ABSTRACTS 223

Indochina’s Slow Opening to the Future

Lawrence E. Grinter

The Cold War ended in Southeast Asia with Communist Vietnam’s entry into the Association of Southeast Asian Nations in July 1995. The final remaining communist guerrilla movements, the imploding in and the dwindling New People’s Army in the , are mere echoes of their original strengths. Thus, the post-Cold War transformation of all of Southeast Asia is well underway, and much of it reflects market economics and the emergence of middle classes that favor more liberal political arrangements. However, the Indochina states-Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia-are far behind the overall trend. Hammered by American bombing campaigns twenty-five years ago, and further damaged by highly repressive and economically autarkic communist “liberation” regimes that followed, the Indochina states are attempting to climb out of the rubble. But their openings to the future are slow and prone toward reversals. Cambodia, now up to ten million people, is still recovering from ’s Khmer Rouge genocide and subsequent ten years of Vietnamese military occupation. The land-mine problem in Cambodia, perhaps ten million remaining devices, is the heaviest concentration in the world. About 1 out of every 250 Cambodians is an amputee. The United Nations presence in Cambodia laid the seeds of more mature politics, but stability disintegrated amidst last year’s fighting between ’s and Prince Ranariddh’s forces, The Khmer rouge, attempting to survive, nevertheless imploded; at least that threat to Cambodia’s stability is receding. In spite of the political chaos, Cambodia’s economy is in better shape than it was a decade ago. Infrastructure is being rebuilt, new foreign investment has occurred. But surrounded by Thailand and Vietnam, and with ASEAN membership delayed, Cambodia cannot control its strategic future. 224 THE KOREAN JOURNAL OF DEFENSE ANALYSIS

Laos, with some five million people and the highest per-capita income among the Indochina states, was less traumatized by the In- dochina wars than Cambodia and Vietnam. The secretive military- dominated government in Vientiane has undertaken considerable experimentation with market economies while, nevertheless, repressing moves toward political liberalization. Even this communist leadership recognizes that Laos’s future depends on unlocking the potential of the country’s natural resources-hardwoods, gold, gems, and hydroelectric capacities. ASEAN membership, granted in July 1997, may help. Vietnam is the heavyweight among the Indochina states with 75 million people and a GDP fifteen times that of Cambodia. With over one million Vietnamese citizens consigned to prison camps after “libera- tion” in 1975, and another three-quarters of a million attempting to escape, the Vietnamese Communist Party assured that no economic development would occur until the late 1980s when it allowed ex- perimentation with guided capitalism. But Vietnam remains a repressive one-party authoritarian state; the Ministry of Interior hounds even peaceful expressions of political and religious differences. Finally in late 1997 there were moves to replace the old revolutionary leadership with younger, more modern cadres. Thus we see the leaderships of the three Indochina states, all com- munists or ex-communists, slowly allowing their countries to open to the global liberation of markets and middle classes which already dominate the rest of Southeast Asia. LAWRENCE E. GRINTER 191

Indochina’s Slow Opening to the Future

Lawrence E. Grinter

The Cold War ended in Southeast Asia with Communist Vietnam’s entry into the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) in July 1995. The only communist guerrilla warfare left in the region is the dwindling New Peoples Army operations scattered in the Philippines and the shrunken and imploding Khmer Rouge activity in Cambodia. These final two fighting relics of Southeast Asian Marxist-Leninism are mere echoes of the ideological and military collisions that once tragi- cally contorted the region. The Philippine guerrillas have no chance of taking the Manila government, and what remains of the Khmer Rouge continues to weaken. Accordingly, the post-Cold War transformation of all of Southeast Asia, even including Burma (), is under way, and much of it reflects market economics and the emergence of middle classes who favor more liberal political arrangements. However the practical achievement of true free market economies and robust democratic systems throughout all of Southeast Asia, if they actually occur, will take many years. Even then the region’s economic-political arrange- ments will not be “Western.” Patriarchal, authoritarian, and collectivist influences will be present in these societies for a long time to come. They are especially evident today in the Indochina states-Vietnam,

The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of the US Air Force or any other government agency. 192 THE KOREAN JOURNAL OF DEFENSE ANALYSIS

Laos, and Cambodia-the least developed and some of the most politi- cally repressive and recently volatile states in the region. Indochina presents significant problems for Southeast Asia and for Western policy: Years of warfare, huge population and infrastructure damage during the Indochina wars and related American bombing campaigns of twenty-five years ago, and highly repressive (in the case of the Khmer Rouge, hideous) communist “liberation” regimes drove these nations further backward. Today, for example, Vietnam’s per capita income is perhaps one-twenty-fifth of Singapore’s, and about a tenth of Thailand’s. But much is changing as Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia slowly open their economies and, in fits and starts, the governments wrestle with economic liberalization and political decompression or stability.

