In reporting Bill Clinton’s visit to Vietnam, the BBC’s diplomatic correspondent declared that what the Vietnamese needed was “more economic growth”. The question begged: why send a reporter all the way to Hanoi when the British ambassador would have happily propagated this line?
On the surface, the Clinton trip was little more than a stunt seeking international respectability for a disgraced presidency. What it concealed was America’s unfinished business of imposing its will on Vietnam and a largely unreported struggle within the country against the destructiveness of economic growth: the jargon for laissez-faire capitalism underpinned by rapacious foreign corporations. Clinton called this “the economic equivalent of a force of nature”.
That the Vietnamese leadership signed only two relatively minor multilateral agreements was indicative of the caution in Hanoi in embracing ‘the force of nature’. This is not to say the Communist Party leadership is itself opposed to a “market” system that has already enriched a small minority. Indeed, the policy known as Doi Moi, or ‘renovation’, was conceived as a means of breaking out of the embargo that was put in place by the US following its humiliating defeat in 1975. In classifying Vietnam a ‘Category Z’ country, Washington imposed sanctions more isolating than even those against Cuba. The World Bank was warned off and humanitarian aid was stopped or obstructed; the new British prime
— source johnpilger.com | john pilger | 27 Nov 2000