policy of the Workers party of Vietnam (the Vietnamese Communist party) has not been suddenly transformed. But the orientation previously advanced by Vietnamese communists could not remain unchanged; it has to respond to the new factors born of the end of the military fighting. The nine months that have elapsed since then permit the main lines of the new policy that has been adopted by the Workers party during the present period of transition to be sketched out. These main lines confirm that in spite of the scope of the tasks of reconstruction it is facing, the Vietnamese Communist party does not wish to withdraw exclusively to its national terrain.
A "favorable moment"
The Vietnamese leaders today are extending the analyses they had long since developed about the place of their revolution. In his speech to the consultative conference for reunification, held in Saigon in November,
Truong Chinh, a member of the Political Bureau of the
Workers party, recalled that "for dozens of years" Vietnam was the country in which "the contradictions characteristic of the contemporary world" were concentrated.
Hence the import of the American defeat, underscored by the document of the party Central Committee quated by Truong Chinh: "If the victory at Dien Bien Phu marked the collapse of French colonialism, the victory of April
30, 1975, for its part, heralded the total and inevitable bankruptcy of U.S. neocolonialism in the world. " (Nouvelles de la RDVN, No. 67.)
The Vietnamese leadership exhibits an effective understanding of the present dynamic of the world revolution and the consequences of the struggle that has been waged, even though this understanding remains deformed by its political misappreciation of the nature of the Stalinist degeneration of the Soviet leadership and its implications. "These victories have weakened American
18 nine months after the victory VIETNA FOREIGN by PIERRE ROUSSET imperialism, lowered its authority. They are encouraging movements of national liberation. • " More generally, they highlight the "offensive position" of the "three great revolutionary currents" which "are converging" during our epoch: the "national liberation movement, " the "revolutionary movement" in the capitalist countries, and the "growth of the system of the socialist countries. " (Nouvelles de la RDVN, No. 71.) The imperialist rouf has opened a "favorable moment" for the world revolution, even though its development remains uneven. Such is the analysis upheld by the leadership of the Workers party. The Angolan events, among other things, confirm that this analysis is well founded: The relative American paralysis and the unusual audacity of Soviet policy, despite the fact that the Soviet Union is terribly dependent on the United States to make up its grain deficit, can be explained in no other way. Nor can Cuba's ability to intervene directly on
MESE POLICY the side of the MPLA, in spite of its geographic vulnerability to U.S. Imperialism. On many occasions the Vietnamese leaders have drawn two lessons of their fights one relating to the character of the revolution in the dominated countries and the other to the organic links among the struggles in the various parts of the world. It was mainly to the latter point that Vo Nguyen Giap referred in his speech to the first congress of the Communist party of Cuba: "In the present epoch, the struggle of peoples for independence and democracy is in general closely linked to the struggle for socialism and communism, although the process of the revolution in each country is distinguished by its own characteristics. The patriotic and democratic forces of the peoples are assembled around the most revolutionary class, which is the working class. . . . (The three great revolutionary currents) are in process of becoming an invincible force, a global force." (Nouvelles de la RDVN, No. 70.)
