The Clinton Administration has left to its successor the task of shepherding the agreement through Congress but, along with most experts, is voicing optimism about passage. However, analogous to the Congressional debate over Permanent Normal Trade Relations with China, there will be opposition and efforts to impose legislative conditions by some Vietnamese-American, environmental, labor and human rights groups. Should their efforts succeed, that could require a new round of bilateral negotiations and further delay.

Thus the challenge now is for American businesses, NGOs and universities with experience in Vietnam to make common and effective cause on behalf of quick passage when the new Administration and Congress take office. However, as Andrew Wells-Dang argues persuasively (page 18), a trade agreement simply removes the last prejudicial war-generated measure against Vietnam. The US has barely begun to address its responsibility for the long-term impact of land mines, unexploded ordnance and Agent Orange.

The proposed visit of President Clinton to Vietnam in mid-November will be a fitting symbolic climax to the normalization process, one of his Administration’s greatest (and by no means preordained) successes. His legacy will be further strengthened if during that time he announces a major new scholarship program, as advocated by leading US educators.

Under discussion is the allocation to educational exchange of $7.5 to $9 million Vietnam annually transfers to the US. Hanoi agreed several years ago to repay $150 million in wartime loans made to its adversaries in Saigon as a prerequisite for international financial normalization. At the time, placing this obligation on Vietnam’s seemed historically questionable and morally bizarre.

Reprogramming the debt payments into scholarships would be consistent with Vietnam’s own sense of priority for human capital development. The country has already committed to use its own budget to send 400 students abroad for graduate and professional training. If this scholarship program is created, Vietnam will still be meeting its international fiscal obligations and the funds will still enter the US economy in the form of payments for tuition and fees, meals and housing, and transport on US air carriers.

The long term value to both countries is incalculable of such a substantial educational program which might be justly remembered as the “Clinton Scholarships”. Even wider benefit would accrue if the US and Vietnam agreed to make an appropriate percentage of the scholarships available to students from Cambodia and Laos. Both countries were “sideshows” to the American war in Vietnam, but bear as deep scars and have even greater foreign study needs than the locus of the “main event”.

—John McAuliff