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Is it Time to Recognize Vietnam?
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14221 |
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CURRENT ISSUES
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7 / 1988 |
3,007 Words |
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William J. Duiker
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In the decade and a half since the fall of Saigon in the spring of 1975, communist leaders in Vietnam have had little opportunity to savor the fruits of victory. The national economy, plagued by the ill-advised efforts of the regime to move rapidly to socialism in the conquered South, is in a shambles. In foreign affairs, the continuing presence of Vietnamese occupation troops in the People's Republic of Kampuchea (PRK) has led to hostile relations with most of its neighbors and isolation in world affairs.
In the United States, it has understandably been difficult for many Americans to view the discomfiture of their onetime adversary without a measure of satisfaction. Bad memories from the war have been compounded by the conviction that Hanoi has been less than helpful in attempting to account for the remains of American soldiers killed during the conflict.
But there have been more tangible reasons for the United States to take delight in Hanoi's postwar difficulties. While the regime's internal policies, however repugnant to many Americans, are of little direct concern to the United States, its invasion of Kampuchea and maintenance of a pro-Hanoi regime in Phnom Penh transgresses the principle of noninterference in the affairs of sovereign states and, in the eyes of many, threatens U.S. security interests and those of many of its friends and allies in the region.
Of more immediate importance to Washington, perhaps, is Hanoi's increasingly intimate alliance with Moscow. The growing Soviet economic and military presence in Indochina, and specifically Soviet use of naval and air facilities at Cam Ranh Bay, represents a potentially serious threat to U.S. security interests in the Southwest Pacific region.
The Reagan administration's response to this challenge has been clear but muted. While rejecting a leading role in the effort to contain the Vietnamese, Washington has provided firm diplomatic backing to efforts by China and the members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) to force Vietnam to withdraw its troops from Kampuchea and agree to the creation of a neutralist and nonaligned government in Phnom Penh. The United States is currently supplying the anti-Vietnamese resistance forces (known as the Coalition Government of Democratic Kampuchea, or CGDK) with limited material aid and has imposed an economic boycott on trade with Vietnam in an attempt to force Hanoi to change its policies.
As several U.S. presidents discovered to their sorrow, it is not easy to pressure the Vietnamese. In a generation of struggle against the French and later against the Americans, Vietnam's hardbitten veteran leaders learned to endure supreme hardship in the serene confidence that they possessed the patience to outwait the enemy. For cosmetic purposes the Vietnamese have offered to withdraw their troops from Kampuchea and hold national elections, but only on condition that external support for the CGDK comes to an end and the legitimacy of the PRK is fully recognized. In fact, Hanoi has adopted its familiar wartime tactic of "fighting and negotiating" and seems to count on the passage of time to erode the precarious unity of its adversaries and consolidate internal support for the PRK, thus presenting the world with an accomplished fact.
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