinet officials, including Secretary of State Antony Blinken, Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack, and USAID Administrator Samatha Power. Besides, we welcomed several high-level congressional delegations, and aircraft carrier Ronald Reagan over the summer. I think all of these visits are significant, which really did reflect the importance with which Washington looks at Vietnam, and the importance with which Washington evaluates the U.S.-Vietnam relationship.

But of course, the big news of the year was President Joe Biden’s visit and then the double upgrade from Comprehensive Partnership to Comprehensive Strategic Partnership. And this was really significant, I think for two reasons. One, it was a reflection of where the U.S. and Vietnam, frankly, already were, you know, our partnership was already comprehensive already strategic. When you look at the activities and the efforts the U.S. and Vietnam make together in so many different areas, whether it’s health cooperation, energy cooperation, or security cooperation, you’ve already known these are fundamental sort of strategic issues in which Vietnam and the US plan together and work together and cooperate together. So really, the upgrade, I think, was significant in that it was a very public acknowledgement of how far our relationship had come in the 28 years of normalisation but it is also significant in what it said about our hopes for the future.

[…]

It was a very public statement that our two countries’ futures are now inextricably linked to the fact that the success of the U.S. is Vietnam’s success, and Vietnam’s success will be the U.S.’ success, whether it’s in terms of promoting prosperity, promoting security, promoting the health of our peoples. Right now, the U.S. and Vietnam are partners whose paths are aligned and whose paths going forward are shared between our two peoples or two countries. I think we saw for example, the pledges the U.S. made to work with Vietnam on semiconductors, and help create a high-tech, innovation-led economy were extremely significant because it’s all about promoting U.S. high-tech investment.”