VETNAM:Still at War
Lens, Sidney
VEITNAM: Still at War Now a U.S. economic embargo perpetuates the calamity BY SIDNEY LENS Adecade ago, when the United States still waged war in Indochina, the South Vietnamese economy could...
...Even if one discounts for inevitable exaggeration, those in charge of Vietnam's recovery obviously face a towering challenge...
...Vietnamese leaders are braced for what they say may turn out to be a "third" Vietnam war...
...The Vietnamese have offered to pull back most or all of their forces if China and the United States would pressure the Thais to seal their borders to Khmer Rouge guerrillas, but Beijing and Washington have been unsympathetic: They instead are trying to establish a Kampuchean government-in-exile, which would include Pol Pot...
...The need for capital is immense—far greater than can reasonably be expected from external or internal sources...
...1 visited a handicraft plant that opened in 1977 with an investment of $ 100 pooled bv a few workers...
...Remarkably enough, there is no famine in Vietnam today, and none is likely...
...These goods— thousands of parcels arrive each month— form the basis of a gray market that helps keep the economy going...
...Half the villages and all the cities, except for the center of Hanoi, were hit mercilessly...
...They remain in bases there, and continue to conduct guerrilla attacks on Kampuchea, with the aid of China, Thailand, and the United States...
...Of the 3.5 million hectares of rice paddies cultivated in 1960, 1.3 million were chemically compromised by U.S...
...North Vietnam, too, received some economic aid—though not nearly as much— while the war raged...
...Other inventive recourses to circumstances include the "new economic zones"—tracts of land reclaimed by the unemployed, former drug addicts, or volunteers from the cities...
...Neither does the United States, which has imposed a total embargo on Vietnam since hostilities ended in 1975...
...China's ambitions are more complex...
...and additional hundreds of millions of dollars spent by American troops...
...Along Ho Chi-minh City's Dong Khoi Street and the avenue that bisects it, Le Coi, one can buy almost anything— American whiskey, cigarettes, motorcycle parts, pipes, electric fans, blenders, sun glasses, and hundreds of other Western-made items...
...They have encouraged, for instance, the formation of collectives to produce everyday wares...
...China, engaged in a conSenior Editor Sidney Lens recently visited Vietnam...
...defoliants and 1.2 million left un-tilled...
...Until the new span is completed years from now, therefore, the Vietnamese must make do with Long Bien, which has a six-mile-an-hour speed limit and is so jammed with bicycles and carts (and sometimes water buffalos and goats) that it often takes a half hour or more to cross...
...Because of the scarcity of consumer goods, for example, farmers—especially in the South, where private ownership of land is still widespread—tend to withhold some of their crops from the market...
...There are 250 such cooperative workshops in Ho Chi-minh City, and 2,500 smaller "production teams...
...in 1974, only three million...
...A similar offensive is being mounted against Vietnam now by the United States and its new ally, China...
...What is happening in Vietnam today resembles what happened in the United States after the Revolutionary War—a time historians call "the critical period...
...The United States, having suffered a humiliating defeat in its gamble for a foothold in Southeast Asia, is determined to pressure this nation to change its ways and change its government—or at least demonstrate that a communist Vietnam must fail...
...Today, annual economic aid to all of Vietnam—north and south—amounts to barely $1 billion, and comes mostly from the Soviet Union...
...In all, 200,000 people are employed in such ventures (as against 330,000 in state factories...
...President Nixon had agreed that Taiwan was part of China, and the People's Republic had finally taken its seat in the U.N...
...Security Council...
...The Vietnamese do not say how many of their troops have been tied down in this quagmire, but Chinese and American sources estimate there may be 200,000 so engaged...
...When the Americans withdrew from the South, they left behind a devastated economy with three million unemployed, a million handicapped, a million addicted to drugs, 800,000 orphaned, and 600,000 caught up in prostitution...
...Four million acres of forest had been destroyed...
...The embargo, observed by all but a handful of Western nations, has crippled economic development in Vietnam and shattered hopes of postwar recovery and reconstruction...