The Kingdom of Cambodia

Cambodia, now up to ten million people, is still recovering from the holocaust of Pol Pot’s Khmer Rouge genocide and subsequent ten years of Vietnamese military occupation. Between April 1975 and December 1978 Cambodia lost one and a half million people to the genocide. All educated people, urban workers, civil servants, army officers, police, minorities, and business people were targeted for erasure. Pol Pot’s “Democratic Cambodia” became a gigantic prison state divided into seven military zones.’ The most gruesome photographic records of the Khmer Rouge genocide are preserved at a high school turned into a torture center known as Tuol Sleng.’ Signs of Cambodia’s

1 Naming itself Angkar (“the organization”), Khmer Rouge directing authorities instituted the most coercive regime in modern Asian history. The social and political techniques of Angkar control, and the effects on the lives of the people, are carefully presented in Marie Alexandrine Martin, Cambodia: A Shattered Society (Berkeley: Univ. of Calif Press, 1994), as translated by Mark W. McLeod, pp. 157-214. 2 The Khmer Rouge extermination rate was the subject of widely variant interpreta- tions, ranging from “tens of thousands” to three million. Taking into account war deaths, disease, starvation, forced labor, and a minimum of a half-million Khmer Rouge killings, a figure approaching 1.5 million deaths results. Two important sources remain: Michael Vickery, Kampuchea: Politics, Economics, and Society LAWRENCE E. GRINTER 193 holocaust are still evident today: tens of thousands of skulls recovered in hundreds of killing pits, estimates of up to eight million live land mines still littering the countryside, and amputees begging in the cities. It still may not be over-the final hard-line Khmer Rouge elements isolated at Anlong Veng evidently have conducted more killings, torture, and kidnappings, and the infamous Pol Pot, reportedly captured or surrendered in June-July, seemed to remain at large. Then on July 28, 1997, came the extraordinary Khmer Rouge video footage of a mute, gray-headed Pol Pot sitting in the dock before a jungle “trial” of cheering Khmer Rouge who denounced him as a mass murderer, but refused to turn him over to an international tribunal.’ The land mine problem in Cambodia affects the country’s entire development. Cambodia has the heaviest concentration of land mines in the world and the highest number of amputees per capita in the world. Land mines often have an explosive life of over fifty years. Some 40,000 amputees in Cambodia equate to 1 in every 250 Cambodians. Most are men and children. One minefield known as K5, built with forced labor and located along the northern border where Cambodia, Thailand, and Laos intersect, is over 600 kilometers long and could contain two to three million mines. Some Cambodian mines float to the surface in the rainy season. Some minefields are built over older mines that sink into the soil. The impact of mines in Cambodia has a sinister multiplier effect: areas become depopulated when people migrate; entire communities become impoverished; food growing and distribution is interrupted; local medical resources become quickly drained when emergency victims require several operations and transfusions. And of

(London: Frances Pintor, 1986), 184-88; and Craig Etcheson, The Rise and Demise of Democratic Kampuchea (Boulder: Westview Press, 19841, pp. 143-49. A more recent and very detailed treatment is Ben Kiernan, The Pol Pot Regime (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1996). 3 Elizabeth Becher, “Videotape shows Pol Pot on Trial, Facing the Khmer Rouge’s Justice,” New York Times, July 29, 1997; and Nate Thayer, “Pol Pot, I Presume,” Wall Street Journal, August 1, 1997; and Thayer, “Brother Number Zero,” Far Eastern Economic Review, August 7, 1997, pp. 14-18. Thayer’s eyewitness piece gives the most convincing evidence to date that Pol Pot’s closest security forces and associates, to save their own skins and gain a chance for amnesty, betrayed their leader of thirty years before he could have more of them killed or imprisoned. 194 THE KOREAN JOURNAL OF DEFENSE ANALYSIS course the long-term psychological problems of the surviving victims are often irnmen~e.~It is estimated that in Battambang province alone the government is paying over $300,000 a year in medical disabilities to victims of land mines. In February 1994 King Norodum Sihanouk called for the destruction of all land mines in Cambodia and a ban on the laying of new mines. It has not been enforced or adhered to.’ The United Nation’s demonstration of democratic processes in Cam- bodia in 1991-93 seemed to lay the seeds of a more mature political system. Working with the UN, and its related International Committee for the Reconstruction and Rehabilitation of Cambodia (ICORC) which supervises Cambodia’s aid flow, authorities in Phnom Penh made efforts to stabilize the country’s growth and modernize some institutions. However, “modernization” Cambodia-style has proved to be a tortuous process. Until July 1997, the country’s precarious post-UN political system rested upon a rickety compromise following the elections of May 1993 in which the two traditional power centers in Cambodia-the monarchy and the bureaucracy-joined into a cumbersome two-headed government with power split between Co-Prime Ministers Prince and former Khmer Rouge Hun Sen. Nevertheless, in their continuous power struggle, which periodically veered into violence, the two men successfully resisted UN hopes and internal pressures for democratization, and blocked reform in Cambodia arguing that Western-style democratic values and institutions had no place in the country. Crackdowns on the democratic opposition and the press were routine as the power equation inside Cambodia gradually and ominously shifted away from the royalists to the so-called ex-communists directed by Hun Sen and his Cambodian People’s Party (CPP). Playing catch-up,

