Vietnam

D

Vietnam Divided

Representatives from all the major world powers, the two rival Vietnamese governments, and the new royal governments in Laos and Cambodia attended the peace talks, which lasted for several weeks. In mid-July, despite U.S. urging to continue the struggle, the French agreed to a compromise agreement (known as the Geneva Accords). This agreement called for the withdrawal of French troops and a temporary division of the country into two separate zones. The Communists would withdraw to North Vietnam, while the non-Communists would move into South Vietnam. To avoid a permanent division, a solution unacceptable to the supporters of both Ho Chi Minh and Bao Dai, national elections were to be held in 1956 to bring about a reunified Vietnam.

D

1

The Uneasy Peace

For the next five years Indochina experienced a brief interlude of peace. In Hanoi, Ho Chi Minh’s government (known as the Democratic Republic of Vietnam, or DRV) focused attention on laying the foundations of a Communist society while hoping for national reunification by means of elections, which were widely expected to favor Ho. But in the South, Bao Dai was soon replaced by Ngo Dinh Diem, a staunchly anti-Communist Catholic who refused to hold national elections as called for by the Geneva Accords. Sympathetic to his anti-Communist beliefs, the United States supported Diem, who claimed that Vietnam’s colonial oppressors had negotiated the agreements. A constitution was written, and after elections staged only in the South, Diem became president of a new Republic of Vietnam (RVN).

During the next several years the Diem regime vigorously sought to crush lingering support for the Viet Minh in the South, as well as all other forms of domestic opposition. His harsh actions resulted in growing hostility from many South Vietnamese. Meanwhile Diem’s social and economic programs failed to reduce the severe inequality of landholdings in the countryside. In 1959, fearing that the Communist base in the South could be entirely eliminated, the North adopted a policy of revolutionary war intent on toppling Diem’s government and bringing about national reunification. In 1960 the North Vietnamese government ordered the creation of the National Liberation Front (NLF), based on the model of the Viet Minh created two decades earlier. Most members of the NLF were native southerners. Relatively few were members of the Communist Party, but the Communists ruled from behind the scenes. In 1961 the armed wing of the NLF, the People’s Liberation Armed Forces (PLAF, popularly known as the Viet Cong, or “Viet Communists”), was formed.

The United States provided increasing amounts of military assistance to Diem’s government, and U.S. advisers instructed South Vietnamese troops on how to fight a guerrilla war. Diem became increasingly unpopular, however, and conditions throughout the country steadily worsened, allowing the PLAF to gain control of much of the countryside. The South alienated many Vietnamese Buddhists by the government’s alleged favoritism to Catholics. With tacit U.S. approval, dissident elements in the army launched a coup in November 1963 to overthrow Diem, and he was killed in the attack. In the political confusion that followed, the security situation in South Vietnam continued to deteriorate, putting the Communists within reach of total victory. In early 1965, faced with the South’s imminent collapse, U.S. president Lyndon Johnson ordered the intensive bombing of North Vietnam and the dispatch of U.S. combat troops into the South.

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E

The Vietnam War

The U.S. intervention caused severe problems for the Communists on the battlefield, but it did not persuade them to abandon their struggle. The North Vietnamese leaders were convinced that they could outwait the Americans as they previously had the French. The North Vietnamese government sent regular units of the North Vietnamese army into the South to bolster the efforts of the local PLAF forces. But the sheer weight of U.S. firepower was difficult to overcome. As casualties mounted, insurgent units were being driven out of the villages into the mountains or along the borders of the country.

In early 1968, hoping to bring about a collapse of the RVN or at least undermine public support for the war effort in the United States, Hanoi launched the Tet Offensive, a simultaneous attack on almost every major South Vietnamese city. Similar attacks took place on towns and villages in the countryside. The Tet Offensive resulted in enormous casualties for the attacking forces, but it also weakened the regime of the new South Vietnamese president Nguyen Van Thieu. The Tet Offensive was also successful in severely shaking the American people’s confidence in the effectiveness of U.S. strategy. In March President Johnson decided to seek a negotiated settlement and announced he would not run for reelection. Peace talks opened in Paris in May but quickly collapsed and stalled for months. In November Richard Nixon was elected as the new U.S. president.

During his presidential campaign, Nixon announced that he had a secret plan to end the war. When implemented, the plan consisted of a gradual withdrawal of U.S. troops while simultaneously strengthening the South Vietnamese army to defend its own territory. At the same time, Nixon opened contacts with China, hoping China would agree to limit its support for North Vietnam in return for better relations with the United States. In 1972, when a second Communist offensive failed to achieve a victory, North Vietnam agreed to a compromise settlement. Under the arrangement, the South’s president, Nguyen Van Thieu, was allowed to remain in office in Saigon, but the NLF was permitted to play a legal political role in the South. All U.S. combat troops were to be withdrawn from Vietnam, but the United States could continue to provide military assistance to the South. The agreement did not address the presence of North Vietnamese units inside the South’s territory. Despite President Thieu’s anger at these conditions, the Paris Agreement was signed in January 1973. According to the terms of the agreement, consultations were to be held on future elections to form a new government in South Vietnam.

The agreement soon unraveled. In early 1975 the Communists launched a military offensive in the Central Highlands, intensifying the attack when the United States failed to respond. At the end of April the Thieu regime collapsed, and the Communists seized power in Saigon.

