Vietnam
Passing of an era
Pham Van Dong who straddles the world like a giant makes way for younger man. Is it a case of new wine in old bottle? By Seah Chiang Nee
Jan 2,1987

A year after end of the Vietnam war, a gaunt man, wearing a red face and seemingly perpetual smile walked firmly across the floor of a conference hall in Colombo to mount a rostrum.

The audience of kings, prime ministers and presidents burst into rapturous applause.

The man was Pham Van Dong, premier of newly-unified Vietnam. The occasion: The Non-Aligned Summit. The time August, 1976

A year earlier, Hanoi had defeated the Americans. It was the victorious leader's first international appearance - a giant among men, adored by many Asian and African leaders in an era adorned with revolutions and wars of one sort or another.

Sitting among hundreds of pressmen in the Sri Lankan capital, I watched an admiring Third World heap adoration on Mr. Dong's Vietnam. They gave him a standing ovation lasting a full minute.

Vietnam then held a vast potential for good or evil. It was to decide how well or poorly non-communist South-east Asia was going to live.

His message was distinctly chilling for his non-communist neighbours. Vietnam, he said, regarded Asean as an imperialist grouping, and it would not forget those countries which had helped the Americans during the war.

More ominous was his proclamation that it was Vietnam's duty to help countries in the region to achieve "genuine independence" - a dark threat to help communist guerillas in South-east Asia.

This prompted Mr. Lee Kuan Yew to say - when his turn came: "It makes me wonder which countries in South-east Asia are not 'genuine' in their independence and should be helped to become 'genuine' ".

Mr. Dong ended by giving Malaysia's call for a zone of peace, freedom and neutrality a kick in the pants by saying it was against "the principle of non-alignment".

Vietnam stood tall then.

The wind was blowing its way. What it had achieved in the battlefield, what it was representing, was seen as a possible wave of the future by a number of developing countries.

It would show how a small country could defeat a superpower. It would show the world how a developing country would keep the wolves from its door, reconstruct itself and propel its people to prosperity.

It was a little bit of history unfolding. Even China, which was then (in 1976) still Vietnam's friend, at least publicly, was overshadowed by this smiling figure of a man.

The heart of non-communist South-east Asia began to beat a lot faster.

In a major way, this little bit of history ended in mid-December with the departure of Premier Dong, Party Secretary-General Truong Chinh and veteran Politburo member Le Duc Tho and half the politburo, together with Defence Minister Van Tien Dung and two other military generals, who ranked fifth and sixth in the party hierarchy.

It represented an end of an era.

What does it all mean? Vietnam is one of the world's most closed ocieties, and it is not easy to interpret events in that country. There are a few possibilities.

Failed miserably

Firstly, whatever a country's ideology, however large or small its size, the first order of the day for any government is to feed, educate, clothe, house and provide health care for its people.

If it fails to do that, whatever greatness in may have achieved elsewhere, matters for naught.

The latest to prove it was Vietnam. Brilliant in war, the Vietnamese communists had failed miserably in peace. People lived poorly, with little prospect of a better future.

In his last testament at the height of the Indochina war before he died, the late Ho Chi Minh confidently predicted: "The American invaders defeated, we will rebuild our land many times more beautiful."

This was not to be. Above all, it had exploded the myth that the Vietnamese were pragmatic and practical.

Instead, the Vietnamese plunged recklessly into an economic morass by turning towards the Soviet Union.

Hanoi also isolated itself by invading Cambodia, sparking off a war with China in the process.

At home, inefficiency and corruption helped to eat away the large industrial base left behind by the Americans in the south and much of the substantial aid given by Moscow.

The new party leader, Mr. Nguyen Van Linh, 71, faces a herculean task that calls for a modernisation drive similar to that conducted by Mr. Deng Xiaoping in China.

For that, it requires a powerful political will to renounce ideology - as China has done - to open the country, economically, socially, at the expense of its political ambitions.

Mr. Deng did it. Vietnam needs a Deng Xiaoping. It needs a complete break with the past. It needs to abandon its Marxism-Leninism in practice, even if not in theory.

