South Vietnam Debt Repayment ....Richard Holbrooke
From: Daniel C. Tsang
Date: Wed, Dec 15, 2010 at 5:58 PM
For the exact debt incurred by South Vietnam that led to the setting up of Vietnam Education Foundation, see:
April 2010 GAO report to the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman and Ranking Member:
VIETNAM EDUCATION FOUNDATION
Recent Improvements Made in Internal Controls, but Weaknesses Persist.
http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d10442.pdf
Page 9:
VEF’s funds come from a portion of the debt repayments that Vietnam makes to the United States.14 The VEF Act established the Vietnam Debt Repayment Fund as a separate account in the Treasury and directed that all debt repayments made by Vietnam under the agreement should be deposited into the fund, with VEF receiving a portion of those funds. VEF began receiving $5 million annually from the fund in fiscal year 2002, and, under the VEF Act, will continue to receive these funds through fiscal year 2018, for a total of $85 million in direct spending. The transfers from the Vietnam Debt Repayment Fund are no-year funds. Because the funds are not subject to a time limitation on their availability, and because VEF did not officially begin its operations until the middle of fiscal year 2003, it accumulated funds and, as a result, was able to obligate more than $5 million annually from fiscal year 2004 to fiscal year 2009, as shown in figure 3.
Footnote 14 On April 7, 1997, the United States and Vietnam signed an agreement in which Vietnam agreed to pay the roughly $145 million in debt, plus interest, the former Republic of Vietnam incurred from 1960 to1975 to support the development of economic infrastructure and to finance the importation of agricultural and other commodities.
Dan Tsang
On 12/15/2010 3:32 PM, catharindalpino@earthlink.net wrote:
> Nixon wrote a "secret" side letter to Saigon as well, promising to re-introduce US troops if the North invaded the South. Both that and the letter to Hanoi were inducements to persuade the two sides to sign the peace agreement. There was little indication at the time that Congress would have gone along with either promise.
>
> The US-Vietnam Education Foundation is a debt-to-development mechanism. I believe that the funds used are repayments of loans that the US Government made to the Saigon government before 1975. US law requires that all such loans be repaid no matter how much time has elapsed or what has transpired in the recipient country since the loan was made. Washington is holding Cambodia to account for loans that the USG made to the Lon Nol government prior to 1975.
>
> Lastly, among the multiple reasons that the normalization attempt failed in the late 1970's was the fact that, during this time, the United States was engaged in a parallel process of normalization with China. By the late 1970's Beijing and Hanoi were increasingly at odds with one another. Carter's National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezkinski did not want to risk derailing normalization with Beijing by normalizing with Hanoi at the same time. Several accounts of this, such as the one in Nayan Chanda's Brother Enemy, suggest that Holbrooke was out-maneuvered by Brzezinski on the issue. It was no doubt a lesson that the young and ambitious Assistant Secretary of State took to heart in future bureaucratic battles.
>
> Best,
> Catharin
> Sent via BlackBerry by AT&T
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: "Tai, Hue-Tam Ho"
> Sender: vsg-bounces@mailman2.u.washington.edu
> Date: Wed, 15 Dec 2010 18:05:46
> To: Vietnam Studies Group<vsg@u.washington.edu>
> Reply-To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
> Subject: RE: [Vsg] Richard Holbrooke
>
> It cannot have been so secret that Ithiel de Sola Pool and Vu Quoc Thuc were writing about what to do about postwar reconstruction back in 1970. Granted, de Sola Pool was highly connected but their book was published.
>
> As for the Vietnam Education Fund, I was under the impression that it was based on the assets of US companies in the former South Vietnam. Maybe someone can clarify?
>
> Hue-Tam Ho Tai
> Kenneth T. Young Professor
> of Sino-Vietnamese History
>
> ________________________________________
> From: vsg-bounces@mailman2.u.washington.edu [vsg-bounces@mailman2.u.washington.edu] On Behalf Of Jason Gibbs
> Sent: Wednesday, December 15, 2010 5:50 PM
> To: Vietnam Studies Group
> Subject: RE: [Vsg] Richard Holbrooke
>
> I don't pretend to have any original insight on this matter, but I've just finished reading Invisible Enemies by Edwin Martini which discusses these events.
