This well-presented and extraordinarily researched book poses two challenging questions: (1) What best explains the government of Vietnam’s decision to start to liberalize its control of internal economic affairs in the mid to late 1980s, and its eventual opening-up of its economic doors to the global community in the 1990s and onward in light of its communist past and continuing authoritarian governing structure? And (2) How did such a remarkable, economically outward-looking change come about for such a closed and insular society with its highly state-centric history and orientation of socialist struggle against capitalism orthodoxy? In trying to answer these questions, the author effectively contributes important and useful insights to several salient foci of contemporary political science: foundational international relations theorizing about the sources of a nation’s foreign policy decision making; the political, social, and economic effects of an increasingly globalized economy on communist countries as they transition from Cold War thinking to a new way of understanding their place in such an overarching structure (a new structure from which they can benefit economically); and the unique evolution and specific development of Vietnam as it responds and adapts to both the post-American war and the end of Cold War circumstances.
The book is organized into nine chapters and the primary framework is basically a chronologically structured description, examination, and analysis of Vietnam from 1975 to 2006. Each chapter sequentially presents specific timeframes inside of this period, starting with the circumstances in the mid 1970s and early 1980s that led to the implementing of the doi moi reforms (doi moi allowed for the expansion of private economic interests and some foreign investment), and continuing to include Vietnam’s normalization of its relations with the United States, its joining its former nemesis, the Association of Southeast Asians (ASEAN) in the 1990s, and going up to Vietnam’s joining the World Trade Organization in 2006. The penultimate chapter discusses potential and probable strategic directions for Vietnam’s future along a number of dimensions. The final chapter presents a prudent articulation and discussion of caveats associated with the analysis the author has rendered.
Readily evinced is the author’s extensive research and years of legwork that produced the data and information necessary to complete this type of deeply penetrating description and analysis of Vietnamese politics, government, and society during this transitional period. These activities by the author include close readings of countless relevant texts and documents; numerous and extended visits to Vietnam; attending and participating in a number of academic conferences on Vietnam, involving American and Vietnamese officials as well as Vietnamese and foreign researchers; meeting and conferring with many Vietnamese political figures and government officials, other notables, and academics who were directly or indirectly involved in this opening to the outside and the preceding internal reform process; and interviewing leading academic specialists on Vietnam from around the world, as well as well-informed journalists. The author’s sweep and range of research and the foundational information background it provides are critical and notable insights.
The author’s core contentions and conclusions are clearly in line with a constructivist perspective. That is to say, ideas, collective mindsets, and national identity help explain and understand a country’s foreign policy as opposed to the realist and neorealist theorizing on material interests driving such behavior. Distilled, the author argues that Vietnam’s political elite, its decision makers, engaged in a re-conceptualization and a new way of thinking about Vietnam’s relationships with other countries in the 1990s, especially its neighbors, in light of the Cold War ending and the increasing pressures of globalization and the economic benefits coming from interdependence. With the collapse of the socialist bloc and the loss of the direct patron of the Soviet Union and a socialist model to follow, and recognizing the serious domestic economic problems emanating from trying to strictly stay the communist course, the Vietnamese political apparatus and other notables took on a profound re-gearing and re-thinking of its strategic policies. The book closely chronicles this gradual dislodgement of the prior world-view, the accompanying internal contentiousness amongst the political elites, and its replacement with the new world-view with the jettisoning of some elements of communist orthodoxy. The context in which Vietnam was embedded had changed, and those altered circumstances necessitated a different way of engaging and thinking about the world around it for the political elite. Adapting and adaptability were key, but this new thinking had to be shaped, molded, and worked through a very ideologically thick history and the continuing structure of the Communist Party staying at the helm. This book gives the reader virtually a first-hand account of this strenuous process.
The author pointedly does not entirely reject realist or neorealist analyses of Vietnamese behavior here, with these changes validly considered from those viewpoints as rational adjustments incentivized by a new international structure post-Cold War. However, he does stress that such arguments are necessarily incomplete. Through a constructivist lens and assisted mightily by his extensive research and deep engagement in Vietnamese politics and political elites, the author helps paint a fuller and hence more accurate portrait of the underlying dynamics that capture this unexpected series of decisions and events emanating from Vietnam. The book’s nuanced analysis is a very useful contribution to the foundational debate in international relations about which school of thought—traditionally, realism, neorealism, liberalism, Marxism, and constructivism—and what combination thereof best capture the primary influences on particular foreign policy decisions.
One of the important divides amongst these differing perspectives is between material factors and non-material factors for the basis of a country’s interests. For constructivists, as this book lends added credence to, a collective mindset or national identity is the basis of interests and it is these that greatly affect the formulation of foreign policy. This is in direct contradiction to the material-based theories that argue that interests are best conceptualized as a function of material capabilities (such as economic development and military strength). Alternatively for constructivists, national interests are mostly the result of ideas. This book’s analysis effectively points to the problematic gap that purely material based perspectives incur when trying to explain human behavior—that, simply, ideas do matter for decision makers, in addition to their recognition of power differentials between states and the impact of other domestic considerations and sources of influence. The bounds of what constitutes “acceptable” policy in a country, as filtered through the collective mindset of the country or its ruling elites, and whether a policy alternative properly or comfortably fits within the national identity remain important considerations, as this work ably illustrates.
This book is masterfully written and presented and it constitutes a useful template on how to engage in constructivist analysis along with a profoundly richer and deeper understanding of Vietnam’s utterly intriguing trajectory. The Vietnamese people are an old, old people and they have lived through an amazing history of growth, transformation, tragedy, and resilience over the centuries, especially since the initial French occupation in the 1800s. This book offers valuable insight into another critical period in the life of the Vietnamese as they strategically transition from one world to yet another.
