Transcript 0:00 [intro music] Welcome to Trendlines, a podcast on global affairs brought to you by World Politics Review. My name is Peter Duri. 0:13 David Brown, a former foreign service officer and freelance writer, joins me for this week's report for an in-depth look at Vietnam's internal politics. 0:22 But first, I am happy to again welcome WPR's Judah Grunstein for a briefing on this week's developments in international affairs. So Judah, what was going on in the world this week? 0:34 Among the things we covered this week was, uh, the recent fighting in Nagorno-Karabakh, uh, which is a frozen conflict between, uh, uh, Azerbaijan and Armenia that dates back to the breakup of the Soviet Union. 0:50 Uh, Nagorno-Karabakh is an ethnic majority Armenian separatist region that belonged to Azerbaijan that tried to break away at the breakup of, of the Soviet Union and has been occupied by Armenian forces that intervened in the fighting, uh, in addition to occupying a, a buffer zone of surrounding areas since 1994. 1:15 And Michael Cecire wrote a briefing for us on the recent fighting earlier this month that follows a, a real uptick of violent border incidents over the past few years and comes in the context of a massive defense buildup by Azerbaijan, which has used some of its windfall revenues from energy sales to, to fund, uh, defense purchases. 1:40 And the recent fighting seems to have been instigated by Azerbaijan, which went on to seize several strategic hilltops, and again, in, in the context of this kind of conflict, uh, the, the outcomes are measured by hil- hilltops. 1:57 Uh, but they, Azerbaijan went on to seize several of these strategic locations, the high ground, and changed the actual line of control in, in this conflict for the first time since the end of the war in 1994. 2:11 And so Michael looks at some of the broader... 2:14 He, he looks at the, the fighting itself, but also at some of the broader geopolitical context, which right now includes tensions between Russia, which is Armenia's primary backer and a treaty ally, and Turkey, which has close political and cultural ties with Azerbaijan. 2:33 And, uh, the f- the... Also looks at the ways in which, uh, the diplomatic context has changed. Uh, it c-... 2:41 The fighting comes at a time when the US has largely distanced itself from managing the conflict through the Minsk Group, which is a group, uh, organized, uh, that comprises the US, Russia, and France, as well as the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe. 2:59 And so Russia has, has sort of stepped into the gap and, and tried to, uh, to bring both sides together, at least to, to, uh, end the, the current round of fighting. 3:11 Uh, but the situation remains potentially explosive and, and, and, and Michael explains why even though a return to a hot war would be in no one's interests, uh, there are also very compelling reasons for both sides not to back down. 3:26 So the, uh, ceasefire there is actually monitored by the OSCE, and, uh, monitoring a ceasefire seems to be a really, really tough and difficult job, um, as Richard Gowan also points out in his column, uh, this week for World Politics Review. 3:42 Yes. 3:42 Richard looks at, uh, the, the United Nations' ceasefire monitoring responsibilities and capabilities, and he starts by looking at, uh, the cessation of hostilities deal in Syria, which has been monitored by Russia and the US 4:02 rather than the UN. Now, there, there are political reasons why Russia and the US prefer to s- keep a close hand on 4:11 that particular mission, but there are obvious drawbacks in terms of objectivity and effectiveness in terms of reporting. 4:19 Uh, both sides have their own reasons for reporting things the way they prefer them to be rather than the way they are. 4:27 And at the same time, Richard looks at how the UN has also actually backed away from what used to be one of its core activities in favor more recently of, of more robust peacekeeping and peacemaking deployments. 4:41 And so a- as the UN moved toward this new model of peacekeeping, it started viewing ceasefire monitoring as anachronistic and, and more su- more suited to Cold War-era conflicts which had to be put on ice rather than, than actually definitively and decisively resolved. 4:59 And he, he argues that in the context of contemporary conflicts such as the Russia-Georgia War, the fighting in Eastern Ukraine, and now in Syria, that ceasefire monitoring has become more and more relevant, and that the UN will really need to dust off that skill set to play an active role, especially in Syria, for instance, if a more permanent relate- arrangement is reached. 