Economic Regionalism in indochina 1982-1985
Economic Regionalism in indochina 1982-1985
Why did Hanoi’s leaders engage in costly nation building in Cambodia given the widespread economic hardship in Vietnam in the early 1980s? The conventional wisdom offers two different explanations, one emphasizing the role of ideology and the other pointing to the security imperative as a determining factor in Vietnam’s occupation of Cambodia in the 1980s. First, the Vietnamese leadership was motivated by the Marxist-Leninist belief in two ideological camps. Through this lens, Hanoi’s leaders viewed Vietnam’s intervention in Cambodia as part of the global ideological conflict between the Soviet-led socialist camp and the imperialist camp spearheaded by the United States.¹ Thus, Hanoi viewed the military intervention in Cambodia and the construction of a new socialist regime after toppling the Pol Pot genocidal regime in January 1979 as Vietnam’s international socialist duty. Opposing the return of the Pol Pot regime in Cambodia, which was backed by reactionary China aligned with the imperialist United States, is therefore consistent with Hanoi’s ideological line. This was the publicly expressed view of conservative leaders like Le Duc Tho.
In contrast, other scholars have attributed Vietnam’s occupation of Cambodia to the security imperative of countering the Chinese threat in Cambodia. Evan Gottesman, who studied the relationship between Vietnam and the PRK in the 1980s, concluded, “Vietnam’s role in Cambodia was not exactly colonial. Its reason for occupying Cambodia was more strategic (to protect Vietnam from China) than economic. Its justification for the occupation (to protect Cambodians from the Khmer Rouge) also seems more valid to modern historians than the racist theories spun by colonial Europeans.”² Yet he went on to argue—which contradicts his preceding claim—that “Vietnam’s economic relationship with the PRK, which included the exploitation of Cambodia’s natural resources and the manipulation of its currency, was similar to the Soviet Union’s domination of Eastern Europe. Like the Soviet Union and its satellites, Vietnam and Cambodia couched their agreements in terms of ‘friendship’ and ‘solidarity,’ but in fact, benefits flowed mostly to the stronger party.” This chapter advances an eclectic argument that goes beyond the either/or dichotomy between strategic interests and ideological Marxist-Leninist orthodoxy. New documentary evidence from the Vietnamese archives corroborates Gottesman’s argument, which stressed Vietnam’s strategic interests, but also reveals that in pursuit of such interests Hanoi’s leaders utilized Marxist-Leninist ideology as an instrument to ensure Vietnam’s long-term strategic domination of Indochina.
I argue that Hanoi aligned Vietnam's strategic and ideological interests in Cambodia with a grand strategy of a Vietnam-dominated regionalism within the hierarchical order of the Soviet-led socialist bloc. To be clear, it is the export of Vietnam's economic model or the integration of Cambodia and Laos into a Vietnamese-led regional system. Rather, it was an asymmetrically interdependent economic community that would enable Vietnam to employ its large population of skilled labor and more sophisticated equipment to exploit the relatively untapped natural resources (rice paddies, forests, fisheries, etc.) of Cambodia and Laos. Over time Cambodia and Laos were to become economically dependent on the larger and more advanced economy of Vietnam. This economic community was expected to create "security externality" for Vietnam and by extension for its two smaller socialist neighbors. Building a viable pro-Vietnamese and anti-China regime in Cambodia contributed to the defense of Vietnam's national sovereignty and the security on its southwestern flank. Moreover, by bringing Cambodia into the Soviet-led socialist camp, Hanoi hoped to raise Vietnam's stature and role as the vanguard of Indochinese socialism within the international socialist hierarchy. As I discuss below, such a role would bring with it material benefits, including massive aid from the Soviet Union and other members of the COMECON and preferential trade agreements between Vietnam and the Soviet bloc and Vietnam and Laos and Cambodia in a system of Vietnam-dominated economic integration. There is no evidence that Vietnam planned to impose outright colonial rule over Cambodia or Laos. However, the bulk of documentary evidence from the Vietnamese archives clearly demonstrates that in 1982-83 Hanoi hatched a grand strategy, inspired by the French colonial scheme, of controlling Indochina via association rather than assimilation to ensure Vietnam's long-term domination of Indochina through economic integration like the Soviet domination of Eastern Europe.
In explaining Vietnam's role in assisting the Cambodian revolution after 1979 to various government offices, the Politburo has placed the Vietnamese Prime Minister's revolution as Vietnam's national duty, which involves assisting the party, army, and people. First and foremost, this duty serves the need to defend our motherland. At the same time, it is also our supreme international duty; given the immense difficulty the Cambodian revolution is facing, Vietnam's assistance is an important and decisive factor that would guarantee the victory of the Cambodian revolution." The statement indicates that national security and ideological considerations were inseparable in Hanoi's thinking. As I discuss below, more concrete evidence reveals that under the cover of its international socialist duty, Hanoi had both short-term and long-term plans to establish Vietnam-led economic regionalism.
Beginning in 1983, Hanoi's strategic thinking shifted from outright military and political control of Cambodia and Laos, as the bulwark against economic encirclement by Thailand and China, to economic access to the markets and natural resources of Cambodia and Laos in order to boost Vietnam's economic growth and competitiveness within the Soviet bloc. By 1984 this was the prevailing view and action plan for economic regionalism put in place by the economically minded leaders and later reformers in Hanoi. This was the next logical objective since growing popular Cambodian resistance and international opposition to the occupation of Cambodia cast doubt on the conservative faction's plan for a lasting pro-Vietnam regime there.
It is important to recall that on the eve of Vietnam's invasion of Cambodia (December 23, 1978), Prime Minister Pham Van Dong emphasized, "It is the issue of Cambodia's national sovereignty, the aspirations of the Cambodian people, and their revolution that Cambodian people have to decide for themselves." Dong stressed, "Vietnam's role was to provide all-out support for the Kampuchean United Front for National Salvation to overthrow the Pol Pot-Ieng Sary regime and establish an independent government in Cambodia."
Hanoi's main objective before the invasion was the neutralization of the Khmer Rouge threat by means of military intervention and regime change in Cambodia, leaving unstated its intention to install a pro-Vietnam socialist government that could stand up to the Cambodian resistance forces dominated by the Khmer Rouge. In the aftermath of overthrowing the DK regime in January 1979 and the Chinese invasion of Vietnam a month later, Hanoi's leaders believed that Beijing's intention was to engage China in a protracted military conflict with Vietnam along the northern border while the Chinese ally, the Cambodian resistance forces, adopted a long-term strategy of a guerrilla warfare to "bleed" the Vietnamese” in Cambodia. Hanoi believed, however, that the strategy of the Cambodian resistance was bound to fail in Cambodia due to the critical lack of popular support in the aftermath of the Cambodian genocide (1975–79). As was discussed in the preceding chapter, that turned out to be not completely true. It was the Vietnamese who had to face growing resistance in rural Cambodia.
As a propaganda tool, the Vietnamese helped the Cambodian government establish the People's Revolutionary Tribunal, which tried the Pol Pot-Ieng Sary clique for the crime of genocide on August 15-19, 1979. It saw the Vietnamese troops as liberators, revealed Khmer Rouge hideouts to them, and even identified enemies burrowing among the masses. The Cambodian people were concerned that Vietnam would withdraw its troops soon, fearing that the Khmer Rouge would return to terrorize them.9 This sentiment was short-lived as the Vietnamese troops were soon seen as occupiers in the eyes of Cambodian populace. On the economic side, Vietnam shifted from nonrefundable aid to the PRK for most of 1979-81 to primarily economic cooperation based on the principle of reciprocity and technical assistance in 1982-85.
Given the complete destruction of the socioeconomic system in Cambodia by the DK regime, the Vietnamese leadership concentrated its assistance on helping their Cambodian comrades on three major fronts: (1) building a new revolutionary government in Vietnam's image (armed forces, political system, economy, and culture) from the central government to local authorities; (2) stabilizing people's livelihoods, restoring production capacity, and educating the masses about the importance of collective ownership; and (3) helping the new Cambodian armed forces to wipe out the remaining resistance forces of the enemy, that is, the retreating Khmer Rouge.10 Towards that end, Hanoi expected to tap into Cambodia's rich natural resources and agricultural potential with the help of Vietnamese experts and equipment to build a viable socialist economy for the People's Republic of Kampuchea (PRK) regime.
In the chaotic years 1979–80, Hanoi counseled the Cambodian and privateary government to adopt a combination of state central planning and private exchange of the goods it could not provide. Markets quickly responded based on such private exchange. While rice was the medium of exchange for inexpensive goods, more expensive items from Thailand were paid for in gold.¹² As discussed below, by 1982 Hanoi was alarmed by the flow of gold from Cambodia, Laos, and Vietnam to Thailand due to unofficial cross-border trade. Hanoi’s ther idea was to create solidarity groups for agricultural production (doi doanket san xuat nong nghiep in Vietnamese, krom samaki in Khmer).¹³ According to Margaret Slocomb, the distribution of agricultural production within thekrom samaki was to be transparent, equitable, and reasonable. An individual’s share of the rice harvest was to be proportional to his or her labor input. However, the elderly, children, and those without the strength to do labor also received a portion of food to guarantee their livelihood.14 By 1980, as the food crisis persisted, family economy was encouraged and promoted to increase food production to compliment the collective economy.
