 Well, thank you very much, President Grundy, for the invitation to come here to the U.S. Institute of Peace and to address issues of the relationship between the United States and Vietnam, a bit about the relationship between the United States, Laos, and Cambodia, and certainly a special welcome to all of you who have journeyed from Southeast Asia to come and join this two-day conference. Thank you for being invested in a future with a positive, strong partnership between the United States and the countries of Southeast Asia. I do want to follow up on the President's recognition of the passing of Senior Lieutenant-General Wenqi Wen, former Vice Minister of Defense. Wenqi was an absolutely key architect in building the relationship between the United States and Vietnam, particularly over the remediation of dioxin. And I have with me a copy of a speech that Senator Lehi gave in March of 2021 in which he paid tribute. And I just thought I would read a couple of paragraphs to remind us of this key relationship and the contributions that he made. So these are the words of Senator Lehi, Mr. President, he's addressing the President of the Senate, Mr. President, I want to pay tribute to one of Vietnam's highest-ranking military officers, Senior Lieutenant-General Wenqi Wen. General Wen, who has served as Vietnam's Deputy Minister of National Defense since 2009, has played an indispensable role in the reconciliation between Vietnam and the United States. After more than four decades of military service, he is finally near in retirement from the Ministry of National Defense. The speech goes on for several pages, but I just thought I'd cite one other paragraph. General Wen has been my principal Vietnamese counterpart in working to address the legacy of dioxin contamination at the former U.S. military bases and the needs of Vietnamese with severe physical and cognitive disabilities resulting from exposure to dioxin. I consider him a friend and I'm grateful for the hospitality he has shown me, my wife Marcel, and other senators who have visited Vietnam. Each significant positive effort takes champions on both sides of the relationship, and certainly Lieutenant-General Wen was a champion and he will be missed. In April, I had the privilege of leading a congressional delegation to Vietnam with the express purpose of sustaining the war legacy programs that former Senator Patrick Leahy had worked for years to establish. His key staff member in this effort, Tim Reiser, is here and if Tim could stand for a minute, I'd just like to recognize him for all the decades now. He did this work in the context of being the clerk for the Appropriations Subcommittee on State and Foreign Operations, but I think he would have managed to accomplish this work no matter what official position he held and since Senator Leahy's retirement he's continued to really facilitate the connections between our nations. These programs mean a lot to me personally and I've thought about why they resonate so much and the story really begins when I'm just a little tight and my father and mechanic would come home and after dinner we would watch the evening news and on the news in the early mid-60s and then forward would be clips from the war in Vietnam and I have this memory of asking my mother about war, how long could a war last, this conflict and asking her if it could last more than a week, more than a month, more than a year and each time her affirming that yes it could last longer than that and it was hard for me as just a little guy to get my hands around a conflict that could endure with so much carnage for such a length of time. And then I started to realize that this was a war that in which young men were conscripted, drafted by the United States and sent to serve. I lived in a blue-collar community. In that community when people's draft number was called there wasn't a lot of discussion about being a conscientious objector or a lot of discussion about college deferment. I'm the first in my family to go to college, very few people I knew had gone to college and so the context was this might be something that I might be sent to that war. Well, that focuses the mind but as it turned out in June of 1973 the official authority for conscripting Americans ended. That was almost exactly a year before I graduated high school. So I wasn't drafted and I didn't face the choices that I might have faced about deferment or conscientious objection. But off I went to college with a strong interest in international affairs and immediately launched in some courses on international affairs and I learned a whole lot about the war. And I just came to believe that the entire enterprise was a terrible, tragic mistake. So many deaths in Vietnam where every family was touched, so many deaths in American families, so many injuries American soldiers were bringing home all for a severely flawed theory of international security. So when I learned about Senator Leahy's programs to heal the wounds of war it just like this is the right thing to do. I want to help sustain these programs as Senator Leahy retires. That's how I ended up leading a congressional delegation to Vietnam this last April. One of the Leahy war legacy programs is to clean up the remaining hotspots of docks in contamination from Agent Orange called such because the barrels had an orange stripe that went around them. The Agent Orange is a defoliant, it's cancer causing, it causes genetic defects, it's highly toxic and we sprayed incredible amounts across the landscape of Vietnam to make it easier to see the deployment of Vietnamese soldiers. The U.S. stacked thousands of these barrels at the Air Force bases and many of those barrels leaked