4 Seth Mydans, “In Cambodia, the Dying Continues Long After the War,” New York Times, December 3, 1997. Also see Paul Davies and , War ofthe Mines: Cambodia, Landmines and the Impoverishment of a Nation (London: Pluto Press, 1994). 5 LTC Terrance L. Steinhebel, US Army, “Cambodia’s Landmines and Their Impact,” unpublished Air War College paper, February 1997. LAWRENCE E. GRINTER 195

Ranariddh’s Funcinpec, like the CPP, was also authoritarian and manipulati ve.6 New assaults on democratic elements began on March 30, 1997, when grenade attacks outside the National Assembly in Phnom Penh killed sixteen people and wounded over one hundred more, including Americans. An attack on Hun Sen’s life occurred on May 29 when his motorcade was shot up.7 Then in June and July 1997, as both govern- ment factions worked to woo remaining hard-line Khmer Rouge ele- ments at Anlong Veng, the coalition government disintegrated amidst fighting between the two co-prime ministers’ troops. July 4-7 Hun Sen staged a coup d’etat, and Prince Rinariddh, his troops, and numerous Funcinpec party members fled Phnom Penh. Others, perhaps fifty, were executed.8 A tactical alliance between Ranariddh’s fighters and Khmer Rouge elements in the north seems to have emerged. Remonstrances by Sihanouk to Hun Sen, seeking some kind of compromise between Rinariddh and Hun Sen, failed.’ Nevertheless, national elections are still scheduled for May 1998.

Refer to my “Southeast Asian Security into the 21st Century: Emerging Patterns and Challenges,” Korean Journal of Defense Analysis, Winter 1996, p. 121. Also see Pierre P. Lizee, “Cambodia in 1995: From Hope to Despair,” Asian Survey, January 1996, pp. 83-86; Stephen Morris, “The U.S. Must Back Cambodia’s Democrats,” Asian Wall Street Journal, May 6, 1996, p. 16; and Steve Heder, “Cambodia’s Democratic Transition to Neoauthoritarianism,” Current History, December 1995. Matthew Lee, “Cambodia: Blasted Democracy,” Far Eastern Economic Review, April 17, 1997, p. 18, and Phnom Penh (AP) [email protected], May 29, 1997. See reports of July 7, July 10, and the New York Times reports of July 6 and 7, and August 21. Also, Robin Ajello and Dominic Faulder, “ASEAN’s Burden,” Asiaweek, June 27, 1997, pp. 18-20, Susan Berfield and Dominic Faulder, “Hun Sen’s Coup,” Asiaweek, July 18, 1997, pp. 17-20, and Richard H. Solomon and Neil J. Kritz, “Cambodia Unredeemed,” Washington Post, August 7,1997, p. 23, and Nate Thayer, “Harrowing Tales,” Far Eastern Economic Review, August 7, 1997, pp. 22-24. Which side, CPP or Funcinpec, could gain most leverage from new arrangements with the Khmer Rouge remnants aggravated the rivalry. See the New York Times, October 20, 1997. Seth Mydans, “Sihanouk Leaves Cambodia After Mediation Bid Fails,” New York Times, October 27, 1997. 196 THE KOREAN JOURNAL OF DEFENSE ANALYSIS

Less dramatic, but equally fundamental, are Cambodia’s economic problems which include inflation, haphazard tax collection, poorly regulated banking, wild futures trading, and chronic corruption throughout the government. There is recent evidence of drug traffickers’ influence within Hun Sen’s power circle. Cambodia’s reformers have clearly lost much ground. The economy remains seriously under- developed: agriculture still accounts for over fifty percent of GDP with industry at about fifteen percent. There are too many unskilled workers, the civil service and the military remain bloated, and exports (largely rubber and timber) cannot pay for imports (gasoline, diesel fuel, vehicles, and cigarettes). On the positive side inflation seems to be under control, tight fiscal and monetary policies are continuing, and GDP growth was averaging six to seven percent before the July 1997 coup.‘o Regarding the collapsing Khmer Rouge, although down to fewer than two thousand active guerrillas and experiencing new turmoil, KR rem- nants in the Anlong Veng area are still armed, and still an obstacle to a tranquil Cambodia and its relations with Thailand. It was in August 1996 that Ieng Sary with almost three thousand Khmer Rouge troops announced his split with Pol Pot and loaned his name to an independent fighting command operating around the northwestern gem town of Pailin. This faction later “dtfected” to Phnom Penh, in return for control of the commercial activities that contrasted them so obviously to the more revolutionary orthodoxy of the Khmer Rouge center, now led by Nuan Chea, Pol Pot’s second in command, Khieu Samphan, and the ruthless military commander, , and his deputy, Im Nguon.

