Winning in Vietnam

WINNING IN VIETNAM. by Frederick Z. Brown T,he trauma of a tragedy a generation ago should not obscure today's realities in Vietnam nor preclude a new relationship with Vietnam in the broader context of East Asia and the Pacific. Life still goes on in Vietnam despite the events of 1975. Saigon did not "fall"; it became Ho Chi Minh City. Three million Vietnamese live there, and they still call it Saigon. While the United States should not attempt to replay the crusade of the Eisenhower-Kennedy-Johnson era, the Clinton administration has an opportunity to influence the evolution ofa new Vietnam in a direction that will benefit not only the strategic, economic, and political interests of the United States but the Vietnamese people as well. Tentative Moves to Normality The United States and the Socialist Republic of Vietnam are moving haltingly toward what diplomats politely call "normalization ofrelations." Hanoi's decision in October 1992 to allow U.S. investigators to examine the war archives of Vietnam's Ministry of Defense for evidence on the fate of American servicemen still unaccounted for broke an impasse on a neuralgic problem that has delayed normalization for years. The VietnamFrederick Z. Brown directs Southeast Asian studies at SAIS under a grant from the Henry Luce Foundation and with the support of the United States Institute of Peace. He served with the State Department in Vietnam from 1968 to 1973. 61 62 SAISREVIEW ese have also satisfied, at least for now, a second U.S. condition: cooperation in the Cambodia peace settlement. The United States has responded by partly lifting the economic embargo imposed on Vietnam many years ago and kept in place because of these barriers. Although the policy of the Clinton administration is not yet clear, it is possible that sometime in 1993 normalization will move ahead. The Vietnamese flag will be hoisted over the turn-of-the-century mansion on Massachusetts Avenue which was last occupied by the Thieu regime's ambassador plenipotentiary to Washington. Until the new U.S. chancery is built in Hanoi, Old Glory will fly over a faded green villa on Ly Thuong Kiet street, the U.S. consulate building that has been vacant since the 1954 Geneva Conference on Indochina. The normalization mating dance has not been graceful. Hanoi, for reasons of economic distress and geopolitical insecurity, has been eager to consummate the act since 1977. Washington has been indifferent if not contemptuous, showing interestonly in humanitarian subjects: POW/MIAs, refugees, the emigration of Amerasian children, and the fate of former political prisoners. In 1993 the Vietnamese leadership, trying to shake the fetters of Marxist economics without losing political control, remains anxious to move ahead. The United States, ofcourse, has never had "normal" relations with any government ofVietnam or with the Vietnamese people, and normalization cannot be a magical moment achieved by the stroke of a pen. The United States was at war with half of Vietnam for the first twenty years of that country's independence from France in 1954. Mutual hostility has endured for another long period. In this context it is difficult to know what normal really means. What is certain is that normalization is a process, not a fixed destination. An intelligent relationship will take years to build even with the best ofintentions . But the establishment of an American embassy in Hanoi will help the Clinton administration to understand the evolution ofVietnamese society and to resolve the bilateral humanitarian disputes still in play. A fixed residence in Washington, the first for unified Vietnam, will enlighten Hanoi's insular power structure on the vagaries of American society as well as on the new administration's foreign policies. Vietnam Syndrome A quarter ofa century ago the United States was trapped in a military involvement that eventually took more than fifty-eight thousand American lives. The communist Tet offensive in February 1968 symbolized the frustration , and to many Americans the folly, ofthe Vietnam quagmire. Admitting personal defeat, Lyndon Johnson declined to run again for the presi- WINNING IN VIETNAM 63 dency and became a casualty ofthe domestic turmoil ofthe 1960s in which Vietnam and civil rights were central elements. One can only view what...