The US left landmines in Vietnam. An aid freeze won't erase that.

Fifty years after the end of the Vietnam War, the people in Vietnam and Laos are still cleaning up unexploded U.S. landmines left behind from our war. That is, until Donald Trump's foreign aid freeze.

Shortly after the Trump administration announced its 90-day freeze on foreign aid on January 20, U.S.-funded programs were issued a stop work order, including demining initiatives in Laos. Since the halt, there have been four accidents resulting in six injuries and three deaths, including that of a 15-year-old girl, casualties of a war that ended over 50 years ago.

On February 13, a federal judge ordered the Trump administration to unfreeze foreign aid spending. Despite this ruling, local officials say that deminers in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia are still prevented from going back to work in order to comply with the administration’s orders.

While a waiver was issued this month for Cambodia to allow $6.36 million to resume flowing through to November 2025, we are already witnessing the damage from the halt in the pause in clearance efforts and in an accident that claimed the lives of two toddlers.

U.S.-supported demining teams have been forced to stand down and are barred from operating equipment or vehicles funded by U.S. grants. This stop-work order impacts 1,000 demining operators in Vietnam. In Laos, over the past two weeks, local authorities say that more than 100 calls have come into the clearance hotline. Despite having nearly 4,000 deminers in Laos, none of them are allowed to respond due to the executive order. It is only a matter of time before desperate, untrained villagers attempt to handle the explosives on their own.

Children in Vietnam with disabilities — including those suffering from exposure to the U.S. military’s use of the chemical Agent Orange — who were receiving daily rehabilitation services funded by USAID have had their care suspended. Without continued therapy, muscles will stiffen, developmental progress will stall, and some may never regain mobility.

For decades, U.S. programs have addressed the lasting legacies of war. These efforts have not only saved lives and supported vulnerable communities but have also bolstered years of diplomatic progress. Foreign aid is not charity — it's a strategic investment for our country. U.S. assistance in Southeast Asia has consistently garnered bipartisan support due to its clear, tangible benefits: enhanced safety, economic stability, and strengthened bilateral cooperation.

The first priority for the U.S. was the recovery of Americans missing in action (MIA). This effort began in 1985, when the U.S. sent its first investigative team to Pakse, Laos, to recover remains of 13 servicemen from a military plane crash in 1972. Over the years, these recovery missions expanded, and to date, the U.S. has recovered 1,046 of the 2,634 MIAs in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia.

This collaboration on MIAs laid the foundation for addressing the more complex challenges of unexploded ordnance and Agent Orange. This has not been an easy process but great strides have been made to address the impacts of at least 13 million tons of explosive remnants of war that littered the countryside resulting in nearly 200,000 casualties since the end of the war in all three countries.

In Laos, over 2.5 million tons of ordnance were dropped, surpassing the combined total of bombs dropped on Germany and Japan throughout all of World War II. This staggering amount makes Laos the most bombed country per capita in the world. Yet, to this day, less than 10% of these deadly remnants have been cleared.

In 1989, USAID launched its first post-war humanitarian initiative through the Leahy War Victims Fund, providing prosthetics to former veterans of the South Vietnam Army and civilians who had been injured. In 1993, the U.S. expanded its efforts, funding clearance teams for humanitarian demining to remove landmines and unexploded ordnance from villages in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia. This cleared land for essential infrastructure such as farmland, schools, homes, and hospitals.

Upon learning that nearly half of the casualties were children, USAID and the State Department also began funding educational programs in schools, teaching children not to touch these deadly remnants of war and to alert an adult to notify mine clearance experts. These mine action efforts have led to a dramatic reduction in the number of casualties. In Laos, casualties went from 300 from before 2008 to 60 or fewer over the past decade. Recognizing the benefit of investments, the U.S. has funded programs in more than 125 countries and has been the largest provider of humanitarian demining investing worldwide.

Once a deeply contentious issue between the U.S. and Vietnam, the topic of Agent Orange has evolved into a shared collaboration over the past two decades. The U.S. has, via USAID and other agencies like the Pentagon, invested in dioxin remediation at former military bases in Da Nang and Bien Hoa, as well as funded medical care and rehabilitation for tens of thousands of Vietnamese with severe disabilities living in areas where the dioxin contaminated herbicides were used. Similar initiatives had begun in Laos, but, with the aid freeze, these efforts were halted — which would likely leave a generation of children with birth defects and disabilities without the critical support they desperately need.

As the examples of Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia demonstrate, strategic use of foreign aid can not only save lives, but can foster reconciliation so that the U.S. can work with new partners to expand its collaboration on many other fronts, including defense, economics,and people-to-people exchanges. Eliminating our USAID specialists with decades of expertise is destroying invaluable institutional knowledge. Stripping services from the most vulnerable doesn’t show care, it puts lives at risk.

Since 1989, the U.S. has invested just over $1.5 billion in addressing UXO, Agent Orange, and war-related disabilities in Southeast Asia. To put that in perspective, in today’s dollars, that is roughly the cost of six days of fighting during the Vietnam War.

This year is not only the 50th anniversary of the end of the American War in Vietnam. It also marks 30 years since the normalization of bilateral relations between the two countries.This year is also the 40th anniversary of the U.S.-Laos collaboration in recovering U.S. MIAs and the 75th anniversary of the establishment of bilateral relations. Our ties with Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia have been built through healing the wounds of war together and hopes for a new era of peace and prosperity. These gains can be lost overnight. Washington risks sending a chilling message to the world: that America’s word is worthless, its commitments fleeting, and its moral leadership for sale.

Secretary Rubio should immediately ensure that the already-committed foreign aid is reinstated before the U.S. loses decades of progress and trust.