>
> The $3 billion dollar reparation evidently was agreed to in some secret side letter that Nixon negotiated alongside the Paris Accords. Part of the US consternation on the subject of reparations came from the Vietnamese negotiator's revelation of this secret letter that the US side considered to be a state secret. This happened as Holbrooke was trying to open some sort of diplomatic normalization with Vietnam. The Carter era was the one window of time when this could have happened and this misunderstanding seems to have helped to close the door on normalization for a long time.
>
> Jason Gibbs
> San Francisco
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: vsg-bounces@mailman2.u.washington.edu [mailto:vsg-bounces@mailman2.u.washington.edu] On Behalf Of Joseph Hannah
> Sent: Wednesday, December 15, 2010 2:13 PM
> To: Vietnam Studies Group
> Subject: Re: [Vsg] Richard Holbrooke
>
> It is my recollection from that that much if not all of the $3 billion
> was to come from frozen assets of the former RVN held in US banks and
> by the US government. Some of that money now forms the basis of the
> Vietnam Education Fund -- a grant program for educational exchange
> between Vietnam and the US...
>
> Joe Hannah
> Department of Geography
> University of Washington
>
> On Wed, Dec 15, 2010 at 12:38 PM, Tai, Hue-Tam Ho wrote:
>
>> In my recollection, Vietnam demanded the $3 billion that was included in the Paris Peace Accords as Post-War Reconstruction Aid as War Reparation. Holbrooke's position was that 1. By invading the South, Hanoi had broken the Accords; 2. that while there was some possibility that the US public might be willing to provide $3billion as postwar reconstruction, it would not be willing to provide it as war reparation.
>> When my father visited me in 1970, there was already quite a bit of thinking in the US about how postwar reconstruction money would be spent. The MIT political scientist authored a study on that subject. That postwar reconstruction/war reparation money was included in the Second Five Year plan.
>> According to Karnow, despite the various difficulties, Holbrooke remained persuaded that normalization was possible, but Vietnam's invasion of Cambodia made that impossible at the time. That was his take, not mine.
>>
>> Hue-Tam Ho Tai
>> Kenneth T. Young Professor
>> of Sino-Vietnamese History
>>
>> ________________________________________
>> From: vsg-bounces@mailman2.u.washington.edu [vsg-bounces@mailman2.u.washington.edu]
>> Sent: Wednesday, December 15, 2010 3:00 PM
>> To: Vietnam Studies Group
>> Subject: Re: [Vsg] Richard Holbrooke
>>
>> I remember Holbrooke discussing in a television interview his negotiation
>> efforts with Vietnam under the Carter administration. As he related it,
>> the major obstacle to normalized relations at that time was Vietnamese
>> leaders' insistence that the U.S. provide $3.2 billion in aid, and that
>> the U.S. was obligated under the 1973 Paris Accords to do so.
>>
>> Steve Denney
>> library assistant
>> UC Berkeley
>>
>>
>>> Dear list,
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Along these lines, today’s Democracy Now broadcast (available online)
>>> includes an extended segment on Holbrooke’s positions and roles vis-à-vis
>>> various US foreign policy issues over the past several decades, including
>>> the embargo on Viet Nam and the supplying of weapons to the Indonesian
>>> government turning the genocide in East Timor. It presents, not
>>> surprisingly, a rather unflattering view of Holbrooke. It would be
>>> interesting to hear list members’ comments on the segment, especially with
>>> regard to his role in US-Vietnam postwar relations.
Rylan
On Tue, Dec 14, 2010 at 8:03 AM, Bill Hayton wrote:
Oops. Blame Politico...
"He served six years in Vietnam, including as a civilian representative
for the U.S. Agency for International Development in the Mekong Delta.