After January 1979, with respect to the construction of the Cambodian revolutionary government, Vietnam played three specific roles. First, at the central level, the Vietnamese government assisted its Cambodian counterpart in building organizational structures of governance from the central to local levels regarding the two specific tasks of state administration and economic management. The Vietnamese trained Cambodian civil servants to fill the bureaucracy of newly established government ministries. Vietnam also assisted the Cambodian government in developing a professional bureaucracy and a budget for each Cambodian ministry. In addition, the Vietnamese government helped the Cambodian government develop a plan for economic and cultural recovery, including proposals for material aid from the Soviet Union and other socialist countries for the years 1979-80.16 The Vietnamese continued to play a mentoring role for their Cambodian comrades well into the mid-1980s.
Second, at the provincial and city levels, Vietnamese authorities in the south were instructed to train and assist their Cambodian comrades in implementing various directives and resolutions of the Cambodian party and government. They also helped their Cambodian counterparts organize provincial and city administrations, especially with respect to economic and cultural affairs. That effort included on-site training of provincial-level Cambodian cadres by provincial Vietnamese experts. In cases in which Cambodian cities or provinces did not have enough cadres, technical officials, or professionals, Vietnamese provincial authorities dispatched Vietnamese experts to Cambodia on the condition that the two governments agreed to it. Finally, Vietnamese provinces were to assist Cambodian provinces with material supplies, including agricultural equipment and fertilizer, and consumption goods as determined by the Vietnamese government.
To have clear oversight of Vietnamese assistance to Cambodia, in February 1979 Hanoi established sector-specific advisory committees, including B68 (a party committee in charge of political organization and the state apparatus from the central government to the district level), A40 (a government committee in charge of economic, social, and cultural affairs), Group 478 (a military advisory group charged with building the Cambodian revolutionary armed forces), K79 (in charge of building the public security and police forces), and A50 (in charge of rebuilding the capital of Phnom Penh).17 On June 16, 1978, Work Committee Z (Ban cong tac Z) of the Party Central Committee with the code name Committee B68 was established by the Politburo to carry out four tasks. First, it followed and researched the Cambodian situation on all four fronts and reported to the Politburo to determine Vietnam's policy direction and assist the Cambodian revolution. Second, it implemented resolutions and instructions of the Politburo and CMC (the highest political and military decision-making bodies) concerning the building of Cambodian armed forces and the planning of military operations. Third, it assisted Cambodian armed forces and Cambodian comrades with establishing the Cambodian revolutionary government and training Cambodian cadres step by step. Fourth, it provided material aid to Cambodian revolutionaries as instructed by the CMC.18 On December 12, less than two weeks before the invasion of Cambodia, the CMC issued Decision 129/QD-QU, establishing a military advisory group with the code name Group 478 under the supervision of B68.19 The establishment of this military advisory group shows that Hanoi's leaders had a clear strategic plan to stay in Cambodia long after the invasion to train the armed forces and build a new government there.
- Group A40 issued a document titled “The Situation and Tasks of Economic and Cultural Cooperation between Vietnam and Cambodia.”18 This document outlined the Vietnamese government’s plans to assist the PRK government in rebuilding its economy and society. It emphasized the need for Vietnam to provide technical and material assistance to Cambodia in order to help the PRK government overcome the devastation caused by the Khmer Rouge regime. The document also stressed the importance of building a strong and stable Cambodian economy as a key to ensuring the long-term security of both countries.
On February 26, 1979, the Council of Government issued Decision 72-CP to establish the economic, social, and cultural committee A40 to assist the People's Revolutionary Council of Cambodia. Notably, A40's main objective was to assist the Cambodian government in economic-cultural recovery and development and implement various economic projects that the Cambodians were not yet capable of doing. The A40 committee dispatched Vietnamese vice-ministers to build ministries of the Cambodian government in their respective field of expertise. For instance, a Vietnamese vice-minister of agriculture was appointed to lead a group of Vietnamese agriculture experts to mentor their Cambodian counterparts in the areas of irrigation, fishing, and forestry. For the central planning, a Vietnamese vice-chairman of the State Planning Committee was to lead a group of Vietnamese economic experts to help the Cambodian government with policy planning from finance and pricing to salaries of government civil servants.
On August 24, 1979, of the same year, the secretariat of the Party Central Committee issued Resolution 19/NQ-TW to establish a unified Work Committee K (Ban phu trach cong tac K) in charge of all of Cambodia's economic, military, and political affairs and its foreign relations. Committee K was scheduled to act on behalf of the Vietnamese Party Central Committee, the government, and the CMC in its relations with the Cambodian government and serve as the central office in Cambodia in charge of overseeing all Vietnamese experts.22 Le Duc Tho was appointed chairman of this powerful committee, making him the most influential Vietnamese leader in charge of Cambodian affairs and directly accountable to the Politburo in Hanoi from 1979 to 1980. General Le Duc Anh was appointed the first vice-chairman of the committee and Nguyen Con and Hoang The Thien vice-chairmen.
As the planner of the invasion in December 1978 and architect of the PRK in Cambodia after January 1979, Le Duc Tho was the most powerful Vietnamese leader acting on behalf of the Politburo in Hanoi. As a trusted confidant of General Secretary Le Duan, Le Duc Tho's civilian expertise as chief of the party organization and member of the Politburo, according to General Le Duc Anh, was the right leader to lead Vietnam's mission in Cambodia.24 At the Prime Minister's Office in Hanoi, Deputy Prime Minister Do Muoi was in charge of Vietnam's economic assistance to Cambodia while Nguyen Con, the chairman of A40, worked directly with the top leadership of the new Cambodian government. The case in point was the urgent reconstruction of the capital of Phnom Penh as the nerve center of the new government.25 In February 1980, the Politburo decided to establish a General Group of Experts (Tong doan chuyen gia) under the leadership of General Le Duc Anh, who additionally served as the commander in chief of the Vietnamese volunteer troops in Cambodia.26 Under Tho's leadership, the slogan of Vietnam's assistance in the civil and political affairs was "Nganh giup nganh, tinh giup tinh, huyen giup huyen" (Branch helps branch, province helps province, district helps district),27 meaning that a Vietnamese branch of government and party was to assist its counterpart in the Cambodian government and party from the center to the district levels. In short, it was Hanoi's export of the Vietnamese model of revolutionary socialist governance to Cambodia.
At the provincial or city level, deputy heads of a specialized department or deputy secretary generals of the People's Committee (provincial governors or city mayors) were appointed to lead a group of four experienced cadres, including one expert on agricultural production, one on distribution, one on transportation, and one on public health. In major cities in Cambodia, Hanoi added three more Vietnamese experts on industry, commerce, and public transportation systems to the expert groups.28 The model of "sister provinces or cities" was applied to implement the government system in provinces and cities. For instance, Ho Chi Minh City assisted the Cambodian capital Phnom Penh.
By February 1979, Hanoi established a viable system for constructing and molding a new socialist regime in its own image in Cambodia, consisting of the B68 committee in charge of building the political bureaucracy and administrative offices of the party and government and first-rate Vietnamese experts to help their Cambodian counterparts from the center to the district level.
- These experts were selected from the most experienced cadres in Vietnam, and they were tasked with training and mentoring their Cambodian counterparts. In addition, Vietnam provided significant financial and material assistance to Cambodia, including food aid, fuel, and construction materials. This assistance was essential for the survival of the new Cambodian government and its ability to rebuild the country after the devastation of the Khmer Rouge regime.
- The Vietnamese model of state-building and economic development was exported to Cambodia through a variety of channels, including the dispatch of Vietnamese experts, the provision of technical assistance, and the transfer of technology. This process of "Vietnamization" of Cambodia was intended to create a new, socialist Cambodia that would be closely aligned with Vietnam's interests. However, this top-down approach to state-building and economic development proved to be unsustainable in the long run. The Cambodian people, who had suffered greatly under the Khmer Rouge regime, were not receptive to a new regime that was imposed upon them by a foreign power. As a result, the Vietnamese occupation of Cambodia became increasingly unpopular, both domestically and internationally.
"included A40 (economic and cultural advisers), Group 478 (military advisers), K79 (the security expert group, which assisted the Cambodian authority in building a police force and ensuring political security and social order), and the Command 917 of the Vietnamese volunteer troops (Vietnam's occupying force). With the Vietnamese military advisers, these groups undertook three tasks: (1) conducting joint military operations with the PRK armed forces to eliminate the enemy (including the Khmer Rouge), (2) helping build and strengthen the PRK revolutionary government armed forces at the provincial and district levels, and (3) preventing mass starvation and restoring people’s normal livelihoods so they could resume economic production. By October 1979, 1,284 Vietnamese experts had been dispatched to Cambodia; in January 1980, the number reached 1,600 (300 experts sent by the Vietnamese central government and 1,300 by Vietnamese provincial authorities). This figure excluded the group of Vietnamese military experts (the exact number is still not known) with the code name Group 478. The two main special committees, B68 and A40, were in charge of overseeing civilian Vietnamese experts in Cambodia. Provincial assistance was under the jurisdiction of B68, while A40 oversaw all Vietnamese experts in the field of economy and culture dispatched to Cambodia by the Vietnamese government."