...In Massachusetts, protests against foreclosures and unfair taxes escalated into a six-month-long rebellion...
...To some extent individual initiative is also encouraged in industry...
...To make ends meet, the Vietnamese have resorted to improvisation— sometimes with great success...
...Finally, Long Bien was restored and the Chinese agreed to build a new bridge not far away...
...Factories established with U.S...
...Xuan Thuy, an influential leader of the Vietnamese State Council, says China's goals since the Sino-Soviet split two decades ago have been to align itself with the United States in opposition to Moscow and to exert dominance over Asia...
...Millions were—and are—suffering from the effects of Agent Orange, and Dr...
...Why sell when there is nothing to buy in city stores...
...tinuous border war with Vietnam, sends no help at all...
...The Vietnamese say two-thirds of all homes in Southern villages were either destroyed or damaged...
...But while the government's flexibility helps to ease tensions, it cannot solve the basic problem, a massive shortage of capital...
...The shortages tend to feed on each other...
...executive secretary of Viet My, a Vietnamese-American friendship organization...
...One hundred thousand people—out of three million—fled the United States (as the Vietnamese "boat people" are doing now), most of them to British Canada...
...Senior Editor Sidney Lens recently visited...
...But for Hanoi it is a big war along hundreds of miles of border— a war that has brought destruction to scores of villages...
...Even if the number is only half that many, it is a major drag on Hanoi's strained resources and one more significant impediment to economic recovery...
...Coincident with the Chinese probes, the Pol Pot regime in Kampuchea—another former ally—attacked along the western border of Vietnam, and launched an all-out offensive in 1977...
...In Ho Chi-minh City (the erstwhile Saigon...
...If rice was in short supply, Washington sent rice...
...China supported Vietnam in its wars with France and the United States to frustrate the two Western powers in Southeast Asia, but Beijing also sought to limit the scope of its client's victories since a strong, unified Vietnam would also be an obstacle to plans for Chinese hegemony in Asia...
...The land is pockmarked with twenty-six million bomb craters, many now filled with stagnant, malarial water, and 150,000 tons of explosives are still dug into the ground waiting to explode...
...According to historian J.B...
...If roads needed to be built, American contractors built them...
...Similarly, the state makes no attempt to interdict the flow of packages relatives send from abroad...
...The newly independent nation suffered extreme hardship...
...McMaster, half the people in Vermont were "totally bankrupt, the other half plunged into the depths of poverty...
...Six hundred miles of railroad needed repairs and 500 bridges along the way had to be rebuilt...
...It is now a flourishinn enterThe U.S., after a humiliating defeat, is determined to make Vietnam change its ways prise of 230 "partners" who make pails and kerosene lamps...
...Peace in Southeast Asia remains tenuous, and Vietnam's travail is bound to last longer...
...The country has a tentative look, like the skeleton of a building before the walls are put in...
...In any case, China initiated sustained attacks along Vietnam's northern frontier as early as 1975, and they continue today...
...With this pittance the communist government must not only feed and clothe a population of fifty-three million but cope with a staggering level of destruction...
...Some miracle, such as a large offshore oil strike (exploration is under way) or a string of consecutive good harvests, might ease the present difficulties, but the American embargo and the possibility of a full-scale war with China threaten recovery for the foreseeable future...
...Vietnam strikes a visitor as lagging generations behind the outside world—a bicycle economy in the space age...
...According to Western and Third World diplomats in Hanoi, they blame the United States and China—and after many decades of hard going, they are prepared to be patient...
...We have shortages of food, consumer goods, raw materials for our factories, fertilizers, medicines, just about everything," says Xuan Oanh...
...Vietnamese authorities have been careful not to push the people harder than conditions allow...
...Crops rotted in the fields while penniless farmers engaged in barter to meet their needs and faced the loss of their land to mortgage-holders...
...The only way for surface vehicles to cross the Red River into Hanoi is by means of a mile-long bridge, Long Bien, that was bombed out of commission frequently during the war...