Later, at age 24, Holbrooke was asked to join an elite White House team
of Vietnam experts, the Phoenix Program, that included several other
rising stars who went on to play leading roles in U.S. diplomacy: John
Negroponte, a deputy secretary of state and director of national
intelligence, former Defense Secretary Les Aspin, national security
adviser Anthony Lake, and Frank Wisner."
----------
From: Bill Hayton
Date: Thu, Dec 16, 2010 at 12:18 AM
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
So, as part of the price of normalisation, the SRV had to agree to take on the debts which the RVN had incurred by fighting against it. And part of that money is now, in effect, a $5 million annual subsidy to the US universities receiving students funded by the VEF. I hope the universities are grateful...
(The VEF's website doesn't quite tell the whole story, declaring that it "is an independent federal agency created by the U.S. Congress and funded annually by the U.S. Government.")
----------
From: Mark Ashwill
Date: Thu, Dec 16, 2010 at 3:02 AM
To: vsg@u.washington.edu
My thoughts exactly. It's what I refer to in a recent blog post as a sin of omission: http://markashwill.wordpress.com/2010/11/25/vef-from-vietnam-with-money. This post includes a link to a PDF version of a 2005 article I wrote about the VEF entitled Moving Vietnam Forward.
Of the 67 grants for study in the US awarded by a USG program to Vietnamese students in 2009, 39 of them were for VEF fellows, which means that the VN govt is (indirectly) funding over half of all USG scholarships for VN students.
Another issue related to this scholarship-for-debt program is: what's happening to the balance of the annual repayments? (This, of course, is a rhetorical question.)
Mark Ashwill
----------
From: Jim Cobbe
Date: Thu, Dec 16, 2010 at 4:01 AM
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
The agreement was modeled on an earlier agreement with the Russian government under which the repayments of Soviet loans similarly pay for scholarships for Vietnamese students in Russia. Jim Cobbe
> u/~jcobbe
----------
From: Maxner, Steve
Date: Thu, Dec 16, 2010 at 6:36 AM
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
The Republic of Vietnam owed the United States Government (to include the Department of Agriculture and USAID) approximately $85 million when the war ended. When North Vietnam took over South Vietnam, they assumed responsibility for the debts of the latter. While this was an ongoing issue with regard to normalizing relations between the US and Vietnam, I do not believe it was so important as to really hinder that process. There were far more substantial issues at the time to include the Cold War, the US stance against communism, lingering emotions from the war, etc...
With the demise of the USSR, the US had more flexibility to work with remaining communist countries. The US and Vietnam normalized relations in 1995, a full five years before the issue of debt repayment was resolved. VEF was created in 2000 by the Clinton Administration as a creative way of facilitating resolution of that issue while helping Vietnam to increase Science and Technology capacity. But Vietnam had to agree to pay back the debt before the US would agree to create VEF and use some of those funds to support that program. The US is facing a similar situation today with Cambodia who owes the US over $300 million. Cambodia wants assurances up front that a similar program like VEF will be created before they agree to repayment terms – but the US will not accept conditions on debt repayment.
The reason the VEF website states what it does is because the funding used for VEF programs IS money that comes from the US Treasury. VEF was established by the US Congress and is funded by the US federal government. Those monies were initially US taxpayer dollars and they went to South Vietnam as loans and resources. Are we actually being critical of the Clinton Administration when they were trying to be responsible stewards of taxpayer funds and insisting that debts owed to the US should be repaid?
Rhetorical or not, the balance of funds paid by Vietnam and not used for VEF go back to the same funding agencies that lent South Vietnam the money. Ironically, those funding agencies, USAID and USDA, have been funding projects into the millions of dollars since we normalized relations and, when combined with VEF, PEPFAR and other US government aid programs, I suspect the US has provided substantially more than $85 million in aid to Vietnam since 1995. So, what USAID or USDA does with those additional dollars that do not go into VEF have undoubtedly already gone back to Vietnam in one form or another and several times fold what Vietnam has paid to the US.