5:23 Yeah, and, uh, we actually did a course at university with one of the, uh, chief negotiators, uh, who negotiated a lot of the, uh, ceasefires in, uh, the Kosovo conflict, and that was a really interesting insight in how difficult it is to negotiate these, uh, these, uh, arrangements in the first place and then to keep everybody in line and, uh, try to, to c- to, to keep them in place. 5:47 So yeah, I can totally understand that this is a very difficult skill set to, uh, to apply to such a complicated situation. 5:55 We also took a look at, uh, a regional effort in West Africa to mount a, a regional force, uh, to, uh, in the fight against Boko Haram. Uh, uh, a briefing by Alex Thurston, which I'm sure you have some insights into. 6:11 Yeah. And, uh, this is obviously a conflict that isn't likely to end in a ceasefire anytime soon. 6:17 Um, so Alex, uh, uh, looked at the, uh, took a look at the multinational joint task force, um, which is supposed to be a, uh, force that involves, uh, Niger, Chad, um, Cameroon, uh, Nigeria, and, and the newest member w- member would be Benin, and, uh, which is supposed to fight Boko Haram, but its origins go way back, um, I think into, uh, the 1990s, uh, trying to combat banditry in the region. 6:47 And Alex, uh, he points out several really striking inconsistencies in, within this, this force. 6:54 So the, the member countries, um, try to frame it in the terms of African solutions for African problems, but what's, what's actually happening is, um, that they're, uh, that it's a vehicle for Western interests, mainly France and the US, uh, to, um, to project their influence and, uh, their cooperation into fighting Boko Haram locally because, uh, they use the pretext of supporting this multinational joint task force as a way to deploy their own assets, um, in terms of, uh, surveillance or, uh, material support, uh, for, for the member countries. 7:33 And it's, in theory, it's, it's, it's a great feat of cooperation between these countries in a, in a conflict that is very regional and crosses borders, but actually what, what's happening is that, uh, there are very few and even less, uh, successful operations that these countries undertake together, and instead they really do all-- everybody does their own thing, their own offensives, their own, uh, um, operations. 8:00 So, um, and 8:03 Alex's, uh, main point is that it's also a vehicle for the very authoritarian governments within that, uh, task force, especially Chad and Cameroon, Niger, um, to, uh, legitimize their rule because they, they become recipients of Western aid. 8:22 Um, their rule and their power, their military power gets entrenched. So really interesting, uh, look at, at this, at this very politicized force that has very little military meaning. 8:36 Y- yes, and, and in some ways, the, the dirty secret is that it's, uh, 8:42 the, the principal actor here is Chad, and the, mainly because the Chadian armed forces have proved themselves to be essentially the most effective armed forces in the region. 8:54 And at the same time, there were a lot, there was a lot of, uh, politically prickly issues about allowing Chad to operate, uh, in other countries. 9:03 And so, uh, we saw, we saw in Mali, for instance, uh, the Chadian forces were a major part of the initial intervention in the north of that country. 9:14 Um, and in some ways, this regional force was a way to sort of smooth over this idea of, of, uh, of really essentially working through Chad, uh, to, as, as the primary security partner in the region. 9:28 Um, and, and I think in particular with regard to Nigerian, uh, objections, because Nigeria, which, which sort of sees itself as a, a regional and even an African, uh, leader, uh, had, had quite a few objections to allowing Chadian forces to operate in its territory, even though the Nigerian military was not very effective in, in targeting Boko Haram. 9:51 So i- in a lot of ways, this, uh, this force is, is sort of a, a political window dressing to allow for more practical arrangements that have, uh, ex- implications in terms of, uh, s- certainly democratic norms in the region. 10:09 Yeah. Thank you again, uh, for, for joining us. Thanks very much. It's been a pleasure as always. To stay up to date on global politics, you should join WPR's newsletter. 10:20 Just go to about.worldpoliticsreview.com/newsletter or click on the newsletter button on the top of the homepage to subscribe. 10:29 [Instrumental music] Vietnam is of course a country ingrained in the world's consciousness since the Vietnam War. 10:38 But the reality of politics in Vietnam has evolved considerably since the 1970s and warrant a closer look provided for this week's report by David Brown. I'm David Brown, a freelance journalist based in California. 10:56 I typically write, uh, about, uh, Vietnam, a country that, uh, I've had a long interest in ever since I was first posted there as an American diplomat some fifty years ago. 11:10 Vietnam today is a country of about ninety-two million people. The country is, and has been since about 1990, rapidly modernizing. 