10 Discussions with Helen Hudson, Economic Section, US Embassy, Phnom Penh, March 3, 1997. Also see US Embassy, Phnom Penh, “Foreign Economic Trends: Cambodia,” November 6, 1996. On the narcotics problem, see Nate Thayer, “Cambodia: Narco-Nexus,” Far Eastern Economic Review, April 24, 1997, pp. 20, 21, 24. 11 Background data involved briefings at US Embassy, Phnom Penh, March 3, 1997. Also see Pierre P. Lizee, “Cambodia in 1996: Of Tigers, Crocodiles, and Doves,” Asian Survey, January 1997, pp. 67-69, Nate Thayer, “Unraveling Revolution,” Far Eastern Economic Review, August 29,1996, pp. 20-22, and Dominic Faulder, “Bleeding the Khmer Rouge,” Asiaweek, October 25, 1996, p. 24. LAWRENCE E. GRINTER 197

Whether these final Khmer Rouge, including those most responsible for the Cambodian Holocaust, can continue to hold out amidst its own cannibalization is unclear. But the June-July chaos in Phnom Penh also may have had an assist from these KR who claimed (and Ranariddh’s faction believed) that Pol Pot had surrendered to his own bodyguards. Hun Sen, paranoid, worried and realizing that Ranariddh was in secret productive negotiations with these Khmer Rouge, overthrew the govern- ment.” Then in late July came the extraordinary video footage and reports of Pol Pots toppling from power. On October 16, 1997, at Anlong Veng, correspondent Nate Thayer was permitted to interview Pol Pot. Pressing the ex-Khmer Rouge leader over and over on the issue of the mass killings and torture under his regime, Pol Pot’s evasive answers were typified by responses like, “My conscience is clear,” and, “I never heard of [Tuol Sleng].”’3 Despite the political chaos, given the heavy United Nations economic legacy, Cambodia has turned a corner toward its own version of economic development. The country is awash in US dollars, the quasi- official currency. Infrastructure projects-roads, bridges, power plants-are rebuilding, and tourism at Angkor Wat has been healthy (not a lot of money but a lot of tourists). About one-third of Cambodia’s budget (down from fifty percent) now comes from international aid, over 300,000 refugees have been resettled since 1991, and the country was posed, despite seriously inadequate technical preparation and public concern by the diplomats, to become a member of ASEAN in July- something King Sihanouk, in his nervous, curious pronouncements, had hoped to ~rec1ude.I~Cambodian membership has been delayed by ASEAN given the political instability.”

12 See Nate Thayer, “Ambiguous Alliances,” Far Eastern Economic Review, July 3, 1997, pp. 24-25, and Keith Richburg and Jeffrey Smith, “What Went Wrong in Cambodia?”, Washington Post National Weekly Service, 28 July 1997, pp. 14-1 5. 13 Nate Thayer, “Day of Reckoning,” Far Eastern Economic Review, October 30, 1997, pp. 14-20. 14 The king, for all his eccentricity, undoubtedly wants to protect Cambodia from foreign influences that could again overpower the country. Thus he has warned of unpleasant surprises regarding ASEAN membership, and the required reform of tariff barriers, tax structures. The king continued: “We will see uninterrupted 198 THE KOREAN JOURNAL OF DEFENSE ANALYSIS

Finally Cambodia’s strategic problems remain irreducible; it is a small, vulnerable country caught between Thailand’s emerging colossus of 65 million people and at least 60 times Cambodia’s GDP to the west, and Vietnam with 75 million people and 15 times Cambodia’s GDP to the east.I6 Cambodia must have Thai trade to survive, corruption is everywhere, and tax delinquency is huge. Thai businessmen bribe Cambodia’s loggers to ship out the prized hardwoods. The rusting pieces of Vietnam’s Soviet-built tanks and guns are found in the countryside. It has been Cambodia’s historic fate to spawn the most brilliant culture in Indochina, but also to lose territory, resources, and sovereignty to its neighbors. One can feel the anxiety in Phnom Penh. Survival, as much as development, still defines Cambodia’s slow opening to the future.

