Conclusion

Conclusion

Vietnam's decision to invade Cambodia was driven not by hegemonic ambition, nor by Marxist-Leninist ideology and the resultant socialist affinity with the Soviet Union against China, nor by an altruistic humanitarian impulse to save the Cambodian people from the genocide perpetrated by the Pol Pot regime. Rather, Hanoi's leaders were strategists attuned to a realpolitik interpretation of international relations and their rational consideration of strategic and material interests at the heart of Vietnam's national security. Their decision was rationalized by the full backing of the Soviet Union to address a dual national security crisis of homegrown economic hardship and two-front threats that the Chinese-Khmer Rouge alliance posed to Vietnam's national security. Domestic imperatives, specifically the socioeconomic crisis and widespread corruption within the party-state apparatus in the late 1970s, undermined the legitimacy of CPV rule by 1978 and threatened Vietnam's national defense in the midst of the Khmer Rouge attacks on Vietnam from the southwest and increased armed clashes with the Chinese along the Sino-Vietnamese border in the north.

Abundant documentary evidence in this book opens up the "black box" regarding the dynamics affecting the strategic thinking of different factions within the CPV and organs of the government about how to maximize Vietnam's national interests and security. Facing the duality of economic crisis and military threat from the Sino-Khmer Rouge alliance, Hanoi's leadership abandoned Ho Chi Minh's longtime stance of a balanced position between great power rivals and opted for a formal alliance with the Soviet Union in 1978. Hanoi's military leaders, led by General Secretary Le Duan and his close ally Le Duc Tho, took a calculated risk in invading Cambodia to topple the China-backed Khmer Rouge regime and thus strengthen Vietnam's alliance with China's rival, the Soviet Union. The CMC, the top military decision-making body, drew up a decisive military plan, approved by the Politburo, to invade Cambodia and topple the Khmer Rouge as early as January 1978, well before Vietnam decided, in June 1978, to join the COMECON and form a military alliance with the Soviet Union in November of that year. Moderate and economically minded leaders led by Prime Minister Pham Van Dong and Deputy Prime Minister Le Thanh Nghi jumped on the bandwagon with the militant faction because they expected to secure greater economic aid, including modern technology, from the Soviet Union and other Eastern European countries in the COMECON to alleviate Vietnam's economic crisis.

China's massive invasion of Vietnam in February 1979 following Vietnam's invasion of Cambodia in December 1978 dragged Vietnam into a protracted two-front war in Cambodia and against China. The military-firsters' endless demands for massive mobilization on the frontlines in the early 1980s caused a wider rift between them and the economy-firsters, who were increasingly alarmed by the human and material costs the war was inflicting on Vietnam's economy. In addition to factional politics within the Vietnamese Politburo, important roles were played by specialized agencies within the prime minister's cabinet and party committees at the research-committee level. Competing government agencies, under the leadership of the Council of Ministers, were formed and allowed to present their ideas to the Politburo of the party and the Council of State for internal deliberation. Within the Council of Ministers, the Prime Minister's Office played a crucial role in policy input. Rather than a stovepipe decision-making process, there was a strong feedback loop characterized by the relationship between the Politburo (the top decision-making body) and the Council of Ministers, headed by the prime minister (the executive). Subsequently, the Politburo presented a draft resolution first to the Party Central Committee for approval and then to the National Assembly for promulgation.

Beneath the public display of collective leadership and unity, Vietnam's national security decision making was shaped and influenced by competing personalities, factions, ideas, and ideas in internal party politics. There were heated contestations over ideas and policies, especially at times of crisis decision making, such as the decision to invade Cambodia in 1978 or national militarization in 1980-81 following the Chinese invasion of Vietnam in February 1979.

The most important decisions about national security were made collectively by the Politburo, which was dominated by four members of the old guard—Le Duan, Truong Chinh, Pham Van Dong, and Le Duc Tho—who were Long-standing leaders of the party and government. However, policy research and input by groups of political elites, including vice-ministers, policy research of departments, and heads of party or government committees, significantly shaped and influenced the top decision makers' thinking. At times these power groups, including the military faction led by Defense Minister General Van Tien Dung and economic planners led by Deputy Prime Minister Le Thanh Nghi, differed in terms of their influence on policy. For instance, in 1975-77, Politburo member and deputy prime minister Le Thanh Nghi, who also chaired the State Planning Committee, were very influential in planning the economy and shaping economic foreign policy. Nghi's power derived from the party-state's ultimate objective of economic recovery and modernization. As Vietnam was confronted with a growing national security threat and economic crisis at home in 1978, top economic planner Le Thanh Nghi, decorated for revolutionary and wartime accomplishments, was largely discredited and forced to admit major mistakes in the internal self-criticism style of the CPV. Other moderate and economically minded leaders, especially Prime Minister Pham Van Dong, supported Vietnam's invasion of Cambodia and direct involvement in regime change there because they hoped to acquire more economic aid, including advanced industrial equipment, from the Soviet Union and other Eastern European countries. Nghi's influence rapidly declined; he was demoted in 1982 and drifted to a peripheral role in the party thereafter.

