Joseph J Zasloff - Communist Indochina and U.S. Foreign Policy: Postwar Realities

Communist Indochina and U.S. Foreign Policy

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Communist Indochina and U.S. Foreign Policy: Postwar Realities Joseph J. Zasloff and MacAlister Brown

This study examines the important political and economic developments in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia since the Communist victories in 1975 and analyzes the critical policy issues facing the Carter administration in dealing with these states. Summarizing the major options immediately available to U.S. policymakers who confronted the new regimes in Indochina as "wait and see," "neocontainment," and "rapid reconciliation," the authors assess such persisting issues as Vietnam's admission to the United Nations; Americans missing in action in Indochina; the normalization of relations; and reconstruction aid to Indochina. They trace developments within the Indochina states and deal with leadership, political doctrine, party and government organization, economic problems and prospects, and external relations; in so doing, they demonstrate that the revolutions in Indochina were fundamental social revolutions, conclusive and irreversible. They make clear that, although the new Indochina regimes came to power in rapid successionthe results of three closely intertwined revolutionsthere are distinct differences among them in their internal revolutionary activities and their foreign policies.

In preparing their study, Professors Brown and Zasloff have examined translations of Vietnamese, Laotian, and Cambodian daily radio broadcasts and newspapers; conducted interviews with members of the U.S. Congress and the executive branch; and drawn on insights gained during trips to Japan and Southeast Asia.

Joseph J. Zasloff is professor of political science at the University of Pittsburgh. MacAlister Brown is professor of political science and chairman of the Political Economy Program at Williams College.

Joseph J. Zasloff and MacAlister Brown

First published 1978 by Westview Press, Inc.

Published 2018 by Routledge
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Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Zasloff, Joseph Jeremiah.
Communist Indochina and U.S. foreign policy.
(Westview special studies on international relations)
Includes index.
1. IndochinaForeign relationsUnited States. 2. United StatesForeign relations Indochina. 3. IndochinaPolitics and government. 4. IndochinaEconomic conditions. I. Brown, MacAlister, joint author. II. Title. III. Series.
DS546.Z37 327.73'0597 77-28462

ISBN 13: 978-0-367-01744-6 (hbk)

Indochina has consistently confounded Americans. Official policy toward the area has veered from Franklin Roosevelt's disapproval of French colonialism during World War II to the American replacement of the French in Vietnam in 1954, and from critical support of President Diem's government in South Vietnam to complicity in removing him in 1963, followed by U.S. assumption of the major burden of war for seven years. Throughout this prolonged and intimate involvement, illusion after illusion about Indochina has been shattered in the public and official mind. Today Americans find themselves confronted by an area that persists in contradicting expectations bred by wartime perspectives. Even discounting the rhetoric and rationales of U.S. policymakers during the 1960s, the region manifests internal conflicts and foreign policy tactics almost unimaginable five years ago. Yet no Western journalists reside in the three new communist states to report on their internal development. Formal diplomatic relations between Washington and Vietnam have remained broken since April 1975, and each side charges the other with failing to fulfill obligations under the Paris cease-fire agreement. Laos only tolerates a residual American Mission and charges bad faith over the promise of reconstruction aid. Cambodia has scornfully turned its back on diplomatic relations with most of the world.