The Carter Administration and Vietnam

210 Pages·1996·21.1 MB·English

by  Steven Hurst (auth.)

THE CAIITER ADMINISTRATION AND VIETNAM
The Carter
Administration and
Vietnam
Steven Hurst
Lecturer in Politics
The Manchester Metropolitan University
First published in Great Britain 1996 by
MACMILLAN PRESS LTD
Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS
and London
Companies and representatives
throughout the world
A catalogue record for this book is available
from the British Library.
ISBN 978-1-349-24784-4 ISBN 978-1-349-24782-0 (eBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-1-349-24782-0
First published in the United States of America 1996 by
ST. MARTIN'S PRESS, INC.,
Scholarly and Reference Division,
175 Fifth Avenue,
New York, N.Y. 10010
ISBN 978-0-312-15923-8
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Hurst, Steven.
The Carter administration and Vietnam / Steven Hurst.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-312-15923-8(cloth)
I. United States-Foreign relations-Vietnam. Vietnam-Foreign
relations-United States. 3. Carter, Jimmy, 1924- 4. United
States-Foreign relations-1977-81. I. Title.
EI83.8.V5H87 1996
327.730597'09'047-dc20 95-51993
CIP
© Steven Hurst 1996
Softcover reprint of the hardcover lst edition 1996
All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of
this publication may be made without written permission.
No paragraph of this publication may be reproduced, copied or
transmitted save with written permission or in accordance with
the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988,
or under the terms of any licence permitting limited copying
issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, 90 Tottenham Court
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Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this
publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil
claims for damages.
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 I
05 04 03 02 01 00 99 98 97 96
To Don and Joan Hurst
Contents
Acknowledgements viii
List of Abbreviations x
Introduction 1
1 United States-Vietnam Relations 1975-7 18
2 Changing Vietnamese Policy: January 1978-July 1978 46
3 The American Response to the Changed Vietnamese
Position 70
4 The Retreat from Normalisation 91
5 Human Rights and Policy towards Vietnam 125
Conclusion 139
Notes 149
Bibliography 180
Index 193
vii
Acknowledgements
There are a great many people to whom lowe thanks for their assistance
in the production of this book. I would especially like to thank Laura
Summers and Ian Bellany, supervisers of the dissertation upon which this
book is based. They both made every effort to be as accessible as possible,
and Laura in particular spent a great deal of time reading and re-reading
the text. Neither ever failed to make necessary criticisms and both con
tinually challenged me to think and re-think what I was doing. They were,
in short, models of what good dissertation supervisors ought to be. I would
also like to record my gratitude to my thesis examiners, Richard Little and
Phil Williams, for the thoughtful and often acute comments they made on
the original dissertation and for encouraging me to seek to have it pub
lished. Richard was also kind enough to read a draft of the new introduc
tion I wrote for the book. To these four people must go a great deal of
credit for whatever merit this work may have.
I would also like to extend particular thanks to those people who agreed
to take time out from their own busy schedules in order that I might inter
view them in connection with the original dissertation and then approved
my use of their remarks in the published work. They were, without excep
tion, generous and forthcoming with their recollections. I would especially
like to thank Gareth Porter and Ann Mills Griffith, for not only agreeing
to talk to me but who also provided unsolicited documentation which
proved invaluable to my research.
A wide variety of people and institutions made my research visit to the
United States in 1992 a pleasant one. I want to thank the staff of the
Brookings Institution in Washington, DC, for providing me with facilities
and an environment that made my re,search in that city much easier than
it might otherwise have been. I would particularly like to record my grat
itude to those people who attended my seminar paper and offered helpful
criticisms of some then rather half-formed ideas. I would also like to
extend my thanks to the highly efficient, helpful (and numerous) staff of
the Carter Presidential Library in Atlanta.
At a different level, the owners and staff of the Kalorama Guest House
in Washington and Kevin and Peggy Gallagher in Atlanta did far more
than could reasonably have been expected of them to make my stay in the
USA an enjoyable one. I hope it is enough simply to record here the fact
that they succeeded.
My visit to the United States was made possible by the generosity of the
viii
Acknowledgements ix
Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC). Indeed all the research
for the original dissertation was supported by a research award from the
ESRC. Without that material support I could never have undertaken the
project. I would also like to thank the Department of Politics and Philo
sophy at Manchester Metropolitan University for providing funding from
its research budget for a further visit to the United States in 1995.
In the United Kingdom the academic and administrative staff of the
University of Lancaster and Manchester Metropolitan University and the
research students at Lancaster provided friendly and congenial environ
