[News] Vietnam, the US and China

[Anti-Imperialist News]

June 15-17, 2012
http://www.counterpunch.org/2012/06/15/vietnam-the-us-and-china/

Vietnam, the US and China

by GABRIEL KOLKO

If history proves anything, it is that nothing 
can be taken for granted.   Men and parties that 
rule nations fall all the time­as witnessed today 
in much of the Middle East, a region that was 
once considered stable.  The American Central 
Intelligence Agency, a huge, highly expensive 
operation with many analysts paid to predict the 
future, was utterly surprised when the Soviet 
Union fell apart and the whole Eastern Communist 
bloc dissolved with it. Change is the norm today, 
everywhere, and rulers who think they will be in 
power forever­even if they try to repress signs 
of discontent­have a poor sense of history.  What 
is certain is that the Americans have a motive to 
see that the regime in Vietnam that defeated them 
militarily fall because of its own failures.

Given the tremendous and growing disparity 
between Vietnam’s nominal Marxist-Leninist 
ideology and its state-led capitalist practice, 
Vietnam is as ripe for overthrow as any nation 
has ever been, and Vietnam’s present rulers 
should take very little for granted–no more, 
indeed, than those who ran the former U S S 
R.  Basic change is very likely to occur in 
Vietnam: how and when cannot be predicted 
precisely, but the anomaly between its ideology 
and its practice is too overwhelming to persist 
indefinitely.  The higher levels of the Party are 
now very corrupt and increasingly cynical, and 
the patriotic legitimacy it had when it led the 
struggle against the French and then the 
Americans is gone. The younger generation of 
Vietnamese increasingly regard the Communists as 
corruptionists who practice nepotism.

When I was last in Vietnam in 1987 I saw 
corruption at all levels, and nepotism is the way 
many nations are ruled­Vietnam is no 
exception.   All this means the Communist Party 
is losing its legitimacy and relying on its 
security apparatus to stay in power, but police 
will not return the consensus of support from the 
masses it had during the war against the United 
States, a consensus based in very large part on 
nationalism–although many peasants were also for 
a more just land tenure system and Communist 
appeals attracted them. And caused them to make 
immense sacrifices.  On the contrary, using its 
security system to control public opinion is more 
likely to further alienate the public. It is a 
liability, although the Vietnamese Communists 
have a large one, and effective in the 
short-run.  But as we see in the Middle East (or 
the Bolshevik Revolution under Lenin) soldiers 
and police can also switch sides, which can 
produce real crises for the status quo.

The Saigon-regime leader, Nguyen Van Thieu, was 
corrupt and nepotistic also, had a security 
apparatus (also corrupt) and fell apart despite 
the fact the Saigon-regime had superior military 
power to that the Communists possessed.  By 
losing its legitimacy the Communists make 
themselves ripe for replacement, even overthrow. 
The replacements may, in fact, be worse (they 
have been in various nations) but that thought is 
not likely to occur to those who regard the 
present rulers in Hanoi as the fount of all evil.

The regime is likely to fall­I am surprised it 
has lasted as long as it has­next month or five 
years from now–it is impossible to tell.   But 
peasants are a danger to it (as they are in 
China) because too many are being displaced to 
build, among other things, industrial zones, open 
pit mines, and golf courses while many leaders of 
the Communist Party, who are increasingly 
factionalized and split, enrich themselves.

There are reports that the American government 
has specialists on Vietnam who are also thinking 
about how and why the Communist government might 
be replaced.  These reports are probably 
true.  They believe that the spread of American 
culture (mainly music) will eventually bring down 
the regime­but that may very well be wishful 
thinking.  American-style culture has existed in 
Vietnam for decades.  Far more important, in my 
opinion, is the Communist Party’s loss of 
legitimacy due to corruption and nepotism, and 
the élan it once had.  It has developed 
economically but the benefits of economic growth 
have been very unequal­as it is in China also.

