PEOPLE

The Boa! Aopk
levels because it wanted to 'play the China card'. Proponents of thb
thesir prgue that, as early ns Decemkr 1977, the Carter adminismtion
had concluded that normalization of relations with Vietnam and
China were 'eithtr/or propositions', and that if the US pressed ahcad
with the Vietnam negotiations it would antagonize kking and fru~
rate efforts to reach agmmcnt with China on the exchange of diplomatic
reprcscntativcs and the resumption of normal trade.
An elaboration of this thesis proposed that Vietnam was in &ect
driven into a closer alliance with the Soviet Union by the antagonism
of China and its support for the hl Pot rdgime, and by fears that
the US, in its enthusiasm for normal relations and trade with China
to cwnterbrlancc the Soviet's regional influence, delibemtely
slowed down negotiations with Vietnam. Smior state department
officials agreed th~t US recognition of Viemam had been a sensitive
issue for the Chinese in 1978, and an even more sensitive one in
1979, when China and the US had resumed normal relations and
China and Vietnam had fought a limited border war. But they
claimtd that the issue had never been directly raised with the Chinese
during negotiations for nomlization in 1978, and that 'thm
was no particular reaction from the Chintse' when American negotiations
had referred to it by hint or inferenec.
On August 12 1979, Mr Holbrooke resmrtd the American position
that 'present circumstances m~dc it impiblc and undesirable
to resume progress towards normalization of relations' with Victmm.
Some future movement was not impossible, he aid, but it
depended on 'Viemam's actions'. The US had already given its conditions
for a resumption of negotiations during rhe abortive tslks
with Vietnamese representatives in New York and Geneva in June
and July: an independent gwernmcnt in Kampuchea, oontrol of the
refugee exodus, and assurances about Vietnam's new relationship
with the Soviet Union.
While they had no finn formula for 8 settlement in Kampuchea,
US officials could see no possibility of stability in the region unless
here was a government in Phnom Penh that represented a11 three
contending forces: the deposed Pol Pot faction, still fighting in the
jungles with the support of kking and claiming representation at
the United Nations; the Hcng Samrin kgime, installed by Vietnamese
force md sustained and apprenrly controlled by Hanoi; and the
Stability
'third force' of nationalisw, rallying uneasily around the exiled
former prince, Norodom Sihanouk. Such an improbable coalition
was, they agreed, unlikely in the foreseeable future.
Although Americans had been encoutagcd by the apparent change
of Vietnam's policy at the Gcnkva refugee conference in July, and
by Hanoi's formal but dl1 unfulfilled agreement to admit American
consular officials to proeess applicants for family reunion in the US,
the adminimation was reserving judgement on Vicmam's intentions
and its ability to administer a humane refugee policy. The US
demand for reassurances abut Vietnam's Russian connection was
a grey area - less a formal precondition than a warning that growing
Soviet influence in Viemm would inevitably impede progress
towards normalization, In Hanoi, on 9 August, the Viemamese setretary
of state for foreign affairs, Nguyen Co Thach, bluntly toid
a visiting American congressional delegation: 'The US established
relations with China with no conditions. , , this is a double standard.
This is the China card . . . All over the world, no country hs used
relations with a third country as a condition for normalization.'
Of the three American conditions, the future of Kampuchea was
the most critical and the moat intractable. But ir was widely acknowledged
in Washington that there was lictle chance that Vietnam would
quickly or easily change its position on any of them, ceminly not
un Kampuchea or the Soviet connection. Some analysts predicted
there would bt no change in Vietnam's policies until Hanoi's present
lcaders, still inspired by the 'curse-he-enemy' values they had
applied so successfully during more than thirty years of war, had
bcen rcplaced by a generation more susocptible to compromise and
more attuned to economic reconstruction and social reform.
Although the average agc of the scventtcn-member politburo in
Hanoi was sixty-nine, there wau little confidence in Washington that
a new leadership was about to emerge.
There was general agreement among US officials that the issue
of normnlization was dead - at least until after the presidential tlections
in 1980. Therc was no effective constituency pushing for a
resumption of negotiations: Amerians, for the most part, preferred
to avert their attention from Viernam. There were no dear and compelling
economic incentives for the resumption of economic, much
less political, relations with Vietnam. The American chamber of