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.Americanization strengthened the hand of the only viable alternativeto U.S.domination the National Front for the Liberation of South Vietnam(NLF) and when it was destroyed, the North Vietnamese army.Growing U.S.domination tore apart South Vietnam s social fabric.Itundermined production of rice in favor of higher-value crops for urban con-sumers.Because toiling in the rice fields exposed farmers to combat, theyjoined a mass exodus to safe urban havens.Young people raised in cities wereinculcated with the values of consumption for its own sake.The job of deal-ing with the chaos caused by the massive influx of U.S.troops and money fellto Nguyen Van Thieu (1965 75), who would lead South Vietnam to its finaldestruction in 1975.Like Diem, Thieu was incapable of and uninterested in assembling a broadsocial constituency or establishing an institutional and ideological basis tocoordinate citizen actions in support of his government.The major differ-ence between the two leaders was that Thieu lacked ideological pretensionsand had no nationalist credentials.A master opportunist, he assembled acoalition of like-minded individuals willing to share the spoils of plunder.Bureaucrats who were committed to governance to promote national welfare 08-7556-0 ch8.qxd 5/9/08 9:55 PM Page 110110 The Economic Failure of Client Regimeswere stymied, and many became enemies of the regime.Expanded Americaninvolvement gave Thieu the means to be even more indiscriminate thanDiem had been in using executive prerogatives to pay off supporters.Having surrendered to an outside force the fight to build South Vietnam,Thieu was left without nationalist credibility.Two groups that Diem hadspurned the ethnic Chinese business community and the military brasswere to provide coalitional support to Thieu.These two groups and the statebureaucracy that distributed aid and controlled licenses constituted the threepillars that held up Thieu s regime.The Chinese business elites who aidedThieu s rise to power in 1967 saw their business conglomerates restored andtheir property, confiscated by Diem, returned.Accumulating capital by polit-ical means, the Chinese were politically nonthreatening because of theirmarginal stature in Vietnamese society.35 Yet over the course of a few years,Chinese business groups were in control of South Vietnam s economy, shar-ing their gains with government personnel and maintaining a strong client-patron relationship with Thieu.Unfortunately, their business goals had fewconnections to the national interest.Under Thieu the officer corps was packed with loyal generals, whose num-bers increased from forty to seventy-three.The enlargement was intended toprevent the coordination of a coup by a few senior officers.Thieu often pro-moted officers to duties far beyond their abilities, and the new appointeesgained shares of the state s economic resources through sanctioned venuesfor corruption.Eventually the most lucrative government posts were simplyauctioned off, which meant that many key positions went to the officers mostefficient at collecting bribes and side payments.Thieu s strategy for political survival depended on persistent inputs of U.S.resources to sustain an economy geared to maintaining the loyalty of his offi-cer corps and business elite.But this strategy so compromised the effective-ness of his administrative apparatus that it eliminated any prospect of imple-menting social policy and nullified his promises to comply with U.S.policyobjectives of establishing a democratic regime.Although he reintroduced vil-lage elections and launched a land-to-tillers program,36 the land redistribu-tion was feeble compared to the earlier redistribution by the Viet Minh.Thieucould not overcome the rural population s loss of confidence in and supportof his government.Thieu ruled as an autocrat, using assassinations and bribery to dissuadechallengers from entering the 1971 presidential election.Nguyen Cao Ky, theonly viable opponent, withdrew his candidacy and left the Americans with-out a means of transferring power to legitimately elected national leaders. 08-7556-0 ch8.qxd 5/9/08 9:55 PM Page 111Illegitimate Offspring: South Vietnam 111Martial law in 1972 gave government the power to impose comprehensivecensorship and imprisonment without trial for crimes as vague as supportingneutralism or jeopardizing public safety.In fall 1972, 40,000 detainees wereadded to the prison population, for whom no public records were kept.U.S.leaders looked the other way.Those most aware of Thieu s abuses also knewthat he was their only alternative to instability.Rivalries within the oppositionforces left the SVG no framework for amassing broad social support.There was a final irony in this attempt to foster a viable democratic alter-native to Communism in South Vietnam.As the war became less popularamong the U.S.electorate, in 1971 and 1972 the Nixon