The Lao People’s Democratic Republic

Laos, with some five million people, and the highest per-capita income, among the Indochina states, seems to have been less traumatized by the Indochina wars than were Cambodia and Vietnam. While over two million tons of American bombs (including “cluster bombs” which still now explode) were dropped on targets in Laos, the very primitive- ness of the land, mountains, and forests gave the country some degree of cushion from the destruction raining down from above. Perhaps, also, the stoicism and Buddhism of the Laotian people helped.I7

waves of foreigners coming to Cambodia, not to help us improve our lives but to compete mercilessly with us.” Sihanouk quoted in Um Sarin, “King gets as- surance,” Cambodian Times, March 17-23, 1997. 15 ASEAN continues to recognize Prince Ranariddh as Cambodia’s first co-prime minister. Hun Sen moved quickly to replace him with Ung Huot who is believed to be a figurehead. Cambodia’s entry into ASEAN is now indefinitely delayed to the evident unhappiness of most parties, two exceptions being King Sihanouk, frequently resident in Beijing, and the Khmer Rouge remnants who see it weakening Hun Sen. Asian Wall Street Journal Weekly, July 28, 1997, p. 2. Hun Sen’s courting of Sihanouk has not worked. New York Times, August 21, 1997. 16 Lawrence E. Grinter, “Despite market economics, Indochina still repressive,” Montgomery Advertiser, Montgomery, Alabama, USA, March 30, 1997. 17 Stan Sessor captures Laos’s woeful underdevelopment in his “Forgotten Country,” New Yorker, August 20, 1990. LAWRENCE E. GRINTER 199

In 1975-76, the victorious Pathet Lao guerrilla leadership tried to submerge Laos under the standard Stalinist system (with help from Vietnamese “advisors”): collectivized farms, nationalization of the small industrial base, central planning and price control, social and cultural regulation and, of course, prisons and “reeducation camps.” Over 350,000 Laotians fled-the Mekong River borders Thailand next door- including all the educated and entrepreneurial classes and as many of the Royal family’s retinue as could escape (the Royal family itself was not so lucky, the principal figures were taken off to the forests where those not shot were evidently starved to death). But soon the communist’s larger plans began to break down and, as early as 1979, cracks appeared in the Stalinist concrete-especially in Laotian agricul- ture which simply could not be collectivized. As Prime Minister Kaysone admitted in a 1989 interview:

They had done it that way in other socialist countries and I thought I understood how it should be done.. . so we tried it out here. It worked in some situations but not in others. Then [in 19791 we had to slow down, and then change direction.lX On the political front, however, the regime’s zealots pressed ahead, locking up, chasing out, or eliminating the old guard. Once Kaysone and his retinue were politically secure they discovered that their Marxist-Leninist approach to Laos was turning a stricken economy into a shambles. In 1985 the secretive, repressive political leadership shifted to ambitious economic reforms. People who had fled were invited back and, indeed, many did return. Most of the reeducation camps were closed. The Laotian perestroika (“new thinking” or New Economic Mechanism) accelerated and the leadership dismantled much of the collectivized socialism they had first set up. Kaysone continued:

The real change began in 1985. . . . It was then that we really began to tackle the problem of prices, values, and money. We began experiments with a more flexible pricing policy. . . .I9

18 Kaysone interviewed by Grant Evans in 1989, as reprinted in Sessor, “Forgotten Country,” p. 60. 19 Ibid. 200 THE KOREAN JOURNAL OF DEFENSE ANALYSIS

Today Laotian state industries use “socialist business accounting” methods; and new foreign investment-centered on timber, gems, and power generation from the Mekong River-has increased, bolstered by relatively liberal business codes. Laotian GDP growth, however, has been uneven, averaging about six percent annually. Laos trades principally with Thailand, Vietnam and China, but it cannot control its borders, has large trade deficits, inflation, and a highly inefficient often stagnant agricultural sector, principally in rice production. Severe floods hit the central and southern rice-growing areas in 1996. By contrast, industry and the service sector are doing well, bolstered by foreign direct investment.*’ Thus an economic dualism pervades Laos: improved living standards in the cities, stagnant incomes in the rural areas. Finally the lowland Lao, who live near or along the Mekong River, do not quite constitute a majority of the population; so ethnic difficulties also bedevil the country. The Pathet Lao leadership in Vientiane, a military-dominated oligar- chy within the large and unwieldy Lao People’s Revolutionary Party (LPRP), constitutes an authoritarian one-party state. The instruments of repression are concentrated in the Ministry of Interior and elements of the armed forces. Prison conditions are harsh and medical care hardly exists. The courts are politicized, and stiff sentences go to those who advocate a multiparty system.2’ In 1991, fifteen years after the Pathet Lao came to power, the party allowed a constitution to be adopted and, in 1993 national assembly elections were held (all candidates had to be approved by the Ministry of Interior). But many of the rights provided for in the constitution have not been permitted, nor codified in the implementing legislation. As a 1997 US State Department document observes:

In practice, the [Laotian] government restricts the freedom of speech, assemb- ly, and to a lesser extent, religion, although they are provided for in the constitution. Citizens do not have the right to privacy and do not enjoy a free

