Indochina in turmoil after 1975
In 1975 there were, in fact, a series of communist victories in Indochina. At the same time as Hanoi’s forces clinched victory in their war, the Khmer Rouge and the Pathet Lao took over in Cambodia and Laos respectively.
To some observers this meant that the domino theory rang true after all, for with the Americans out of the way, communism was on the march. To other observers, however, it was clear that while the new ruling elites were composed of communists, the respective loyalties and interests — internal, regional and international — of the Cambodians, the Laotians and the Vietnamese did not mean that a monolithic communist force had suddenly subdued a large part of South-East Asia. National leadership in each country was influenced by nationalist sentiments as much as by communist ideology, and they were wary of external influences. Indeed, by the late 1970s self-inflicted war and genocide rather than peaceful reconstruction were the order of the day throughout much of Indochina.Khmer Rouge
The Western name for the communist movement, led by Pol Pot, which came to power in Cambodia in 1975. The new government carried out a radical political programme that led to 1.5 million deaths. In 1979 it was overthrown by Vietnam, but continued to fight a guerrilla war campaign into the 1990s.
In Vietnam itself, the forced reunification of the country was followed by efforts to unify the nation under the leadership of the Communist Party. However, Hanoi’s leadership faced many obstacles. In addition to the massive human suffering described above, the country lacked the resources for a successful reconstruction programme. While there had been some hope that American aid would be offered in the immediate aftermath of the 1973 Paris Agreements, the continued war and unification had frozen the Vietnamese-American relationship. In the North, the Sino-Vietnamese relationship, which had begun its decline in the late 1960s, was growing worse by the day.
As a result, for external aid the DRV depended largely on the Soviet Union. Indeed, one irony of the unification was that it made Hanoi more, rather than less, dependent on Moscow.Even without the newly exaggerated dependency on the USSR, Vietnam was bound to suffer. One reason was the sheer number of South Vietnamese who,
see Chapter 15
rather than remain in the unified country, chose to leave after 1975. Estimates of the numbers of the so-called boat people run as high as 1.4 million, including 50,000 who were killed during their flight. Almost a million Vietnamese have found new homes elsewhere in the world, predominantly in the United States (the home of roughly 700,000 Vietnamese immigrants since 1975). Those who stayed in Vietnam often suffered immeasurably in labour and ‘re-education’ camps set up by the DRV. Economically, Vietnam was effectively condemned to poverty after 1975, a fate made no easier following the collapse of its major external supporter, the Soviet Union, in 1991. While the Hanoi leadership in the 1990s launched economic reforms similar to those in China, political power was kept in the hands of the Communist Party in a manner also similar to events in China. However, while the Chinese experienced massive, if uneven, economic growth during the 1990s, Vietnam remained poor. The average per capita income was approximately $700—800 at the end of the twentieth century.
In Cambodia, the situation after 1975 was far worse. Under the leadership of Pol Pot, the Maoist-influenced Khmer Rouge initiated virtual genocide after it took over the country in that year. Declaring that 1975 was ‘Year Zero’ of the new Cambodia, the Khmer Rouge launched a homicidal effort to cleanse the country of any remaining ‘bourgeois’ elements and create a pastoral communist utopia. Much of the urban population was forcefully transferred to rural areas. Libraries, schools and temples were destroyed. Between 1975 and 1978 an estimated two million Cambodians were killed, with countless others fleeing the country.
To guard its independence from the more populous and better-armed Vietnam, Pol Pot’s regime established close ties with China, a country eager to prevent Soviet- backed Vietnamese hegemony in Indochina. However, at the same time the Khmer Rouge provoked Vietnam by initiating a series of border incidents and persecuting ethnic Vietnamese within Cambodia.Finally in December 1978, Vietnam’s patience snapped and it launched an invasion of Cambodia, which drove Pol Pot out of power and established a puppet government to replace the Khmer Rouge. China followed up by invading Vietnam in February 1979. In a brief inconclusive war 35,000 people died. Meanwhile, Pol Pot gathered his troops and fought a prolonged guerrilla warfare campaign against the new regime of the People’s Republic of Kampuchea. Vietnamese troops, approximately 140,000 of them, remained in the impoverished country until 1989. Only in the late 1990s was the Khmer Rouge finally defeated and Pol Pot captured, although the latter committed suicide before he could be put on trial for genocide. The end result of this lengthy civil war was that Cambodia remains a country even worse off economically than Vietnam.
Laos may have escaped the genocide of neighbouring Cambodia but it too came under the domination of the DRV. Landlocked and bordering on Vietnam, Cambodia and China, the Laotian economy was severely weakened by the continued turmoil in the region. The Pathet Lao refused to hold elections in the country until 1989; the country remains among the poorest in the world (indeed, its per capita income was even lower than that of Cambodia and Vietnam in 2000).
In short, the ‘dominoes’ that fell in 1975 were not much better off a quartercentury after the last American soldiers had left Saigon. Political dogmatism, the politics of revenge and the continued interest of external powers in the region — it should be noted that the United States, in effect, approved of China's attack on Vietnam in 1979 — continued to wreak havoc in Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam throughout the remainder of the Cold War. While this, in turn, proved that American fears of the continued spread of communism had been exaggerated, the United States (as well as the French, the Soviets, the Chinese and others) still shares some responsibility for the casualties and massive economic dislocation that have continued to plague Indochina to the present day.