administration triedto implement a Vietnamization of the conflict, replacing the U.S.army withSouth Vietnamese forces.This policy increased U.S.dependency on Thieu scircle just as U.S.funding was disappearing.Without arms and money fromWashington Thieu lost the loyalty of the elites, whose support he needed.South Vietnam s army was taught to fight a rich man s war.But the UnitedStates then withdrew money for weapons, cutting aid to $300,000, while theNorth allegedly received $1 billion worth of arms from Russia.Withoutextensive U.S.backing, South Vietnam lacked the means to support a large,technically proficient fighting force that could withstand an invasion fromthe North.Many commentaries on the cause of South Vietnam s defeat point to theregime s weak legitimacy and failing economy.The necessity of feeding theurban centers, whose economies depended on servicing the diminishing U.S.forces, proved to be another contradiction of Vietnamization that madeThieu s position untenable.Urban opposition and elite infighting wereincreasing in 1975, as North Vietnamese forces rolled in.According to GabrielKolko, defeat on the battlefield had its origin in the ultimate dilemma ofVietnamization, which was the absence of any real social foundation for theRepublic of South Vietnam, outside of the military, whose political roles andmotives made its warlike functions quite secondary. 37 Vietnamization couldnot succeed politically or socially, Kolko concludes, because the economicsystem of patronage and corruption that sustained it required massive Amer-ican assistance.How Did the United States Land in This Dilemma?Vietnam held little independent commercial or political interest to theUnited States.The collapse of non-Communist China in 1949 promptedAmerica to seek a viable non-Communist state in South Vietnam.38 Believing 08-7556-0 ch8.qxd 5/9/08 9:55 PM Page 112112 The Economic Failure of Client Regimesthat the future of Asia would be fought in Vietnam, Robert Scigliano wrote, Diem became America s indispensable man; the United States has consid-ered him the only alternative to Communism in Vietnam.the willingdependence of the United States on Diem has given him a great advantage inhis dealings with his major ally.[Diem] has felt safe in rejecting Americandemands. 39 Diem was confident that U.S.politicians would never threatenthe ultimate sanction, that of abandoning South Vietnam to the Commu-nists [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
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.Americanization strengthened the hand of the only viable alternativeto U.S.domination the National Front for the Liberation of South Vietnam(NLF) and when it was destroyed, the North Vietnamese army.Growing U.S.domination tore apart South Vietnam s social fabric.Itundermined production of rice in favor of higher-value crops for urban con-sumers.Because toiling in the rice fields exposed farmers to combat, theyjoined a mass exodus to safe urban havens.Young people raised in cities wereinculcated with the values of consumption for its own sake.The job of deal-ing with the chaos caused by the massive influx of U.S.troops and money fellto Nguyen Van Thieu (1965 75), who would lead South Vietnam to its finaldestruction in 1975.Like Diem, Thieu was incapable of and uninterested in assembling a broadsocial constituency or establishing an institutional and ideological basis tocoordinate citizen actions in support of his government.The major differ-ence between the two leaders was that Thieu lacked ideological pretensionsand had no nationalist credentials.A master opportunist, he assembled acoalition of like-minded individuals willing to share the spoils of plunder.Bureaucrats who were committed to governance to promote national welfare 08-7556-0 ch8.qxd 5/9/08 9:55 PM Page 110110 The Economic Failure of Client Regimeswere stymied, and many became enemies of the regime.Expanded Americaninvolvement gave Thieu the means to be even more indiscriminate thanDiem had been in using executive prerogatives to pay off supporters.Having surrendered to an outside force the fight to build South Vietnam,Thieu was left without nationalist credibility.Two groups that Diem hadspurned the ethnic Chinese business community and the military brasswere to provide coalitional support to Thieu.These two groups and the statebureaucracy that distributed aid and controlled licenses constituted the threepillars that held up Thieu s regime.The Chinese business elites who aidedThieu s rise to power in 1967 saw their business conglomerates restored andtheir property, confiscated by Diem, returned.Accumulating capital by polit-ical means, the Chinese were politically nonthreatening because of theirmarginal stature in Vietnamese society.35 Yet over the course of a few years,Chinese business groups were in control of South Vietnam s economy, shar-ing their gains with government personnel and maintaining a strong client-patron