...For long periods people had to rely on makeshift pontoon bridges...
...Since there is little money for adequate supplies of seed and fertilizer, for example, farm collectives are being formed very slowly in the South, though collectivization was completed in the North years ago...
...The packages keep many private merchants in modest comfort...
...Nguyen Du'ong Guang, deputy director of the University Hospital in Hanoi, told me that war veterans are fathering disproportionately high numbers of deformed children...
...In 1971 the nation produced 25.4 million tons of tin and zinc...
...In the occupied territories, Britain armed Indians and conspired with them to establish an independent state that would serve as a barrier against U.S...
...A few bombs, in fact, go off almost daily...
...Of the 42,000 hectares of coconut land, only 9,900 were still in production in 1975...
...The Soviet Union, China, and some of the Eastern bloc states sent help...
...loans turned out goods made from raw materials imported from the United States...
...In the American press, this conflict is presented as a "small war" typical of many such in Asia and Africa...
...The reports are mixed...
...All-told, fifteen million Vietnamese were left homeless after the "American war" ended...
...Since the bridge tilts, traffic lanes have been reversed so that heavily loaded trucks that pass over it early every morning don't ride the sloping side...
...Fortunately for the present regime, the Vietnamese do not seem to blame their government for the state of things...
...Two-thirds of the rubber trees were rendered unusable—either temporarily or permanently...
...According to the United Nations, a stockpile of 100,000 tons of rice in the South this year that was badly needed in the North couldn't be shipped for want of adequate transport facilities...
...But clearly the circumstances demand acute austerity...
...economic embargo perpetuates the calamity BY SIDNEY LENS Adecade ago, when the United States still waged war in Indochina, the South Vietnamese economy could count on an annual infusion of $2 billion in U.S...
...The Chinese," an official told me, "destroy with such thoroughness that they do more damage to the villages they attack than B-52s were able to do during the 'American war.' " Mortar shelling is an everyday thing, and there is a virtual state of siege on the long front...
...By generous estimate, Vietnam's gross national product is $8 billion a year—less than $150 per capita...
...Had New Hampshire enforced the debtor laws "two-thirds of the community would have been in prison...
...Vietnam responded with a quick military foray that drove Pol Pot's forces into Thailand...
...So goes the Vietnamese explanation for the remarkable turnabout in China's position...
...In the North, American planes dropped 7.8 million tons of bombs (three-and-a-half times what the Allies dropped on Germany during World War II...
...In the mid-1790s, the Crown seized 478 American vessels bound for the French West Indies, impressed hundreds of Americans sailors, and continued to occupy and rule Detroit, Fort Erie, Niagara, and five or six other key places...
...It seems to me to fit the pattern of events...
...By the time the United States withdrew its forces in 1973, Beijing had achieved its rapprochement with Washington...
...It is no exaggeration to say that our war against Vietnam continues—by economic means, but with consequences almost as devastating as those formerly inflicted by bullets, bombs, and defoliants...
...Other builders had to be found—and capital raised—to begin all over again...
...westward expansion...
...Vietnam is caught in a vise of geopolitical ambitions...
...It is difficult to tell how voluntary are the volunteers or how successful the zones are...
...As a quid pro quo, China supported Henry Kissinger's two-government concept for Vietnam...
...There are 100 privately owned factories in Ho Chi-minh City, according to a trade union official, and 100 that are jointly owned by the state and private entrepreneurs—as against 330 government-owned plants...
...At the same time, one to three million Kampucheans (out of a population of nine million) were being slaughtered by Pol Pot's Khmer Rouge, and a number of disaffected commanders in his army, including the current president, Heng Samrin, appealed to Hanoi for help...
...Though the war had officially ended, Britain continued it by other means, as the United States is doing now against Vietnam...
...But when Hanoi's relations with Beijing soured, China ordered its engineers to pack their blueprints and come home...
Vol. 45 • December 1981 • No. 12
