'The lessons of the Vietnam experience' - an extraordinary editorial from The Australian, 27 April 1985

The lessons of the Vietnam experience

On Tuesday we remember the tenth anniversary of the fall of Saigon. April 30 1975. It was a day in which the world saw the feebleness of Western resolve, in which the unreliability of the Western alliance was paid for in blood and suffering by an ally who had been denied the means with which to defend himself.

The Vietnam war divided Australian society profoundly. Ten years after the war's final episode seems an appropriate time to reflect on the lessons we might learn from our experience in Vietnam.

The moral case for our commitment to Vietnam was in essentials quite simple. South Vietnam was a sovereign nation, not fully a democracy - imperfect certainly - but a very long way from totalitarianism and embodying substantial freedom for its people.

North Vietnam was totalitarian dictatorship which, with the backing of China and the Soviet Union, wanted to impose its hegemony on South Vietnam. South Vietnam asked for help and we had a right to respond.

The geopolitical case for our commitment was equally straightforward. The American presence in South Vietnam, in geopolitical terms, can be seen as an extension of the doctrine of containment. That doctrine had it that in the interests of avoiding a global conflagration no great attempt would be made to liberate countries which had fallen to communism, but the spread of communism, inevitably by undemocratic means, would be resisted. Communism would be 'contained' within its existing borders.

The case against our involvement in Vietnam was that the dispute was really a civil war, that the Viet Cong were indigenous South Vietnamese who had the overwhelming support of the South Vietnamese people in their struggle to throw off the shackles of imperialism.

Well, what is the verdict in the intervening years?

THE VIET CONG

It is now clear that from the earliest days of the war the Viet Cong were infiltrated and manipulated by the North Vietnamese army. As the war went on, the involvement of the North Vietnamese army grew and grew, so that when Saigon fell it was not to Viet Cong guerillas but to North Vietnamese tanks.

The success of the Viet Cong guerilla war had not been essentially military. Rather, it had managed, despite enormous military defeats, to inflict such casualties on the Americans and their allies that Western resolve waned, and in the end South Vietnam was abandoned.

Could South Vietnam ever have survived? After the Paris peace treaties the South Vietnamese were guaranteed certain amounts of aid, especially if the North Vietnamese broke the treaty. Of course the North Vietnamese broke the treaty as soon as it was signed, but an isolationist American Congress starved South Vietnam of aid. The South Vietnamese army fought with extraordinary bravery at times, even when the battle was hopeless - at Xuan Loc, for example. But no army could have maintained morale when it was abandoned by its friends, its supplies cut off, international guarantees ignored, and left to face overwhelming odds.

The events within Indo-China since the fall of Saigon provide the most comprehensive and overwhelming argument that we were right to try to help South Vietnam to survive. The true degree of the Vietnamese people's support for the communist regime can be gauged by the unavoidable evidence of the million refugees who have fled Vietnam since Saigon's fall.

It is worth pondering this just for moment. Imagine how horrific life must be to contemplate boarding a leaky boat, braving the depredations of Thai pirates, to seek a distant, dangerous and mysterious landfall.

It ought also to be remembered that the Kampuchea [Cambodia] genocide, which has sickened the world, was carried out by Vietnam's erstwhile allies, the Khmer Rouge. Vietnam did not fall out with the Khmer Rouge because of human rights, but because of the ramifications of the Sino-Soviet split. Now Vietnam maintains its own regime of terror within Kampuchea, with an army of occupation of some 200,000. It also rules Laos with an army of occupation, and has been particularly savage in its suppression of the rebellious Hmong tribesmen.

RE-EVALUATION

Throughout Indo-China the Vietnamese have developed an extraordinary network of re-education camps. These camps are terrifyingly savage.

All this has led to a major re-evaluation of the Vietnam war. In the United States, many former opponents of the war have admitted how wrong they were. Even many who still believe that US involvement in the war mistaken, concede their own support of the Viet Cong was naive. Even former Viet Cong members have joined in the re-evaluation. It is extraordinary that within Australia few of the 1960s protesters seem even aware of the grotesque human rights record of the Vietnamese since 1975. Certainly, they have lacked the courage of many former radicals in the US who have admitted their mistake.

One of the few really distressing things Australia did in Vietnam was the way we evacuated our embassy a few days before Saigon's fall. The callous indifference to the fate of our former friends which saw us leave them behind, to face imprisonment, persecution and death, evacuating hardly any of the staff or friends of Australia within Vietnam was shameful.

It is said that from all evil some good flows. We have in recent years been privileged as a nation to offer a new home to tens of thousands of our former Vietnamese allies. These people have enriched our national life. They have found in Australia what was denied them in Vietnam - the sort of society they were striving for in their homeland.

On this day we should pay tribute to the brave Australians and Vietnamese who fought nobly in a just cause. That the cause was lost does not make it any less just. History will remember them, like the first Anzacs, as good and brave men and women.