The United States is in danger of losing Vietnam a second time-this time not to communism but to our capitalist competitors in Asia and Europe. While it is still illegal to make a telephone call from Chicago to Hanoi, British Telecom has contracted to lay the longest optical cable in Asia between Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon) and Nha Trang, and Vietnamese anthracite coal is literally coming to Newcastle.
Economic relations are developing despite serious difficulties between Vietnam and Britain over the influx of Vietnamese boat people into Hong Kong. France, Italy, Japan, Thailand, Singapore and Australia are also prospecting in Vietnam. Our attempt to isolate Vietnam economically is in the process of final collapse, leaving American business isolated from the largest country in mainland Southeast Asia.
Our allies are breaking ranks because the embargo of Vietnam no longer makes political sense. Eleven years ago, the Vietnamese army invaded Cambodia, overthrew the murderous regime of Pol Pot and occupied the country. The invasion and occupation terrified neighboring Thailand, and China felt threatened by the Vietnamese-Soviet alliance. Therefore, a political and economic isolation of Vietnam was widely supported.
Since that time, however, the Vietnamese have withdrawn all combat units from Cambodia and have actively promoted a settlement of the conflict there. Moreover, relations between China and the Soviet Union have improved, while those between Vietnam and the Soviet Union have cooled. The prime minister of Thailand has called for turning Indochina ``from a battlefield into a marketplace,`` and cross-border traffic between China and Vietnam is booming. So the boycott of Vietnam no longer serves a clear political purpose, and other countries simply do not share the American grudge against Hanoi.
Although Vietnam is one of the world`s poorest countries, it does have considerable economic potential. The population is over 90 percent literate and could supply a cheap and efficient workforce. Natural resources and food resources are significant. In 1989 Vietnam became the world`s third largest rice exporter. Its oil production is developing rapidly, and might reach 300,000 barrels a day within three years.
Vietnam`s foreign investment code, written by a Harvard Ph.D., is one of the most liberal in the world. Vietnam is a bargain right now, and governments and businessmen of many countries are working together to secure a piece of the action.
The policy of the United States on Vietnam has not been rethought since the invasion of Cambodia. When Vietnam met our conditions for normalization of relations by withdrawing its troops from Cambodia, we merely raised our demands.
Now it is no longer a question of international leadership, but of watching the rest of the Western world vanish from sight ahead of us. To lose Vietnam to the communists was traumatic enough, but to lose Vietnam to the British?