relationship with Thieu.Unfortunately, their business goals had fewconnections to the national interest.Under Thieu the officer corps was packed with loyal generals, whose num-bers increased from forty to seventy-three.The enlargement was intended toprevent the coordination of a coup by a few senior officers.Thieu often pro-moted officers to duties far beyond their abilities, and the new appointeesgained shares of the state s economic resources through sanctioned venuesfor corruption.Eventually the most lucrative government posts were simplyauctioned off, which meant that many key positions went to the officers mostefficient at collecting bribes and side payments.Thieu s strategy for political survival depended on persistent inputs of U.S.resources to sustain an economy geared to maintaining the loyalty of his offi-cer corps and business elite.But this strategy so compromised the effective-ness of his administrative apparatus that it eliminated any prospect of imple-menting social policy and nullified his promises to comply with U.S.policyobjectives of establishing a democratic regime.Although he reintroduced vil-lage elections and launched a land-to-tillers program,36 the land redistribu-tion was feeble compared to the earlier redistribution by the Viet Minh.Thieucould not overcome the rural population s loss of confidence in and supportof his government.Thieu ruled as an autocrat, using assassinations and bribery to dissuadechallengers from entering the 1971 presidential election.Nguyen Cao Ky, theonly viable opponent, withdrew his candidacy and left the Americans with-out a means of transferring power to legitimately elected national leaders. 08-7556-0 ch8.qxd 5/9/08 9:55 PM Page 111Illegitimate Offspring: South Vietnam 111Martial law in 1972 gave government the power to impose comprehensivecensorship and imprisonment without trial for crimes as vague as supportingneutralism or jeopardizing public safety.In fall 1972, 40,000 detainees wereadded to the prison population, for whom no public records were kept.U.S.leaders looked the other way.Those most aware of Thieu s abuses also knewthat he was their only alternative to instability.Rivalries within the oppositionforces left the SVG no framework for amassing broad social support.There was a final irony in this attempt to foster a viable democratic alter-native to Communism in South Vietnam.As the war became less popularamong the U.S.electorate, in 1971 and 1972 the Nixon administration triedto implement a Vietnamization of the conflict, replacing the U.S.army withSouth Vietnamese forces.This policy increased U.S.dependency on Thieu scircle just as U.S.funding was disappearing.Without arms and money fromWashington Thieu lost the loyalty of the elites, whose support he needed.South Vietnam s army was taught to fight a rich man s war.But the UnitedStates then withdrew money for weapons, cutting aid to $300,000, while theNorth allegedly received $1 billion worth of arms from Russia.Withoutextensive U.S.backing, South Vietnam lacked the means to support a large,technically proficient fighting force that could withstand an invasion fromthe North.Many commentaries on the cause of South Vietnam s defeat point to theregime s weak legitimacy and failing economy.The necessity of feeding theurban centers, whose economies depended on servicing the diminishing U.S.forces, proved to be another contradiction of Vietnamization that madeThieu s position untenable.Urban opposition and elite infighting wereincreasing in 1975, as North Vietnamese forces rolled in.According to GabrielKolko, defeat on the battlefield had its origin in the ultimate dilemma ofVietnamization, which was the absence of any real social foundation for theRepublic of South Vietnam, outside of the military, whose political roles andmotives made its warlike functions quite secondary. 37 Vietnamization couldnot succeed politically or socially, Kolko concludes, because the economicsystem of patronage and corruption that sustained it required massive Amer-ican assistance.How Did the United States Land in This Dilemma?Vietnam held little independent commercial or political interest to theUnited States.The collapse of non-Communist China in 1949 promptedAmerica to seek a viable non-Communist state in South Vietnam.38 Believing 08-7556-0 ch8.qxd 5/9/08 9:55 PM Page 112112 The Economic Failure of Client Regimesthat the future of Asia would be fought in Vietnam, Robert Scigliano wrote, Diem became America s indispensable man; the United States has consid-ered him the only alternative to Communism in Vietnam.the willingdependence of the United States on Diem has given him a great advantage inhis dealings with his major ally.[Diem] has felt safe in rejecting Americandemands. 39 Diem was confident that U.S.politicians would never threatenthe ultimate sanction, that of abandoning South Vietnam to the Commu-nists [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]