I am not sure if Vietnam is ready for that, or if Mr. Linh, however, much an economic pragmatist, has the political will for it.

To open rapprochement with the US and the rest of the Western world, Vietnam will have to abandon some of its present political and military ambitions, open itself to the West - not culturally, not subserviently (no fear of that, knowing the Vietnamese) - for its technology, trade and investment.

It would have to come to terms with China on the basis of equality and non-interference.

An honourable exit from Cambodia based on the principle of a non-aligned Phnom Penh government freely elected under United Nations supervision will be the best starting point.

Short of a genuine opening of its door to the West - and the rest of the world - no other reform will cure the disease.

Needs foreign investment

Vietnam needs trade and technology. It needs foreign investment. It needs foreign exchange.

However generous the Soviet Union, the long-term prospect is an opening of Vietnam's doors.

Premier Dong realised the danger of over-dependency on the Soviets.

In a speech to a group of visiting Americans in 1978, he said: "Whenever in our 4,000-year history Vietnam has been dependent on one large friend, it has been a disaster for us."

Yet, on its own choice, it has bungled into one of the biggest foreign policy failures ever committed by any country in any part of history when it chose to align itself with Moscow.

Worse still, it has chosen a form of communism so extreme and economically destructive that China - and to a much lesser extent - the Soviet Union itself and Eastern Europe are working at various speeds to get out of.

Heaven knows how many times in the past dozen years Vietnam's leaders had been self-critical over their own economic performance and spoken of reforms.

They have, in fact, become a ritual.

If the reforms that Mr. Linh wants to bring about internally are more of the same, then history will look back at 1986 as the year when Vietnam did no more than put old wine into a new bottle.

These are little capitalistic steps of buying and selling in the cities and on the farms, without any drastic change in ideology and foreign policies.

The economic cancer is deep-rooted, condemned by a system of Vietnam's own choosing. But it is not terminal.

Downgrading the army

Secondly, a more certain outcome of the leadership changes is that with the exit of Mr. Van Tien Dung, the Defence Minister, and two other top-level generals, the million-strong army, one of the largest in the world, is likely to see less priority given to it.

In Vietnam's context, with its long history of wars, the army has always played a dominant role, and this will remain so.

But its lustre has faded with its failure to defeat a rag-tag guerilla force in Cambodia. It has come under intense criticism for corruption and negativism.

Much less priority may in future be given to it and much-needed resources are likely to be set aside for economic reconstruction.

Thirdly, the changes have swung the balance of the leadership more in favour of leaders who were either born in the South or who had served long spells there.

These are generally more pragmatic and less dogmatic. Some of the free-wheeling, capitalistic ways of the South may now be allowed to function. The tail, in a way, is wagging the dog.

There appears to be a compelling reason for these changes. No communist country has witnessed such a dramatic departure of leaders.

Those who have taken over have not suddenly jumped into the arena; they themselves were part of a government although Mr. Linh inexplicably left the politburo in 1982 and was quietly reinstated three years later.

The Soviets, who are bankrolling Vietnam's survival, as well as its occupation of Cambodia, had increased pressure or a better economic performance.

There is more. China had spent almost 30 years of "perpetual revolution" in a self-destructive, Spartan life under Mao Zedong before Mr. Deng Xiaoping pulled it back.

Suicidal manner

It had destroyed a generation of growth. Vietnam, in its own suicidal, unforced manner, has done exactly the same thing for 11 years.

The 60 million Vietnamese, like their Chinese neighbours, have a high threshold for pain. But even they cannot withstand this spartan life for long.

If Mr. Pham Van Dong and his colleagues had not left graciously, they were likely to face the prospect of doing so ignominiously.

The chances for social disorder in the country, had the changes not taken place, were growing by the year.

It may still erupt if the people are made to go through another prolonged period of spartan living, now that expectations are raised as a result of the leadership changes.

In short, Vietnam's enemy is not China, or the United States, or the anti-Vietnam forces in Cambodia. The enemy is time, Vietnam has not got very much of it.
By Seah Chiang Nee