As for US universities being grateful, etc… the fact is that a VEF fellow only receives part of the funding needed for their educational programs from VEF and VEF does not even cover half of the expenses needed for a PhD student. The remainder and more than half of the funds needed for those students come from the host institutions. For example, we have a VIED fellow at our university and he is receiving the same amount of funding as a VEF Fellow ($54K to help cover the first two years) but the department where he is studying is providing more than $65K for that student to complete their program. This means that the taxpayers of the State of Texas are subsidizing this Vietnamese student and are providing more than 50% of the funds he needs for his program of study. I will let others quibble about who should be grateful to whom but, in the spirit of Christmas, perhaps we should all just be grateful to each other…
Finally, I know from my conversations with them that the creators of VEF drew their inspiration from the Boxer Rebellion Indemnity Scholarship Program – a US program established in China in 1909. It was not based on a Soviet program.
Steve Maxner
Director, Vietnam Center
Chairman, Board of Directors, VEF
----------
From: Pierre Asselin
Date: Thu, Dec 16, 2010 at 9:29 AM
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
steve:
thanks for this very interesting and nuanced clarification.
pierre
Pierre Asselin
Associate Professor of History
Hawai'i Pacific University
1188 Fort St., Suite MP 405
Honolulu, HI 96813
----------
From: Daniel C. Tsang <dtsang@uci.edu>
Date: Thu, Dec 16, 2010 at 1:55 PM
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
More on the Boxer indemnity fund as model for VEF:
From Senate Bill 3097 (VIETNAM EDUCATION FOUNDATION AMENDMENTS ACT OF 2008 ) report: http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/cpquery/T?&report=sr458&dbname=110&
(The bill would have moved VEF to under the US State Dept. and establish an American Research College in Vietnam)
VEF receives $5 million each fiscal year from the U.S. Treasury, drawing on payments made each year by the Socialist Republic of Vietnam to the Vietnam Debt Repayment Fund. This creative recycling of a portion of Vietnam's national debt to the United States follows the successful model established more than 100 years ago when the Congress created the Boxer Indemnity Fund, allocating a portion of China's debt to the United States to create Tsinghua University in Beijing. To this day, Tsinghua is one of China's premier universities, with two Nobel Laureates, the former Premier of China Zhu Rong-ji, and the current President of China, Hu Jin-tao, among its more famous graduates. To augment its annual appropriation, the VEF is authorized to receive private contributions and grants to support its operations.
S. 3097 builds on the accomplishments of the VEF and the example of the Boxer Indemnity Fund, and draws on lessons learned over the past eight years to strengthen and streamline VEF's management and seek ways to enhance its long-term impact, including its ability to spur innovation in Vietnam's education sector.
___________________________
From Senator Kerry's press release on the 2000 Act establishing VEF:
http://kerry.senate.gov/press/release/?id=07947a59-a58b-4164-8683-6e6fb4d0f5e2
There is successful precedent for the kind of exchange program this legislation creates. In 1908 the United States returned a portion of the Boxer indemnity bond to China for the purpose of educating Chinese students in the American institutions. Since 1975, the Japanese-American Friendship Commission has been funding educational and cultural exchanges through the debt repaid by Japan to the United States for the return of Okinawa.
Dan Tsang
----------
From: Melanie Beresford <melanie.beresford@mq.edu.au>
Date: Thu, Dec 16, 2010 at 3:43 PM
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
On the other hand, you could view the $85m as money US taxpayers spent to fund part of the US war effort. Of course there were many more US taxpayer dollars that went into propping up that regime (roughly a billion a year non-military at the height of the war). It scarcely seems a credible idea to me that the Vietnamese taxpayers owed the US anything at all. Same goes for Cambodia (swap $300m for 500,000 civilian deaths under US bombing?)