20 Far Eastern Economic Review, February 9, 1995. 21 US Department of State, “Laos Country Report on Human Rights Practices for 1996,” Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor, Washington, DC, January 30, 1997, p. 2. LAWRENCE E. GRINTER 201

press . . . prison conditions remain harsh, and some societal discrimination against women and minorities persists.22 The actual mechanisms and practice of power and favoritism within the junta are highly personalized, often nepotistic. There are the usual neighborhood block wardens, standard practice in communist regimes, who keep an eye on people’s comings and goings. Advocates of rapid and comprehensive reforms, never appreciated, were further downgraded in the aftermath of the Sixth Congress of the LPRP held in March 1996. At the same time, writes Yves Bourdet:

The Sixth Congress reinforced the power of those groups and individuals who want a slower reform path and more control over the process, as illustrated by the greater place occupied by the military in the new top leadership. Of the nine members of the new politburo, seven belong to the military forces (six generals and one All three top positions in the party hierarchy are now generals. The “new” Central Committee reflects the same conservatism with the overwhelming majority having joined the LPDP before the “liberation” of 1975. To their credit the junta in Vientiane does not seem to have bought into the Golden TriangIe heroin trade. Unlike SLORC in Burma, which sets the world example for a government-sponsored drug syndicate (or vice versa), there is not much evidence that the LPRP is involved in drugs-which is remarkable given Laos poverty and the low pay and dismal working conditions of most government officials. Cultivation and production of opium in Laos is actually down to about one-half of the 1989 levels (and well below Burma and Afghanistan). Internation- ally funded crop substitution projects, government counternarcotics efforts, and assignment of Drug Enforcement Agency personnel to the US Embassy in Vientiane seem to have helped. And perhaps, most importantly, when given a crop and income alternative Laotian minority hill tribe farmers will stop growing opium. Then, again, Laos is a land

22 Ibid., p. 1.

23 Yves Bourdet, “Laos in 1996: Please Don’t Rush,” Asian Survey, January 1997, p. 73. 202 THE KOREAN JOURNAL OF DEFENSE ANALYSIS link between five other nations which makes it an inevitable drug shipment transit point, and the country’s borders are porous and in~ecure.’~ Despite the political miasma and repression, the key to unlocking Laos’s future is the economic potential of its natural resources-forty percent of the country is covered with prized hardwoods. Large deposits of silver, gold, and gemstones also exist. But Laos is landlocked, and breaking that isolation will be the hardest challenge ahead. Reformers such as former Deputy Prime Minister Khamphoui Keoboulalapha have sought to bring in major foreign investors.2’ But very poor infrastructure (including no railroads), too many mountains, large transportation costs, major dependency on outside aid, and regions isolated from each other seriously constrain the future.26 There may be twelve thousand telephones in the entire country. And, of course, the suspicious leader- ship, insisting on a one-party state, closes ranks whenever reformers push too hard. Finally, Laotian officials have publicly worried whether the government can meet even a small percentage of the economic and diplomatic requirements for ASEAN membership, which was initiated on July 24, 1997.

The Socialist Republic of Vietnam

Vietnam is the heavyweight among the Indochina states with seven- ty-five million people and an authoritarian government that inches toward a market economy while zigzagging on policy issues and human rights matters. Ten years after the violent reunification of Vietnam and the institution of the huge prison system, the communist orthodoxy in Hanoi (like Vientiane’s rulers next door) acknowledged that the

24 US Department of State, International Narcotics Control Strategy Report, 1996, Washington, DC, 1997, pp. 15-18. 25 Jonathan Rigg, “Managing Dependency in a Reforming Economy: The Lao PDR,” Contemporary Southeast Asia, September 1995, pp. 150-52, and Grant Klinkum, “Laos: A Cautious Opening,” New Zealand International Review, March/April 1996, pp. 26-28. 26 Yves Bourdet, “Laos in 1996: Please Don’t Rush,” pp. 76-77. LAWRENCE E. GRINTER 203 country’s economy was collapsing. It is little wonder: Vietnam’s gulag approached Stalinist proportions, with over a million citizens going to prison and “reeducation camps,” and three-quarters of a million others attempting escape on the high seas. As usual all the entrepreneurial talent, former officials, westernized and educated people, writers, artists and middle and upper classes were targeted for punishment or erasure.27 Then, in 1986, with even the politburo finally acknowledging the catastrophic results, the Vietnamese Communist Party (VCP) endorsed new policies of economic reform and limited political debate (“renova- tion77).28 To gain foreign assistance and increased diplomatic recognition as Soviet aid dried up, Hanoi accelerated the country’s economic opening, and GDP growth rates have been averaging about 8% per year in the 1990s. The army haj been steadily reduced to its present 500,000 men. Saigon and its environsI are booming. The American trade embargo was lifted in 1994 and US-Vietnamese diplomatic normalization came about in July 1995. A US ambassador is resident in Hanoi. Total US business investment may now be up to $700 million. Vietnam’s overall economy is prospering: agricultural production was up 5% and industrial produc- tion up 14% over 1995. Total exports may be 27% higher than in 1995.29 Nevertheless, Vietnam’s obvious problems include lack of sophistica- tion with market economics, a chaotic stock market and banking system, weak legal processes, and frequent anti-investment policy shifts in the fractious and aging politburo. And of course political repression: the party through its internal security organs makes sure no one gets too far out of line. A high birth rate keeps the population young, and worker productivity is low. Severe regional inequities, pervasive corruption, and

