A War of Angry Cousins

(6 of 9)

By invading Viet Nam, Peking clearly intended to regain some lost prestige and prove it is no paper tiger. The invasion also presumably had a tactical goal: drawing Vietnamese troops away from Cambodia in order to ease the pressure on Pol Pot's surviving forces. But the risks involved in the Viet Nam invasion were far greater than those involved in the border war with India. Besides a possible Soviet retaliation that could come at any time, China already has suffered a political setback in world eyes. The Japanese, who joined them in decrying "hegemony" when they signed a treaty with Peking last year, were upset that China was practicing such blatant hegemony of its own. Some American policymakers took grim satisfaction at the ironic spectacle of five Communist countries—the Soviet Union, China, Viet Nam, Cambodia and Laos—caught in a bloody family feud. But there is not much to be satisfied about. China's shining image as a new friend intent on furthering peace and stability in Asia is suddenly badly tarnished.

Not that Viet Nam has come off much better. Hanoi's expansion into Laos and its invasion of Cambodia did much to demolish Viet Nam's widespread image in the Third World as a brave anticolonial underdog and show it up more as an Oriental 20th century Sparta intent on becoming gendarme and ruler of all it can grasp. One mystery: How do the Vietnamese maintain that martial impulse after more than 30 years of constant warfare? Part of the answer derives from who has the upper hand in the collective leadership that succeeded Ho Chi Minh. The eleven-man Politburo is divided between pragmatists who want to concentrate on internal reconstruction and hard-liners who are bent on military adventure, despite the gruesome hardships involved. The hardliners, led by pro-Soviet Party Boss Le Duan and Defense Minister Vo Nguyen Giap, are in control. Says a diplomat long acquainted with Hanoi:

"The Vietnamese leaders regard themselves as messianic representatives of the purest revolutionary movement in the world. They are affected, if you will, by an arrogance of power." Combined with the arrogance is the urging of Moscow, which moved into the power vacuum left behind by the U.S. retreat. There is some small justification for the argument that the U.S. may have driven Viet Nam into the Soviet embrace last summer when it spurned Hanoi's modest attempts at reconciliation.

The complex causes of the China-Viet Nam War are also rooted, however, in the historic animosity between the two ethnic cousins, which dates back 21 centuries to the Chinese colonialization of the kingdom of Nam Viet in the Red River Delta. In A.D. 39 two sister queens named Trung Trac and Trung Nhi led a four-year revolt against the Middle Kingdom; a wrathful counterattack smashed the Vietnamese troops at the River Day. Rather than surrender to the Chinese, the two queens jumped in the river and drowned—a martyrdom still honored by Vietnamese girls every March on Hai Ba Trung Day.