Vietnam as Confection

When Donald Trump and Kim Jong Un choose to meet in Vietnam, it represents a meaningful compromise for them both, writes Morten Strand.

At the end of the month, the U.S.’s 45th president will finally come to Vietnam. Donald Trump should have already been in Vietnam – as a soldier – in 1969. But he obtained a false medical exemption from military service. This came from Dr. Larry Braunstein, who had his office in one of the Trump family’s buildings, writes The New York Times, among others. This was a friendly favor, perhaps not unlike corruption.

But now there is no hope. Trump will go to Vietnam. This time it is on behalf of the government, which is himself. Just like 50 years ago, Trump has a plan for the country where the U.S. lost its virtue. Vietnam became a disgrace and a political catastrophe in American history.

Now Vietnam has found its footing as a Communist dictatorship and as an economic miracle. Trump will display this for Kim Jong Un, like a piece of hard candy he hopes Kim will suck on. It is Vietnam’s transformation from a dirt-poor, war-torn agricultural country to a nation that has increased its per capita gross domestic product by a factor of five since 1986, which will entice Kim to give up his nuclear weapons. With that, the economic sanctions can cease, and he can pursue economic reforms and privatization. That is to say, that which has already occurred in Vietnam can also become reality in Kim’s North Korea.

After the first meeting with Kim in Singapore in June, Trump reflected on North Korea’s potential, given its fantastic beaches. The Washington Post reported Trump as saying, “‘Boy, look at that place. Wouldn’t that make a great condo?’ … I said, ‘Instead of doing that [building rocket launchers], you could have the best hotels in the world right there.’ Think of it from a real estate perspective.”

So reflected the real estate and hotel king Trump. This is part of Trump’s thinking behind the meeting in Vietnam. That is, Kim – if he does not beat swords into ploughshares, as a 100-year-old anti-war slogan exhorts – may be persuaded to choose economic advancement over threats of military confrontation and nuclear war.

The parallels between Vietnam and North Korea are clear. They are two Asian Communist dictatorships, each ruined by war with America, which so far have both chosen their own paths. Vietnam is an apparent economic success, while North Korea is a highly visible economic fiasco. But the parallels stutter there. For though Vietnam – and also China – gave up cults of personality and personal dictatorships that were built around the Vietnamese revolutionary hero Ho Chi Minh, and in China around Mao Zedong, the personality cult around Kim lives on and well. Besides the brutal oppression, which according to the U.N., renders North Korea a terrorist regime in its own class, it is precisely the idolization of Kim that characterizes the regime.

In Vietnam, both Uncle Ho and his successor Le Duan had to die before the Communist Party introduced collective leadership. Along with this came the ideological compromises that were necessary for privatizing the economy and introducing a market economy. Likewise in China, Mao had to die before his successor Deng Xiaoping could slowly begin to privatize the economy and eventually institute a type of collective leadership.

The problem in North Korea is that the young Kim has neither considered dying, nor, as far as we know, instituting collective leadership. Collective leadership would go against that which, above all, ties Kim to absolutist power, namely the blood ties to his father and grandfather. For in the strongly conservative and Confucian North Korea, it is the very blood ties from the state’s founder, Kim Il Sung, that give the young Kim political legitimacy.

The young Kim has opened up the economy and introduced a certain degree of market economy, for food among other things, which farmers can sell at selected markets. But that Kim should give up the totalitarian system hardly seems logical; it is exactly this that he has sought to defend with the missile and nuclear weapons program. And this is the starting point for the whole inflamed conflict around North Korea.

When Trump and Kim meet – presumably in Da Nang – right in the middle between north and south in the long stretch of Vietnam, there will once again be a gathering with the potential for great drama. We do not know if Trump has something up his sleeve, something we still do not know about but that the meeting in Vietnam will reveal. What we do know is that Trump needs points he can sell as political triumphs. We also know that Kim has lies and swindling in his political DNA. A manifestation of this is the U.N. report that he now flies his nuclear warheads and missiles around to hide them from the outside world.

This sets the scene for the battleground of Vietnam.