27 See, for example, Doan Van Toai and David Chanoff, The Vietnamese Gulag (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1986). The book details the hunger, corruption, and filth inside communist Vietnam’s prison system in the Saigon area. 28 The arrogance, ignorance, and vengeful attitudes of the northern cadres who came south after the communist victory is detailed by the former communist officer and reporter Bui Tin, in his Following Ho Chi Minh: Memoirs ofa North Vietnamese Colonel (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1995), pp. 88-11 1. 29 Brantly Womack, “Vietnam in 1996: Reform Immobilism,” Asian Survey, January 1997, pp. 80-83. 204 THE KOREAN JOURNAL OF DEFENSE ANALYSIS deteriorating state services are notable, as is hunger in the central Vietnamese countryside.” Vietnam remains a one-party authoritarian state. With its constitution- ally mandated leading role, and control of all senior government posi- tions, the Communist Party ensures compliance with politburo guidelines. The National Assembly, the judiciary and, of course, the armed forces are all under VCP control. Internal security is maintained by the Ministry of Interior (MOI), whose police and special investiga- tive organs have wide-ranging authority inside the government and across Vietnamese society. The Interior Ministry:

maintains a system of household registration and block wardens to monitor the population, concentrating on those suspected of engaging, or being likely to engage, in unauthorized political a~tivities.~’ Arbitrary arrest and detention is routine, including jail for the peace- ful expression of political or religious differences towards official policies and behavior. Vietnamese citizens obviously are not free to change their government, and political opposition and other political parties are not permitted. No human rights organizations are allowed to operate. All labor unions are party-controlled. In 1996, the Vietnam government:

continued its long-standing policy of not tolerating most types of public dissent and of prohibiting independent religious, political, and labor organiza- tions. There were credible reports that security officials beat detainees. Prison conditions were harsh. Societal discrimination and violence against women remained problems.32

30 Grinter, “Southeast Asian Security into the 21st Century,” p. 119, and Todd Crowell and Ken Stier, “Vietnam: The Enemy Within,” Asiaweek, April 25, 1997, pp. 24-25. 31 US Department of State, Vietnam Report on Human Rights Practices for 1996, Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor, Washington DC, January 30, 1997, p. 1. Indeed, within the Vietnamese Communist Party itself, the control and monitoring apparatus also exists, as cadres look upon each other with fear. Toai and Chanoff, The Vietnamese Gulag, pp. 248-49. 32 US Department of State, Vietnam Report on Human Rights Practices for 1996, p. 1. LAWRENCE E. GRINTER 205

Vietnamese prison conditions are severe with reports of detainees dying due to disease and violence. Political prisoners are singled out for particularly unpleasant treatment. Dr. Doan Viet Hoan is serving a fifteen-year sentence for publishing a reformist newsletter. Dr. Nguyen Dan Que got twenty years for publicly supporting political reform. At least seven Vietnamese Catholic priests are serving sentences of over ten years for “sowing disunity between the people and state.” Lesser sentences go for “anti-social propaganda,’’ and “abusing democratic privilege^."^' In Vietnam mail is routinely opened, telephones are monitored, and fax and electronic communications are intercepted. The US Embassy in Hanoi has had diplomatic pouches opened, seen its employees cars vandalized, and had POWIMIA search equipment detained.34 The foreign media is closely monitored and foreign jour- nalists have been roughed up in Hanoi. In short the party is jealous of, and insecure about, its control and will use whatever means necessary to maintain its power. The most recent five-year cycle of the Communist Party Congress and the National Assembly’s convening occurred in middle and late 1996. While the official discussions leading up to the Eighth Party Congress were often heated and prolonged, and despite concurrent crackdowns on dissidents, no change occurred in the top of the party hierarchy. The aging president, prime minister, and party general secretary all retained their jobs, although significant generational trans- ition appears to be occurring at lower levels of the Vietnamese party and ~tate.’~Eighty-year-old Do Muoi, general secretary of the Communist Party, spoke openly of his fatigue and frailty. Seventy- seven-year-old Le Duc Anh, the state president, and seventy-five-year- old Prime Minister Vo Van Kiet, are also expected to retire.36 In

