Vietnam War Anniversary

Vietnam War Anniversary – 50 years after Victory and the Defeat of the USa

by Inger V. Johansen, Vice-President of the European Left

Vietnam war destruction – Agent Orange

The Vietnam war was one of the most devastating since the Second Word War: three million Vietnamese lost their lives; the destruction wreaked by the war was immense, especially in central Vietnam, which was marred by bombing, toxic defoliants such as Agent Orange and napalm. Agent Orange is still killing and disabling new generations of people. New figures say 400,000 have been killed in total by Agent Orange.

The struggle to bring the USA and the chemical companies which produced Agent Orange to justice has been long and hard, and has been unsuccessful. As late as last year, a French-Vietnamese woman, Tran To Nga, a former reporter at the Giai Phong press agency (the National Liberation forces) in southern Vietnam during the war, lost an appeal case against a number of chemical companies at a Paris court. The companies claimed that the US government was responsible for the defoliants and their use, as they were employed by the US government. All cases against both the US government and the companies have been rejected by the courts over the years. Only a handful of US pilots who were exposed to the chemicals when on duty in Vietnam have been compensated.

Tran To Nga also raised the charge of ecocide in connection with her case, due to the ecological damage the spraying of Agent Orange has caused in Vietnam.

There are good impressions of rebuilding following the damage caused by the war, especially in central Vietnam which was particularly hard hit, with the US naval and army headquarters in Danang. After many years the reconstruction of the old Imperial City in Hué is now underway. Just a few years ago this was a ruin.

First visit in 1980

As a visitor in 1980, in the early years after the war, I experienced the poverty of the people and the ruins of a war-torn country, in fact still suffering from a recent military attack by China (which was defeated in this war). I participated in a delegation of eight young people from the Danish Left

Socialist party. We also visited the then Kampuchea and experienced the excavations of some of the terrible mass graves of the Khmer Rouge, as well as the political prison in Phnom Penh, where around 20,000 party members – belonging to factions opposing the core around Pol Pot – were executed.

Since then, my visits to Vietnam have come at steady intervals, 10 to 15 visits in all, which gives a good overview of the decisive and impressive work that has been done to improve the lives of the population. The introduction of a market economy (“Doi Moi”) towards the end of the 1980s should be seen in this light. There have been impressive growth figures from the Vietnamese “tiger” economy since around the turn of the century. At present they are between 6 and 7%, although lower during the corona virus pandemic.

Capitalism or socialism?

It is difficult to estimate the relative roles of capitalism and socialism in this country. There is no doubt that improving the living standards has been a very high priority, depending to a large extent on using elements of a capitalist market economy. On the other hand, living standards also depend on distribution policies, to lessen the gap between higher and lower incomes. The gap is still obviously there, especially visible in places like Ho Chi Minh City, where the city centre has been more or less destroyed by high-rise glass and similar buildings. Town-planning seems to be non-existent – capital/money decides. Ordinary Vietnamese flee from this part of the city. The youth gather in the bars around the old Ben Thanh market where prices are lower.

But nevertheless, income differences seem considerably lower than in many capitalist countries in the global south. Those most deprived are often ethnic minorities living in the mountain areas in northern and southern Vietnam.

It’s difficult to assess the scale of any oppression within the country, but Vietnam seems generally to be a very liberal country, with freedom and little visible oppression.

The colonial and imperialist past

Vietnam has experienced and won two important colonial and imperialist wars in recent history. France was defeated in 1954 at the battle of Dien Bien Phu, won by the Vietminh resistance. The younger population in Vietnam is keenly interested in their own history today, differing from just a few years ago, and they are queuing up to enter the museums. There are excellent historical and other museums.

During a recent visit, I stayed again in the historic Hotel Continental in Saigon, now surrounded by high-rise construction. This was where the British novelist Graham Greene stayed in a corner room on the second floor when he wrote The Quiet American in the early 1950s, filmed much later with Michael Caine in the lead role.

Part of a much larger private story, Greene’s novel also reflects the shift from French colonial masters to new US imperialist ones in Vietnam. But it would be wrong to think that a memorial plaque to Greene’s stay, outside his old hotel room, shows that the colonial past is over. On the contrary. On my last day in the hotel, a leaflet was distributed to the rooms about the history of the hotel under the previous owners: a French immigrant who married the daughter of a Vietnamese governor in the early 20th century, and their descendants. The last one left Vietnam for good in 1975, to go to France. But the amazing thing about this brief history was the fact that there was no mention whatsoever of either French colonial history in Vietnam, or the war against France, or the Vietnam war against the USA. It was just a celebration of the fantastic atmosphere of the old hotel and central Saigon in the good old days.