John McCain - the man who contributed to the normalization of Vietnam-US relations
US Senator John McCain passed away on August 25 at the age of 81. He served as an Arizona Senator for more than 30 years and made many important contributions to the normalization of relations between Vietnam and the US.
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| In 2013, Senator John McCain (center) guided and introduced the US Senate building to Senior Lieutenant General Do Ba Ty (right), Deputy Minister of National Defense of Vietnam. Photo: Reuters |
According toSenator John McCain's office said he passed away on the afternoon of August 25 (US time) with his wife and family by his side after 60 years of serving the United States.
Earlier, in an announcement on August 24, Senator John McCain’s family said that he had decided to discontinue medical treatment for his brain cancer. Senator McCain, 81, discovered he had cancer last July and was absent from the US Congress in 2018. In April 2018, he also had surgery for enteritis.
He ran unsuccessfully for the Republican presidential nomination in 2000 and again in 2008. He served as chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee and the US defense policy bill was named after him.
From a prisoner of war during the Vietnam War, US Navy pilot John McCain became one of the strongest promoters of normalizing US-Vietnam relations. In terms of relations between the two governments, after becoming a veteran politician, McCain always sought to promote normalization of relations with Vietnam. He was one of the two most active figures (along with Senator and former US Secretary of State John Kerry) urging and lobbying the US administrations at that time to normalize diplomatic relations with Vietnam.
To create the best conditions for this process, he urged both sides to initiate humanitarian issues such as clearing unexploded ordnance left over from the war, searching for missing persons in action, supporting people with disabilities due to war consequences, detoxifying dioxin-contaminated areas, and enforcing the law, etc.
Thanks to McCain's efforts and advocacy, along with the support of Senator John Kerry in the Committee and President Bill Clinton (who had a strategic vision for Vietnam), both major parties that dominate American politics (Democrats and Republicans) have gradually supported the normalization of diplomatic relations with Vietnam.
As a result, in 1994, the US Senate passed a resolution sponsored by John Kerry and John McCain, calling for an end to the economic embargo against Vietnam, paving the way for the normalization of relations between the two countries a year later./.