11:22 The government is a single party regime, communist of course, um, but the economy is basically capitalist, and this was a decision the Vietnamese made, uh, in the 1980s after experimenting, trying very hard really to, um, develop, uh, the economy along classic Stalinist lines and, uh, not doing very well at all. 11:49 The regime decided at that time that, uh, if Vietnam was going to survive and thrive in the world, it had to, uh, take the capitalist road, much as China had seven years earlier. 12:03 Basically, it's a country which is, um, very open to the world, but still with a political system that is, um, quite tightly disciplined and, uh, controlled by the Communist Party, which counts about four million members, and just recently, in January, um, selected, um, a new set of leaders. 12:25 [Instrumental music] After a week of closed-door meetings, Vietnam's one-party rulers chose to stick with Nguyễn Phú Trọng as general secretary, the leader of the Communist Party and the nation for another five-year term. 12:42 The 71-year-old said his election was a surprise, as he was looking to retire, but he's standing up to the responsibility. The Communist Party, he said, is here to stay, but with democratic principles. 12:57 In the Vietnamese constitution, the Vietnamese Communist Party is described as the institution which plays the leading role in society, and in fact, it is pervasive. 13:11 The Red Cross, the Bar Association, the Chamber of Commerce, all of these have a shadow party organization within them. The 13:23 Vietnamese Communist Party has struggled with, um, the problem of relevance or legitimacy for quite a while now. 13:32 It's no longer the party that won the wars and carried out the revolution that accomplished Vietnam's independence from France and subsequently, uh, the unification of the country, uh, notwithstanding the intervention, uh, of the United States. 13:48 In January of this year, the party elected new leadership. They do that every five years, uh, at a national congress, which pretty much endorses decisions made, uh, in smaller leadership groups. 14:02 But this year, it was particularly bitter and unusually open contest because the fellow who had been prime minister for the last decade, Nguyễn Tấn Dũng, had made a bid to become the general secretary of the party, that is to say, the top political job. 14:23 And Dũng, to many communists, commun- traditional communists, represented everything that was wrong with the new order, which is to say he managed to brand himself in many ways as a reformer and one who had built, um, bridges to the non-party Vietnamese, specifically the new middle class, the ri- you could call it the rising professional community, businessmen, lawyers. 14:55 To the extent that within the party there was a serious concern that this fellow might be a Vietnamese Gorbachev who was prepared to loosen and perhaps even do away with the party's leadership of the country. 15:13 And the other major concern, of course, is that, uh, the Prime Minister Dũng's regime, um, that there is an awful lot of institutionalized corruption. 15:24 About, um, a year ago, a little more than a year ago, it, uh, was evident that the prime minister was aiming to win election to the highest party job, that is to say, general secretary. 15:38 And, um, indeed, it looked as though, uh, he had a pretty clear shot at it. There had been some earlier contests where efforts to discipline the, the prime minister, 15:51 uh, had failed, and it would seem that he had a fairly good working majority of the party's central committee, uh, which is a group of about 200 people. 16:03 Twice, they had, Dũng had been able to rally support within the central committee and, um, turn back efforts by his colleagues in the party's politburo to dismiss him. 16:16 So, um, what was going to happen then in the last year? 16:21 In effect, the party's old guard managed to rally around an anybody but Dũng movement within the party to stop this rather audacious bid by the prime minister to, uh, become the strongest Vietnamese leader in, uh, many, many years. 16:45 The fellow who defeated him was the incumbent general secretary. His name is, uh, Nguyễn Phú Trọng. 16:53 And Trọng is as different from Dũng as can possibly be, both in his manner and in his, uh, philosophy. 17:04 He's a true believer in Marxist ideology, a grandfatherly stu- uh, type, and, uh, tough as nails. 17:12 And he managed, uh, essentially to rally the folks in the party who were concerned about the emergence of too strong a leader. I think that's the way to put it. 17:26 Too strong a leader, which would, who could become a threat to everybody else, um, and indeed to the party organization. 