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Indochina's Slow Opening to the Future

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Indochina's Slow Opening to the Future 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 Khmer Rouge in Cambodia and the dwindling New People’s Army in the Philippines, 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 Pol Pot’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 Hun Sen’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 (Myanmar), 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 Phnom Penh 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
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