When the War Was Over (72 page)

The overall result was the increasing specialization of experts and writers on Indochina. Since the whole picture could not be drawn, Indochina watchers concentrated on details. Journalists in Bangkok interviewed refugees from Cambodia, but journalists in Hong Kong wrote about Cambodian government policy. Academics specialized in the areas where they could document some of their evidence: foreign affairs of the countries, refugee resettlement issues, or government planning schemes. One specialist might examine the Sino-Vietnamese rivalry in light of the Sino-Soviet split, another the historic border problems between Vietnam and Cambodia.

By their silence and refusal to allow serious research or reporting from their countries, the Vietnamese and Cambodian leaders indirectly encouraged
this American—indeed, Western—withdrawal from the region and the concomitant ignorance of much of the actual conditions in their countries. Neither Hanoi nor Phnom Penh said anything about their menacing dispute until it led to a wide-scale border war at the end of 1977. Like most communist countries, Phnom Penh and Hanoi only reported the good news, or their version of good news, not the problems. Reading only the official press from Vietnam and transcripts of Cambodian radio broadcasts, one would be left with the impression that the two revolutions were transforming their countries into peaceful, productive worker-peasant states and trying their best to repair the horrible damage left from the war.

Vietnam welcomed some foreign journalists, Laos a few, Cambodia none. Those who traveled to Vietnam were given a standard tour that concentrated on the country's devastation and its problems of reconstruction. The visitor's agenda usually included trips to model villages, model new economic zones, a home for the rehabilitation of prostitutes or one for former drug addicts, and foreign aid projects such as the Swedish-sponsored Bai Bong paper mill factory. These journalists were watched, and nearly every appointment with a Vietnamese had to be cleared and then monitored by a government “guide” or translator.

None of this added up to the reality of postwar Indochina. Few experts understood, much less connected, the ugly secrets hidden in the region. None saw the explosion that would come in 1978. It was difficult enough to keep abreast of events within each country as they occurred, to read translations of the daily broadcasts from government radios, and match them with refugee reports and the rare journalist visits to the region. An expert on Cambodia rarely had the time to follow Vietnam, Laos, and China. When the Third Indochina War began, most governments and experts were at a loss to explain the cause or anticipate the consequences.

The collective American withdrawal encompassed all of Southeast Asia, friends in the region and former enemies in Indochina. The irony was not lost on the non-communist countries of Southeast Asia—Thailand, Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, and the Philippines. These member states of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) were the dominoes cited throughout the war. They were the countries which the United States said it was protecting against eventual domination by communists in Vietnam. They were the dominoes that would fall, the United States warned, if the communists were victorious in Indochina.

Yet after 1975 the United States seemed to abandon the dominoes along with Indochina. It was a period of anxiety and gloom—most notably for Singapore, Malaysia, and Thailand. Thailand was a military ally of the United States, Singapore one of America's staunchest supporters in Asia. Malaysia and Thailand had had strong domestic communist insurgencies; the communists in Thailand were active and receiving valuable support from the neighboring communist regimes in Laos and Cambodia. Singapore leader Lee Kwan Yew had been one of the region's staunchest supporters of the “domino theory”; he had counseled President Johnson to continue fighting in Vietnam for fear the Vietnam War would spread to Thailand, Malaysia, and Singapore.

Moreover, the ASEAN countries had taken part on the losing side of the Vietnam War. Thailand and the Philippines were the homes for American military bases. Singapore, Malaysia, and Indonesia had provided minor support in the form of diplomacy or training for South Vietnamese police and security forces. Some of these countries feared retribution, and during its first years in power Hanoi repeatedly blasted the ASEAN countries for their role in the war at America's behest.

At first the ASEAN countries acted separately, with varying degrees of panic and fear. Thailand asked the United States to shut down its military bases. Then the Thais looked to China for a rapprochement that eventually led to a military relationship. The Thais decided they could be better assured of protection from China than from the United States. But the Thai government moved too swiftly for the strong conservative military, and in 1976 there was a bloody coup that brought the military back to power.

Malaysia sought a strong dialogue with the victorious leaders in Hanoi. Indonesia, always more fearful of China than of Vietnam, was the sole nation to remain calm. The Philippines was plagued with its own domestic dissidents and insurgents. Singapore's controversial and dynamic leader Lee Kwan Yew decided the security of his small city-state required a cohesive program for all of ASEAN to avoid problems with communist Indochina.

Lee wanted to reactivate the Association of Southeast Asian Nations and turn it into a strong political force. ASEAN had been formed in 1967, to create an economic community in Southeast Asia along the lines of the European Economic Community. That goal proved elusive, but in 1976 the association found a new purpose by presenting a single non-communist face to what seemed to be a communist Indochina bloc.

