The Rising East
In a conversation with a Japanese friend about Asia the other day, the discussion turned to a comparison of Japan and Vietnam in the years after their draining and costly wars with the United States. The vastly different consequences were striking. A tale of two countries
that fought wars with
the United StatesJapan suffered a devastating defeat at the hands of the Americans in 1945, but 25 years later was well on the road to democracy and prosperity. Vietnam scored a singular victory over the United States in 1975, but a quarter-century later wallowed in political paralysis and economic poverty.
Why the difference?
At the end of World War II, Japan lay prostrate, two of her cities having endured atomic bombs and many more having been leveled with fire bombs. Her factories had been nearly stilled, her people were on the verge of starvation, and her lifeline to Southeast Asia had been sliced by American submarines.
By 1970, Japan had seen a relatively benevolent American occupation impose a political order built on prewar democratic beginnings that were snuffed out by harsh military leaders. Those militarists had been purged, a free press nurtured and labor unions encouraged.
With the onset of the Cold War with the Soviet Union in the late 1940s, the United States began to revive Japan as part of the containment of Soviet influence. U.S. economic assistance poured in and around 1970, Japan started running a trade surplus instead of a deficit with the United States.
More economic help came from U.S. purchases of equipment and supplies from Japan during the Korean War of 1950-53, which stimulated production. Modern technology, imported and home-grown, replaced the industrial plants destroyed in World War II, and Japan completed a plan to double the national income. Government, business and labor collaborated to forge an "economic miracle."
In foreign affairs, Japan had become an ally of the United States and benefited from the nuclear and conventional umbrella provided by the Americans. It permitted Japan to survive with a small military force and minor military spending.
In contrast, at the end of the war in Vietnam, the North Vietnamese exulted in having driven off the Americans, ousted the South Vietnamese government in Saigon, and united the country under its rule from Hanoi. Even so, the Vietnamese were exhausted from having fought Japanese occupiers during World War II, the French colonials who returned after the war and then the Americans.
By 2000, Vietnam still suffered from the legacy of a century of oppressive French colonialism. The French did little to instill democracy and the economy was heavily dependent on agriculture fostered to supply the needs of metropolitan France in the first half of the 20th century.
More important, postwar Vietnam had few leaders who knew much about economics. They had spent their adult lives fighting the Japanese, the French and the Americans and had therefore acquired little practice in running an economy.
Moreover, most Vietnamese leaders were burdened with Marxist economic theory. For the last decade, they have vacillated between hardline conservatives who insisted on sticking with socialist economic controls and reformers who urged that Vietnam follow the Chinese model of limited market economics.
So far, the conservatives seem to be in control. That has scared off foreign investors who five years ago saw Vietnam as a potentially attractive market or manufacturing site for exports to other Asian countries. Vietnam has gotten little help from its troubled ally in the Soviet Union or Russia.
A brief war with China in 1979 ended whatever chance Vietnam might have had for Chinese aid. A further drain on the Vietnamese economy has been maintaining the world's 10th largest standing army (Japan's is 24th). While Hanoi has reduced its force, it still devotes a large portion of its economy to military spending.
Vietnam's relations with the United States are still tenuous. Diplomatic relations have been established and the Vietnamese have helped Americans to recover the remains of soldiers missing in action. But trade and investment has been slow, cultural relations remain weak, and military and security contacts have been minimal.
A moral in this tale? It would be tempting to say that it's better to lose a war to the United States than to win, but that may be too flip. For Asians, it would seem that being friends with the United States is better than being an adversary. For Americans, it's easier to become friends with an erstwhile enemy if you have won the war.
Richard Halloran is editorial director of the Star-Bulletin.
He can be reached by e-mail at rhalloran@starbulletin.com