For 1980 Hanoi planned to increase the number of Vietnamese experts in Cambodia from 1,600 to 6,000. In March 1980, the Organization Committee of the Central Committee of the CPV headed by Politburo member Le Duc Tho issued Directive 384 TC/TW, instructing Office 6 of the Prime Minister’s Office, in charge of Cambodian affairs, to dispatch more Vietnamese cadres who spoke Khmer or Laotian languages to Cambodia and Laos and to increase funding from 15 to 25 percent for Vietnamese cadres to learn Khmer and Laotian languages. Except for Vietnamese translators, the directive prohibited Vietnamese workers in the field of economic production and construction and Vietnamese drivers from regularly contacting Cambodian people or officials. The move was meant to reduce the political sensitivity of the increased Vietnamese presence in Cambodia. From the very beginning, the Vietnamese leadership was aware of the political sensitivity of their ubiquitous presence there. Hanoi’s leaders told Vietnamese soldiers and experts:
Helping the Cambodian revolution is our noble international duty and defends our motherland. In helping our Cambodian friends, we have to respect Cambodia’s sovereign independence and maintain solidarity and friendship between Vietnam and Cambodia. The Khmer Rouge reactionaries spent four years indoctrinating Cambodian people to hate the Vietnamese, and they will continue to stir up such ethnic hatred to lure Cambodian people to their side and use them as the support base for guerrilla warfare against us. All our soldiers and cadres who perform their duty in Cambodia must treat our Cambodian comrades and their citizens with respect, obey their laws, avoid the attitude of big power chauvinism in any form, and refrain from transgressing on Cambodian peoples' lives, property, and cultural traditions.
Vietnamese Aid to the PRK 1978-80
On December 23, 1978, on the eve of Vietnam's invasion of Cambodia, the Vietnamese government decided to allocate the first economic assistance package, including 50,000 to 70,000 tons of food grains, 600 tons of salt, 10 tons of sugar,20,000 cans of condensed milk, 2 million meters of cloth, and other household products to restore people's livelihoods in the liberated zone. As Le Duc Tho represented the Politburo of the Central Committee of the CPV on Cambodian affairs after Vietnam's invasion in 1979, at the Office of the Prime Minister, Deputy Prime Minister Do Muoi assumed oversight over Vietnam's economic assistance to Cambodia.
In March 1979, Prime Minister Pham Van Dong issued an emergency assistance plan. From March to October of that year, the Vietnamese Ministry of Transport, with security for transportation guaranteed by the Vietnamese MoD, transported a total of 142,000 tons of material aid to Cambodia, including 11,000 tons of economic aid and 131,000 tons of military aid—that is, an average of 16,000 per month. A total of 124,500 tons of material aid and equipment were to be shipped from Ho Chi Minh City to Phnom Penh, an average of 14,000 tons per month. The remaining 18,000 tons were to be transported by sea via Kampong Som (the main seaport of Cambodia), which amounted to an average load of 2,000 tons of cargo per month or approximately 70 tons per day.
The Vietnamese MoD oversaw the receipt of material aid in Kampong Som and Phnom Penh and then transported it from these two port cities to designated areas deep inside Cambodia. In addition, Vietnam helped the Cambodians with transshipment of the much larger quantity of material aid from the Soviet Union and other socialist countries that passed through Vietnamese ports. To that end, the Vietnamese Ministry of Transport was instructed to undertake the enormous task of assisting its Cambodian counterpart in restoring various national roads connecting southern Vietnam to Cambodian cities and provinces near the border. Inside Cambodia, Vietnam helped restore the railroad from the Kampong Som seaport to Phnom Penh.
In March 1979, Hanoi's leaders counseled their Cambodian comrades to ask for material aid from the Soviet Union and other socialist countries, and the Vietnamese advisers were to provide the idea and draft the aid request.
By April 1979, starvation in post-genocide Cambodia had reached an alarming scale. According to a report of the Vietnamese government, starvation was occurring in various provinces, including Kampong Thom, Kampong Speu, and Pursat, and other newly liberated regions in the western part of Cambodia. For the rest of the year, Hanoi ordered the Vietnamese military in Cambodia to distribute food supplies they captured from the enemy and some of their own food supplies to local Cambodian authorities so that they could distribute them directly to Cambodian people who faced starvation.
For economic recovery, Hanoi's top economic planners used Cambodia's economic potential in the last two years (1968-69) of the Sihanouk regime as a benchmark for economic recovery after 1979. First and foremost, Hanoi made it an urgent priority to restore Cambodia's agricultural sector, which was its strongest. Cambodia already possessed 2.4 million hectares of rice paddies out of a maximum cultivatable land of 2.8 million hectares, which yielded 3 million tons of rice per year in 1968-69. However, in 1979 the rice yield was very low, only 1 ton of rice per hectare, and only half the available land was cultivated for one rice season per year due to the severe shortage of labor in the aftermath of the genocide. The entire Cambodian labor force, according to the Vietnamese study, consisted of 1.5 million people in 1979. Each laborer could produce only 250 kilograms of rice per year.
To increase productivity, the Vietnamese planned to help mechanize Cambodia's agriculture on a large scale, undertake irrigation projects, and create other favorable conditions for rice cultivation. The second priority for economic recovery went to Cambodia's transportation sector, which was severely damaged. Hanoi referred to transportation recovery as a decisive factor for Cambodia's national defense and economic development.
Speedy recovery in the two critical foundations of the PRK economy, namely, agriculture and transportation, required importing large amounts of machinery, vehicles, and other agricultural equipment from the Soviet Union and other socialist countries. As an aid-receiving country, Vietnam was not able to assist Cambodia in acquiring sophisticated equipment and technology.
However, Vietnamese planners felt that the country could play a crucial role in human resources, and it dispatched tens of thousands of Vietnamese technicians and skilled laborers to directly advise their Cambodian comrades from the central government down to the various district authorities. Such A large presence of Vietnamese cadres and workers, as Hanoi's leaders speculated in April 1979, would become a major political issue that could arouse suspicion among Cambodian people and lend support to the enemy's anti-Vietnamese propaganda.45 Vietnamese leaders were sensitive to Cambodia's suspicion of Vietnam's intentions. Hanoi's rationale, however, was that Cambodia's economic recovery would be too slow to recover if the PRK regime was to depend only on Cambodia's small labor force.46 To minimize the political fallout of the heavy Vietnamese presence in Cambodia, Hanoi limited the number of unskilled Vietnamese workers and used more Cambodian workers in the areas of road construction and other public works. In the beginning, Vietnamese economic professionals and managers were to directly help the Cambodian government and directly work within the Cambodian administration from the central down to the district level.47 Thus, for Cambodia's economic recovery, Hanoi's formula was to combine Cambodia's rich natural resources, Soviet modern technology and machinery, and Vietnam's basic but long-term assistance in the areas of skilled labor, technical and economic experts, and training Cambodian officials in socialist economic management.
- The Vietnamese strategy of "Vietnamization" of Cambodia was both a blessing and a curse for the PRK. On the one hand, it helped the PRK to rebuild its economy and society after the devastation of the Khmer Rouge regime. On the other hand, it created a dependency on Vietnam that many Cambodians resented. The Vietnamese presence in Cambodia also led to tensions between the two countries, which eventually led to the withdrawal of Vietnamese troops in 1989.
On January 24, 1979, Vice-Minister of Foreign Affairs Vo Dong Giang was appointed to replace Phan Ba as Vietnam's ambassador to the PRK.48 In September 1979, B68 officially assigned eighteen Vietnamese education experts to build a socialist educational system in eighteen of the twenty provinces of Cambodia. By January 1980, every Cambodian province had a Vietnamese education expert, and Phnom Penh had two.49 In April, A50, a Ho Chi Minh City group of experts in charge of rebuilding the capital city of Phnom Penh, recruited 360 teachers who had suffered under the Khmer Rouge regime and had diplomas from the Sihanouk and Lon Nol regimes to teach at 70 schools with a total of 90,000 students in Phnom Penh.50 For a period of one year, from January 1979 to January 1980, Vietnamese experts trained more than 20,000 teachers and went on to train more than 10,000 more in 1980.51 Vietnam's training focused on both political ideology and technical professions, with the latter serving the former. The training emphasized (1) the ideological orientation of the Cambodian revolution, (2) the crimes of the Pol Pot-Ieng Sary clique, and (3) Cambodian-Vietnamese-Laotian unity and international socialist solidarity. To Vietnamese education experts, the colonial and feudal influence of the old educational systems remained strong, posing a major challenge to the building of a socialist education system.53 Through their socialist lenses, the Vietnamese viewed the old education system of the Sihanouk era of the 1960s as "heavily influenced by French colonialism, reactionary, and backward." The eradication of the colonial, feudal, and reactionary influence of the previous regimes and ideological indoctrination of a new socialist man became the paramount political and ideological objective of the new socialist education system. The Vietnamese experts claimed a historic achievement in their assistance to Cambodia in the field of education. 56 The educational task of the Vietnamese education experts in Cambodia was divided into two phases. The first five years (1979-84) were the most important phase, as they were to eradicate the influence of the old educational system and build a new socialist one to serve the PRK. In 1982-83, the Vietnamese experts helped Cambodia enroll 1.6 million middle school students, which was almost twice the number of students during the Sihanouk era.