resulting in deep contamination at Da Nang and Bien Hoa and the U.S. decontamination program that Lieutenant General Vinh helped to partner in tackled Da Nang Air Force base first and that had already been fully cleaned up by the time our delegation went in April. We built a giant oven, then excavated and baked incredible amounts of dirt to basically neutralize that docks and Bien Hoa Air Force base was next and while most of that work is still ahead of us, some tenure agenda ahead of us, a piece has been completely decontaminated and re-landscaped as the peace park. And at one end of the park is a bench, the Lehi Bench. Inscribed into that bench is a quote from Senator Lehi saying, we cannot change history but together we can build a better future. I think that's just a powerful, beautiful sentiment. That's what the war legacy programs are all about. We cannot change what came before but we can shape what lies ahead of us, former enemies working together to build a better future. Those war legacy programs operated really in two ways. One level is addressing the physical wounds of war. A second is building relationships through which we can partner on other projects. But let me address the components of that first level. The first is, as I mentioned, the cleaning up the docks and hotspots docks and again generates birth defects, causes cancer, the birth defects can be passed down through generations and America must remain engaged and clean up Bien Hoa Air Base. Completion of that project is estimated to take, well, about half a billion dollars and ten years. So we have to stay the course. Now when I went to college in my first year and my first international relations course, we saw a film about the United States involvement in Vietnam and those of us in the course felt it so powerfully, so personally that this was our generation's tragedy. Then four years later, I taught that course, I was a teaching assistant for that course and I took my students to that same movie and they saw it differently. They saw it as a previous generation's mistake and that kind of difference of four years span. Well, it's important that those of us who feel it personally, we're getting older, I'm 66 as General Vinh was, that we maintain this connection to our responsibilities on these warlike programs. We make sure that others who are younger than us understand the connection and the responsibility as well. We have now invested about $140 million in programs to assist individuals who are suffering disabilities triggered by dioxin. Those funds support programs for medical and rehabilitation services, prosthetic and orthotic devices, physical, occupational, speech therapy, training and support for caregivers, access to public transportation and promotion of disability rights and inclusion. These investments need to continue. Third, we're working to locate and clear unexploited ordinance. Since 1993, the U.S. government has assisted in the removal of hundreds of thousands of unexploded mines. I've seen different numbers ranging from 400,000 to 750,000. What a huge number of mines, and often cluster munition bomblets. But that number of hundreds of thousands, it's a drop in the bucket when you consider that an estimated 800,000 tons of unexploded ordinance remains scattered across Vietnam. And those cluster munitions, they can lay hidden for decades until a plow hits them or a child picks one up, it explodes and kills those or maims those who are nearby. This is really why I fiercely opposed the use of cluster munitions in the Ukrainian war this year. Since the 1970s, over 100,000 people have been hurt or killed by the delayed explosion of these munitions. So we have to continue to work on the cleanup, to fund the work of the cleanup. However difficult, however tedious it might be. Fourth, we have to continue to provide care and assistive technologies to those who have been injured by the explosions. And there is a fifth component to these war legacy programs. Vietnam has, for a substantial amount of time, helped identify the remains of American soldiers and return their remains back to the United States. And for that, we are deeply, deeply grateful. The United States now has a program in which it is assisting Vietnam in using the best DNA technology in the world to help locate and return the remains of Vietnamese martyrs. This program helps recover these wandering souls, as they are referred to, who have been lost for half a century after dying in battle and return them to their families. And while the war in Vietnam was incredibly public, we cannot forget that the United States also fought a secret war in Cambodia and Laos. In Cambodia, it's estimated that the United States dropped 26 million cluster bomblets. Since 1979, about 65,000 Cambodians have been hurt or killed by these moms. Today there are 25,000 Cambodians living with limb loss as a result of unexploded ordnance that exploded. It's the highest ratio per capita in the world. And Laos. Laos is estimated to be the most heavily bombed country in the world, bombed by the United States. It's estimated the U.S. dropped 270 million cluster bombs in Laos, where 10 times the amount dropped in Cambodia. And about a third of them failed to explode, and they're still hidden across the countryside. So the United States needs to do all it can to work with Laos and Cambodia in partnership to address the finding and removal of these munitions, just as we have in Vietnam. Earlier this week I met with the Ambassador from Laos, and we discussed ensuring that the United States and Laos continue to work together to find and remove these cluster munitions. So I mentioned that on the first level, these war legacy programs