One afternoon in mid-December, Colonel
Tran Dang Thanh shared his views on foreign
affairs with an audience of deans and professors
drawn from Hanoi's many universities. Like all
Vietnamese Communist Party business, Thanh's
comments were considered state secrets. However,
unbeknownst to Thanh, who teaches at Vietnam's top
military college, someone in the audience was
wired. A full text was soon uploaded to the
Internet and went viral.
The occasion was
a meeting of senior Party cadre who administer or
teach at colleges and universities in the capital
area, and who double as functionaries charged with
propaganda and training. They had been convened to
hear Thanh lecture on the situation in the South
China Sea.
China's relentless
encroachments on islets and sea areas
claimed
by Vietnam have been an intractable problem for
the regime. For several years now, the government
has been the object of trenchant online criticism
for what bloggers regard as a limp response to
Chinese provocations.
Thanh's principal
mission was to explain why, in the view of
Vietnam's leaders, a policy of restraint is the
nation's only rational course vis-เ-vis its huge
neighbor. Had he stuck to that theme, the
recording might not have made much of a splash.
However, Thanh chose to embroider his two-hour
talk with riffs on the treachery of Americans, the
admirable qualities of the North Korean and
Iranian regimes, the likely return of Russia to
the region, and a lengthy, sometimes impenetrable
discussion of Vietnam's millennium-plus
co-existence with the resurgent giant to the
north.
For critics of the Vietnamese
regime, the rambling remarks of this hitherto
obscure professor epitomize what's wrong with the
nation's politics. It is not the foreign policy
discussion that has most energized the
blogosphere, however.
Domestic attention
has riveted on a short passage near the beginning
of Thanh's talk, when he noted that in his first
term as President of Russia, Vladimir Putin had
banned Communist Party activities and abolished
the pensions of former Soviet Union officials.
That could also happen in Vietnam if the Party
were to fall from power, Thanh warned.
"Comrades now working don't yet have a
pension but sooner or later, we'll all be eligible
for our retirement pay, and we hope every one of
us will draw it in full. I'm explaining this so
that each of you realizes that defending our
nation and socialist ideology covers a lot of
things, and among these is the very practical fact
that we are protecting our own pensions and the
pensions of those who will come after us... So, I
have to say clearly, we must do everything we can
to protect our socialist Vietnamese regime at all
costs."
Not once did Thanh bother to
mention the Party's familiar propaganda themes,
snorted blogger Dong Phung Viet. He said nothing
about striving to create a nation that's
"peaceful, independent and socialist, just and
democratic, sovereign and secure throughout its
entire territory."
For their part,
resident diplomats are doubtless poring over
Thanh's tour of the world as viewed from Hanoi. He
singled out five nations for discussion: the
United States, Russia, Iran, North Korea and
China. In summary, Thanh said:
On
the United States: "To tell the truth, the
US is implementing a two-faced policy. One face
uses Vietnam as an advanced force to block China.
The other face employs every means to destroy the
long-standing solidarity between the people of
Vietnam and the people of China. ... The Americans
really want to set up a naval base at Cam Ranh
Bay, one of the three best harbors in the world.
... The Americans are pushing a strategy of
'peaceful change' [of the Vietnamese regime] and
they seek to implement it through 'educational
cooperation' with us."
On
Russia: "Resurgent, with an economy
powered by endless reserves of oil and gas and
cutting edge defense industries, what does Russia
want of us?... It is intent on returning to East
Asia. In the past, Russia gave strong support to
our army and navy. Now through us, they see a way
back to the region. The Russians have a high
opinion of Vietnam. They see us as loyal and
faithful. ... and like the Americans, they really
want us to rent Cam Ranh Bay to them. ... which of
course we're not going to do."
On
Iran: "There are 1.1 billion Muslims
between us and Europe. They are warrior peoples...
who want to remold the world according to Allah's
plan. Now the Islamic Republic of Iran is
determined to pursue its nuclear development plan
to secure a peaceful environment. I won't go into
whether Iran is building nuclear weapons or not...
but certainly the Iranians have enough strength to
defend their interests."
On North
Korea: "Its people are economically poor,
but overflowing with love of country, like us
Vietnamese in the 1960s and '70s. They're on a war
footing. They launch rockets ... and get respect.
Whatever the North Koreans say, they do. They're
also determined to become a nuclear nation. They
cause the big countries to lose sleep worrying
about their rockets. That's something we need to
study."
On China: (At this
point, Thanh launched into a 20-minute digression
on Vietnam's long history of cultural borrowing
from China whilst fighting off invading armies
every 200 years or so. Eventually he got to
China's economic take-off under former leader Deng
Xiaoping and "Deng's burning desire", mastery of
the South China Sea.)
Defensive
considerations and the lure of vast supplies of
oil and gas not far from home are driving China's
policy, Thanh said. That's made China the
principal threat to Vietnam's claims to its
offshore waters and islands. But not, Thanh
emphasized, the only threat.
Segueing into
a discussion of South China Sea issues, Thanh
pounded away at the notion that war with China is
unthinkable, without ever quite saying so. There
are 1.3 billion of them, and only 90 million of
us, he noted. Thus, for Vietnam, China must be a
special case. "We must never forget that they've
invaded us over and over, yet we also must always
remember that China made great sacrifices to
supply us in our wars against France and the US.
We must not seem ungrateful for that."
Thanh heaped scorn on the notion that
Vietnam could rely on American support. "They
never have and never will treat us well. If
they're nice here, if they praise us there,
support us in the South China Sea, it's because
they're trying to use a small fish to catch a big
one."
The first principal of Vietnam's
strategy therefore must be to safeguard its
independence and self-determination, Thanh
asserted, stealing an oft-repeated line from
independence hero Ho Chi Minh. But it must also
give top priority to preserving a peaceful
environment, he argued. This was not an easy task,
indeed a contradictory one, and the key to
accomplishing it is preserving solidarity between
the people of Vietnam and the people of China.
Four things must be avoided, Thanh
declared: military confrontation, economic
confrontation, isolation and dependence on a
foreign country.
Getting back the Paracel
Islands (from which China evicted South Vietnamese
troops in 1974) will be difficult, Thanh
acknowledged, but we've got to try, going at it
cleverly, avoiding a direct clash. We told the
Chinese, he said, that our historical claim to the
islands is better than yours. Let's fight it out
in the International Court of Justice. If it rules
against us, we'll accept that.
Finally,
Thanh double-underscored the relevance of his
presentation to the assembled dons. Illegal
demonstrations against Chinese aggression do not
serve Vietnam's interest, he declared. Enemies of
Vietnam have been using the South China Sea
problem to stir up students. There have been too
many demonstrations and they must stop now, he
argued.
"It's up to all of you school
leaders," Thanh said bluntly. "The Party expects
you to manage your kids. If we find that students
from your school are taking part in
demonstrations, you can be sure there will be a
black mark on your record."
David
Brown is a retired American diplomat who
writes on contemporary Vietnam. He may be reached
at nworbd@gmail.com.
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