In 1979 Vietnam provided Cambodia with nonrefundable aid of 130 million VND.In a top-secret report dated April 12, 1980, to the top Vietnamese leadership in Hanoi, chief economic adviser to the PRK and chairman of Committee A40 Nguyen Con counseled, "Vietnam's 1980 assistance to Cambodia had to factor in the maximum use of the latter's existing material resources and foreign aid from other socialist countries and international organizations." To reduce Vietnam's aid burden, Con only proposed to provide nonrefundable aid worth 150 million VND for 1980 to continue assisting Cambodia in the recovery of agriculture, food production, transportation, telecommunications, culture, health, and education. More than one-fourth of the fund (40.2 million VND) would be used to strengthen the Cambodian revolutionary forces.
In 1980, as Hanoi was planning to increase the number of Vietnamese experts from 1,600 in 1979 to 6,000 and train 3,000 Cambodian officials, the planners began to face the increased cost of building a regime in Cambodia.50 In December 1979, B68 requested that each Vietnamese expert working in Cambodian provinces receive a monthly ration of 24 kilograms of food supplies, 3 kilograms of meat, 2.5 kilograms of fish and shrimp, and 1.2 kilograms of peanut, salt, and sugar per person. Citing a proposal by the Ministry of Foodgrains and Foodstuffs that food rations be reduced due to food shortages, deputy prime minister and vice-chairman of the Council of Ministers Do Muoi, who was in charge of economic affairs and assistance to Cambodia, decided that from April 1 of that year onward the monthly food ration would be reduced to 16 kilograms for each Vietnamese expert who worked in Cambodian provinces and 15 for those who worked in Phnom Penh.
In response to the increased expenses for Vietnamese specialists working in Cambodia in 1980, Deputy Prime Minister Do Muoi suggested a more pragmatic solution; that is, the Vietnamese experts utilize a portion of their rice ration to purchase meat at local markets in Cambodia. In 1978-79, expenses for all Vietnamese experts in Cambodia were covered by the General Department of Logistics of the MoD, but in February 1980 three thousand Vietnamese specialists were present in Cambodia and this figure excluded Vietnamese experts dispatched by the CPV and Vietnamese provinces for short-term assistance to the PRK. In 1980, the structure of managing assistance to the PRK changed; material supply, including food for Vietnamese military experts, remained the responsibility of the General Department of Logistics of the MoD; the Prime Minister's Office was in charge of all expenses for Vietnamese economic experts headed by Committee A40; and the secretariat of B68 was in charge of meeting the needs of all Vietnamese specialists the CPV sent to Cambodia. In February 1980, Tran Xuan Bach, head of Committee B68, asked for twenty vehicles for Vietnamese experts in Cambodian provinces (one vehicle for each province), but Deputy Prime Minister Do Muoi approved only ten. Much less enthusiastic about Vietnam's international duty to assist the Cambodian revolutionaries than Le Duc Tho, economically minded Do Muoi was a strong advocate of saving Vietnamese resources and using as many Cambodian resources as possible for nation building in Cambodia.
In 1981, due to Vietnam's economic difficulties, Hanoi planned not to increase its aid significantly and desired to use Cambodian resources and foreign aid from the Soviet Union and other socialist countries to cover the majority of the postgenocide recovery. As a conservative (one of Hanoi's ideological hard-liners), Con warned the Cambodian leadership against accepting aid from western organizations for fear of political infiltration.
Vietnam was Cambodia's patron but it was still a poor country. Hanoi's leaders expected to build Cambodia's new revolutionary government in their image using their human resources. Yet, with Vietnam's limited ability to provide Cambodia with sophisticated and high-value material aid, Hanoi's leaders looked to the Soviet Union and other, more developed Eastern European countries of the COMECON to assist their nation-building efforts in Cambodia. In just one year after liberating Cambodia from the Pol Pot genocidal regime in 1980, Hanoi looked for ways to reduce Vietnam's economic burden. Counseling Cambodia to exploit its natural resources and ask for more aid from the Soviet Union was the next logical step.
The Role of Soviet Aid to the PRK, 1979-81
In 1979 the Soviet Union provided the PRK with significant nonrefundable
material aid via Vietnam. The Soviet aid package included 20 diesel electricity generators, 200 tractors, 360 transport vehicles, 250 small vehicles, 35 buses,5 ambulances, 3 mobile clinics, 50,000 tons of fuel,$^{65}$ 8,300 tons of steel, 1,000 tons of iron, 2,000 bicycles, 5,000 tons of cement, 200 tons of aluminum, 50,000 tons of rice, and a long list of consumption goods including 3 million meters of cloth to 2 million dishes.$^{66}$ In September of 1979, the PRK regime, as the Vietnamese counseled, requested supplementary aid from the Soviet Union, including 20,000 tons of rice, 50,000 tons of corn, 30,000 tons of fuel, and other items.$^{67}$ Thus, Soviet material aid played the most significant role in building a material foundation for the PRK regime.
In enlisting Vietnamese help with the transshipment of its material aid to the PRK, the Soviets distrusted their Vietnamese comrades' handling of such aid and desired to have their own economic experts directly assess Cambodia's need for Soviet aid. On June 16, 1979, Moscow dispatched a seventeen-member delegation from the Committee for Foreign Economic Relations, headed by the committee vice-chairman, to Phnom Penh to assess the PRK's economic situation and determine what part of its aid request was urgently needed. Later it presented its findings to the Soviet government. The Soviet delegation met with its Cambodian counterpart led by the Minister of Economy and Liveli- hood Ros Samay. To Soviet dismay, the Cambodian side allowed its two Vietnamese economic advisers from the Vietnamese Ministry of Foreign Trade to attend the bilateral meeting.
The Soviet delegation concluded its visit to the PRK by offering a few recommendations and a specific suggestion that aid should be shipped directly from the Soviet Union to the PRK. First, the Soviets agreed to assist the PRK in technology, industrial equipment, and machinery to help restore factories and transportation. Second, they prioritized their material aid to many fields, including health (e.g., the Khmer-Soviet Friendship Hospital), transportation, telecommunications and television, fisheries, agriculture, and technical training. For transportation especially, the Soviets planned to immediately restore the means to ship Soviet aid directly to Cambodia via the Kampong Som seaport and Phnom Penh River port. The Soviets also pledged to provide more transportation vehicles for the second phase of transportation infrastructure recovery. In addition, the Soviet government desired to immediately establish an economic representative in Phnom Penh.
One of the reasons behind Soviet frustration with the transshipment of Soviet aid to Cambodia for 1979 via the Vietnamese port in Ho Chi Minh City was the lack of transparency on the part of the Vietnamese government regarding the handling of Soviet aid. A few factors contributed to this lack of transparency.
First, Vietnam's decentralized system of transshipment, under which each Vietnamese ministry was responsible for shipping its own Soviet aid, did not work smoothly and in fact led to confusion, which in turn created friction in Vietnam's relations with Cambodia and the Soviet Union. While the Ministry of Foodgrains and Foodstuffs received Soviet material aid on behalf of the Cambodian government, the Ministry of Transport was in charge of transporting all of it from Vietnamese ports to various destinations in Cambodia. For instance, in 1979 the Vietnamese Ministry of Foodgrains and Foodstuffs received 50,000 tons of food from the Soviet Union, and the Ministry of Transport was to ship it to Cambodia. In 1980, Vietnam was to ship 130,000 tons of Soviet food aid to Cambodia, and the Vietnamese Ministry of Materials Supply was responsible for receiving Soviet aid in the form of fuel, steel, iron, and agricultural machinery on behalf of the Cambodian government. As a result, two issues created disputes between the Soviets and the Vietnamese. At times, the Soviets transferred "Soviet aid to Vietnam" to "Soviet aid to Cambodia" due to the emergency. According to the Vietnamese, Soviet ship captains sometimes failed to keep a clear record of this change. As a result, when the Vietnamese took a portion of "Soviet aid to Cambodia" to pay for that loan, a dispute between the two sides occurred. On the Vietnamese side, when Soviet aid to Cambodia had not yet arrived, the Vietnamese shipped its own food supplies, including rice and instant noodles, as emergency loans. However, the Vietnamese would then take some of Soviet aid to Cambodia in rice and corn to pay back these loans. When the Vietnamese side did not make this clear to their Soviet and Cambodian comrades beforehand, it created a misunderstanding between Vietnam and the Soviet Union on the one hand and between Vietnam and Cambodia on the other. To make it more transparent, the Vietnamese Ministry of Finance proposed to Prime Minister Pham Van Dong that all transshipments of aid from other countries to Cambodia should be under the central control of the Vietnamese Ministry of Transport. In doing so, it would create unified control, including management and delivery of foreign aid to Cambodia via Vietnamese ports.