33 Ibid., p. 3. 34 UPI, “Troubles remain in U.S.-Vietnam relations: Analysis,” Vietnam Daily General News, April 26, 1997, http:/www.vietsandiego.com/viet- newslvngnews2. html. 35 See Mark Sidel, “Generational and Institutional Transition in the Vietnamese Communist Party: The 1996 Congress and Beyond,” Asian Survey, May 1997, pp. 481-95. 206 THE KOREAN JOURNAL OF DEFENSE ANALYSIS

September 1997 it was announced that Tran Duc Luong, 60, would become the new state president and Phan Van Khai, 64, the new prime minister.37 Nevertheless, a kind of political immobilism pervades the upper tiers of the party and bureaucracy. Deadlock between conservatives and reformers dominates Vietnamese politics as decisionmakers seek to muddle through while protecting their interests. Brantly Womack sum- marized the lethargy:

The structural weakness of immobilism is that it is permanently behind the curve of societal developments. In ironic contrast to the millenarian posture of a communist party, such a leadership no longer leads but rather is pulled along unwillingly by its reins on social forces. . . . It will require skillful use of both handles of government, reward and punishment, to continue to preempt crisis.3R

Socially Vietnam is experiencing generational splits as the Indochina war veterans finish out their lives dependent on an inefficient state sector in competition with the new entrepreneurial youth who have no memory of the war and would probably jettison what remains of the bureaucracy in their zeal to make money. The fear of foreign influences is prevalent in Hanoi-controlled policy and media.39 Stringent regula- tions are placed on foreign correspondents. Party conservatives openly fear anarchy and a loss of control. Saigon is referred to as a reactionary den of democrats trying to free the southern half of the country; this

36 There was speculation in early 1997 that Lt. Gen. Le Kha Phieu, 68, who is the army’s political commissar and the top internal security officer on the Politburo, could become the next party chief. Nguyen Manh Cam, 68, the foreign minister, was thought to become the next state president. Phan Van Khai, 64, was a candidate for the next prime minister. Asiaweek, April 25, 1997, p. 26, and Far Eastern Economic Review, July 3, 1997, p. 26. Asiaweek, August I, 1997, pp. 20-21. 37 Washington Times, September 18, 1997, p. 16, and Far Eastern Economic Review, October 20, 1997, p. 16. 38 Womack, “Vietnam in 1996,” ibid., p. 87. 39 A typical example appeared recently in a MOI magazine entitled Ho Chi Minh City Police, which commented that foreign firms are training Vietnamese nationals to become “spies” to learn “state secrets” (such as, for example, government estimates of the GNP), Asian Defence Journal, June 1997, pp. 66-67. LAWRENCE E. GRINTER 207 twenty-two years after liberation. In short, Vietnamese society and the Vietnamese government are full of tensions as economic liberalization collides with the intransigence of the political elite. Thus the characteristics of the current regimes in Hanoi, Vientiane, and Phnom Penh-corrupt, personalized, authoritarian, and anti- democratic-were also the characteristics of the totalitarian communist “liberationist” governments that took power in 1975. Some of those characteristics also were reflected in the Thieu, Souphana Phouma, and Lon No1 governments which sought, unsuccessfully and with heavy American support, to deny the totalitarian movements their victories. Of course there were fundamental differences between Nguyen Van Thieu and Ho Chi Minh, and between Lon No1 and Pol Pot. First the communists practiced and institutionalized political extermination and economic centralization on scales never dreamed of (much less prac- ticed) by the US-backed regimes. Secondly the “liberation” of In- dochina, while done in the name of Marxist-Leninism, cloaked, as was evident to all but the American and European left, a monstrous Stalinism. Now, however, Indochina has begun to come out from under the rubble: from authoritarian regimes under assault by totalitarian guerrilla movements in the 1970s, to successor totalitarian regimes in the 1970s and 1980s which ruined the societies they captured, to quasi-reformist socialist and authoritarian regimes grudgingly giving way to the developmental imperatives of the 21st century. The implications for the United States of Indochina’s slow opening to the future? First, and obviously, the US no longer drives mainland Southeast Asia’s events as was true, militarily, a quarter century ago. The opening of Indochina is largely economic and is being sparked by Asian investors working with these still-repressive governments. Other ASEAN governments are also chaperoning some of the transformation, and pushing for lower trade and tariff barriers, something painful for all three Indochina states who simply cannot yet compete. But ASEAN, sadly, requires no political reform as precondition for membership, and the regimes in Hanoi and Vientiane (and of course in Rangoon), and the neo-authoritarian government in Phnom Penh, get little pressure to reform. Basically ASEANs diplomats worry about instability, not repression, when they look at Indochina and Burma. And so the dilem- ma of “reform socialism”-the contradiction between economic 208 THE KOREAN JOURNAL OF DEFENSE ANALYSIS liberalization and political repression-has yet to be resolved in Viet- nam, Laos, or Cambodia, and it looms as a future crisis in each country. Given no provable vital US interests in Indochina today, American policy has little choice but to encourage economic reform as the chief hope for a better Indochinese future.