From the perspective of the military-firsters led by Le Duan and Le Duc Tho, the economic crisis was extremely detrimental to national defense and the legitimacy of the party, and they used it to justify their preference for an all-out war with the China-backed Khmer Rouge. From 1978 to 1984, the conservatives and their military-first allies were the dominant voices within the party and government. As early as January 1978, the CMC was all powerful as national security became the top priority. Notably, General Van Tien Dung, General Le Duc Anh, and Chu Huy Man played crucial roles in strengthening the military and planning the invasion of Cambodia. Members of the economics-first faction could only protest in private, although they were alarmed by the military's rapid depletion of vital material and human resources due to Vietnam's military-first policy during this period.

Five years into the war, the rising cost of the two-front conflict in Cambodia and against China had squandered foreign aid from the Soviet Union and other socialist countries and undercut economic reforms, thus giving reformist economists and more influence in foreign policy decision making by 1983-84. The reform and firsters successfully persuaded the old guard to embrace economic reform and a shift from total reliance on the Soviet bloc to a broad-based economic foreign policy.

policy. After the PPA was signed in January 1973, then-vice-minister Nguyen Co Thach was among the few high-ranking officials entrusted by the Politburo with conducting research on the potential for expanding economic relations with the West. Thach believed that the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe were lagging behind the West in the technological revolution of the 1970s. During the Cold War period of peaceful coexistence in the early 1970s, the Soviet Union and some Eastern European countries led the way in showing the Vietnamese that economic cooperation with the West to obtain modern technology did not necessarily undermine socialist ideology. Nguyen Co Thach directly counseled the conservative-dominated Politburo in September 1973 that Vietnam could engage in economic cooperation with the West while ideologically and politically siding with the Soviet Union. Indeed, Nguyen Co Thach's role in collective idea change was far more significant than conventional wisdom acknowledges.

At this early stage, young reformists like Thach recognized the transformative role of technology in increasing Vietnam's economic efficiency and exports, but such reform thinking was far ahead of its time given the Politburo's focus on the war effort to reunite the country. It took the increasing human and material costs of Vietnam's two-front war for the second-generation reformists and their new thinking (tu duy moi) to dominate Vietnam's collective decision making by 1985-86. Nguyen Co Thach was promoted to minister of foreign affairs in 1982 and played a central role in formulating the Doi Moi policy in 1986.

Today, forty years after the onset of the Third Indochina War (1978-88), there are two conflicting historical narratives of Vietnam's invasion of Cambodia in December 1978 and China's invasion of Vietnam in February 1979. First, the historical memory of the Sino-Vietnamese border war in February 1979 is deeply contested in both Vietnam and China today. China's historical representation of the war as a punitive action against an ungrateful Vietnam is a thorn in Sino-Vietnamese relations. Until recently the war with China was a strictly forbidden topic in Vietnam because Hanoi has attempted to avoid provoking anti-Vietnam hostility from a rising China. The official publication of a history of China's war of aggression against Vietnam in August 2017 in a new fifteen-volume History of Vietnam provides a narrative of the Vietnamese people's heroic fight against Chinese invaders to defend their nation. As in the case of Vietnam's intervention in Cambodia, the official version of this highly sensitive episode in the 1979 Sino-Vietnamese border war is not only a counter-narrative to Chinese nationalist history, but it also serves the national purpose of memorializing the Vietnamese people's sacrifice and heroism in defending their country from China's aggression, as their ancestors did for two millennia.

Regrettably, such a nationalist history requires a truncated narrative bleached of its complexity and unflattering past, including the heavy toll the military confrontation in Cambodia and against China in the 1980s took on Vietnam's economy and the suffering that ordinary Vietnamese people endured.

Second, in Cambodia opinions are highly divided. Many Cambodians attribute Vietnam's intervention to "Vietnam's imperial ambitions over Cambodia." The ruling CPP and its supporters, on the contrary, view this as "Vietnam's liberation of Cambodia." The Vietnamese government today reminds Cambodians of Vietnam's sacrifice for and liberation of the Cambodian people from the Pol Pot genocidal regime. The official history of Vietnam's intervention in Cambodia constructs a metanarrative of Vietnam's sacrifice in fulfilling its international duty to assist the Cambodian revolution (1978-89). Both narratives are inaccurate in light of this book's findings. Ample evidence shows that the Vietnamese leaders did not invade Cambodia with imperial ambitions in mind, though neither did Vietnam's top economic planners shy away from promoting Vietnam-dominated economic regionalism in the first half of the 1980s.

