Who Won the War? Greed, Schism and the Party Faithful in Vietnam

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THE Hanoi regime could soon be in serious trouble. The danger is of a nation split along the old north-south divide, with hedonistic Saigon as the capital of the south, or one split into a thousand petty feudal baronies.

Vietnam is one of the poorest nations on earth. That was true even before its principal benefactor, the Soviet Union, disintegrated. Because of Hanoi's tight fiscal grip of the whole country, that poverty is fairly evenly distributed. It is genuinely difficult to be rich in Vietnam at the expense of your neighbour. But the potential to be rich is not evenly spread. It is concentrated in the south. The south gives to the north a good proportion of its rice (used both as the staple diet and to pay off Vietnam's colossal foreign debt), the hope of income from oil and gas deposits currently being prospected for in the Mekong Delta by western …