Clinton's Vietnam Visit Called 'Home Run'
HO CHI MINH CITY - While his own constituents were caught up in a
frenetic domestic drama over his
successor, Bill Clinton returned Monday
almost unnoticed from scoring one of the
most important--and unexpected--successes of his presidency
halfway around the world, in Vietnam.
Vietnam's government provided limited advance notice of his
visit and terse coverage by state-controlled media after he arrived,
yet Clinton received the kind of public adulation from tens of
thousands normally associated with pop idols. On signs and in
shouts for his attention, the Vietnamese clamored in ever growing
numbers to get close to a man they called simply "Bill."
The president and his senior aides were openly taken aback by
the public reaction, with Clinton describing various aspects of his
visit as "overwhelming," "profoundly moving" and "astonishing."
In the process, the president set an important precedent for his
successor in 21st century diplomacy: Constructive engagement with
long-standing enemies works.
"Sanctions and trade and investment embargoes--all of those
things have not delivered much in places like Cuba, Iran and Iraq.
But as we saw in Vietnam, engagement has delivered. And it
certainly costs less to American taxpayers than an embargo," said
Moises Naim, editor of Foreign Policy magazine.
Over the past eight years--and despite the controversy over the
president's position on the Vietnam War three decades earlier--the
Clinton administration gradually but deliberately lifted the trade
embargo in 1994, opened diplomatic relations in 1995 and
negotiated a U.S.-Vietnamese trade agreement in 1999.
The thaw led Vietnam to approach Clinton exactly a year ago
about becoming the first American president to visit Vietnam in the
postwar era.
North Korea Could Be Next
"It would have been easy for him to say, 'Vietnam is just one of
those issues I don't want to deal with.' But instead, he picked up
the bat and swung--and hit a home run right out of the park," said
Thomas Vallely, a Vietnam veteran and former Massachusetts
legislator who now heads a Harvard University development
project in Vietnam.
The administration may be on the verge of reaping similar
rewards in North Korea, arguably the most feared of what until
recently the U.S. called "rogue states." Again, it has been a phased
effort beginning with an agreement to dismantle a nuclear energy
program in 1994 that might have been used to produce nuclear
weapons.
Last month, Secretary of State Madeleine Albright became the
first ranking U.S. official to visit Pyongyang, the North Korean
capital, to discuss terms that would limit the North's ballistic missile
program. Clinton is now considering a trip before he leaves office
to negotiate a formal agreement.
"Even after such a short time and such limited engagement,
there's been a diffusion of the threat. We're now less jittery about
the dangers North Korea presents," said Naim, the editor.
Engagement is especially effective with a twist: going around the
government directly to the people.
"Clinton had such an impact because, in the new age of global
communications, it's easier to constructively engage society rather
than its leadership," said Thomas Carothers, vice president for
studies at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in
Washington.
"And that has implications for how a president uses the new
global pulpit in the future, not only in Vietnam. It shows that there's
great value when a president stands firmly for certain values and
speaks out purposefully but is available for dialogue."
The second effect of Clinton's visit appears to be an intensified
debate inside Vietnam about the pace and direction of change. The
president left in his wake a Communist leadership scrambling to
counter both his message and popularity.
Just hours after the president departed, an official paper
published a front-page article Monday by Lt. Gen. Le Van Dung,
chief of staff of the Vietnam People's Army, pledging to "crush" the
threat posed by "peaceful evolution," code words for
pro-democracy political reforms.
"Nowadays, hostile forces are fighting against us actively to
sabotage socialism and the leading role of the Communist Party of
Vietnam," he wrote in the Vietnamese-language People's Army.
He also warned that the military has a special duty "to give
constant direction to the entire army and the entire people to
struggle to make sure the peaceful evolution plots of the hostile
forces fail."
Blunt Talk From Communist Officials
As the public turnout to see Clinton mushroomed almost by the
hour, the leadership also took what U.S. officials considered the
unusual and undiplomatic step of publishing a blunt admonition to
the American president by Le Kha Phieu, secretary-general of the
Communist Party, delivered in a private meeting Saturday.
"We respect the choice, the lifestyle and political systems of
other nations. We in turn demand that other nations respect our
people's choices," Phieu told Clinton, according to the party's
official newspaper. Phieu is the hardest-line Communist in
Vietnam's troika of leaders, which also includes the president and
prime minister.
Phieu also challenged Clinton's allusion to the war era as the
"painful past." Phieu reportedly countered: "For us, the past was the
root, the foundation, the strength of the present and future. The
result of our anti-aggression resistance was that we gained
independence, reunified our country and brought our country to
socialism. Therefore, for us, the past was not a dark, sorrowful and
unhappy past."
Senior members of Clinton's entourage conceded that the
United States and Vietnam still have serious differences over both
politics and economics. Yet they say they are convinced that Hanoi
can't back away from the relationship--nor avoid the consequences
of inviting American business and aid organizations to visit and of
globalization.
"Only the United States can help Vietnam evolve from a
developing country over the next 15 years," said a ranking
administration official in the entourage. "Not France, not Japan, not
China--only the United States."
The only issues are how this Southeast Asian nation makes the
required compromises and when, he said.
'He Got All Parties to Sit Down'
The final effect of the president's historic three-day visit was on
his legacy. It was more than a feel-good trip for the first president
to visit Vietnam since 1969, when Richard Nixon stopped for six
hours to rally troops at the height of the war. It may also have
closed the chapter over his own initial attempt to avoid the draft.
"Clinton has always had Vietnam somewhere in his psyche,"
said Vallely, the Vietnam vet and development project chief.
"Despite his past, he never gave up the idea that at the end of his
term he was going to do something big with Vietnam. He did it: He
got all parties to sit down, and he made Vietnam more comfortable
with dealing with the United States. In the end, that will probably
shape his legacy even more than his position on the war."
By Robin Wright - The Los Angeles Times - November 21, 2000.
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