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"Diane Fox (dnfox)" <dnfox@hamilton.edu>
date Jan 2, 2007 12:44 PM
subject [Vsg] any best guesses on impossible statistic?--those hurt by US embargo of VN
I've had a request for a figure that I would not know how to calculate, but wonder if some of you might have some thoughts on this:
Is there any way to make a reasonable guess of how many people in Vietnam were hurt or even died as a result of the US embargo?
Thanks for any suggestions.
Diane
Joe Hannah <jhannah@u.washington.edu>
date Jan 2, 2007 1:09 PM
subject Re: [Vsg] any best guesses on impossible statistic?--those hurt by US embargo of VN
Hi Diane,
I have a few materials about this sort of thing in boxes -- mostly from
the late 1980s -- but I can't put my finger on them. Here is one title
about Cambodia that I remember -- it might give you some insight into the
situation in Vietnam, or perhaps a methodology for answering such a
question (though I know the situations were vastly different):
Author: Mysliwiec, Eva
Title: Punishing the poor : the international isolation of Kampuchea / Eva
Mysliwiec
Pub info: Oxford, UK : Oxfam, 1988
Also, there was a congressional hearing in 1978-ish about continuing the
embargo of "North Vietnam" after the end of the war.
Best of luck,
Joe Hannah
"Adam @ UoM" <fforde@unimelb.edu.au>
date Jan 3, 2007 1:55 PM
subject RE: [Vsg] any best guesses on impossible statistic?--those hurt byUS embargo of VN
I do not think that the economic costs of the US embargo prior to 1994 were
that great. Ambassadors were exchanged in 1997. What had been happening
before then? A lot. This American interest seems to me to reflect
long-standing views about the importance of the US, which is now not what it
was.
Until 1989-90 the per capita level of aid to Vietnam was relatively high,
due by then mainly to support from the Soviet bloc.
Despite the embargo, inward FDI to Vietnam after 1989-90 grew fast;
Vietnamese exports to developed countries also grew rapidly, with access to
the EU of some importance.
Unlike, say, the 1960s, the US was thus shown as one would expect to be
relatively economically irrelevant to a newly emergent country such as
Vietnam, since despite the embargo commercial capital inflows were large and
mainly from the region (Australia's initial relative importance in primary
sectors eased off quickly), and market access to the EU was now possible and
turned out to be a real option. The pattern of globalisation has made access
to the US relatively unimportant for an economy such as the Vietnamese.
The very fast growth in trade and capital flows since the late 1990s makes
no difference to this observation, I think. The main determinant of growth
over this period was on the supply side, through standard MNC a regional
commercial strategies.
The embargo issue was linked by non-US countries to security matters, of
course, part of the rapprochement associated with the China issue.
Aid flows were certainly slowed by the embargo but did this really matter?
Indeed, it can be and has been argued that the experience in Vietnam has
been that domestic conditions, especially economic efficiency, have tended
to be <<negatively>> correlated with changes in aid flows: the collapses in
aid flows in 1978-80 and 1989-90 correlated with declines, the boosts in
1981-84 (as Soviet aid replaced lost Western and Chinese aid) and the
early-mid 1990s being correlated with declines.
One can differentiate this from humanitarian issues, but the INGOs came in
from 1990 or so, with Rep Offices, starting with Trocaire, lead agency for
the Catholic CIDSE consortium, so far as I recall.
Adam
Markus Taussig <markustaussig@mac.com>
date Jan 3, 2007 2:21 PM
subject Re: [Vsg] any best guesses on impossible statistic?--those hurt byUS embargo of VN
I think the strongest argument for saying that the US embargo did
have an impact would be to say that the embargo politically
undermined reform-minded leaders of the early transition period.
Such Kremlinology, of course, carries us in fantasyland, but it's
still interesting to imagine. After all, some prominent leaders
favorable to the US and to more liberal economic policy did not fare
well in the early transition period. Perhaps the political calculus
would have been different if tangible benefits were more at hand.
What if, for example, the reforms of the early 1990s (e.g. first
company law, proclamation of plans for significant privatization) had
been responded to more positively by the US? If the export boom that
followed the BTA had come at that time, perhaps ... well, anyhow,
Vietnam's growth was very impressive anyhow, so I actually agree with
Adam that the consequences of the embargo for Vietnam tend to be
exaggerated.
