Lessons from another war
From Enemy to Friend: A North Vietnamese Perspective on the War, by Bui Tin. Naval Institute Press. $24.95
Bui Tin has long had a knack for timing. As a war correspondent, a colonel in the army, and later as deputy editor of Nhan Dan, the
newspaper of the Vietnamese Communist Party, he barely missed a step. When French rule in Indochina ended with the 1954
battle of Dien Bien Phu, he was there to witness it. When Saigon fell in 1975, he was among the first northerners to enter the
presidential palace. In 1979, he was on the spot when Vietnamese troops entered Phnom Penh. And just as the Cold War was
ending, he hit headlines again by defecting to the West.
From Enemy to Friend is his second book in English. The first, Following Ho Chi Minh, published soon after his arrival in Paris in
1990, was an exposé of corruption, arrogance and moral decay in post-war Vietnam. At that time the country was still reeling from
the twin shocks of the Soviet collapse and China's 1989 student uprisings. When Bui Tin appeared on BBC radio to give a series of
accompanying interviews, in Vietnamese, Western correspondents reported entire streets of Ho Chi Minh City emptying as people
crowded around radio sets to listen.
The problem with From Enemy to Friend is that, for once, his sense of timing has let him down. If the book was intended as a
sequel to his earlier work, it disappoints. There are war stories for Vietnam War buffs, but overall the book suffers from a paucity of
new material. If the book is an appeal for United States-Vietnam dialogue, today's America has many other things to concern itself
with than Vietnam, not least its current war in Iraq.
Vietnam has moved on, too.
A decade ago, Bui Tin criticized the country he fled for authoritarianism, a political culture of mistrust, and intolerance of dissent.
Today's popular, though contorted, reasoning is to ignore such costs and tout the result: Stability. This is a book that should have
been written years ago.
So what does the reader get? From Enemy to Friend is history as seen from the centre of the arena--Bui Tin's arena. It contains
insights and opinions, and not all the opinions are original.
On America's mistakes, Bui Tin says that the U.S.'s prosecution of the war was constrained by concern among its top
policymakers about public opinion. On Cold War tactics, he says that the U.S. overestimated the risks of Chinese or Soviet
intervention. On battlefield wisdom: America chose to escalate its war too gradually, thereby unwittingly giving its North Vietnamese
opponents the opportunity to learn and react.
He goes on to suggest how America might have avoided defeat: By sending troops to occupy a section of the Ho Chi Minh trail
instead of attacking its myriad narrow pathways from high-altitude B-52 bombers.
The appeal for rapprochement implicit in the book's title comes almost as an afterthought. Bui Tin also hints at his personal longing
to return to Vietnam. Given his status as the country's best-known defector--a term he eschews--that seems unlikely. He even
repeats in this book a contentious claim that he was the man who accepted the April 30, 1975 surrender of South Vietnam and
produces a less-than-convincing photo to prove this. While some Western historians believe his claim to be correct, Hanoi
emphatically disagrees.
From Enemy to Friend has the feel of a swansong, though its author, in his 70s, is no antique. It also has the appearance of a book
that was difficult to translate and edit, notwithstanding the skills of translator and editor Nguyen Ngoc Bich.
A little extra work might have smoothed over some of the more jagged edges. Its question-and-answer style reads awkwardly, and
there is an overuse of exclamation marks to reinforce statements, which tends to strain the eyebrows. On the 1968 Tet Offensive, for
example, we are told, "But our losses, severe as they were, were clearly offset by political and psychological victories resulting from
failures on the part of the U.S. administration! . . . U.S. policy gave Hanoi breathing room at just the moment when we were hardest
pressed in South Vietnam! So on the political, strategic and psychological fronts, we had won a major and spectacular victory!"
Reflecting the continued interest in Vietnam in military circles, From Enemy to Friend contains a generous and thoughtful foreword
by former U.S. Navy Secretary James Webb. But overall what's left in the end is a book mainly for Vietnam War enthusiasts and for
those who might know Bui Tin.
It's a shame that such an extraordinary character has on this occasion produced a less-than-extraordinary read.
By Adrian Edwards - The Far Eastern Economic Review - April 3, 2003
|