Suchergebnisse

The paper tries to present the Indochina wars (1945-1975) in historical perspective focussing especially on the involvement of the great powers: the United States, the Soviet Union and China. It stresses the particular interests of the three powers and emphasizes the triangle dynamics which added fuel to the conflict. In accordance with this dynamics, an understanding providing for US disengagement, reaches between the United States and Moscow on the one hand and Peking on the other, took out the wind of the sails of the conflict. Accord in the outer circle of the conflict undercut also the dynamics in the inner circle. The Paris agreement was specially tailored to US military withdrawal. Weak in the political domain it led to the military solution.

This paper tries to analyze the China-Vietnam-Indochina conflict from a historical perspective and points to the urgency for a search for peaceful solutions. Two layers of historical memory weigh heavily on the present conflict: a) the two thousand years' stormy history of relations between imperial China and Vietnam, coupled with the history of Vietnam's encounter with Kampuchea and Laos, and b) the hundred years' history of French colonial penetration, followed by two Indochina wars. The first layer, with its dominant feature of North-South political-military expansion, left the region with a high sensitivity to security issues. The second layer contributed to contemporary developments by reducing Chinese influence, by shaping the Indochinese entity and by creating opportunities for the Vietnamese to win a pre- eminent position in Indochina. A possible solution of the conflict is seen in a policy of non-alignment and neutrality of the Indochinese nations.