On May 2, 1980, the Soviet Union signed an agreement to significantly increase nonrefundable economic and military aid to the PRK. The most notable items of Soviet aid for 1980 consisted of 130,000 tons of food supplies (50,000 tons of rice, 20,000 tons of flour, 30,000 tons of rice noodles, and 30,000 tons of corn), 350 vehicles (of the 500 Cambodia had requested), 130,000 tons of fuel assistance from cloth and bicycles to agricultural machinery.<sup>74</sup> In addition, the Soviets provided substantial military aid, including 91 military transportation trucks (30 Zil-157-KD heavy-duty trucks and 61 GAZ-53 light trucks) for 1980, 102 GAZ-66 light trucks and 3 helicopters for 1981, and 33 other items of military necessities from 800 tons of fuel to medical supplies.76 In addition, the PRK received supplementary aid in food and consumption goods from Bulgaria, Mongolia, Czechoslovakia, Poland, and the German Democratic Republic (East Germany).
In a letter to Prime Minister Pen Sovann dated June 6, 1980, Deputy Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the Soviet Union Ivan Arkhipov expressed his displeasure with the slow transshipment of Soviet material aid, including food supplies, from Cambodia’s Kampong Som seaport to other parts of the country where such aid was needed. Arkhipov told Sovann:
What is most important to us is that all Soviet aid, including food supplies, is effectively used and quickly transported to regions where such aid is needed. In the spirit of comradeship, I want to convey our concern about the situation of transporting Soviet material aid from Kampong Som port to other regions. Due to poor preservation and slow transportation, most of the goods were damaged due to the [Cambodian side’s] neglect. For example, 6,000 tons of corn [from the Soviet Union] has been stored at the port since October of last year [1979]. Two thousand tons of cement arrived at the port in January of this year [1980], but due to poor storage the cement was largely spoiled. In addition, 20 of the 50 tractors we sent you are still parked at the port and have not been used.
Arkhipov told Sovann to increase his shipments from six hundred to fifteen hundred tons of cargo per day, which was roughly equal to the daily quantity of imports arriving at the Kampong Som port.77 The Soviets pledged to send two ships for sea and river transport, together with a group of fifty Soviet experts and equipment to upgrade the Cambodian port facility. Arkhipov urged Sovann to mobilize transportation and the labor force to increase capacity as the rainy season was approaching, which meant that transport was going to be even more difficult. The PRK's overreliance on the Vietnamese for transportation must have appalled the Soviets.
In 1981, two years after the collapse of the DK regime, Vietnam largely curtailed its nonrefundable aid to Cambodia and began a new era of bilateral trade based on mutual interests between the two countries.78 The majority of Vietnam's exports to Cambodia consisted of high-value products, including machinery, equipment, spare parts, rice and fruit tree seeds, cloth, medicine and medical supplies, school supplies, construction materials, handicraft products, and processed food. On the other hand, Cambodia's exports to Vietnam comprised mostly low-value items, including agricultural products, forest products, fish, poultry, and domestic animals. Vietnam's nonrefundable aid to Cambodia was reduced to technical assistance, including research studies, design, repair, and recovery of thirty-five economic and cultural projects; the dispatch of Vietnamese experts to Cambodia; and scholarships for Cambodian students.
In April 1981, Vietnam and the Soviet Union signed an agreement on “the coordination of economic assistance to the recovery and construction of the PRK concerning projects in the agreements between Cambodia and the Soviet Union.”85 This trilateral agreement stated, “Vietnam will assist in the implementation of the work under the responsibility of the Cambodian government as stated in the agreement with the Soviet government. Such assistance in the form of sending Vietnamese experts to the Soviet-aided projects in Cambodia will be carried out in agreements between the Vietnamese and Cambodian authorities. When necessary, the Cambodian authority will transfer to the Vietnamese government all important documents on structural design and technological equipment from the Soviet Union.”86 Thus, Vietnam's role as the coordinator and implementer of the Soviet aid projects in Cambodia further suggests the Soviets' delegation of responsibility for assisting Laos and Cambodia to Vietnam as the de facto leader of socialist Indochina.
The year 1983 saw a major shift in Hanoi's strategic thinking from an all-out military confrontation with China and ASEAN to the partial withdrawal of Vietnamese troops from Cambodia and a long-term strategic plan for Vietnam-led economic integration of the three Indochinese countries, a model inspired by the Soviet-led COMECON. Such a shift in strategic thinking was driven by both international pressure and domestic economic imperatives at home. In 1980-82, the decline of the Soviet economic power in the last few years of Brezhnev's rule, compounded by economic competitiveness between Vietnam and other Eastern European members of the COMECON, converged with Hanoi's growing fear of the economic and political threat emanating from China and Thailand, which were aligned with the United States.
By late 1982 and early 1983, Vietnam's two main strategic objectives—building socialism and defending national sovereignty—in Hanoi's view were more threatened by economic and political factors emanating from China and ASEAN than by Chinese military attacks.
At the center of this change was the rising influence of reformist leaders, including Foreign Minister Nguyen Co Thach. Against the growing military costs of the two-front war and the prospect of protracted warfare, their ideas about economic reform and opening gained more support from the old revolutionary guards, namely, Le Duan, Le Duc Tho, Truong Chinh, and Pham Van Dong within the Politburo of the Party Central Committee, after four years of costly military confrontation with China and military intervention in Cambodia. In 1983 this gradual change in Hanoi's strategic thinking was by no means a move away from a focus on military confrontation with the West but rather a reorientation of strategies from a focus on military confrontation with China and Thailand toward deescalation of military conflicts and dialogue with China and Thailand in the hope of reaching an acceptable political solution to the Cambodian problem. Such regional stability would allow Hanoi to focus on economic integration within the socialist Indochinese bloc. The reformists used the language of "peaceful economic and political evolution" engineered by China and ASEAN to convince Laos and Cambodia to support a shift from short-term military confrontation to long-term economic security as the Soviet bloc was becoming a less reliable base for Vietnam's economic development.
The ultimate motivation behind the economy-first faction's strategic idea of Vietnam-led economic regionalism was to provide a short- and long-term material foundation for its twin strategy of building socialism and defending its national sovereignty against the Chinese threat, as well as for expanding Vietnam's political sphere of influence within the Soviet-dominated hierarchical structure of international socialism.
The bulk of available documentary evidence reveals that, although Hanoi's leaders did not have the motive of physically colonizing all of Indochina per se, they sought to establish a Vietnam-dominated Indochinese regionalism to advance Vietnam's economic development and security environment and confront the economic and political threat emanating from China, Thailand, and other ASEAN members.
In March 1979, just two months after toppling the Pol Pot regime, Prime Minister Pham Van Dong instructed economic experts in Office 6 of his cabinet to conduct a thorough study of Cambodia's economic potential. On April 30, a report on "Cambodia's economic situation after liberation," was submitted to the prime minister. In this report, Vietnamese economic experts wrote, "Based on our early assessment, Cambodia's long-term economic potential is rich and diverse in many fields, from agriculture and forestry to fisheries and so on. Its rich natural resources will be a strong foundation for developing an independent socialist economy."
In the summer of 1982, the Council of Ministers instructed the MOFA and the Committee of Economic and Cultural Cooperation with Laos and Cambodia to take charge of organizing an economic experts conference on economic
cooperation between Vietnam, Laos , and Cambodia to be held for six days in Ho Chi Minh city in January 1983 in preparation for the first high-level party and government leadership summit of the three indochinese countries. In an internally circulated report dated August 24, 1982, the MOFA and the Economic Advisory Committee of the Prime Minister’s Office wrote, “Today the process of the international division of labor and economic cooperation between socialist countries has created the need to build economic alliances between the three Indochinese countries to collectively confront the threat of the West-led economic globalization and the economic threat posed by China and Thailand respectively.”
To understand why Hanoi’s strategic thinking was shifting in late 1982 away from military confrontation, which began in 1978, it is important to discuss how Hanoi viewed the decline of Soviet economic and political power in the early 1980s following the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979. In addition, one needs to take into account the trend of great power rivalry moving away from military confrontation toward peaceful coexistence and dialogue between the Soviet Union and the United States, on the one hand, and reconciliation between the Soviet Union and China in the context of troubled Sino-American relations on the other. Vice-Minister of Foreign Affairs Vo Dong Giang believed that the troubled relations between China and the United States would compel China to shift its strategy from military confrontation to reconciliation and dialogue with Vietnam and the Soviet Union.
Hanoi’s leaders must have been alarmed by the deterioration of the political and economic foundations of Soviet power in the last few years of Brezhnev’s rule (1980–82), which was in part affected by the renewed Cold War tensions between the Soviet Union and the United States and heightened military confrontation between Warsaw Pact and North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) forces following the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979. The US Carter administration’s economic sanctions against the Soviet Union after the invasion of Afghanistan had already exacerbated economic tensions inside the Soviet bloc.