And no less important is the fact that fissures 
among Communist leaders have emerged; many know 
about them and effectively they are public, and 
this split never existed to this extent 
before.  Basing Party rulership on cronyism makes 
such opposition all the more easy and 
justifiable. The system of control that the 
Communist Party elite has worked out is to some 
crucial extent also self-defeating.  A split at 
the top was the prelude to the Soviet Union’s 
demise, and the leading opponent among the famous 
leaders in Vietnam is Vo Nguyen Giap, the 
architect of the Communist victories in the first 
and second Indochina Wars and the last living 
Communist “founding fathers.”  He is vocal, has 
even talked of forming a new party, and any 
effort to silence Giap might alone trigger mass 
resistance against existing Party leaders. Having 
the venerable Giap on its side might very well 
embolden the potential opposition, which also 
includes some members of the Communist Party who 
do not like the way it has been going–and still 
believe in the ideals, which led to the emergence 
of the Party in the first place.

The Obama Administration–which includes many 
people besides the President– is in an ambiguous 
position: the present Vietnamese regime is ready 
to be a part of an anti-Chinese coalition the U. 
S. is talking about forming as an aspect of its 
yet-vague Pacific strategy that will presumably 
preoccupy it over the next 10 years, but I think 
over the next decade the U. S. is likely to be 
distracted by crises elsewhere­where is unknown 
but its similar resolution in 1962 to focus on 
China was impossible once it decided to fight 
wars in Iraq and Afghanistan­whose outcome 
remains unknown but were certainly not American 
victories in the sense it hoped for.  Given the 
nature of the world today, it is impossible to 
know what will occur 10 years from now.  Shooting 
or other crises will define its priorities. It 
would be naïve for the Hanoi regime to assume the 
American-led coalition would ever emerge over the 
next decade, though in fact­if precedent is any 
indication­Vietnam is able to be very naïve in 
conducting its foreign relations.

The American Government would be happy, though, 
were the Communist-led regime to capsize.  The U. 
S. lost a war with it and the collapse of the 
present Communist government would give many 
important people in Washington a certain solace.

The United States has since 1945 felt responsible 
for every corner of the world, and this sense of 
having a global mission makes it impossible to 
know where it is going to place its resources ten 
years from now. Its military is now increasinly 
involved in Africa. The Vietnam Government should 
be aware that American intentions today are not 
what they do a year from now, much less ten. Its 
placing confidence in present U.S. promises and 
intentions flies in the face of historical experience.

It is not certain in this world what will happen 
next: neither the careful observer nor the people 
in power know.  Vietnam may or may not implode, 
but Communist states have ceased to exist, and 
there is such a discrepancy between its nominal 
ideology and practice­as there is in China 
also­that the men and women who now rule

Vietnam would be foolish not to take into serious 
consideration what events elsewhere­the entire 
Eastern Bloc­means for their future 
also.  Vietnam “Communism,” as it still likes to 
call itself, can last forever or it might fall 
next month­but the state has problems and if it 
does nothing then the contradiction between its 
nominal ideology and practice will eventually 
catch up with it. Their present policies are 
likely to be challenged, somehow, and at some 
time.  If they ignore these questions they ignore 
the meaning of recent history, not only in the 
Eastern Bloc but in many Muslim nations also. 
Making an alliance of some sort with the United 
States against China­which I think will never 
emerge in the form the U.S. envisages today­will 
not resolve its basic problems.

GABRIEL KOLKO is the leading historian of modern 
warfare. He is the author of the classic Century 
of War: Politics, Conflicts and Society Since 
1914 and Another Century of War?. He has also 
written the best history of the Vietnam War, 
Anatomy of a War: Vietnam, the US and the Modern 
Historical Experience. He can be reached at: 
<mailto:kolko at counterpunch.org>kolko at counterpunch.org.

A version of this article in Vietnamese by the BBC.




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