cheers,
Melanie
--
Melanie Beresford
Associate Dean Research
Associate Professor in Economics
Faculty of Business & Economics
Macquarie University, NSW 2109
Australia
----------
From: Tai, Hue-Tam Ho
Date: Thu, Dec 16, 2010 at 5:21 PM
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Without going into the pros and cons of whether the US should have propped up the South Vietnamese regime, Hanoi did take on the rights and claims of that regime, including territorial claims (that seems to me one reason why overseas Vietnamese so eagerly use the conflict over the Paracels and Spratlys to criticize the current regime). I'm no expert on international law, but it seems to me that inheritor regimes take on both rights and obligations of the regimes they succeed.This strikes me as different from the French demand that the Vietnamese court reimburse the French for the cost of conquering the Three Provinces of the East. But that was what the Treaty of Saigon stipulated.
Nonetheless, as Steve Maxner points out in his very helpful post, the disagreement over postwar reconstruction/war reparation funds was only a small irritant during the negotiations over normalization.
----------
From: Melanie Beresford
Date: Thu, Dec 16, 2010 at 5:56 PM
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Yes, a small irritant used by people like Holbrooke to avoid the issue of US responsibility and the desperate need for reparations.
As for the lingering emotions, I would describe them as hubris. It seems that a Marshall Plan was available for Germany and Japan, but not for Vietnam. What better way to end the cold war (I mean the Vietnam proxy cold war) than by becoming a bigger donor than even the USSR! It worked after WW2.
Apologies for bringing a note of controversy into this otherwise sedate discussion.
cheers,
Melanie
--
----------
From: Maxner, Steve
Date: Thu, Dec 16, 2010 at 6:31 PM
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
I do not have a view on it one way or the other. The views that resulted in these policies were those of every successive US President and administration from Ford through Clinton.
I think referring to the government of the Republic of Vietnam as a “propped-up regime” reflects a political perspective – not dispassionate historical analysis. The fact is that both the governments of North and South Vietnam had patrons providing substantial funds, material, and assistance. If one side deserves that moniker, so does the other.
Also, I am not sure the source of the figures cited regarding casualties in Cambodia but US bombing there did not cause anywhere near 500,000 Cambodian civilian casualties. The estimates I have seen cited are between 40K-100K by such scholars as Ben Kiernan. Those numbers are horrible enough without exaggerating them.
Lastly, a Marshall Plan in Vietnam was not possible as the American public and politicians were not about to pour billions of dollars in a region where we did not succeed in meeting our initial objectives. Such a plan was possible in Germany and Japan because the Allies won and could be magnanimous in victory. Further, there was a need to bolster western Europe in the aftermath of the war and expansion of the Soviet Union and communism into eastern Europe. The same was so for eastern Asia after WWII. But after the war in Vietnam, President Ford could not even muster enough political support to send minimal US forces and stop the Khmer Rouge genocide – let alone enough support to provide billions for a reconstruction program.
----------
From: Melanie Beresford
Date: Thu, Dec 16, 2010 at 6:44 PM
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
My figure of half a million came from Michael Vickery.
The DRV was at least legitimate in the sense of not having been installed by a foreign power and enjoying the broad support of the population. These are not issues of 'political perspective', but of dispassionate historical analysis.
cheers,
Melanie
----------
From: Stephen Denney
Date: Thu, Dec 16, 2010 at 6:58 PM
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
I believe U.S. aid was possible -- and certainly strong moral arguments were made for such aid -- but not if presented as an obligation of a peace treaty which had been destroyed through the military takeover of the south. It was the choice of Vietnam's leaders at the time to insist that the U.S. was obliged by this treaty. This was no minor irritant, not at a time when hundreds of thousands of our former allies were being sent to re-education camps and new economic zones, or risking their lives on the high seas fleeing the country.
I also wonder if a Marshall plan type of large scale aid from the U.S. at that time might have forestalled the needed economic reforms that began in the mid-80s.