The Polish political and economic crisis of 1980 revealed the precarious position of the Soviet Union. Moscow injected US$4 billion to prevent the collapse of Poland's economy that year, while food shortages in the Soviet Union worsened. From 1980 onward, a number of Warsaw Pact countries, including East Germany, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Romania, and Bulgaria, became increasingly dependent on NATO countries for loans. The worsening economic and political crisis within the Soviet bloc had a direct negative impact on Vietnam, along with Cambodia and Laos, as they had shifted to far greater reliance on foreign aid from and trade with the Soviet-led COMECON; Vietnam's exports to the COMECON accounted for more than 70 percent of its imports coming from these countries in the early 1980s. To the Vietnamese, the Polish crisis demonstrated the limits of Soviet economic power as a socialist bulwark against the invasion of western capitalism. The Vietnamese also learned that members of the Warsaw Pact were engaging in limited economic relations with NATO countries even though they were ideological rivals engaged in military confrontations.
In close proximity, Vietnam in the early 1980s not only faced ideological conflicts and military confrontations with China and Thailand, the latter a key member of anti-Vietnam ASEAN, but it also came under growing economic threats from its neighbors. As Vietnam continued to suffer economic stagnation and food shortages in the early 1980s, unofficial cross-border trade with Thailand was depleting Vietnam's and Cambodia's reserves of gold and foreign currency. As large numbers of commodities, including secondhand motorcycles, popular foreign cigarettes, Thai beer, and clothes were smuggled from Thailand through Cambodia to southern Vietnam, Vietnamese and Cambodian gold, diamonds, and foreign currency ended up in Thailand.
Imports of goods from Thailand had to be paid for in gold or foreign currency. As Beresford and Phong explain, "Although they could be purchased in Phnom Penh with Vietnamese dong [VND], they had first to be purchased in Thailand with Thai baht or US dollars. In this case the imports have been paid for. The deficit, which was certainly large, could be covered either by Cambodian exports to Thailand or by dollars available in the Vietnamese market and transferred to Cambodia." According to Beresford and Phong's estimation, Vietnam's annual unofficial imports from Cambodia amounted to no less than US$200 million. With respect to the balance of unofficial imports and exports, Vietnam suffered a large trade deficit with Cambodia. Unofficial cross-border trade with Thailand via Laos followed the same pattern; cheap Thai shoes and clothes were the two most popular goods in Vietnam. As a result, the constant flow of foreign currency and gold from Vietnam to Thailand became a major concern to Hanoi's leaders.
Deng Xiaoping declared at the Twelfth Party Congress On September 1 ,1982 that “economic construction” was the fundamental determinant of China’s success in solving international and domestic problems. Since 1980 China had actively engaged in a new mission in its economic diplomacy; that is, to promote its economic development. China had already developed a working relationship with the United States to obtain economic and technological assistance. With the cooperation of the United States and Thailand, China sent economic and military aid to the Cambodian resistance forces, including the khmer Rouge, to increase the human and economic costs to the Vietnamese occupying forces.
Proponents of reforms and opening, especially Foreign Minister Nguyen Co Thach, argued that the greatest threat to the Socialist Republic of Vietnam and its smaller Communist allies in Cambodia and Laos was by 1982 political and economic; to them, the military threat posed by China and its ally, the resistance forces inside Cambodia, had become secondary to the growing threat of China’s economic and political rise. In other words, from the perspective of the economy-first faction, the fear of Vietnam being left behind the global economic change and lagging behind its Communist great power neighbor China presented a long-term threat.
Hanoi’s idea of a Vietnam-dominated Indochinese regionalism emerged in the context of (1) the deterioration of the economic and political foundations of the Soviet bloc and uncertainty about the Soviet commitment to aiding Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia; (2) Hanoi’s fear of a repeated economic crisis and domestic political instability and desire for more autonomy from the Soviet Union; and (3) the immediate threat China and Thailand posed to the political, economic, and security interests of Vietnam in Indochina. Internal discussions at the policy-input level, precisely in specialized committees and agencies such as the Committee of Economic Relations with Foreign Countries, the Committee of Economic and Cultural Cooperation with Laos and Cambodia, and the Prime Minister’s Office, reveal Hanoi’s strategic shift from a posture of military confrontation to one of economic integration and political solidarity in Indochina in late 1982 and 1983.
On February 22-23, 1983, on Vietnam's initiative, the three Indochinese socialist countries convened the first high-level party and government summit in Vientiane, the capital of the LPDR. Hanoi attached historic and political importance to the summit and dispatched a Vietnamese delegation to assist Laos in organizing it.101 Internationally this summit was primed to boost Vietnam's public diplomacy, demonstrating this summit was primed to boost Vietnam's public diplomacy, demonstrating the nonmilitary nature of the Indochinese socialist bloc to dispel the ASEAN security concerns often raised by Thailand, Singapore, and Malaysia about a Vietnam-dominated Indochinese military alliance. The Vietnamese hoped to drive a wedge within the ASEAN community and between ASEAN and China. The summit was timed to launch a surprise to derail China's attempt to isolate the Indochinese countries at the seventh NAM summit in New Delhi, India, on March 7-11, 1982, during which the issue of Cambodia's country seat at NAM was expected to be a hotly contested issue. The Vietnamese top diplomat Nguyen Co Thach and Prime Minister Pham Van Dong declared a major success in isolating China at the NAM. summit. There was a split near the middle, with twenty-five countries supporting the Cambodian government in exile and nineteen supporting the Heng Samrin regime. Only Singapore and Malaysia condemned Vietnam's occupation of Cambodia. Seventeen countries voted to leave the Cambodia seat vacant.
Yet Hanoi's more concrete success was achieved behind closed doors, that is Vietnam obtained the consent of Laos and Cambodia to its long-term plan for economic integration of the three countries. According to the Vietnamese MOFA report, "Laos and Cambodia with good faith want to enhance the cooperation of the three economic cooperation committees. Besides, Laos desired to quickly establish a system of economic cooperation between the three countries modeled after the Council of Mutual Economic Assistance."109 Vietnam's top economic planners were very pleased that their Cambodian and Laotian comrades were enthusiastic about Hanoi's long-term plan for Vietnam-led economic integration in Indochina. But the Vietnamese explained to them that
because we cannot afford to allow our enemy to accuse Vietnam of establishing a military alliance and to cause our ASEAN neighbors to fear us, we did not mention the trilateral military cooperation in the summit declaration. However, in our dialogue the Laotian comrades proposed that we help them by maintaining a long-term presence of [Vietnamese] volunteer troops in their country. As for the Cambodian comrades, they completely agreed with us regarding the strategy of gradual withdrawal of Vietnamese volunteer troops, and they praised and thanked our soldiers in Cambodia. Especially, the three countries completely agreed with each other regarding the assessment of regional and international politics, China's ambitions in Indochina and Southeast Asia, and the orientation of our foreign policy.
In 1983, Laos and Cambodia were also in accord with Vietnam's strategy of the gradual withdrawal of Vietnamese troops from Cambodia to demonstrate the corresponding ability of the Cambodian revolution to stand on its own and to emphasize Vietnam's desire for peace consistent with the international trend of deescalation of confrontation in the world and Southeast Asia. In a top-secret report on the March summit delivered to the Council of State, the MOFA wrote:
After three years of bitter struggle and victory, the position (the) and strength (luc) of the three countries have never been as strong as they are today. We have circumvented the most difficult test in the years 1978-80, during which the Sino-American cooperation against our Indochinese revolution was at its peak. Our Indochinese unity and cooperation with the Soviet Union have also never been this strong. China's policy of putting pressure on ASEAN countries to oppose the Indochinese countries has failed. Dialogue and peaceful coexistence in Southeast Asia the emerging trend. The recent Sino-Soviet negotiations marked the failure of China's policy of suing the Sino-American alliance against the Soviet Union.
Foreign Minister Nguyen Co Thach warned, “We must educate our cadres well to defeat the enemy’s attempt to divide our three [Indochinese] countries and to reject the ideology of big-country chauvinism and the ideology of narrow-minded ethnonationalism. Especially we need to be prepared to confront China’s shift from the policy of using the military to a new policy of peaceful evolution, using political and economic tools to divide our three countries, foster regime change, and sabotage our revolution from the inside.”113 In essence, Indochinese economic regionalism was to replace each country’s economic nationalism.
A series of conferences had been convened to find common ground on the substance of the joint communiqué of the three Indochinese countries well before the summit even took place. Nguyen Co Thach told the Council of State on March 29, 1983, that the two preparatory conferences at the foreign minister and economic expert levels were organized in such a way as to guarantee secrecy well before the high-level party and government summit in Vientiane.114 On December 9–10, 1982, the vice-ministerial conference in Vientiane concluded with an agreement to hold a follow-up conference of economic, cultural, and technological experts from the three countries in January 1983.
Tran Xuan Bach, secretary of the party secretariat of the Party Central Committee, was appointed chairman of the preparatory committee (ban tru bi) for the high-level summit, and the vice-minister of foreign affairs, Vo Dong Giang, was appointed as one of the members of this committee. On December 27, 1982, Bach’s preparatory committee authorized the Standing Committee of the Council of Ministers to organize a six-day conference of economic experts from the three countries in Ho Chi Minh City in January 1983. Each country was to send a six-member delegation to the conference. The Vietnamese delegation was headed by Tran Quoc Manh, who was vice-chairman of the Committee on Economic and Cultural Cooperation with Laos and Cambodia (CECC-Laos and Cambodia).
