Thai domino refuses to lie down

Press, 26 July 1984, Page 16

Thai domino refuses to lie down

RICHARD WEST,

of the “Daily Telegraph,” concludes his

review of South-East Asia’s campaign nine years after Saigon’s fall. The first article in this two-part series was ■ printed yesterday.

The absurd political pundit York Harding, in Graham Greene’s novel “The Quiet American,” published in 1955, had proved to his own satisfaction that Red China was planning to seize Vietnam and then all Asia. A few years later, President Eisenhower took up the arguments of the fictional Harding by saying that if South Vietnam were to tall to the Communists, all the adjoining States, from Laos and Cambodia to Thailand, Burma, Malaysia, the Philippines and even India and Pakistan, would fall in turn, “like dominoes.” Meanwhile, in Hanoi, the ancient Communist Ho Chi Minh sent hundreds of thousands of men to die against the French, the South Vietnamese and, at last, the Americans, in the confidence that when the imperialists were defeated and People’s Republics established throughout Indo-China and the world, then the sacrifice would be justified by universal peace.

In 1975, all Vietnam, with Laos and Cambodia, fell to the Com-

munists, but so far there had been no vindication of Eisenhower’s “domino theory,” still less of the hope that Communism may bring with it peace. Almost as soon as Saigon fell, Red China started to treat RedVietnam as an enemy still more objectionable than the Soviet Union, and actually went, to war with her in 1979. Once again, this month, the two Communist States are exchanging artillery fire and threatening war. The Vietnamese Communists invaded Communist Kampuchea (Cambodia) in 1979, and have been fighting ever since against the Khmer Rouge guerrillas as well as, more recently, anti-Communist Kampucheans. The murderous Khmer Rouge now maintain a camp of Vietnamese prisoners, some of whom were displayed last month, looking starved and woebegone. Apologists for the Vietnamese Communists have tried to portray them as ideologically different from the Chinese and Khmer

Rouge; but this argument does not stand up. Whereas the Chinese party seems to have understood that socialism does not work, and that some freedom and profit motive are necessary- to survival, the Vietnamese remain dogmatic and Stalinist

While Mao Tse Tung is now under a cloud in his native China, his memory is revered in Vietnam. The French historian Georges Boudarel, editor of "La Bureaucratic en Vietnam,” has tried to explain the doctrinal differences of these Asian Communists, in an article in the “Far Eastern Economic Review.”

“As relations grew more and more tense with the Khmer Rouge and Peking, there was soon the spectacle of Vietnamese ‘ultraMaoists’ in conflict with the Chinese ‘infra-Maoists’ of the Deng Xiaoping group, to use terminology that made the rounds in Hanoi. The former wanted to speed up reunification and general socialisation. The Great Leap Forward in the 1950 s made an abrupt reappearance, but with its label removed and in a new Soviet setting.” Those of us who are neither "ultra-Maoists” nor “infraMaoists” have come to see that the Communists can only retain support and power by constantly

warring against each other. In Africa, the Marxist Ethiopians, Eritreans, and Somalis have been fighting each other for years. Students of Afghanistan say that the trouble concerns a feud between two rival factions calling themselves Communists, who once would have disputed the ownership of a water-hole, the theft of a camel, or size of a marriage dowry, but now fight over points of Marxism.

If Communism in Indo-China has failed to bring peace, still less has it spread fo neighbouring countries under the “domino theory.” The Indian sub-continent has its problems but these do not include any marked growth of Communism. The Philippines have a Communist guerrilla movement but this gets no inspiration from Vietnam. Burma, Malaysia, Singapore and Indonesia grow more stable, prosperous and anti-Communist And Thailand, the nearest country to Indo-China, and once considered the domino most likely to fall, looks strong and thriving. During the early 19605, when Vietnam had scared the Kennedy administration, a book appeared called “The Ugly American,” warning of how the United States was losing to the Communists in a South-east Asian country very like Thailand.

A movie followed, with Marlon Brando as United States Ambassador to this fictional country, whose Prime Minister was played by a Thai politician and journalist called Kukrit Pramoj. The witty and cultivated Kukrit went on to become the actual Prime Minister of Thailand. When Kukrit was asked in 1976 what Thailand had learned from the fall of Vietnam, he answered: “That Uncle Sam is impotent.” Like most Thais, Kukrit did not suppose that because the United States had failed in Vietnam and had stopped interfering in Southeast Asia, Thailand would fall to the Communists.

On the contrary, the withdrawal of United States troops and economic aid seem to have made Thailand more self-reliant and prosperous. The economy, based on rice, has grown enormously year by year, and raised the standard of living of all Thais. The Communist guerrilla movement has shrivelled to little more than 2000 fanatics. Life has not been interrupted for years by one of the coup d’etats that were once so frequent.- The generals still play a role in politics

but they have to enter the game of democracy to run for election. By contrast to Thailand, Vietnam is now in a wretched state, dependent on the Soviet Union and other East European countries for aid amounting to billions of dollars. Although the money is lent at low interest, Vietnam has to repay part of the debt by sending off thousands of unemployed to work in the Soviet Union as what can only be called, politely, indentured labour. The economy of Vietnam is kept going almost entirely by what remains of the private sector. A document produced last year for the party stated that private traders controlled more than half the market in foodstuffs, agricultural products, fish and forestry products. Apart from the Soviet Union, Vietnam now has few friends. Support has declined from 1979 when many non-Communist countries were grateful to Vietnam for having got rid of the Pol Pot regime in Kampuchea. The United Nations overwhelmingly backs the emigre coalition Government, headed by Prince Norodom Sihanouk, and including the Khmer Rouge. Vietnam’s isolation was displayed last month at an international conference held in Bangkok to discuss the future of South West Africa (Namibia). A Khmer Rouge delegate stood up and compared South Africa’s occupation of Namibia with Vietnam’s occupation of Kampuchea. Not long ago, the chief of staff of the Indonesian armed forces, General Benny Murdani, said in a speech meant to be sympathetic to Vietnam, that China was now the biggest threat to South-east Asia. He went on to say that Vietnam, “like Israel” was surrounded by hostile powers, and therefore had to be aggressive. One can almost feel sorry for Vietnam, on being compared to Israel and South Africa, the bogey countries of the Left, but General Murdani had a point. The Vietnamese are indeed under threat. The Communist Vietnamese are back where the South Vietnamese were 10 years ago, clinging on to a thin strip of land on the rim of a hostile land mass, dependent for their survival on a foreign Power. Only the foreign Power has changed.