ASIA
HAND Bush strikes a 'grand bargain' with
Vietnam By Shawn W Crispin
When
US President George W Bush arrives in Vietnam
on Friday for the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation
(APEC) summit [1], he'll be looking to
burnish his foreign-policy credentials after last
week's bruising congressional election defeat,
which was widely viewed as a referendum on his
government's ill-fated invasion of Iraq.
But any pretensions that Bush may make
toward policy success in Vietnam should be viewed
just as incredulously as his
administration's various
other spurious declared victories for democracy in
the Middle East.
The former US war
adversary and now emerging economic partner,
Vietnam's ruling Communist Party, will roll out
the red carpet for Bush. With US support, Vietnam
is poised in early 2007 to join the World Trade
Organization (WTO), an important recognition of
the country's successful 20-year transition from a
command to a market-based economy.
Although the US Congress on Tuesday
rejected a deal to normalize bilateral trade
relations, Bush will, much to the delight of his
APEC hosts, cast warming US-Vietnamese relations
as one of his government's few foreign-policy
successes.
Earlier, Bush's government had
predicated strengthening economic ties on
improvement of the monolithic, repressive
communist regime's abysmal rights record. In May
2005, the US and Vietnam reached an agreement
whereby Hanoi vowed to ease its restrictions on
religious freedoms in exchange for a bilateral
trade deal and Washington's support for its bid to
WTO membership.
Negotiations on specific
cases and issues were stuck until this year, and
at least two of the "prisoners of concern" whom
Washington firmly pushed for release are still
under detention without charge.
Nonetheless, the US State Department on
Tuesday removed Vietnam from its list of
"countries of particular concern" that severely
repress religious freedoms - a sticking point in
formally normalizing trade relations and a point
of embarrassment for Hanoi.
That
concession was granted even though the US
Commission on International Religious Freedom, a
bipartisan independent federal agency, strongly
urged Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice as
recently as November 6 to maintain the sanctions
because "religious prisoners were still confined,
only a tiny fraction of the churches closed since
2001 had been reopened and forced renunciations of
faith continued".
Grand bargain
The decision, it appears, was part of a
larger behind-the-scenes quid pro quo deal,
including significantly Vietnam's agreement to
abolish or repeal its "administrative detention
decree 31/CP", which harshly allows for detention
without trial.
Hanoi first enacted the
draconian decree in 1997 to silence dissidents
without messy and embarrassing trials that often
drew critical international news attention. State
Department official Michael Orona on October 30
told an Agence France-Presse reporter that Vietnam
had agreed to scrap the measure - though to date
Hanoi has not made a formal announcement.
And it was likely no coincidence that US
technology firm Intel decided to increase its
Vietnam-based investments from US$300 million to
$1 billion on the same day last week that a
Vietnamese court convicted but only lightly
punished and agreed to deport three US citizens on
"terrorism" charges. The case had emerged as a
sharp sticking point in bilateral relations.
Vietnam-born Nguyen Thuong Cuc, who was detained
without charge for more than a year, was released
early from her 15-month sentence for "humanitarian
reasons" related to her declining health.
To be sure, there have been new, hopeful
signs of openness in Vietnam. In September,
authorities released more than 5,300 prisoners,
and in October another 1,000 were released for
"good behavior". The Communist Party announced its
intention in September to promote more gender
equality and advancement of women in the
workplace.
And a local newspaper recently
reported that the Communist Party was considering
a draft decree that would open the way for
sex-change procedures, a seemingly dramatic
reversal of the party's longtime ban on deemed
deviant sexual behavior, including homosexuality.
Bush will no doubt attempt to cast
these select developments as proof that his
administration's sticks-and-carrots approach is
promoting more economic and political openness in
Vietnam. But it is altogether unclear whether
Vietnam's recent concessions are not mere
window-dressing for its APEC showing, and that
once the foreign dignitaries return home and
important trade deals are sealed that the
heavy-handed regime returns in earnest to its
repressive old ways, some Vietnamese pro-democracy
activists fear.