In an all-day meeting on December 30, the CECC-Laos and Cambodia circulated an economic cooperation policy draft prepared for the conference of economic experts from the three countries. Senior economic officials of the Council of Ministers, including Hoang Kim Anh, attended the meeting.116 The draft of the policy proposal to be presented to the Laotian and Cambodian delegations only contained a summary of (1) “content of cooperation,” (2) “procedure on the forms of cooperation,” and (3) “methods of implementation.”
In a nutshell, Vietnam’s proposal was that for 1983-85 the implementation of bilateral trade agreements would continue and focus on trilateral cooperation that benefited the three countries in the most important areas, especially food supply, consumption goods, processing of forest products for export, transportation, and telecommunications, and technical cooperation.118 Six forms of economic cooperation listed in the proposal included nonrefundable aid, loans, joint projects, trade, subcontracting, and plan coordination for the economic FYP for 1985-90.119 The three countries agreed that the Soviet ruble would be used as the currency for trade.
Vietnam by design was going to be the dominant country in Indochinese economic regionalism, although in public, Vietnamese planners spoke of sovereign equality and socialist fraternity. Vietnam’s real motives were masked by the language of “special brotherly relations between the three countries” and the need for “mutual assistance” through all-sided and long-term economic, cultural, and technological cooperation. In its internally circulated comprehensive economic study of the Committee on Economic Relations with Foreign Countries, which was presented to the Politburo and the Standing Committee of the Council of Ministers in July 1982, the document shows Hanoi’s long-term economic plan for a Vietnam-dominated Indochina. Documents in preparation for the high-level summit on February 22-23, 1983, further reveal the long-term strategic thinking of Vietnam’s economic planners.
In a top-secret economic research report, dated July 17, 1982, prepared for the Council of Ministers to present to the Politburo, a research group of the Committee on Economic Relations with Foreign Countries drafted a master plan for Vietnam’s economic cooperation with Cambodia and Laos from 1983 to 2000.120 This report was completed on June 30, 1982. Then it was sent on July 2 to the Office of the Council of Ministers for further review and additional ideas. In a revised version of the “economic cooperation plan,” the research group provided an in-depth analysis of the need and potential of economic cooperation and integration between the three countries. Finally, the Committee on Economic Relations with Foreign Countries presented the study to the Politburo on July 17 so it could decide on a policy orientation. The Politburo was to convene a high-level party-government summit of the three countries in February 1983 to forge a trilateral agreement to deepen economic integration between the three Indochinese countries.
The study began by stressing the shift from Vietnam’s nonrefundable aid to Cambodia (1979-81) and Laos (1965-81) to building independent socialist regimes in the two countries and to economic cooperation after 1982 to oppose the Sino-American alignment and its attempt to weaken the solidarity of the three countires. In the Vietnamese analysis, four factors (politics, geography, economic resources, and history) were singled out as representative of the commonality the three countries shared, and these factors also laid a strong foundation for integrated economic regionalism in Indochina. Politically, the three nations were to be the vanguard of socialism in Southeast Asia, and they were under a growing economic threat from China and Thailand, which were aligned with the United States. At the same time, China and Thailand attempted in every way to drive a wedge among the three countries and between them and the Soviet Union by stoking Cambodian and Laotian fears of Vietnamese hegemonism.
Geographically, the three countries are closely linked on the same Indochinese peninsula, sharing the Mekong River and a few million hectares of land rich in natural resources along their land borders. In terms of economic resources, each country had different strengths and weaknesses and could benefit by forging collective efforts to step up economic productivity and exports to the Soviet Union and other COMECON countries in Eastern Europe. Historically, colonial France had crafted a long-term plan to exploit the natural resources of Indochina by building a transportation system that crisscrossed the peninsula. Later, the first half of the 1970s saw the failed attempt by the United States to connect Cambodia and Laos with western Thailand's economy. Yet, from the perspective of Hanoi's economic planners, the regional economic blueprint of the French colonialists remained useful for Indochinese economic integration and to advance socialist industrialization in the region.
The Vietnamese plan was that economic cooperation between Vietnam and Cambodia and Laos would begin in the 1980s in the form of Vietnamese loans to the other two nations. The three countries could collaborate to construct industrial projects but would seek support from the Soviet Union and other COMECON countries.122 Vietnam's long-term plan of economic regionalism was to more effectively exploit the natural resources (land, labor, forests, fish, and mineral resources) of the three countries, especially the largely untapped natural resources of Cambodia and Laos, to meet domestic needs and increase surpluses for export to the Soviet Union and other COMECON countries. In return, the three countries were to import from the Soviet Union and Eastern European countries modern technology and the industrial equipment needed to industrialize their respective economies. This plan would secure economic growth and enhance national defense, which in turn would serve the twin strategies of defending and building socialism in each country.123
The Vietnamese plan was that economic cooperation between Vietnam and Cambodia and Laos would begin in the 1980s in the form of Vietnamese loans to the other two nations. The three countries could collaborate to construct industrial projects but would seek support from the Soviet Union and other COMECON countries.122 Vietnam's long-term plan of economic regionalism was to more effectively exploit the natural resources (land, labor, forests, fish, and mineral resources) of the three countries, especially the largely untapped natural resources of Cambodia and Laos, to meet domestic needs and increase surpluses for export to the Soviet Union and other COMECON countries. In return, the three countries were to import from the Soviet Union and Eastern European countries modern technology and the industrial equipment needed to industrialize their respective economies. This plan would secure economic growth and enhance national defense, which in turn would serve the twin strategies of defending and building socialism in each country.
Notably, the Council of Ministers' study, which was more detailed and official after it was reviewed by the Politburo, revealed Hanoi's deep strategic motive behind Vietnam-led Indochinese regionalism, that is, the linkage between economic and security cooperation in Indochina. On August 24, 1982, the Office of the Council of Ministers sent back suggestions about the content of economic, cultural, technical, and scientific cooperation between the three Indochinese countries to the MOFA and the CECC-Laos and Cambodia. First, it shared the research group’s rationale that the three Indochinese countries shared a common struggle and destiny and therefore Indochinese regionalism was a natural development. Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos were geographically connected, suffered economic hardship because of the thirty-year war (against the French, the Americans, and then the Chinese), and were similar in terms of their current stage of economic development, that is, small-scale production and a natural-resource-based economy. The Vietnamese Council of Ministers stressed what economists call “comparative advantage” in that “Cambodia and Laos possess abundant and diverse natural sources that have been underexploited due to the severe lack of human resources, equipment, infrastructure, capital, and technological capacity. However, Vietnam possesses a much larger force of skilled labor and stronger technological and industrial foundations.”124 The Council of Ministers also emphasized the importance of convincing Cambodia and Laos that “this economic regionalism would create necessary material foundations for an Indochinese [security] alliance.”
In addition to Vietnam's military domination of Cambodia and Laos, Vietnam was superior regarding its technological capacity, skilled labor force, economic management and size, and population. Hanoi's top economic planners envisioned a transition from economic cooperation to integration,126 resembling an economic bloc. Vietnam would begin by concentrating on the most important projects, including exploitation of the water resources of the Mekong River; mining natural resources, especially minerals in the highlands of the three countries (Tay Nguyen in Vietnam, northeastern of Cambodia, and lower Laos, with combined virgin land of four million hectares); and improving the transportation system (land, water, rail, air, and pipeline) that connected them all. Such projects were of strategic importance for long-term cooperation, which would increase each country's economic strength and the collective economic power of all three.
Hanoi's strategy of developing Vietnam-led Indochinese regionalism was revealed in greater detail in a study by an economic advisory committee within Office 7 of the Council of Ministers. Six key economic and cultural sectors, in Hanoi's plan, that were targeted for short- and long-term cooperation (at least until the year 2000) included (1) agricultural production; (2) the exploitation and preservation of forest resources; (3) the development of industry and manufacturing of consumption goods; (4) transportation, telecommunications, and Post: (5) foreign trade, air travel, and tourism; and (6) culture. The six areas of trilateral cooperation were ranked from high to low priority in that order. First and foremost, in agriculture Vietnamese economic planners desired to significantly widen and deepen trilateral cooperation to expand food production, to address shortages of food in each country, and to develop and process agricultural products for export to the Soviet bloc.128 From the Vietnamese economic planners’ perspective, annual rice production was 300 kilograms per person on average. This level of productivity was too low to keep up with the rate of population growth in each country (Vietnam at 2.6 percent per year, Laos at 2.4 percent, and Cambodia at 2.8 percent).
The food shortages in the three countries, in Hanoi’s view, could be easily resolved in a short span of time, but Vietnam had to spearhead trilateral collaborative efforts to develop and exploit the combined agricultural land and resources of Cambodia and Laos by utilizing Vietnamese human resources and technology. To the Vietnamese planners, Laos and Cambodia possessed far greater potential for agricultural productivity than did Vietnam. By 1982 Laos was able to cultivate only one-fourth of its available agricultural land and grew rice only once a year; its enormous amount farmland had not been used due to the lack of irrigation systems, machinery, and labor in the early 1980s. Rice growing in Laos still used traditional primitive methods, that is, it depended on manual labor and plowed its rice fields using oxen and buffalo. The result was a low rice yield, only 1.2 tons per hectare per year. If modern farming techniques were applied, the rice yield could reach five tons per hectare in some regions.
