A Conversation with Ambassador Ted Osius Kicks off Alumni Speaker Series

During the first year of his first tour as a U.S. diplomat in Vietnam, Ted Osius experienced the power of reconciliation and forgiveness. The United States had only recently reestablished diplomatic relations with the country, some 20 years after the Vietnam war ended. On a 16-day, 1,200-mile bike trip from Hanoi to Saigon, Osius and his biking partners made a stop in what used to be the demilitarized zone separating North and South Vietnam. There, taking advantage of the Vietnamese language skills he learned before he arrived, he struck up a conversation with an older Vietnamese woman.

The woman told him about the people in her village—and in her own family—who had died in American bombing raids during the war. Feeling quite uneasy, Osius confessed to the woman that he was, in fact, an American and worked at the U.S. embassy. Her response surprised him. He recalled: “She looked at me, and she said, ‘Today, you and I are brother and sister. You are my little brother.’ I thought this was revealing of the way the Vietnamese were approaching our new relationship. It was with a spirit of forgiveness, a willingness to look forward. And I found this everywhere [in the country], back in the mid-90s and again as ambassador.”

Osius shared this experience during a discussion at Johns Hopkins SAIS on October 3, 2022. His appearance was the first event of the school’s newly launched Alumni Speaker Series, which features a diverse array of distinguished alumni who are international affairs practitioners, business leaders, and government officials for insightful perspectives and thought-provoking discussions on leadership and relevant topics that impact SAIS focus areas.

While the Vietnamese showed a remarkable willingness to let bygones be bygones and begin a new chapter with the United States, Osius noted that American leadership was also a factor in what he described as “the 25-year arc of reconciliation.” He wrote a book about this: Nothing Is Impossible: America’s Reconciliation with Vietnam. Published in October 2021, the book traces how this rapprochement was championed on the U.S. side by such leaders as late Senator John McCain (who spent more than five years as a prisoner of war in Vietnam), Senator John Kerry (a former secretary of state and Vietnam veteran), and Ambassador Pete Peterson (who was a prisoner of war for over six years and later became the first U.S. ambassador to postwar Vietnam).

“There were a phenomenal number of people who made brave choices to turn two enemies into friends, and I thought those stories needed to be told,” Osius said. “Diplomacy ends up being really about people. There are big and personal interests, power matters, money matters, but I also think relationships matter. So, the stories I tell [in the book] tend to be about people.”

SAIS students and other audience members also had a chance to ask questions. In response to one question, Osius acknowledged that there are people for whom reconciliation is not personally possible, including among the older generation of Vietnamese who fought on the side that lost the war. “They suffered too much for it to be possible, and I respect that,” he said, then added: “I believe that it’s in the best interest of the United and of Vietnam to find ways to bring about reconciliation.”

Osius is now president and CEO of the US-ASEAN Business Council. He was a diplomat for 30 years, most of which he spent in various assignments in Asia, eventually serving as U.S. ambassador to Vietnam from 2014 to 2017. Among his other assignments were deputy chief of mission in Jakarta, Indonesia, and political minister-counselor in New Delhi, India. Osius also served as deputy director of the Office of Korean Affairs at the State Department, regional environment officer for Southeast Asia and the Pacific, and senior advisor on Asia and trade to Vice President Al Gore.