Fate of North Vietnam if South Vietnam survives

[Sorairo]

Suppose by hook or crook that South Vietnam manages to pull through the Vietnam conflict with something similar to the designated border with the North. Suppose further that the South manages to make it to the end of the Cold War and is able to take advantage of the boom the third world had in the 80s.

How would North Vietnam respond to the pressures of the 80s, especially if they still have the breakdown with China? Would they pursue economic liberalism as OTL? Even more crucially, what would be the most likely fate of North Vietnam (especially one that failed in its mission to unify the South) by 1991?

1) OTL - Economic liberalisation, moderate political reform, rapprochement with the West, still a one party Communist stat living in coexistence with a South Vietnam of many potential ideological shades.
2) North Korea - North Vietnam falls into an ideological wormhole to distance itself from the South and 'holds the line against Capitalism' whatever the cost.
3) East Germany - as the South (presumably) starts to pull away economically and Communism is discredited, South Vietnam absorbs the North

 

[Sam R.]

The impact of repeated US aerial bombardment every 3 years until the Eastern European economic crisis grows too dire is going to impact the situation more than the public brothel that is the RVN in the 1970s and 1980s.

 

[Scorpius72]

3) East Germany - as the South (presumably) starts to pull away economically and Communism is discredited, South Vietnam absorbs the North

Hopefully this and in that scenario you'd see a LOT of NV officials being prosecuted in the south for the various crimes they committed in North Vietnam under the communists.

 

[Dancing Fool]

Hopefully this and in that scenario you'd see a LOT of NV officials being prosecuted in the south for the various crimes they committed in North Vietnam under the communists.

This is true. The North Vietnamese committed war crimes. At the same time, the Vietnamese communists did regime change in Cambodia in Jan. 1979, and prevented the Cambodian genocide from being even worse.

Cambodian–Vietnamese War​

“ . . . On 23 December 1978, 10 out of 19 divisions of Khmer Rouge's military divisions opened fire along the shared Southwestern borderline with Vietnam with goal of invading Vietnames provinces of Đồng Tháp, An Giang and Kiên Giang. . . ”

*******************

Vietnam could have just defended. Instead, they did full-scale regime change, and I’m not sure they’ll choose to do so if the South is by itself.

 

[The Banker]

Suppose by hook or crook that South Vietnam manages to pull through the Vietnam conflict with something similar to the designated border with the North. Suppose further that the South manages to make it to the end of the Cold War and is able to take advantage of the boom the third world had in the 80s.

How would North Vietnam respond to the pressures of the 80s, especially if they still have the breakdown with China? Would they pursue economic liberalism as OTL? Even more crucially, what would be the most likely fate of North Vietnam (especially one that failed in its mission to unify the South) by 1991?

1) OTL - Economic liberalisation, moderate political reform, rapprochement with the West, still a one party Communist stat living in coexistence with a South Vietnam of many potential ideological shades.
2) North Korea - North Vietnam falls into an ideological wormhole to distance itself from the South and 'holds the line against Capitalism' whatever the cost.
3) East Germany - as the South (presumably) starts to pull away economically and Communism is discredited, South Vietnam absorbs the North

All 3 are possible
Depends on who takes power and what he does after Ho chi Minh
Le Duan's position wasn't rock solid by any means and if his 1973 attack on the South failed then other individuals might try to use that as a justification for a power grab

 

[lionhead]

Yeah totally depends on why both North and SouthVietnam still exist. How does the South prevent itself from collapsing and why hasn't the North totally infiltrated the South?

Because i don't see North Vietnam stop trying. If they still exist, the war is still on.

 

[Shiva]

If there is still a North/South divide how would that impact a possible Cambodian/Vietnamese War scenario since I could still see Pol Pot deciding that such a conflict would be needed to try and hold his 'Democratic Kampuchea' together.

 

[Shiva]

After doing a little digging I have some rough ideas on how a Cambodian-South Vietnamese War could go, basically it starts for the same reasons as RL. Pol Pot was suspicious of the Vietnamese people and the proposed Indochina Federation, also he needed to try and distract from how badly things were going under his rule, so I could still see an invasion happening, but of South Vietnam, Pol Pot would try to keep some ties to North Vietnam to keep the international communist world on his side.

But with American support I could see South Vietnam repelling Kampuchea, but the threat of the war ballooning into a much bigger conflict would prevent any counter-invasion of Pol Pot's Cambodia or regime change.

So Kampuchea would basically turn into a second North Korea and might still exist in the present day of TTL.

Also I could see the ultimate fate of the Vietnams being a mix of 1 and 2, where North Vietnam is forced to make some economic changes in the wake of the fall of Communism (IF that happens as per RL) but otherwise keeping a much tighter grip on things than PR China has in economic terms, but very little political reform will happen.

So a South Vietnam would be like RL South Korea, but being pressured on two fronts, not just it's northern border but also from Kampuchea, so it would be even more tightly allied with America than in RL, and China would have a vested interest in keeping North Vietnam and Kampuchea going.

 

[Sorairo]

After doing a little digging I have some rough ideas on how a Cambodian-South Vietnamese War could go, basically it starts for the same reasons as RL. Pol Pot was suspicious of the Vietnamese people and the proposed Indochina Federation, also he needed to try and distract from how badly things were going under his rule, so I could still see an invasion happening, but of South Vietnam, Pol Pot would try to keep some ties to North Vietnam to keep the international communist world on his side.

But with American support I could see South Vietnam repelling Kampuchea, but the threat of the war ballooning into a much bigger conflict would prevent any counter-invasion of Pol Pot's Cambodia or regime change.

So Kampuchea would basically turn into a second North Korea and might still exist in the present day of TTL.

Also I could see the ultimate fate of the Vietnams being a mix of 1 and 2, where North Vietnam is forced to make some economic changes in the wake of the fall of Communism (IF that happens as per RL) but otherwise keeping a much tighter grip on things than PR China has in economic terms, but very little political reform will happen.

So a South Vietnam would be like RL South Korea, but being pressured on two fronts, not just it's northern border but also from Kampuchea, so it would be even more tightly allied with America than in RL, and China would have a vested interest in keeping North Vietnam and Kampuchea going.

My only question is whether the Khemer Rouge will even have anyone left to rule if they last another decade? They killed 25% of the population in just four years so it's hard to see how they can last into the 21st century without the Cambodians effectively ceasing to exist as a nation.

 

[Sam R.]

The Khmer Rouge were acting as a nationalist ethnic fascism in relation to a multi ethnic nation. While there were elements of social status to their massacres, there were also elements of pure ethno-linguistic nationalism to their massacres. They would have run out of people to kill and power positions to belittle. Their aim wasn't to murder all Cambodians, but to murder people in certain economically viable modes to murder who were under the control of the Kampuchean state. Contrast to the Vietnamese Workers' Party's non genocidal murders [low rule of law state sanctioned murder] in Vietnam. Cambodia got a nuts party for historical reasons, Vietnam a sane but abhorrent[*1] party for historical reasons.

Yours,
Sam R.

[1] The fact that I think they were correct for their aims doesn't reduce their abhorrence, either in their acts, or their intended outcomes. They desired certain class transformations within reduced class power, and they enacted the situation that would result in nomenklatura rule. About all you can say in moral terms is they were both more competent and more hands off than the RVN or USA.

 

[Shiva]

So with what Sam added it's likely that with Pol Pot running out of victims to blame for his failures combined with losing a major war against South Vietnam that he would be overthrown. though how much of the nature of the regime would change depends on who would win the power struggle.