In Cambodia, in Hanoi’s view, the country’s agricultural land, or 1.3 to 1.5 million hectares, only one-fourth of the cultivated in the early 1980s. However, in the late 1960s, 2.5 million hectares were cultivated during the Sihanouk regime. Rice was farmed only once a year, and farmers did not use modern methods of high-yield farming. The annual rice yield was only one ton per hectare.
On the other hand, Vietnam’s agricultural sector was more developed than those of Cambodia and Laos. Vietnam applied high-yield farming techniques, increased rice-growing seasons, expanded fruit-tree growing, acquired experience building large-scale irrigation systems, and had plant- and animal-breeding research centers and animal disease control center. Vietnam harvested 2.1 tons per hectare each rice-growing season in the early 1980s. The Vietnamese economic planners wanted to share these experiences to help their Cambodian and Laotian comrades increase their agricultural production to address domestic shortages in each country and contribute to Indochina’s exports of agricultural products to the Soviet Union and other Eastern European countries.131 The Vietnamese also desired to cooperate with Cambodia in exploiting and processing freshwater fish in the Tonle Sap, the great lake of Cambodia.
In the short term, the Vietnamese were to provide expertise, technology, equipment, and machinery of various kinds to exploit the agricultural resources of Laos and Cambodia, process them, and get their share of agricultural production or purchase it at “socialist” prices, meaning below international market prices. The Vietnamese planners reasoned that “Thailand, with a population of 46 million people and 6 million hectares of rice paddies, annually exported agricultural products worth US$8 billion (an average of US$170 per person), whereas in 1983 the three Indochinese countries had a combined population of more than 62 million people and more than 20 million hectares of rice paddies and could only export agricultural products worth US$350 million per year (an annual average of US$5 to $6 per person).”133 The Vietnamese planners continued to speak zealously of the potential of exploiting the rich national resources of Laos and Cambodia. In their assessment report, they wrote:
The Indochinese agricultural export potential is enormous, especially the highlands that join the three countries, with nearly four million hectares of fertile soil suitable for growing rubber, coffee, cacao, tea, and fruit. The Cambodian highlands comprise approximately 900,000 hectares; the Bolaven Plateau of Laos comprises over 1 million hectares. And in 1983 most of the highlands in the two countries has not been farmed, the dense forest in these regions is underexploited, forest products have not been processed, and therefore their value for export remains low.
For long-term cooperation, the Vietnamese planners were thinking of starting several big projects to exploit the land and water of the Mekong River to boost the economy of each country. Those projects included hydropower plants in Pa Mong (Laos) and Stung Treng (Cambodia), water transportation, freshwater fish farming, fresh drinking water facilities, and irrigation projects. The Vietnamese were also planning to establish “a rice-seeding research center for all of Indochina.”
Economically minded and reformist leaders within the Council of Ministers also proposed a "preferential trade system for Indochina," especially a trade system that could meet the food supply needs of Vietnamese experts, workers, and volunteer troops in Laos and Cambodia. They suggested that in those countries Vietnamese military units be allowed to cultivate and produce food to meet their needs and mitigate Vietnam's economic burden.
Vietnam's national interests were front and center in forestry cooperation. The Vietnamese economic planners saw enormous economic potential for exploiting the diverse and rich forest resources of Laos and Cambodia. In each country, logging alone, according to the Vietnamese estimate, would produce approximately 1 billion cubic meters of fine timber. In Laos, the Phin Xavannakhet forest covers more than 18 million hectares and has more than 18 million cubic meters of high-quality wood of various kinds. The forest in the Muang Phin (Xiang Khuang Province) and Nakai (Khammuon Province) covers between 400,000 and 500,000 hectares of land and has not been exploited. In addition, Cambodia's northeastern region has a rich and dense forest, and it has not been exploited either. Both Laos and Cambodia were not capable of processing forest products and faced many difficulties due to the lack of laborers, transportation, processing equipment, and adequate roads.
For technical cooperation, the Vietnamese saw an opportunity to export their processing equipment and expertise to Cambodia and Laos. In addition, they wanted to partner with their Cambodian and Laotian comrades to exploit the latter's forest resources and increase exports to the Soviet Union and other Eastern European countries.138 For long-term cooperation, the Vietnamese planners envisioned building a joint forest-industrial complex, including wood processing, the production of wood products for consumption, and school products such as paper, pencils, and blackboards. These products would provide easily accessible resources for each country's lucrative export industry.
For heavy industry, the Vietnamese aimed to create a pan-Indochina industrial complex. Vietnam's industrial capacity, including energy generation, mining, metallurgy, chemical processing, and manufacturing of construction materials, was already much stronger than those of Laos and Cambodia. Certainly, Vietnam would take the lead in this area. Specifically, Vietnam saw an enormous market in Laos and Cambodia for its manufactures, including machinery and equipment to develop their agricultural sectors, forestry, road construction, and irrigation systems. Tens of thousands of small manufacturers in the industrial hub of Ho Chi Minh City would grow quickly as the demand for machinery, equipment, construction materials, and consumption goods in Cambodia and Laos was enormous.140 Vietnam's manufacturing sector was running well below capacity due to the endemic shortages of raw materials, and as a result unemployment remained high. For this reason, the Vietnamese planners targeted Cambodia and Laos as easily accessible sources of raw materials to increase Vietnam's production of consumption goods and provide more jobs to Vietnamese workers.141 In return, Vietnam would trade its manufactured
equipment, military hardware, fuel, and food. During this period, Vietnam, which was heavily dependent on large amounts of aid from the Soviet Union and other socialist countries, could provide Cambodia with only limited material aid, which included mostly supplementary food supplies and consumption goods to prevent starvation, restore agricultural production, and consumption. However, Hanoi's planners concentrated most of Vietnam's human resources and energy on building a client state in Cambodia modeled after its own party and government structure by dispatching large numbers of Vietnamese advisers in all fields, from the military, police, economic and cultural affairs, and top party and government leaders to district administrators. In short, Hanoi sought to exercise rather exclusive political and military influence in Cambodia, but it did so by shifting the burden of material and technological aid to the Soviet Union and other socialist members of the Soviet-led COMECON and tapping Cambodia's natural resources.
In 1983 the reformist leaders proposed to reduce Vietnam's provision of massive assistance to Cambodia and Laos and implement gradual shift toward Vietnam-dominated economic regionalism in Indochina in 1985-90. Under such regionalism, Laos and Cambodia would also benefit, though to a much lesser extent, due to their close cooperation with Vietnam in exploiting their natural resources, especially agriculturally land, extensive forests, fisheries, and rich mineral deposits.
In domestic politics, after a four-year military mobilization and confrontation in Cambodia and against China, the economic reformist faction managed to convince the old guard within the CPV leadership to consider the costs of the two-front war and change the course of Vietnam’s foreign policy. The nature of the threat also changed, as in 1983 the economic threat loomed even larger than the military one. As China’s military threat declined, the economic and political threat from China and Thailand rose, causing the Vietnamese leadership to fear Chinese economic pressure and the drain of gold and foreign currency from Indochina to Thailand.
Internationally, Vietnam-led Indochinese economic regionalism would not only enable Vietnam to take advantage of the international division of labor with the Soviet-led COMECON but would also allow Vietnam to ward off the economic threat from the West. The economic crisis in Poland on loans in 1980-81 alarmed the Vietnamese leadership, demonstrating that dependence from the West ran the risk of political instability. The shift from military confrontation to economic integration of the three countries was also justified by structural change in great power politics from military escalation after the Soviet Union’s invasion of Afghanistan in 1979 to détente and peaceful coexistence in
1982 as the political and economic power of the Soviet Union significantly declined in the last two years of Brezhnev’s rule (1980-82). Regionally, China’s troubled relationship with the United States and ASEAN’s fragile unity regarding the resolution of the Cambodian problem led Vietnam’s top diplomats to believe that China and ASEAN would prefer dialogue over military confrontation with Vietnam. This turned out to be true for ASEAN, but China was not giving up its military strategic thinking from military confrontation with Vietnam along the Sino-Vietnamese border while Vietnamese troops were present in Cambodia. In summary, the shift in Hanoi’s strategic thinking from military confrontation to economic integration of the three Indochinese countries in 1982-83 was driven by both domestic economic imperatives and structural changes following Vietnam’s invasion of Cambodia and the Soviet Union’s invasion of Afghanistan.
The impetus for course correction was additionally driven by impersonal material factors in 1983-85. The growing costs of the two-front war in Cambodia and with China, combined with the burden of nation building in postgenocide Cambodia and assistance to Laos, rapidly increased along with the prospect that Vietnam was at great risk of being bogged down in a protracted military conflict in Cambodia and China with no end in sight. Large-scale battles in summer of 1984 in Cambodia and battles in the mountains against Chinese troops at Vi Xuyen (a district in Ha Giang Province), in which Vietnam suffered unprecedented casualties in a span of a few weeks, further illuminated the stalemate in this protracted war. Clearly Vietnam was fighting an unwinnable two-front war by 1985.
Each article is in a column from the book.
Comments
Post a Comment