were about addressing the physical wounds of war. But on another level, they're about building a relationship, a relationship of cooperation, a planning, a partnership, of execution of those plans between our two nations, and that that partnership can be the foundation for working on many other issues, from building a stronger economic partnership, a thriving Vietnamese manufacturing economy, working on issues of the environment or issues of security. Now this cooperation was not inevitable. You know, the feelings in the course of war run deep, and we could have chosen on one side or the other, or both sides, to remain bitter enemies. But that is not the choice that we have made. We have chosen together to build a better future, and we have to keep investing in that choice, that choice of partnership for the future. The relationship between our two governments is growing. In addition to the war legacy programs, Vietnam has participated in a number of our exchange programs in which we sponsor individuals to come to the United States. In a previous capacity, I was head of the World Affairs Council of Oregon, and we hosted the International Visitors Leadership Program, and in that program we hosted any number of delegations from Vietnam. There are now more than 7,000 Vietnamese alumni of U.S. government-sponsored exchange programs. We had most recently a delegation from Vietnam in my home state of Oregon in March. And I invite all of you to come visit the most beautiful and wonderful state in the United States of America. This past December, I worked to accelerate the confirmation of a new director of the Peace Corps, Carol Spahn. We got it done just in time for her to travel to Vietnam in December at Christmas time to swear in the first ever group of Peace Corps volunteers. I think that makes it Vietnam, the 143rd country to partner in the Peace Corps. And to allow Peace Corps members to be in Vietnam, that is a significant symbol of growing trust in the relationship between our nations. I was really pleased to be able to meet those Peace Corps members while I was there. And prominent diplomatic visits, accelerating. Secretary Blinken visited Vietnam in April. I heard about his upcoming visit and mentioned it in some conversation with the press, and I was informed that it had not been officially announced yet. Word had pretty well spread, so it wasn't too bad of faux pas, but you never know when you're going to make a mistake when you're wearing a microphone. But I was so pleased that Secretary Blinken was going. And it helped pave the way for President Biden to visit this past Sunday, where he and General Secretary Trong upgraded the US-Vietnam partnership to a comprehensive, strategic partnership. And that is a tremendous goal point to accomplish. And so thank you to leadership of Vietnam and the United States for accomplishing that new relationship. And in the near future, Vietnamese Prime Minister Pham Minh Chin will be visiting the United States, so we will be walking him shortly. These visits, they underscore great strides that we have made together. Since the normalization of relations in 1995 and the potential for working together on issues related to economy, security, the environment, let me just highlight a few of the areas where we can continue to build our relationship. First, we can together work to build a prosperous, secure future across the Indo-Pacific. Strengthening the rules based international order, providing security for all nations and promoting shared prosperity. Working together through ASEAN, the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework, other multinational institutions and platforms to strengthen commerce, strengthen supply chains. We can work together. We can slow climate chaos. We can work together to accelerate our mutual transition to renewable energy. This is something that has to happen incredibly fast. We see the impacts in the United States. We see the impacts in Vietnam. These last nine years have been the hottest on record in the world. This last July 4th was the hottest day in the history of human occupation on our human presence on this planet. And as Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos move up the manufacturing value chain, more multinational corporations want to move production to countries with 100% renewable clean energy. Well, then building that clean energy infrastructure will be indispensable to realizing that vision. And I don't need to tell anyone here that Southeast Asia, in particular the Mekong Delta, is incredibly susceptible to the impacts of climate change from the warmer temperatures, rising sea levels, salt infiltration, challenging the fertility of soils, floods, more powerful storms, so forth. And speaking to the Mekong Delta, we can work together on some of the challenges like sustainable fisheries, countering chemical contamination, cleaning up plastic pollution, restoring habitats. I am proud to lead in partnership with Senator Sullivan. Alaska, a bipartisan resolution in the U.S. Senate, recognized the importance of the Mekong Delta to Southeast Asia and the role of the Mekong United States partnership for promoting prosperity. We know that our two nations will not always see eye-to-eye on every issue. We have different histories. We have different forms of government. But we can use the foundation that has come from the war legacy programs and the cooperation on these other programs. We can use that to have this sort of relationship where we can discuss those differences and work to resolve them. Together our countries can build a new future that is prosperous for all, that respects human rights, that addresses climate chaos, that protects