As a rule, the U.S. secretary of state does not attend the funeral of the general secretary of a Communist party.
Yet that is exactly what Washington’s top diplomat, Antony Blinken, had planned to do for the last rites of Nguyen Phu Trong, the longtime leader of Vietnam, who died in office on July 19, 2024, aged 80. Ultimately, Blinken couldn’t make it to the funeral, but he did visit Hanoi a day later.
