PV - Vietnam Today

[eric_t12]

http://www.mishalov.com/Vietnam_capitalism.html

"Now the war is all over and they have the liberty and independence and freedom they made such sacrifices for," said the United States ambassador, Pete Peterson, himself a war veteran who spent six years in a North Vietnamese prison.

"But the world has redefined those things," Mr. Peterson said. "What is independence in the global economy? Now a country is more appropriately graded on interdependence. And liberty from what? Happiness today is defined by the individual. They couldn't have assumed in their wildest imagination a situation like this."

Under this watchful leadership, Vietnam today seems like a nation of bees buzzing inside a bottle, thrumming with repressed energy. Many of the same difficulties that drove away foreign investors -- along with stifling limits on local business practices -- are crippling the efforts of Vietnamese entrepreneurs. And an insistence on government control of major industries serves as a sea anchor slowing economic growth.

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But when the United States offered a $750,000 program of mine-clearing and training several years ago, the Vietnamese refused because it would once again cause uniformed American soldiers to be based on Vietnamese soil.