17:36 So with a fair amount of internal drama, it became clear in December and then in January as the party congress met, uh, the 12th Party Congress, 17:49 um, that, uh, in fact, Prime Minister Dũng's, um, effort to secure the top spot had failed and a new politburo, very heavily tilted towards long-term party, uh, officials and in people from the internal security ministries, particularly the, the police We're going to, uh, take control of the government and the question now, of course, is, uh, where will they take it? 18:20 [instrumental music] Just 20 years ago, most Vietnamese earned their living from the land, but now manufacturing has taken over agriculture. Now, smartphones roll out by the millions. 18:33 With a plentiful workforce, the government opened its doors to high-tech companies, looking to bring them from China, where a worker's average salary is three times that of Vietnam. 18:47 It's too early to say whether there has in fact been a significant change in the way Vietnam will address problems of growth and modernization. 19:00 There, the two big issues are growth and corruption, and in fact, they're intertwined. 19:06 The new leadership, Secretary General Truong in particular, have said that their objective is to purge the party's corrupt e- elements. That is a huge job, and many have failed in the past. 19:21 Um, when you have a system like Vietnam's with state-run enterprises and no transparency to speak of, it's a situation that's, uh, very conducive to, um, people, uh, making, um, illicit income and a lot of it. 19:40 So the question is, now that Truong and his allies in the Politburo now have unquestioned control of the government apparatus, whether in fact there will be a crackdown and whether many, many heads will roll and, uh, 19:58 others will, uh, adjust, uh, to, um, a new reality. 20:03 At the same time, the World Bank and many young Vietnamese economists and, uh, other observers have said the only way to effectively dismantle the apparatus of, uh, corrupt dealings in Vietnam is to do away with the state enterprise sector. 20:24 And that, from an ideological point of view, the so-called system market socialism, uh, concept where the state, has the state playing a, uh, very prominent role in the economy, not just managing it, but participating in it through the state-owned enterprises, which coexist side by side with a fairly vigorous private sector and now an increasingly important, uh, foreign invested sector. 20:52 And by past performance and past indicat- indications, the new group of leaders is not going to do away with the state enterprises, but will instead attempt to reform them. 21:07 And if that's all they do, they probably will not succeed in, uh, generating the transparent and dynamic economy that, um, the World Bank and Vietnamese economists, uh, say is possible. 21:23 Now, why is this a, why is this so important right now? 21:28 It's because Vietnam has arrived at a level of development where it has a great chance to become a significant part of the world economy, not just as a producer of raw materials and basic commodities, not just as an assembler of garments and footwear, but to, uh, develop an advanced manufacturing sector. 21:57 And according to analysts, this window of opportunity is really only going to last for another 12 or 15 years. At the mo- at this moment, Vietnam is, is, is at a real demographic advantage in, uh, 22:14 uh, opportunity for modernization. 22:16 Big challenge for the Vietnamese economy is to go from being a, an economy which essentially is producing, uh, for foreign companies according to foreign company specs into an economy which is able to, um, innovate and organize and develop, um, and become a factor in its own right. 22:40 Can Vietnam find the political will to deal with endemic corruption, to loosen the political controls, and generally create the circumstances that would enable a, an, a domestic and indigenous modern economy to develop? 23:00 [instrumental music] Many thanks to David for providing these insights. Find his detailed country report on worldpoliticsreview.com under the title, "Can Vietnam's New Leadership Deliver on Last Good Chance for Change?" 23:17 My thanks to you as well for joining us again this week. If you never want to miss an episode of Trend Lines, you can subscribe to us in your podcast app of choice. S- just search for Trend Lines. 23:31 Trend Lines is produced and edited by me, Peter Dury. 23:34 You can follow me and World Politics Review on Twitter, and you can find links to pieces covering the issues we talked about in the show notes on worldpoliticsreview.com. 23:45 Have a fantastic weekend, and see you next week for a new episode of Trend Lines. 24:15 [outro music]
