Viet Nam: Ending an Entanglement

“Rice is currently the primary concern of our daily life,” said the editorial in the Vietnamese Communist Party newspaper Nhan Dan, amid reports that 3 million of Viet Nam’s 63.5 million people may be threatened with starvation because of economic mismanagement and poor harvests. Last week Hanoi took a step that may not only lighten the burden on a desperately ailing economy but also make Viet Nam less of a pariah in Southeast Asia. The government announced that by the end of the year it would withdraw 50,000 Vietnamese troops from neighboring Kampuchea as part of a total, phased pullout of 120,000 troops by 1990.

The announcement was welcomed by the Soviet Union, which backs Hanoi with an estimated $1 billion a year in aid but is unhappy with Viet Nam’s mismanagement. Disengagement from Kampuchea could also improve Hanoi’s chilly relations with China, which supports Kampuchean resistance forces, including the once dreaded Khmer Rouge, that have been fighting the Vietnamese. Eventually, the U.S. may feel more disposed to endorse Hanoi’s requests for Western assistance. Not everybody will be pleased, however. Some Kampucheans fear that the Khmer Rouge, who ruled with murderous intensity in Phnom Penh until Vietnamese forces drove them out in 1978, may return.