natural resources. And I was very, very struck while sitting on the Lehi bench at the Peace Park about a symbol of our countries going forward together. If you sit on that bench and you stare across the park, you will see at the other end that there are two fighter planes. But those fighter planes are not facing each other in confrontation. Instead, they are mounted parallel to each other, side-by-side with each other, representing our partnership going forward together in the same direction. One plane, Vietnamese, one plane, an American fighter, side-by-side, flying into the future together. That was a beautiful representation to me because suddenly those fighters in the Peace Park are not about war, they're about partnership. Earlier this year, Vietnamese Prime Minister Pham Minh Chin said, between negotiation and confrontation, we choose negotiation. Between dialogue and conflict, we choose dialogue. And between peace and war, we choose peace. Negotiation, dialogue, peace. Failing to make those choices in the past brought war and suffering. But choosing them now is a path to a far better future. Thank you. Mr. Senator, thank you for your leadership and thank you for your comments this morning. With your permission, we'd like to pick up on just a few of the aspects of your discussion. The first, you touched on the fact that you have sponsored with someone from the other side of the aisle, with a Republican senator. Important legislation then looks at the Mekong Delta. How have you seen both Democratic leaders and Republican leaders react to the elevation of our relationship with Vietnam into a comprehensive strategic partnership? The reaction has been extremely positive. There is a sense that we share mutually beneficial opportunities. And as I think about, for example, right now, what I saw in Vietnam was a rapidly expanding first world economy. And as I went from meeting to meeting, a number of people pointed out that the goal of the country is to be developed on a par with other southeast Asian economies like South Korea or Taiwan. By the year 2040, that's not very far away. To do that requires an incredibly fast investment by the world to produce parts for the international supply chain. And so Vietnam has a strong interest in the economic partnership with the United States of America. And we have a strong interest. And many of our companies that have been operating primarily in China are looking to move and to move to part of its driven by the Chinese treatment of the Uyghur community and a lot of the production that is done with slave labor wanting to move to an alternative. And so this is happening incredibly fast. And I mean, I was just stunned by the level of development that I saw, modern infrastructure, modern light rail being built, so on and so forth, at a pace that I was a little jealous, actually, I could bring some of that to Oregon. And so I think the reaction has been that that's very positive, that we have some mutual security interests too in terms of the dynamics of Southeast Asia. And so that there's a lot of opportunity here. Senator, you've talked about the beginning of this new phase of our relationship, our friendship, through the elevation of our formal state-to-state relations into this comprehensive strategic partnership. If this is the beginning, it suggests that there will be ups and there will be downs as we go forward. What do you think some of the highlights are going to be and we're very interested in your reflections on what you think some of the obstacles are, some of the things that we're together as Vietnam and the United States are going to have to face and find solutions for? Yes, so, well, I've mentioned a number of the ups. I think the Warlegsy programs, not only were the right moral thing to do, but they have been so helpful to so many people and they have provided a foundation for dialogue that has led to connections. And for example, the connection between Senator Lehi and his team member Tim Reeser and Vietnamese leaders, those friendships, and they were friendships built over time, are very meaningful in working on other issues. I guess I really feel like in addition to the substance of the programs, it's the relationships that bode well for the future. In terms of the challenges, every issue is complex. Anything easy has already been done, so therefore everything you're seeking to do is challenging by definition. And so whether it's in the economic sphere or in the security sphere, nothing is simple. And so we'll have to iron those out. Perhaps the most significant issue we'll have to wrestle with is that our two nations carry often a different approach to the issue of citizen speech and commentary. And so this issue of freedom of speech and the ability of citizens to weigh in on issues and challenges and not face retribution for that is something our two nations will definitely have a lot of conversations about and wrestle with. Senator, you described in a very compelling way why this issue has meant so much to you personally. And we think of the extraordinary role that fellow senators, Senator Lehi, Senator McCain, and Senator Kerry have played in shaping, committing to propelling this extraordinary 50-year reconciliation process. Where do you want to see that process go next? So those individuals, Senator Kerry, Senator McCain, and certainly Senator Lehi, they did invest enormous effort to make this connection. And you have both Senator McCain and Senator John Kerry having been in the Vietnam War, carrying that connection. Of course, Senator McCain having been imprisoned. And emotionally, it's so powerful to see those who were directly involved with the war behind them and build friendships