Daring democracy
movement Vietnam's new thousands-strong
pro-democracy movement, known locally as Bloc
8406, has daringly intensified its activities to
coincide with US pressure on the government to
improve its rights record. In August, the group
publicly declared its four-phase proposal for
Vietnam's democratization, including demands for
the restoration of civil liberties, the
establishment of political parties, the drafting
of a new constitution and, finally, democratic
elections for a new representative National
Assembly.
Vietnamese authorities have
since cracked down hard on the group's members,
through physical abuse, harassment, lengthy
interrogations and in at least two cases detention
without trial. Still, Bloc 8406 members, who have
openly publicized their names and addresses,
intend to make their calls for democratic change
heard during the APEC summit. Communist
authorities have reacted violently to that
possibility, erecting "No Foreigners", "No
Pictures", and "Restricted Area - No Passing"
signs near the homes of known dissidents.
Public-security forces have reportedly
jammed mobile-phone reception in several areas of
Hanoi to impede communication between dissidents
and reporters. Labor activist Le Thi Cong Nhan, a
spokeswoman for the unsanctioned Vietnam
Progression Party, has been ordered by police not
to leave her home, meet with foreigners or have
more than two people in her house during APEC,
according to pro-democracy activists. Former
political prisoner Pham Hong Son has since
November 4 been the victim of two mysterious
staged traffic accidents, where masked assailants
have attempted to knock him off his motorcycle,
they say.
Last Thursday, the government
forcibly emptied Hanoi's central Mai Xuan Thuong
Park of hundreds of protesters, some having made
the trip from distant provinces, who had gathered
to stage protests against government corruption.
Still, Viet Tan, an underground grassroots
democracy movement, has said through a widely
circulated statement that APEC "is the time [for
foreign leaders and media] to engage in a
dialogues with the Vietnamese people, not just the
dictatorial regime".
For all the
democratic and rights-promoting symbolism, those
meetings clearly won't happen during Bush's visit.
That's because his administration's Vietnam
initiative is driven more by commercial and
strategic imperatives than a drive to promote
democracy. Vietnam is currently Asia's
second-fastest-growing economy, and is quickly
emerging as the regional destination of choice for
Western and Japanese investors aiming to hedge
their exposure to China. After decades of economic
isolationism, Vietnam presents vast greenfield
investment opportunities for US companies,
including in the crucial information-technology
industry, for which Vietnam is home to more than
600 software-oriented firms.
Bush is also
aggressively courting Vietnam to counterbalance
China's emerging military influence in the region.
In July, senior US military officials broached the
possibility of conducting joint military maneuvers
with their Vietnamese counterparts, and urged for
greater US naval vessel access to the country's
ports. Donald Rumsfeld, then the defense
secretary, in April paid a high-profile visit to
Hanoi, leading to still unsubstantiated
speculation that Washington was negotiating access
to air-terminal and deepwater-port facilities at
Cam Ranh Bay to pressure China's naval ambitions.
Growing economic and strategic ties no
doubt represent a useful catharsis for the two
former war adversaries' painful past. But the
grand bargain that Bush has brokered with
Vietnam's communist leaders falls well short of
his administration's earlier position to exchange
economic and strategic privileges only for proven
democratic gains. But in his weakened political
state, Bush will clearly choose to see democratic
progress among signs of repression, so long as he
can take home a much-needed foreign-policy
victory.
Note [1] The Asia-Pacific
Economic Cooperation is a group of Pacific
Rim countries that meet with the purpose of
improving economic and political ties. It has
standing committees on a wide range of issues, from
communications to fisheries.The heads of government
of APEC members meet annually in a summit called
APEC Economic Leaders' Meeting rotating in
location among APEC's member economies. Its
members are: Australia, Brunei, Canada, Chile,
China, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Japan, South
Korea, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Papua
New Guinea, Peru, the Philippines, Russia, Singapore,
Chinese Taipei (Taiwan), Thailand, the
United States and Vietnam.
Shawn W Crispin is Asia
Times Online's Southeast Asia editor.
(Copyright 2006 Asia Times Online Ltd. All
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