This body of doctrinal reference allows us to partially locate the originality of the position the Vietnamese leadership assigns itself in the international workers movement. In fact, this position differs clearly from that of the Maoist leadership, whose orientation is determined by the struggle between the "two superpowers" and above all against Soviet influence, even in Southeast Asia, where the maintenance of some American forces is viewed as a desirable counter to Soviet presence in the Indian Ocean. It also diverges from that of the Communist party of the Soviet Union, which aims at the difficult goal of maintaining an essential status quo in the world relationship of forces during a period of a rise in the class struggle internationally. Nevertheless, while a study of the theses developed by the Vietnamese CP on this question confirms the originality of this leadership, it also reveals the profound ambivalence of the policy of this leadership. The search for economic development and national independence is impelling the Vietnamese to diversify their alliances and aid sources as much as possible. This involves a threefold effort: to situate Vietnam on the border between the "socialist camp" and the so-called "nonaligned countries"; to normalize diplomatic and economic relations with all the imperialist powers; to avoid becoming too deeply involved in the Sino-Soviet conflict. The South Vietnamese Provisional Revolutionary Government (PRG) had joined the "nonaligned" bloc as long ago as September 1973. In August 1975, during the Lima conference, the Democratic Republic of Vietnam was in turn admitted to this bloc. Reunified Vietnam will thus be part of this bloc, one of the few workers states, along with Cuba and the People's Republic of Korea, to participate with full rights in the "group of 77." The signs of a diplomatic "thaw" with the United States, the first contracts signed with Japan (financial aid, export of shrimp, establishment of a fertilizer factory) show that the normalization of diplomatic and economic relations is also probably well underway. The first major difficulty with which the Vietnamese leadership was confronted in the international arena after the victory of April 1975 had to do with its relatons with the People's Republic of China. China/USSR: the balance broken It is quite certain that the Workers party of Vietnam wants as far as possible to maintain an equal balance in its relations with the USSR and China. In fact, this corresponds both to the situation of the Indochinese revolution, which is compelled to seck the broadest possible aid in order to repair the damages of a war of thirty years' duration, and to the empirical analysis made by the Vietnamese leadership of the Sino-Soviet conflict, which is regarded as a fratricidal conflict that criminally divides the "socialist camp, " to which
19
VIETNAM all three, the USSR, China, and Vietnam, objectively belong. But the policy of the Maoist leadership prevented the maintenance of this equal balance. There has been a sharp aggravation of tension between Vietnam and China, which has been visible since Nixon's trip to Peking in July 1971. In 1974 a border conflict broke out. It was in mid-January of that year that China militarily occupied the islands of one of the archipelagos whose ownership is contested: the Paracels, which were held by Thieu's forces at the time. The PRG and the DRV then made it known that the question of the ownership of the Parace! and Spratly islands would be settled by negotiations. But these negotiations never took place, and the conflict has recently taken on a new dimension. The December 15, 1975, issue of Pekin Information published a long peremptory article. "The islands of the South China Sea, " the article stated, "have been Chinese territory since ancient times"; some of these islands "have not yet come into our possession again, but the Chinese people will liberate Taiwan, and all the islands: belonging to China will return to their fatherland." (p. 15.) Both Tap Chi Quan Doi Nhan Dan, the magazine of the Vietnamese army, and Radio Hanoi have called for preserving national unity "in the territorial waters of the continental shelf." (Quoted by J. Decornoy in Le Monde, January 6, 1976) It appears that the Vietamese leadership may be prepared to have the army occupy the Spratly archipelago. Whatever the stakes involved in the border conflict -which affects the national independence and economic interests (oil) of each side - the overall divergences that are being manifested today are probably the more profound. True, an aid agreement has been signed between China and Vietnam for 1976, and during his September 1975 visit to Peking Le Duan, first secretary of the Workers party of Vietnam, delivered a very warm speech. He extensively hailed the "militant solidarity" that unites the two peoples, who are "close friends," and the "friendship between comrades and brothers." But Le Duan recalled that the struggle against imperialism must take account of the fact that imperialism's "chief is American imperialism. " (Nouvelles de la DRVN, No. 62.) Le Duan's Chinese counterpart, on the other hand, called for a struggle against "hegemonism. " The Sino-Vietnamese meeting did not conclude with a joint communiqué, although as the Vietnamese delegation continued its trip, important communiqués were signed with the USSR and five countries of East Europe. As for Pékin Information, it exhibited a remarkable lack of