F

The Socialist Republic of Vietnam

In 1976 the South was officially reunited with the North in a new Socialist Republic of Vietnam. Under the leadership of Le Duan, party chief since the death of Ho Chi Minh in 1969, Communist leaders in Hanoi adopted an ambitious plan to bring about the creation of an advanced Communist society. However, extensive war damage, lack of foreign investment, managerial inexperience, and the passive resistance of millions of people in the southern provinces all combined to defeat the program. By the end of the decade, the economy was in shambles, and popular hostility to the leadership had reached alarming heights. Thousands of people, many of them ethnic Chinese merchants and their families, fled the country in flimsy boats or across the border into China.

A foreign policy crisis worsened the domestic problems. For decades, Communist Party leaders had planned to unite Vietnam with revolutionary governments in neighboring Laos and Cambodia to form a militant alliance against the threat of imperialism. By the end of 1975, Communists had come to power in both countries, but the new government in Cambodia, under the leadership of militant revolutionary Pol Pot, was suspicious of Vietnamese intentions. Pol Pot refused to join with Hanoi, and Cambodian troops attacked Vietnamese villages near the Cambodian border. Pol Pot also demanded the return of territories in the Mekong Delta that the Vietnamese had seized from Cambodia’s predecessor, the Angkor Empire, during their “march to the south” centuries before.

In December 1978, after abortive efforts to bring about a compromise, Vietnam launched an offensive to overthrow the Pol Pot regime and install a new pro-Vietnamese government in Cambodia. They accomplished this in early 1979; however, the Vietnamese government had underestimated China’s interest in the area. Long suspicious of Vietnamese plans to dominate all of Indochina, Chinese leaders warned Vietnam that any attack on Cambodia would be viewed as a grave threat to the peace. Adding to China’s suspicions was the fact that Vietnam had recently signed a military security pact with China’s bitter rival, the Soviet Union. Furthermore, Chinese and Vietnamese troops had recently clashed on their mutual frontier, and the Chinese government bitterly criticized Vietnamese mistreatment of its ethnic Chinese population.

Less than two months after the Vietnamese invasion of Cambodia, China launched a brief but bitter assault into northern Vietnam. Although Chinese troops withdrew a few weeks later, they remained along the common frontier, forcing Vietnam to maintain a high defense posture in the area. In the meantime, Vietnam was forced to station nearly 200,000 occupation troops in Cambodia to protect the pro-Vietnamese government it had installed there.

G

The Doi Moi Reforms

By 1986, the year of Le Duan’s death, Vietnamese leaders had begun to recognize that major changes were needed. At a national congress held in December, new party leaders launched the doi moi (economic renovation) program to reform Vietnamese society and stimulate economic growth. They abandoned efforts to build a fully Communist society by the end of the decade and dismantled collective farms. Party leaders declared their intention to bring about a mixed economy, involving a combination of state, collective, and private ownership. Foreign investment was encouraged, and a more tolerant attitude was adopted toward the free expression of opinion in the country.

Vietnam also sought to improve its position in foreign affairs. All Vietnamese occupation troops were withdrawn from Cambodia by the end of the 1980s. In 1991 Vietnam signed a peace agreement in Paris that created a coalition government of Communist and non-Communist elements in Cambodia. Vietnam made serious attempts to improve relations with China and with the United States, which ended its economic embargo in 1994. Full diplomatic relations were established the following year. In 1995 Vietnam joined with non-Communist governments in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), a regional organization dedicated to promoting the economic growth of its member states. Also in 1995, Vietnam applied for membership in the World Trade Organization (WTO) with the aim of opening the country to greater foreign trade and investment.

Vietnamese leaders, however, have not yet entirely abandoned their dream of creating a Communist society. While stating their intention to create a modified market economy, they insist that state-run industries will hold the “commanding heights” in the system. Party leaders will not tolerate the creation of rival political organizations and rigorously suppress dissent from opposition forces. Conservative party leaders express open concern at the corrosive influence of decadent ideas from the West, which they view as a plot by “dark forces” in the United States to destroy the Vietnamese revolution. Like the leadership in neighboring China, Vietnamese leaders have declared their support for a policy of “economic reform, political stability.”

In 2001 Vietnam’s Politburo elected Nong Duc Manh as the Communist Party’s general secretary, making him the country’s top leader. Manh pursued a program of economic liberalization, and Vietnam’s economy came to be characterized as “a market economy with socialist orientation.” Manh was reelected to a second five-year term in 2006 and indicated that economic reforms would accelerate. The doi moi reforms had brought tangible success, making Vietnam one of the fastest-growing economies in the world. From 1996 to 2006 Vietnam maintained an annual growth rate of more than 7 percent. In 2006 it ranked second only to China in economic growth.

Vietnam’s economic prospects received a further boost in November 2006, when the WTO approved the country’s bid for membership. The acceptance capped more than a decade of negotiations. The Politburo of Vietnam ratified the deal in late November, paving the way for Vietnam to become the 150th member of the WTO the following month. To gain membership, Vietnam committed to further opening its economy to foreign trade and investment. Among other provisions, Vietnam agreed to lower many import tariffs, abolish trade quotas and restrictions, and open previously protected economic sectors to foreign investors. Membership was expected to give Vietnam more access to overseas markets but also increase the pressures of foreign competition on Vietnamese businesses.

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