Markus
"Adam @ UoM" <fforde@unimelb.edu.au>
date Jan 3, 2007 3:57 PM
subject RE: [Vsg] any best guesses on impossible statistic?--those hurt byUS embargo of VN
My two feelings regarding Marcus' thought-provoking posting below are -
A. That this once again sees things in terms of the assumption that the US
is important - to my eye this is reminiscent of classic 'late Empire'
thinking and anybody who looks at the UK in the 1950s and early 1960s is
well aware of it. In terms of security relations, where else, given China,
was the US going to go in the 1990s but to cutting Hanoi a good deal?
Evidence can be found in the lack of any serious conditionality applied by
the WB, such as in the mid 1990s loans, where the Vietnamese signed up to
lots and delivered very little, to no cost. The Vietnamese foreign policy
thinkers were I think well aware of this and needed only to wait - which
made it easier for them to deal with the balance with China. Meanwhile in
the early 1990s, before the embargo was lifted, the FDI was flooding in, so
was bilateral aid, the WB and ADB were champing at the bit and it was not
market access that was determining export growth. So when their people came
back from the HIID and other seminars (with important Professors fresh from
Russia, advocacy of Big Bang and so on) that had tried to sell the great
value of economic links with the US and the importance of XYZ, and what they
would get if they would only PQR, what conclusions would any sane person
draw?
B. That it assumes that the boom in exports post BTA is driven by access to
the US rather than developments on the supply side - again, looking at the
US rather than Vietnam. Market penetration in developed Asia and the EU is
hardly enough to scare importing countries and risk imposition of limits.
Again, the analysis supports the view that the Us is important, when other
analyses - and lessons drawn from them - suggest that it is not.
Anyone been reading Gibbon?
Adam
"Diane Fox (dnfox)" <dnfox@hamilton.edu>
date Jan 3, 2007 8:54 PM
subject Re: RE: [Vsg] any best guesses on impossible statistic?--those hurt byUS embargo of VN
Thanks, Adam.
This reminds me of a comment by Nguyen Co Thach at a party at the Thang Loi on the occasion of the lifting of the embargo (or was it "normalization" of relations?) At any rate, he gave a toast that went along the lines: "The US likes to say it is welcoming Vietnam to the international community. The international community is here--the US is welcome, but a little late."
Diane
Chuck Searcy <chucksearcy@yahoo.com>
date Jan 4, 2007 9:01 AM
subject Re: RE: [Vsg] any best guesses on impossible statistic?--those hurt byUS embargo of VN
Diane,
The comments from Adam and Markus focus mostly on economic dimensions of the embargo, which are important because economic factors affect many facets of life which may not be easily quantifiable. Your question, Diane, is a challenge and some answers would be very interesting.
One piece of anecdotal information which has always stuck with me, on the humanitarian side of the question, is something doctors at the Children's Hospital told me in 1995 when I first started working there on a rehabilitation project -- providing orthotic braces for kids with club foot, cerebral palsy, and other diseases and disabilities including polio (a project funded, incidentally, by a USAID grant which was part of the first U.S. government assistance to Vietnam). When I inquired about the high number of polio cases, the doctors explained that the embargo had prevented the purchase and import of polio vaccine, except in limited quantities from countries which defied the embargo, and import of key ingredients which could have allowed the Vietnamese to produce their own vaccine was also blocked by the embargo. After the embargo was lifted, in only a few years Vietnam could claim no new cases of polio reported, for the first time.
Would that situation have occurred much earlier, and thousands of cases of polio prevented, if the embargo had not been in place?
Joe Hannah <jhannah@u.washington.edu>
date Jan 4, 2007 11:12 AM
subject Re: RE: [Vsg] any best guesses on impossible statistic?--those hurt byUS embargo of VN
Hi Diane and all,
A perhaps intangible but no less real effect of the embargo is the still
lingering suspicion about US motives in Vietnam and a sense of enmity that
is sustained in some portions of the Vietnamese Party-Government. I have
several personal anecdotes from my years working and researching in VN
where close informants would comment on how the fact that I am an American
made access more difficult, made people (especially officials) more
circumspect, and made my friends and colleagues more vulnerable to
official scrutiny. Among many poignant pieces of advice I received over
the years in how to develop relationships with Vietnamese officials and
scholars was, "...and *never* forget that you are an American."
The "embargo" was in fact a Treasury Department classification of Vietnam
as a "category Z" state (if memory serves), defining VN effectively as a
enemy state. That classification, I would posit, bolstered Vietnamese
"hardliners" and undermined those Vietnamese who wanted to improve
diplomatic and cultural relations between VN and the US. Many (Vietnamese
and Americans) worked hard during the embargo years to overcome that
classification and move ahead, but the embargo made such work an uphill
battle.
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