enthusiasm on the occasion of the announcement of Vietnamese reunification. Clearly, whatever appearances may be maintained, there is a profound incompatibility between an orientation based on denunciation of Soviet "social imperialism" and an orientation for which "solidarity among the revolutionary forces" (including the USSR) "is the ticket to victory." (Nouvelles de la DRVN, No. 69.) The joint Soviet-Vietnamese communiqué went so far as to recognize the USSR as "the first proletarian state in the world. " (Nouvelles de la DRVN, No. 65.) As long as the Maoist leadership maintains its present policy, tension between the two countries can only increase. In fact, the Vietnamese workers state is tending to become an "objective enemy" of the People's Republic of China in that it is helping to strengthen Soviet influence. Obviously, it remains possible that in face of the very high political price of its present orientation (especially in a case like Angola), divisions may appear in the Chinese leadership and this orientation may be modified. The Sino-Vietnamese confrontation became particularly lively on two issues: Portugal and Angola, Vietnam immediately recognized the People's Republic of Angola and extended its support to the MPLA. On this point, the Mooist leadership experienced its greatest isolation among the workers states. Cuba denounced its policy violently. Even the People's Republic of Korea wound up withdrawing its instructors from Zaire and supporting the MPLA. On Portugal, the DRV not only supported the "complex struggle for national independence and socialism, also stated that this support constituted the "touchstone of genuine proletarian internationalism" today. (Nouvelles de la DRVN, No. 62.) The main alliance The main alliance desired by the Vietnamese leadership is the alliance with the official Communist movement on an international scale. The Maoist defection has tended to reduce this to an alliance with the world Soviet Stalinist movement. The Workers party of Vietnam systematically supports the Communist parties throughouf the world. In the past this was the case in Chile and today it is the case in Portugal and Spain, where the denunciation of Francoist crimes is accompanied by salutes to the efforts of the Spanish Communist party to extend its alliances to include "rightist forces that do not approve of the fascist regime." (Nouvelles de la DRVN, No. 66.) Hanoi has agreed to follow Soviet diplomacy in the case of India, analyzing the state of emergency decreed by Indira Gandhi as a response to an attempted coup by "right-wing reactionaries, " (1976 Asia Yearbook of the Far Eastern Economic Review, p. 318) and has allowed the Indian press to avail itself of Vietnamese support. Symptomatically, the Vietnamese position on India has been very discreet. But it nonetheless covers up for o regime that now holds an unenviable world record: the largest number of political prisoners. Finally, in the Soviet-Vietnamese communiqué the DRV agreed to hail the holding of the Helsinki conference and to "support the Central Committee of the Communist party of the Soviet Union and the government of the Soviet Union
in their external activities aimed at concretizing the Leninist principles of peaceful coexistence . . and at making the process of détente irreversible. " (Nouvelles de la DRVN, No. 65, p. 3.) A short while ago, the Workers party of Vietnam was virulently condemning the "illusion of détente. " It has apparently not changed its view of the fundamental aggressiveness of imperialism, since all the elements of its previous analysis of the world situation remain current for it. The previously expressed differences of orientation with the Soviet leadership have not disappeared. But this relative alignment with Stalinist diplomacy highlights the limits of the empirical political consciousness that was developed during the Vietnamese revolution; it further highlights the limits of the objectives the Vietnamese leadership has set itself today, for it
Giap does not claim to be playing a direct role in the recomposition of an international revolutionary leadership, or, more precisely, its profound incomprehension of the nature of the crisis of the international workers movement and the choices that this leadership consequently makes: the choice of a fundamental alliance with the world workers movement through the official Communist movement, Stalinist in its majority. This alignment is relative and certainly not absolute. Vietnamese diplomacy asserts its autonomy, both in relations with the workers states and in relations with the dominated countries. The trip of the Yugoslav Dzemal Bijedic to Hanoi in October, like Giap's trip to Cuba, enabled the Vietnamese to hail revolutions that were able to win victory without the support of foreign armies. It seems that Vietnam has recently received a rather large number of foreign militants. The Workers party refused to rally to support of the Soviet project of a "collective security pact" in Asia. It accepted an important confrontation with Thailand at a time when the USSR was seeking to normalize its relations with that country. And it obtained official Soviet recognition of its own regional role and responsibility. The abovequoted joint communiqué in fact asserted that "the DRV has become a solid base for the revolutionary struggle of all the Vietnamese people, a genuine advance post of socialism in Indochina and in Southeast Asia. The prestige of the Workers