Steve Denney
----------
From: Melanie Beresford
Date: Thu, Dec 16, 2010 at 7:23 PM
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
You could indeed argue that the acute crisis induced by the elimination of US aid in 1975 was a major factor in stimulating the beginning of economic reform in 1979 (not the mid-80s - by then the Vietnamese economy was already largely a market economy except in industries where the centre could still 'plan' due to its grip on Soviet aid goods and many of those found their way to the market anyway). A Marshall Plan might have delayed reform - on the other hand, even Le Duan was pragmatic about the economy in the late '70s. A Marshall Plan can work wonders in terms of turning former enemies into friends.
A Marshall Plan might even have saved "our" former allies some of their trials.
Melanie
----------
From: Maxner, Steve
Date: Thu, Dec 16, 2010 at 7:31 PM
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
In the DRV there were no other choices, no other parties, no other candidates, and opposition to the communist party resulted in prosecution/persecution and possible imprisonment or worse if one challenged the political authority of the government. How is that a government by popular support?
The fiction of a popularly elected democracy applied to both sides – North and South. To claim otherwise is hardly dispassionate and neither is using loaded jargon such as “propped-up (aka puppet) regime.”
From: vsg-bounces@mailman2.u.washington.edu [mailto:vsg-bounces@mailman2.u.washington.edu] On Behalf Of Melanie Beresford
Sent: Thursday, December 16, 2010 8:45 PM
----------
From: Melanie Beresford
Date: Thu, Dec 16, 2010 at 7:43 PM
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Oh dear! I didn't say popularly elected. I didn't even say popular. I said broad popular acceptance. There's a very major difference.
I didn't say puppet either. The Diem-Thieu regimes certainly had agenda of their own which they attempted to implement, sometimes against US opposition (Diem in particular proved to be unsatisfactory as a 'puppet' , so the US was not unhappy about his assassination) and poor LBJ was very frustrated about the revolving door politics (his famous quote which goes something like 'who's going to stabilize those people out there'). Thus puppet does not equal 'propped up'.
Melanie
----------
From: <sdenney@library.berkeley.edu>
Date: Thu, Dec 16, 2010 at 8:18 PM
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
As I said, a strong moral argument could be made for U.S. aid after 1975,
to help repair the damage of the war. But the Paris Agreements was not the
appropriate document for Vietnamese leaders to cite, because they showed
no respect for other basic provisions of the treaty, those specifying
civil liberties and the right of free election. The treaty was destroyed
already.
Maybe U.S. aid would have helped soften the policies of Vietnam at the
time, or maybe it would have propped up an unrealistic socialist system
that had already failed.
Steve Denney
----------
From: Melanie Beresford
Date: Thu, Dec 16, 2010 at 8:38 PM
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
In that case the question of who destroyed the treaty first, must remain a very moot point.
Melanie
--
----------
From: Bill Hayton
Date: Fri, Dec 17, 2010 at 4:03 AM
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Dear Steve and all,
Thanks for your note, it's clear that the VEF is delivering benefits to Vietnam.
Putting the various accounts together, one can see that the VEF was a creative and subtle way to smooth over the differences within the US establishment and between the US and Vietnam over the merits of normalisation. I can also see that the decision to take on the RVN's debt facilitated the SRV's international integration and that that has resulted in a rapid increase in the standard of living for its people.
But l can also imagine that there must have been at least one meeting in the normalisation process where a US diplomat said words to the effect of "We want our $185 million" and a Vietnamese diplomat said something about dioxin and the US diplomat said "we're not going to talk about that here". I guess that's realpolitik for you.
Bill
From: vsg-bounces@mailman2.u.washington.edu [mailto:vsg-bounces@mailman2.u.washington.edu] On Behalf Of Maxner, Steve
Sent: 16 December 2010 14:36
To: Vietnam Studies Group
Subject: RE: [Vsg] South Vietnam Debt Repayment ....Richard Holbrooke
----------
From: Maxner, Steve
Date: Fri, Dec 17, 2010 at 6:34 AM
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
The initial comment below is not about “acceptance,” it states that ”The DRV was at least legitimate in the sense of not having been installed by a foreign power and enjoying the broad support of the population.”