The number of ASEAN meetings skyrocketed in 1975 and 1976. Lee Kuan Yew literally commuted to Bangkok to find common ground with the Thais, who were the people most directly affected by the communist victories.
By the end of 1976 a consensus was formed. The ASEAN nations not only recognized the new governments in Indochina but agreed on the need for “dialogue” with the Vietnamese as well as the Chinese. They all agreed that the United States could not be counted on for security assurance and it was in Thailand's best interest to seek such assurances from Beijing. At the same time they decided that there was no need to “kowtow” to either Hanoi or Beijing, that if they stuck together they could become each other's best defense against political or economic deterioration.

And after 1975 there were reasons for worrying about their economies. Although foreign investors did not flee from the ASEAN nations, new investors were hard to find. The international business community was wary of bringing new capital to a region where three countries had just become communist. This was particularly troublesome for the ASEAN states that were diehard capitalists and had counted on foreign investment to develop their economies. Again, they decided to become their own salesmen and protectors, to develop their domestic infrastructures and entice foreign investment themselves—and not to rely on American support for their efforts.

Circumstances forced these potential “victims” of a communist victory to become the beneficiaries—largely through their own efforts to prevent the domino theory from coming to fruition. By 1978, when the world had no recourse but to turn its attention once more to Southeast Asia, the ASEAN states had pulled off what European analysts described as an “economic miracle.” All of the countries experienced economic growth above the world average for middle-income nations, even though they were developing countries. As important, by banding together to face a potential foreign threat, they managed to diffuse the long-simmering problems among themselves. They no longer saw each other as a threat—differences remained, but disputes were settled quietly.

ASEAN had become a singularly effective regional group in the developing world and was being compared to similar groups in the advanced countries. But it took some time for the United States to catch up to that reality, or the reasons behind its emergence. American universities had dropped their emphasis not only on Indochina but on all of Southeast Asia. Southeast Asian centers disappeared from universities after 1075—from Columbia, Yale, and other universities. News from ASEAN countries rarely appeared in newspapers or in news stories.

Once again, it took trouble in Indochina before ASEAN came into focus in the United States—trouble in the form of the boat people who fled in droves from Vietnam in 1978 and landed on the shores of ASEAN nations.

Finally, the Third Indochina War showed it was the communist world that was the chief victim of the communist victories in Indochina. By winning their wars the Indochinese communists removed the one remaining basis for even token cooperation between China and the Soviet Union—their common desire to defeat the United States and their client states. After 1975 the communist world became prey to sharper and deeper divisions than at any time since the Sino-Soviet split broke open in 1963, and with far more devastating consequences.

The historical, ideological, and territorial disputes between Vietnam, Cambodia, and China that had lain dormant for the sake of war against U.S. imperialism emerged with a vengeance. Not only did it lead to war between those countries but it propelled China further toward relations with the West, particularly the United States.

China and the Soviet Union openly competed for influence in the new communist Indochina, forcing the communist world to take sides. And in their quest for support elsewhere, Cambodia and Vietnam eventually went looking to their non-communist neighbors, the ASEAN states.

By 1978 the communists had destroyed whatever unity they had developed during the Vietnam War. In 1975 communist insurgency seemed the wave of the future; by 1978 the communists themselves had buried that prediction. They had done so by fighting among themselves, betraying each other in order to win support for their side, and governing their countries in such a frightful fashion as to cause disillusionment worldwide.

Vietnam's image was among the first to change. During the war North Vietnam had been depicted, rightfully, as a small David battling the giant Goliath of the U.S. military machine. Immediately after the war the Vietnamese communists retained that image among third world and communist nations; it was toasted for fighting foreign domination despite the overwhelming odds against victory and for fighting three decades to achieve independence.

But Vietnam's status had changed dramatically. Unified Vietnam was a nation of 50 million people, and the second-largest communist power in Asia. Its military prowess was staggering; Hanoi had not demobilized its army in peace. Instead, communist Vietnam expanded its armed forces in peace until it included one million fighters—the third largest in the world. The Vietnamese were ranked among the five most effective military powers in the world. The thirty years of warfare had made North Vietnam a deeply
militarized society, and in peace the Vietnamese held on to that strength. And the Vietnamese army became the Goliath of Southeast Asia.

That strength was part of the impetus behind ASEAN's initiative to promote at least a political counterweight to the new communist Indochina.

Most of the Western world reacted to the other undeniable aspect of postwar Vietnam—the staggering destruction of the country. The vast majority of nations wanted to help Vietnam. Within one year the Vietnamese had established diplomatic relations with ninety-seven nations and belonged to twenty-two international organizations, including the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, and the Asian Development Bank. Foreign countries pledged over $6 billion in aid within the first years for the reconstruction of Vietnam.

But Vietnam fumbled its reconstruction programs. And in short order Hanoi shifted its priority toward military and security affairs. Reconstruction was replaced by regional dominance as a top priority. Laos quickly became a protectorate of Vietnam, the first step toward that goal.