OFFICIAL 2025 04 17
A celebration of Peace in Vietnam, 50 years after the end of war
It has been 50 years since the victory for peace in Vietnam on April 30, 1975. As Vietnamese people asserted their self-determination against massive and prolonged attack, U.S. people from many backgrounds and localities countered the initial domestic support for U.S. aggression, and made monumental efforts to find a just and humane people’s resolution to this war. In 2025, peoples in the U.S. and Vietnam deserve to look back with pride and celebrate that both peoples have made peace and built up a friendship.
As the Trump MAGA regime is re-asserting a prerogative of big powers to boss small countries around, it’s particularly urgent that we the peoples in the U.S. recognize and publicize Vietnam’s achievements for human well-being, and help block any interference or obstacles that the U.S. regime may put up. For us in the U.S. contending with a neo-fascist regime at home, the victorious fight of the Vietnamese people against great odds also offers powerful inspiration. From its forward-thinking environmental approaches to the protection of the rights of all workers (earning a “sustainable” designation for many products) to a people’s democratic process and an economy built around everyone’s needs, the social achievements in Vietnam offer a version of what is possible.
Renewed Challenges for Vietnam and All Supporters of Peace
The Trump administration is deliberately undermining the progress toward mutually beneficial, expanded trade relationships that had been underway between the U.S. and Vietnam in recent years. Instead, Trump asserts unilateral U.S. dominance via such policies as the punitive 46% tariffs on goods produced in Vietnam. As a small country dealing with the big powers, Vietnam’s has deftly maneuvered to negotiate non-hostile relations with both the U.S. and China, managing the historical tensions with each. Now, we can anticipate that as the U.S. administration escalates aggression toward China, it will try to pressure Vietnam toward participation in anti-Chinese hostilities.
Growing Movements for Peace and Justice
Over the decades, a movement spearheaded by U.S. Vietnam veterans has been deepening people to people relations and pressuring the U.S. government to recognize responsibility and offer reparations for the ecological and human destruction wrought by the defoliant Agent Orange, now maiming a fourth generation of Vietnamese people. More recently, thousands of young Vietnamese Americans have been questioning the mainstream story of U.S. benevolence and so-called tyrannical communism, and are reconnecting with country of their forebears, and organizing solidarity efforts. Across the U.S., polls consistently show that the majority of people oppose our government’s militarism and the hundreds of billions of dollar spent every year on weapons and interference abroad.
This April, millions of U.S. people have been resisting the elimination of aid, benefit and worker rights programs, the seizure of power by the President from Congress and the Courts, and the detentions and deportations of immigrants. Many campus, labor and community groups are trying to build a peace and justice movement for the current period of aggressive, anti-human U.S. policies. A key aspect of such a movement is our active solidarity with people in Vietnam – to support their self-determined internal development, and unhindered participation in global trade and in the community of nations.
We invite you to read the brief summary below of Vietnam’s development, from .ancient times up to the present day.
Vietnam’s History, Achievements and Struggles in Brief
Vietnam is about 3.4% the size of the U.S., situated in tropical Southeast Asia, just south of China, west of the Philippines, and east of Thailand. Vietnam borders Cambodia and Laos, which together are called Indochina. The population of Vietnam today is 101.3 million (a third of the U.S., growing from 36 million in 1975).
Vietnam has 5,000 years of history as a nation, and finally won its independence from the northern dynasties in 939 AD. Over the last 1,000 years, the country was repeatedly invaded and occupied by foreign forces. At times, a Vietnamese feudal dynasty was defeated and the country occupied, even divided. Each time, the village communities got together and liberated the country. Each time, human losses, cultural and historical, were immense. The wars against the French, the Japanese and the U.S. lasted more than 150 years. The task laid on the shoulders of the Vietnamese people to maintain peace is monumental. 2025 is a meaningful milestone.
After more than three decades of near continuous war came 20 years of isolation by the U.S. embargo (1975-1995). The country, reunified in 1976 under the name “the Socialist Republic of Vietnam” struggled to disarm the fighting forces, clear unexploded mines, wash away toxic Agent Orange contamination on arable land, maintain peace and internal security, and feed the population. It began to really rebuild.
Together with the decision to pursue đổi mới “renovation” (the introduction of a socialist-oriented market economy) in 1986, Vietnam initiated a major continuous campaign, xóa đói giảm nghèo bền vững, continuous “zero hunger and poverty alleviation”. Vietnam focused upon the task, and met with success. Vietnam became self-sufficient in food in 1989. The per capita income in 1975 was USD $372. By 2023 it rose to USD r$4,347. The literacy rate is above 90%. Life expectancy has risen to 75 years. The minimum level required as adequate for the poorest, i.e. the poverty levels, have been steadily, and substantially, increasing.
Gender equality, accompanied by confidence and capacity building for women, was the main task of the Vietnam Women’s Union (found by the Party in 1930, with 19 million members currently), working from the grassroots to uplift women’s roles. Opportunities for peaceful practice of all religions have expanded. In its Constitution, Vietnam guarantees the preservation and teaching of national minority languages and cultures, and proportional representation of national minorities in the National Assembly. The United Nations recognizes Vietnam as meeting the criteria in its “Declaration on the Rights of Persons Belonging to National or Ethnic, Religious and Linguistic Minorities.” (See FAQ for more info.) The Vietnam General Confederation of Labor (founded in 1930, and active in the fight for national independence), affiliated with the World Federation of Trade Unions, plans to increase membership to 13.5 million in the period 2026-2030. Wildcat strikes are known to be common and workers usually win their demands. The central problem of a socialist-oriented market economy, the introduction of personal profit-seeking and corruption in the controlling and regulating state sector, has been admitted and is being dealt with.
As private enterprise is being regulated more effectively, Vietnam is also recognizing the constant need to constrain the tendency of unproductive expansion of the state bureaucracy—in order for society as a whole to progress.. This is a story of success in overcoming the huge and continuing obstacles to social progress, starting from the vast ruins of the long and destructive war, and made possible by the victory for peace of 1975.