party of Vietnam has clearly risen once again. " (p. 2.) This recognition of the regional place of the Vietnamese CP by the USSR is Important. It shows the limits of Soviet action in Southeast Asia today. Above all, it enters into resonance with an intense diplomatic activity being deployed by the Vietnamese leadership. The regional "forward post" As long ago as 1949 Ho Chi Minh affirmed the regional responsibility of the largest workers party of Southeast Asia. In his report to the consultative conference Truong Chinh explained that the most immediate of the effects of the victory of the Vietnamese revolution was that it "broke the American front line of defense in this region." From the editorials of the North Vietnamese daily Nhan Dan just after April 30 to the Soviet-Vietnamese communiqué, one theme is central: "Southeast. Asia belongs to the peoples of Southeast Asia." More precisely, the Workers party of Vietnam stresses the existence of an active liberation movement in Thailand and Malaysia. The case of Thailand is the most significant today. The victory of the Indochinese revolution has deeply affected this neighboring country in which a class polarization is under way and in which the regions bordering Laos and Cambodia are the seats of insurrectional communist movements. The tension between Vietnam and Laos on the one hand and Thailand on the other broke out at the end of 1975. On November 17 a Thai provocation created a violent military incident along the Mekong River. The Bangkok government decided to close the border leading to Vientiane for six weeks. Tens of thousands of refugees from the CIA-backed Meo army of General Vang Pao were received in northern Thailand, and some of them seem to have been organized into new commando units. On December 15 Thai King Bhumibol declared: "There have been various forms of sabotage against our kingdom. This has developed to such a serious stage that it is a direct aggression against the country." (Far Eastern Economic Review, January 2, 1976.) In the spring of 1975 the fact that the Thai govemment had handed many planes and ships of the South Vietnamese puppet army over to the Americans instead of returning them to the PRG had already blocked the normalization of diplomatic relatiors between Vietnam and Thailand. The present tension may ease up in the future, and diplomatic relations will probably be established some day. But the tension will not disappear entirely. In spite of the withdrawal of U.S. combat forces, Thailand re-
VIETNAM mains a base of U.S. action against revolutionary Indochina. The echos of the social transformation, like the genuine independence that has been won on the other side of the border, will continue to resonate in a country in full political and social crisis, especially in the Northeast, which is inhabited by Lao-Thai peoples. The military right will not abandon its anti-Vietnamese campaign, which is one of the instruments in a policy of internal tersion in Thailand. And important links between the Vietnamese Communist party, the Laotian revolutionary forces, and the Thai Communist party have been woven. Moreover, Vietnamese communism is tending to play an active role in the recomposition of the regional Communist movement. This success of its struggle must pose Important questions for the militants of the Communist parties of Southeast Asia that follow a Maoist orientation. The Vietnamese Workers party's appreciation of the orientation of these parties is clearly critical, and the Vietnamese would obviously like to see greater independence from Peking on their part. And this desire is in harmony with the concerns and tensions that, apparently at least, are beginning to be manifested in the Thai and Malaysian parties. From this standpoint, the Southeast Asian communist movement is also one of the to make progress in its relations with Bangkok and since Peking has temporarily ceased to speak of the action of the Thai CP since it is trying to gain recognition of the People's Republic of China by Thailand, the Vietnamese CP has been alone in consistently denouncing the various "civilian" Thai governments and their links to imperialism. From this standpoint, the regional role of the Workers party of Vienam may become more direct and important than it was during the war years. This depends partly on the evolution of the class struggle in the countries concerned. Concurrently, the indochinese equilibrium itself is changing. The great rhythms of the revolution in Laos, Cambodia, and Vietnam obviously remain common ones. Cambodia has adopted a new constitution that proclaims the "Democratic Kampuchea." The great majority of the Sihanoukists have not returned to Phnom Penh, preferring to remain in exile despite the position of Sihanouk himself in support of the Khmers Rouges. The monarchy has been abolished in Loos and the "Revolutionary People's party" has assumed full effective political leadership of the new Democratic Republic. The era of "national union" in Indochina has been aborted before ever really seeing the light of day. Nevertheless, a deep fissure has appeared between Laos and Vietnam on the one hand and Cambodia on the other. The Thai blockade accelerated the VientianeHanoi rapprochement. Since the Laotians no longer had an outlet to the sea, only an aerial bridge and the opening of a Thakhek-Vinh road enabled them to avoid being strangled. The Khmers Rouges, unlike the Laotian leadership, have chosen a triple option