Pham Van Dong's fear that the prolonged presence of Vietnamese troops in Cambodia would stir up anti-Vietnamese sentiment was justified. The Vietnamese army's heavy-handed purges and torture of Cambodian officials in its campaign against the "two-faced" enemy burrowing within the PRK in 1983 undermined Vietnam's efforts to win the hearts and minds of the Cambodian people. The influx of Vietnamese people into Cambodia and Vietnamese mistreatment of Cambodian villagers easily fueled anti-Vietnamese sentiment throughout the 1980s. All these factors played into the hands of Cambodian resistance leaders, who wanted Cambodians to view the Vietnamese as occupiers and turned the Vietnamese intervention into a protracted, unwinnable, and costly war. To reduce their respective burdens of assisting the PRK, reformist leaders in Vietnam and the Soviet Union in 1986 encouraged economic reforms in Cambodia and Laos. In Cambodia, Prime Minister Hun Sen had no other choice as nonrefundable aid from the Soviet Union and Vietnam had dried up by 1986. That marks the beginning of a gradual lessening of Vietnamese influence over Cambodia.

Vietnam's Doi Moi policy in 1986 would never have occurred had Vietnam not endured the most turbulent period of socioeconomic crises threatening the CPV after national unification in 1975, followed by the costly two-front military confrontation from 1979 to 1985. Similarly, Vietnam's integration into the world economy today owes its success to the Doi Moi policy of 1986. In other words, post-1986 economic integration does not erase the periods before it. Instead, it builds on the foundation and orientation of the Doi Moi policy. The trajectory of Vietnam's drive toward economic modernization and national sovereignty remains the ultimate twin objective of the CPV. Vietnam's multi-directional foreign policy is designed to allow its leaders the flexibility to maneuver strategies and tactics to quickly achieve economic modernization and strengthen national defense. Toward such a strategic objective, Vietnam will need a peaceful and stable regional environment, making any military confrontation with China over the South China Sea detrimental to that goal.

Nonetheless, the Sino-American rivalry in Asia, particularly in the South China Sea, has offered Vietnam ample opportunity to maneuver around great power rivalries to further its national interests, defined in terms of economic modernization and stalwart defense of maritime claims in the South China Sea in the age of China's new assertiveness. The US commitment to Vietnam is based purely on Vietnam's usefulness in Washington's grand strategy of containing China. For Vietnam the US market, investment, and advanced military technology are crucial to its economic integration and efforts to beef up its national defense against potential threats by China down the road. However, Vietnam has no appetite for another episode of military confrontation with a China far more powerful militarily and economically than the one the Vietnamese fought against in the 1979-88.

Brantly Womack argues—and I agree—that stability in China-Vietnam relations or the absence of Vietnam’s domination, as is implicit in David Kang’s China-centered hierarchical system, but rather to a mechanism of asymmetric interactions between the two neighbors. China learned the “habits of self-restraint in its relationship with smaller neighbors like Vietnam” while the Vietnamese learned to “fashion their interactions with China into their own cultural learning curve.” One of the important lessons China may have learned from its conflict with Vietnam in the second half of the 1970s is that if Vietnam perceives China to be a threat to its national security and sovereignty, it would not hesitate to side with China’s great power rival and engage in military confrontation with China. A sobering lesson the Vietnamese political elites have learned is that Vietnam ought to avoid tacit military alliances with extraregional great powers like the Soviet Union against China. As the consequences of this war clearly show, even China in 1979, which was much weaker in terms of economic and military power than it is today, could inflict massive destruction on Vietnam's society and economy. The Soviet Union had global interests and was willing to change its own politics without honoring its alliance commitments. It did not send ground troops to Vietnam after the Chinese invasion in 1979 but only sent economic and military assistance to Vietnam. By the same token, Hanoi’s

leaders have even more reason to distrust any military alliance commitment by an extraregional great power like the United States. Given this history, Hanoi's leaders will be even more reluctant to enter into an official military alliance with the United States to counterbalance a much more powerful China in the foreseeable future. Nonetheless, Vietnam is not simply acquiescent to China.

I have written elsewhere that a pattern of resistance and deference to China is a recurring feature of Vietnam's dealings with its more powerful northern neighbor but rather displays astute entrepreneurial thinking about foreign policy strategies and diplomatic tactics to adjust to China's changing power, as it has done for the past two millennia.4 In modern Vietnam, Ho Chi Minh's strategic thinking, applied to the situation Vietnam now faces, is instructive of Vietnam's foreign policy belief system: (1) avoid direct confrontation with great powers, (2) find ways to compromise with them, (3) exploit inherent contradictions and conflicts between them, (4) exercise skillful and flexible diplomacy, and (5) refrain from getting involved in conflicts between them. These are instructive of Vietnam's strategic thinking about its foreign policy and its strategy for coping with China's rise.