ments in which to pursue my research. The staff of the US Embassy's
Reference Centre provided invaluable assistance when I was searching
for the addresses of potential interviewees and the Reference Centre itself
proved to be a mine of vital documentation. Macmillan proved to be grati
fyingly prompt in expressing an interest in my manuscript and I would
like to express my gratitude to all those there who have been involved in
transforming it into a published work. I would particularly like to thank
my editor, Annabelle Buckley, for patiently responding to my various en
quiries and guiding me through the newfound intricacies of the publish
ing world. I would finally like to express my heartfelt thanks to Deana
McDonagh and Kirstin Burke for spending many hours typing the type
script and without whom it would have been published about two years
later than is in fact the case.
On a personal level I have made several important friendships in the
course of writing this book. Alison Pryce and Maria Woodhouse have
become wonderful friends since our various fortuitous meetings at Lan
caster, and Diana Wallace was always stimulating company in the year
that she was there. In Manchester Deana McDonagh and Jules Townshend
have become much valued colleagues and companions. Above all I want
to thank Sam Faulds for putting up with me for quite some time now. I
hope that she will continue to do so for an even longer time to come.
This book is dedicated to my parents, for without their continued en
couragement and support, both moral and material, none of this would
have been possible. I can only hope that what I have produced is worthy
of the efforts of all the above people. Any remaining errors are, needless
to say, my responsibility.
Manchester STEVEN HURST
List of Abbreviations
APSC American Friends Service Committee
ASEAN Association of Southeast Asian Nations
CCP Chinese Communist Party
CIA Central Intelligence Agency (USA)
COMECON/CMEA Council for Mutual Economic Assistance
CPK Communist Party of Kampuchea
CPSU Communist Party of the Soviet Union
CSCE Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe
DK Democratic Kampuchea
DRV Democratic Republic of Vietnam
GRUNK Royal Government of National Union of Kampuchea
G7 The Group of 7 major industrialised nations
ICP Indochinese Communist Party
IFIs International Financial Institutions
JCRC Joint Casualty Resolution Center
MIA Missing in Action
MPLA Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola
NATO North Atlantic Treaty Organisation
NSC National Security Council (USA)
OAU Organisation of African Unity
PRC People's Republic of China
PRG Provisional Revolutionary Government (Vietnam)
PRK People's Republic of Kampuchea
PRM Presidential Review Memorandum (USA)
ROC Republic of China
RVN Republic of V~etnam
SALT Strategic Arms Limitation Talks
SCC Special Co-ordinating Committee (NSC)
SEATO South-East Asia Treaty Organisation
SRV Socialist Republic of Vietnam
UN United Nations
UNHCR United Nations High Commission for Refugees
VWP Vietnam Workers Party
x
Introduction
In January 1977, normalisation of relations with Vietnam was considered
by the incoming Administration to be a goal of some importance in serv
ing American interests in South-East Asia. In the first six months of that
year the Administration undertook a number of initiatives designed to
achieve that end as swiftly as possible. After this effort failed to achieve
normalisation, the pace of events began to slow. A further set of negotia
tions in December 1977 brought no progress. Contacts, both formal and
informal, continued in 1978 and finally, in September of that year, the
two governments agreed terms for the establishment of normal relations.
By that time, however, a number of developments had begun to erode
the Carter Administration's initial objectives in South-East Asia and, in
December 1978, US-Vietnamese normalisation was postponed indefinitely.
Only now, a decade and a half later, has progress towards normalisation
begun once again.
The change in US policy had a significant bearing on the interests of a
number of states and on the development of important events. At a regional
level, it contributed to the continued polarisation of South-East Asia
between Soviet-backed Vietnam and the Democratic Kampuchean (DK)
regime backed by China and Washington's regional friends and allies in
the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN). This polarisa
tion and the conflicts it eventually produced signified the defeat of all the
objectives the Administration had sought to achieve through normalisa
tion. They also dictated the course of events in South-East Asia over the
next decade. The purpose of this book is to identify the determining fac
tors underpinning the policy of the Carter Administration towards the
Socialist Republic of Vietnam (SRV) in the period 1977-9. In particular
it seeks to explain why that policy and the objectives it served changed
within that time frame.
The specific aims of this book are twofold. In the first place, I seek to
challenge the prevailing interpretation of the policy of the Carter Adminis
tration towards Vietnam and to qualify its conclusions in significant ways.
In the course of so doing, I will also seek to demonstrate the utility of an
analytical approach which uses the beliefs and perceptions of actors as a
means of explaining their choices and decisions.
The existing literature on this subject displays a remarkable consistency
of interpretation. Certainly, this is true of two issues which are central to
any analysis of that policy and which are vital to that undertaken here; the