and connections and call for us to be on a different path. Those of us who are coming after, we did not serve in the Vietnam War. I feel the connection by having kind of barely missed the war and having studied it carefully and had strong feelings about it. But that connection will be less over time for those who are more separated, as my students were, who were only four years behind me in college. So we have to carry this connection forward, and it will change a shape. But let's make sure that we keep the foundation in place so we keep investing and completing vision of the war legacy programs. Let's have more senators visit Vietnam and visit Cambodia and Laos. Laos, by the way, is going to be hosting ASEAN for this coming year. So it's a very good moment of reason for people to say, let's make that trip. The senator who went with me, Senator Chris Van Hollen, is the chair of the subcommittee on Southeast Asia of the Foreign Relations Committee, which I also serve on. So he's going to be a powerful partner in this. Senator Coons, who chairs the appropriation or the spending committee that Senator Leahy led and that Tim Reiser served as the clerk for, he being Chris Coons, Senator Coons, is keenly interested in supporting programs. So let's keep building the conversation, make sure we complete that vision, but then there'll be so many more newer conversations about security, about the economy, about the environment. And so I just look forward to bringing in senators who are concerned about or interested in that whole set. And then, Senator, if you allow a final question. The reconciliation process between Vietnam and the United States is, in fact, the longest reconciliation process in the entire modern period. It's lasted 50 years and has gone from milestone to milestone and now from strength to strength. When we look at other conflicts around the world, what would be the advice that you would give leaders in countries that are war, about how to end them and how to reconcile? Well, that's a pretty powerful question, a broad question. But let me start by just recognizing that time period. So I mentioned that 1973, June of 1973 is when the U.S. ended the induction process of folks whose draft number had come up. Well, here we are, June of 2023 is exactly 50 years. So it is half a century process of work, of investment in relationships and programs. The relationship that was most talked about as I was growing up was reconciliation with Germany from World War II and how the Marshall Plan had been a key part of investing in a prosperous Germany and building a foundation for other relationships. So we have that example. We have the Vietnamese example. Here's what we know. When countries have a conflict, leaders often lead a conversation in which they devalue the humanity of the opponent. And that was certainly true in our conflict in World War II and our conflict in Vietnam because it's easier to be at war in which you are looking down the scope of a rifle or dropping, pushing a button to drop a bomb if you've dehumanized the opponent. But we know that that dehumanization is false. We know that the same kind of set of human values exist and reverberate in every culture. And so we have to resist that type of leadership that calls out for dehumanizing others. And we have to recognize for any given conflict that if big conflicts of the past could be ended, and bridges created that were probably almost impossible to imagine when in the conflict or shortly after the conflict, then we know that it can be done in the existing situations. This entire United States Institute of Peace facilitates dialogue, facilitates cooperation in an effort to help kind of build pathways to end conflicts or heal wounds or build relationships. And so let me just end by saying that work is absolutely critical. My first experience on Capitol Hill was an intern for Senator Hatfield. And Senator Hatfield had been one of the first members of the Navy into Hiroshima after the dropping of the atom bomb. And he became a lifelong advocate for diminishing the threat of nuclear weapons. And he and Senator Ted Kennedy, a Republican and a Democrat, worked together in the nuclear freeze movement. They then planted together a tree that is extinct in North America for millions of years. It happens to be the Oregon State fossil. And this tree was found still growing in China. And it's referred now to as a dawn redwood. Well, you will find that tree growing in the path if you walk from my office across the open grounds to the Senate chamber. I pass it multiple times every day. And I have put a plaque on it talking about the peace tree. Well, the connection here is that if you have individuals who are dedicated to building relationships, to building a vision of peace, who are partnering across the aisle, we can build a much better future. Now that peace tree is now the tallest tree on the Capitol grounds. It was not when I was elected 15 years ago. And I wrote up in a pamphlet that when the peace tree became the tallest tree on the grounds, perhaps we'd see a new era of peace in the world. Well, I'm not sure that that vision has been accomplished. But let's rededicate ourselves in the context of our relationship with former enemies that are now partners. Let's rededicate ourselves to building on the work, the work that this U.S. Institute of Peace has involved in relationships and partnerships to build toward a more prosperous future. Resolve our differences through dialogue to choose dialogue, as the Prime Minister said, to choose partnership and cooperation rather than war. Mr. Senator, thank you. I hope everyone joins me in thanking the Senator. Absolutely. Absolutely. Thank you.