New Beachhead in Vietnam

The signing of a tentative trade agreement with Vietnam on Sunday marked the last stride in America’s return to Indochina, nearly 25 years after the end of the Vietnam War. Washington hopes that trade and economic reforms stimulated by the pact will help do with commerce what it couldn’t accomplish with cannons--transform a Communist regime into an open society. But, while handing the economic agenda over to the private sector, Washington should continue to engage Hanoi on a host of other issues, including human rights, emigration and a full accounting of military personnel who were prisoners of war or missing in action.

A decade of doi moi--Vietnam’s reform program--has produced some results, delivering a measure of personal freedom to its 78 million people and, until last year’s Asian crisis brought on depression, a gradual improvement of the country’s bankrupt economy. The momentum for economic change, driven by Vietnam’s chief reformer, First Deputy Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung, is remarkable, judging by the broad terms that Hanoi was willing to accept under the trade pact.

In addition to lowering tariffs and removing import restrictions, Hanoi agreed to reform its banking, distribution and telecommunications sectors, dismantle the state trade monopoly and comply with strict copyright and trademark protection laws. That means Hanoi will have to overhaul the entire legal system on which its economy is based.

The moving force behind the deal on the U.S. side was Ambassador Douglas “Pete” Peterson, a former POW.

The deal was hailed in the United States both by Vietnamese community moderates and Vietnam War veterans who, in the three years of its negotiation, received full cooperation from Hanoi in their effort to account for the 2,058 Americans still missing from the war. In the short run, the agreement is expected to double Vietnam’s tiny annual exports to the United States to about $800 million. Over time it could transform Vietnam’s command economy and integrate the country into global trade.

It took the United States and Vietnam nearly a quarter of a century to turn from adversaries to trading partners. Any closer ties must be based on Hanoi’s improvement of its abysmal human rights record.