Vietnam is celebrating the end of a 19-year-old U.S. economic embargo, but still faces big hurdles before it can compete in the global marketplace as Asia's newest "little tiger."
In Hanoi tonight, U.S. businessman James Rockwell is throwing an "end of the embargo bash" at the old Thang Loi Hotel. "I'm ecstatic" at the prospect of being able to start work on agreements held for months in limbo, he says.
Rockwell's consulting firm, Vatico, was the first U.S. company to win a Vietnamese operating license. Three dozen others now have licenses and about 160 more are in line.
They see Vietnam as a source of cheap labor, a potential market and a moderately rich source of oil, some minerals, rice and handicrafts.
In addition, 1 million Vietnamese in the USA can act as middlemen or joint venture partners in developing new business ties.
Defense experts see the country as a potential security blanket in a region clouded by nuclear threats.
With the embargo's end, visiting U.S. citizens now can:
-- Pay with U.S. credit cards for dinners and hotel rooms.
-- Start selling everything from Avon lipstick to Caterpillar bulldozers.
-- Travel directly to Hanoi without first stopping for visas in Bangkok or Hong Kong.
But if they get in a jam or lose their passports, there'll be no U.S. Embassy to turn to. Washington still hasn't established formal diplomatic relations with Hanoi.
Vietnam's U.N. Ambassador Le Van Bang cautions that President Clinton's decision to end the embargo is "just one more step" toward relations.
Clinton made it clear Thursday the two countries are not ready to trade ambassadors, and Vietnam is not in line for low tariffs enjoyed by virtually all U.S. trade partners.
Without most favored nation status, says Bang, only U.S. business benefits. "It means the U.S. can export to Vietnam, but we can't sell in the U.S. We still can't compete," he says.
"Lifting the embargo is really not the end but the beginning of the process," says John McAuliff, director of the New York-based U.S. Indochina Reconciliation Project, an educational exchange.
Clinton's decision amounts to "recognizing the inevitable," says University of Georgia economist Dwight Lee. "It's an example of government's losing control over economic events. Capital and technology flow all over the global marketplace, and governments are increasingly unable to control economic decisions."
Lifting the embargo is the latest marker on the "road map" to normalization launched three years ago by President Bush.
The crumbling of the economic wall has continued. International telephone improved. Travel agents began booking tours. Bans were lifted on shipments of humanitarian goods. Last July, Clinton removed the biggest obstacle to Vietnam development: U.S. objections to international loans.
"I think it's clear this administration came in wanting to complete the process and they've been working on it," says Richard Solomon, chiefly responsible for the road map as Bush's assistant secretary of State for East Asia and Pacific Affairs.
Rockwell, in a phone interview from Hanoi, said POW groups have been calling to protest his party plans.
But he says they should be joining in: "Lifting the embargo will not hurt our effort to find our MIAs but will assist it. The more Americans on the ground, the better the chances for finding out exactly what happened."
