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United Nations -- It's a quarter century since the fall of Saigon and the collapse of South Vietnam to forcible reunification. Media pundits have churned up the fertile soil of myths, memories, and lingering mendacity which comprise the "Vietnam War." But rather than grimace over the genuine humanitarian tragedy which befell all Indochina in Spring 1975, allow me to present a radically different supposition: Imagine what could have been had the North Vietnamese communists not forcibly reunified South Vietnam.
I will point no fingers nor refight any battles except to say let's Imagine for a moment that after the final American withdrawal in 1973, Hanoi had abided by the Paris Peace Agreements, thus essentially stopping the clock and keeping the status quo. This is to say that South Vietnam would have been able to develop its socio/economic base free not only from Viet Cong terrorism but large-scale North Vietnamese conventional invasion. Something akin to South and North Korea after the 1953 truce.
Economically South Vietnam was ahead of the North -- and Hanoi's hard-liners communists saw to it that there would be no Market-Leninism in their niche of the Indochinese peninsula. So as long as they could hold their own, the Saigon government could be assured of large dollops of American economic assistance.
Look at the Korean case for a moment. Right after the cease-fire in 1953 South Korean was in shambles as was South Vietnam. For the first decade rebuilding brought abrupt economic growth. With a stabilized situation, the per capita income jumped from $94 in 1960, to $248 in 1970, to $1,589 in 1980, to $5,569 in 1990. By the late 1990's the South Korean per capita stood at an impressive $12,400!
Clearly Seoul profited from a keen work ethic, open markets, a continuing presence of U.S. combat forces, and a U.S. Defense Treaty commitment.
South Vietnam had an anemic economy in 1975; recall there was a full scale war. Had the cease-fire held by the early 1980's Saigon could not help but ride the wave of foreign investment, opening markets and enterprise which radically transformed divided nations as Korea and China, and especially Southeast Asian states such as Malaysia, Thailand, and of course Singapore. Even taking a slower growth scenario such as Philippines, South Vietnam would have been on a modest expansion track by the early 1980's had the status quo held.
Former South Vietnam was attracting some investment, carrying out needed land reform and getting into basic exports as did South Korea a decade earlier.
Hanoi's arrogant trumphilaism in the years after reunification, assured the Socialist Republic of Vietnam that it would be bypassed by the rising tide of economic development the waves of investment and entrepreneurialism which lapped on the shores from South Korea to Singapore. Instead Hanoi's dour and dictatorial ruling class embarked on the invasion of neighboring Cambodia -- admittedly upsetting the Beijing-backed Pol Pot regime -- but ensuring that Vietnam would remain a political pariah, even among many non-aligned states at the United Nations.
When the Socialist Republic of Vietnam's Do Moi system of economic reforms opened up to foreign investments, the major surge which raised the proverbial boats throughout the waters of Southeast Asia, had ebbed. Foreign investment peaked in 1996, the year before Asia's economic crisis. Even after the U.S. trade embargo was lifted and investment allowed, the boom never totally materialized for Vietnam's 77 million people.
While the World Bank cites Vietnam's growth rate at 3.5 percent, investors are hamstrung by red tape and graft from government bureaucrats. And there is a still a big difference between South and North Vietnam, the former being more open and entrepreneurially oriented while the North keeps to its classic communist roots.
In 1978, just three years after the invasion of the South, Socialist Vietnam's per capita income stood at $170; South Korea $1,200, Malaysia was $1,100, Taiwan $2,000, Thailand $500, and the Philippines at $620.
Today Vietnam's per capita income stands at only $1,430 as compared with South Korea at $12,400, Malaysia at $10,000, Taiwan at $12,800, and both Thailand and the Philippines at $3,000.
Vietnam's economic reforms present a pale reflection of the far more reaching changes even in Communist China itself. Hanoi having won the battle for reunification, lost the war for its peoples betterment. Instead we saw the boat people, continuing political repression, and an economy still stuck in the past. Imagine for a moment ....
John J. Metzler is a U.N. correspondent covering diplomatic and defense issues. He writes weekly for World Tribune.com.