How “broad” can support be if the only way political power is maintained is by preventing any competition, whatsoever, in the sharing of that political power? The concerted prevention of political competition is an admission that there is not broad support. If there was broad support, the government would not have needed to prevent political competition.
Neither government, north nor south, held on to political power through anything resembling broad popular consensus. Both sides were “propped up” by foreign aid and assistance. I suspect that, just as Johnson lamented the fact that all of our aid bought us little influence in the political affairs of state in RVN, so too did the USSR and PRC lament similar challenges with the DRV.
Steve Maxner
----------
From: Stephen Denney
Date: Fri, Dec 17, 2010 at 11:09 AM
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
From the viewpoint of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam, the Paris Agreements was still a legally binding document -- on the United States -- after April 1975. The spring offensive of that year was launched in order to enforce the treaty, according to official jargon. The portions of the treaty addressing civil liberties and the right of free election were no longer considered relevant by the authorities. Demanding the U.S. adhere to a treaty which they themselves had no intention of following, and using this as a precondition for the normalization of relations, stood in the way of negotiations toward diplomatic relations. When Holbrooke met Phan Hien in Paris talks in May 1977, he offered Vietnam diplomatic relationsw without preconditions, but Hien insisted the U.S. must provide $3.25 billion in aid because of a "secret" letter Nixon had written promising aid in accordance with the Paris Agreements.
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From: Melanie Beresford
Date: Fri, Dec 17, 2010 at 12:03 PM
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Steve, Think of the Pope in Rome. Where's the competition there? Legitimacy can be conveyed by religious belief (as indeed it was in most (all?) states before the French Revolution). Legitimacy can be conveyed by nationalism. Depends what the people believe in.
Melanie
----------
From: Maxner, Steve
Date: Fri, Dec 17, 2010 at 12:19 PM
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
I realize governmental legitimacy derives from many things – however, to imply a government had “broad popular support” when that government did all it could to destroy any other challenges to political authority (to include using violence and imprisonment), and then comparing that to the Catholic Papacy?
All I can say is, wow.
Steve
----------
From: Robert Silano
Date: Fri, Dec 17, 2010 at 12:15 PM
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
This last bit of cant manages to breath new life into the old phrase "useful idiot" that fell out of vogue with Stalin. I hasten to dignify my comment in true VSG spirit by requesting a Vietnamese translation for the term "useful idiot."
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From: Jalel Sager
Date: Fri, Dec 17, 2010 at 2:13 PM
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Dear Robert Silano:
As you know, it's rather impossible to dignify an unprovoked insult from left field, even with a facetious retreat into "true VSG spirit," which your comment contravenes.
Let me try to restrict this discussion a bit, for the sake of my own curiosity, with a query to the list: are scholars still debating which side, RVN or DRV, had broader political support among the people of Vietnam in 1975?
Jalel Sager
University of California-Berkeley
----------
From: Tom Miller
Date: Fri, Dec 17, 2010 at 4:18 PM
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
For what it's worth, the Vietnamese nurses at the plastic surgery hospital I helped establish in Saigon in 1967 with Dr. Arthur Barsky, referred, in a matter of fact way, to "Uncle Ho" as the "father" of their country, not as a political statement but as a simple statement of belief. As for "scientific" evidence at the time, after the Tet Offensive, White House security adviser Robert Komer showed me a printout allegedly showing a week by week analysis of the "level of loyalty" to the Saigon government of each small village, assuring me most of the population now backed the Saigon government. I'm not certain whether he believed it himself, but he presented it as fact - apparently not worried that the sources of "weekly loyalty" input were local South Vietnamese commanders.
Tom Miller
Miller & Ngo, Attorneys at Law
www.millerngo.com, www.greencitiesfund.org
725 Washington Street
Oakland, California 94607
----------
From: Melanie Beresford
Date: Fri, Dec 17, 2010 at 4:23 PM
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
No, or maybe. It seems to be a war over the meaning of words. However, the goal posts keep moving, so I plan to desist from now on.
Melanie