different from that of the Vietnamese. Their international alliance is above 22 all with China. A détente policy toward Bangkok has been developed. On the very day of the Mekong incident in November 1975, Chatichai Choonhavan, Thai minister of foreign affairs, and leng Sary, Cambodian vice prime minister, met in Poipet. A barter agreement was signed between the two countries. Finally, Cambodia's economic development choices, linked to the country's extreme underdevelopment and to its rejection of an Indochinese federation, favor national self-reliance: limit foreign aid, assure a qualitative increase in rice production, and import goods on the basis of the rice exports in order to avoid falling into debt. The international action of the Workers party and the DRV is unfolding on several levels. Their intervention among the countries of the third world is symbolic in this regard. It combines support to the "group of 77" against the imperialist powers (on questions of maritime rights, oil prices, etc.), support to some of the governments of these countries (such as the Algerian regime; during his visit to Algiers, for example, Giap described Boumedienne as a "comrade in arms"), and solidarity with liberation movements. In this Vietnam is seeking to appear as one of the advanced wings of anti-imperialist combat. "What Vietnam did all determined peoples can do against the imperialists of all stripes, " Giap declared in Algiers. He added, explaining the support extended to the Saharan Polisario Front, "We struggle for the independence and liberation of peoples. We have supported all struggles for independence and liberty. If is in this spirit that we support the struggle of the Saharan people for self-determination, the just struggle being waged by the People's Republic of Angola under the leadership of the MPLA, and the struggles of the peoples of the Middle East for the national rights of the Palestinian people. " (Afrique-Asie, No. 11.) He could have added, in Asia, the support to the formation of the Democratic Republic of East Timor and to FRETILIN's resistance to the Indonesian invasion; the FRETILIN minister of defense visited Hanoi in JanuaryIn the international arena, as in the realm of the social dynamic of the reunification (see INPRECOR, No. 42, January 22, 1976), the role of the Vietnamese revolution remains active. The maintenance of this potential will depend on the balance the Workers party leadership strikes between relations among governments and support to mass struggles and above all on the quality of the links that are forged with the revolution in Southeast Asia. The Vietnamese Communist party is now confronted by a threefold task: reconstruction, to which it is trying to respond by broadening its aid sources without depending too much on any one of them and thus threatening to Find itself beholden even to one of its "brother countries"; solidarity with the movements that represent the continuity of the process of permanent revolution on a regional scale, tasks that have been increased by the very success of the struggle in Indochina; and delicate political choices of alliances and international support, in the determination of which the limits of the Vietnamese leadership are coming to the fore even more clearly than before. O
STATE OF EMERGENCY! In the early morning of Saturday, January 31, Lionel Cliffe, senior lecturer in political science at the University of Zambia, was taken from his home on the campus by police and placed in detention. No reason was given for the arrest, but the government's 28-day order allows a detainee to be held without charge or trial for that period while "investigations" are made and it is decided whether a further longer-term order will be made. Cliffe's wife, Doris, was quoted in the February 1 Sunday Times of Zambia as stating that the house had been
Zambia: END THE by T, NKOLE searched for "any literature on Angola." It had been obvious from events over the past week that such arrests were likely to take place. On Sunday, January 25, President Kaunda addressed a demonstration of Lusaka secondary school students who marched to his residence at the State House "to demonstrate their support for Zambia's stand on Angola. " There Kaunda declared that a big campaign was afoot "to change the course of our revolution. I know the big powers behind this campaign. We are going to reveal them very soon. " He said that "counterrevolutionaries have infiltrated a number of institutions and companies to cause confusion." On the same day, Frank Chitambala, a member of the Central Committee of the ruling United National Independence party (UNIP), told a similar demonstration in Ndola that some "misguided Marxist lecturers" at the University of Zambia were inciting students there to oppose the government's stand on Angola. In the same speech, he made the first reference ever to appear in the Zambian media to a demonstration that took place on the University of Zambia campus on January 15. The campus was occupied for the entire day by students demanding an end to Zambia's neutralist position on the Angolan war and the rendering of full support to the MPLA. On that day the entire campus was ringed by police and traffic on the Great East Road which passes the university gates was diverted so that travelers would not see the posters that decorated the gates declaring solidarity with the MPLA. On Wednesday, January 28, Kaunda went on radio and television and declared a "full state of