By Thi Lam, Pacific News Service.
Lost amid the fanfare surrounding Vietnam’s new status and recognition is the price. As on of the poorest countries joining some of the world’s fastest growing economies, Vietnam will have to reduce its import tariff from an average of 50 percent to five percent by the year 2003. The local economy is bound to suffer as a result, as will Vietnam’s coffers. Experts argue, however, that the prospect of increase foreign investments will more than offset the adverse effect of the eventual tariff reduction.
In international relations, even more than in normal business transactions, there are no free lunches. The real price for admission into the ASEAN club is Vietnam’s tacit agreement to act as a buffer against its increasingly aggressive neighbor to the north. In what has now been dubbed the West’s reverse containment policy, ASEAN and the US. intend to use one communist country-Vietnam-as a shield against another, China, now perceived as a new threat to the Asia-Pacific region. In essence, Vietnam will become the battlefield for a new Cold War against its one time communist comrade to the north.
From ASEAN and Washington’s point of view, playing Vietnam off against China makes sense. Containment means establishing relations with surrounding countries and Vietnam is not only China’s neighbor but its traditional enemy. Moreover, Vietnam proved it had lost little of its old military prowess used against the French and Americans by inflicting heavy casualties on Chinese troops when they crossed its northern border in 1979. But today, Vietnam’s antiquated torpedo boats are no match for China’s newly reinforced blue-water fleet. And in the event of a military move by Beijing, Vietnam hopes to buy critical time for the US. to intervene before the fire engulfs the entire region.
But just how trustworthy is the new kid on the ASEAN bloc? Only 16 years ago, Vietnam showed its own expansionist aggressiveness by invading Cambodia with dreams of expanding its "Indochina Federation". Had it not been for fierce Khmer Rouge resistance, Hanoi would likely have crossed the border into Thailand as well. For the long-term security interest of the Asia-Pacific, the ASEAN countries need more than a military shock absorber on China’s border: they need a stable and reliable partner - a democratic Vietnam that respects and adheres to the accepted norms and obligations of the world community.
History shows that aggression is initiated mainly by dictatorial regimes (both world wars emanated from an imperial and a fascist Germany). Rather than pursuing reverse containment, which relies on Vietnam as a pawn, the most effective pro-active containment approach the US. and ASEAN could adopt would be to concentrate on encouraging the gradual transformation of China into a true democracy.
China’s mix of capitalist economics and socialist politics may delay but not prevent the collapse of its current hybrid regime. In the meantime, the West could take delicate steps to speed up the peaceful transformation of China but should refrain from forcing unnecessary confrontations.
"In Southeast Asia, the strategic divisions run along the line of which nations are more concerned about Vietnam and which are more concerned about China," former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger notes "Those more concerned about China are friendly to Vietnam. Those more concerned about Vietnam are friendly to China."
For the time being, ASEAN has decided to be more concerned about China. But only when both rival countries have fully joined the community of free and democratic nations will the line that divides one part of the Asia-Pacific region from the other truly disappear.