Four Steps To A Successful Will Plan - Colonie Senior Service Centers: Fill & Download for Free

What would Grand Admiral Thrawn think of the Wehrmacht during World War II?“Good morning, Generalleutnant Von Manstein.” The pensive looking man said as two flanking sentries snapped to attention. His crisp greeting was not reciprocated.“If this is somebody’s idea of a joke, major, I am not laughing,” Von Manstein said in a voice that betrayed more than a little exhaustion.“My apologies, General Guderian sends his compliments and apologizes that he couldn’t be he—“ Von Manstein cut him off with a raised hand.“General Guderian is a busy man—but so am I. What can I do for him?” The major nodded at the two sentries who hurriedly opened a steel-reinforced door that led to a dimly lit office. A wooden table covered with maps and scattered papers was orbited by a crown of smoke produced by a multitude of recently extinguished cigarettes. The major gestured to a small stack of papers on the table’s corner.“General Guderian was hoping that you can explain this…” Von Manstein groggily perched thick-rimmed glasses on his nose as his scanned a map of Western Europe. Von Manstein smirked.It was a crude drawing of the plan that he had drafted, with help from Guderian, for the invasion of France and the Low Countries. It wasn’t an exact copy. Formations were not clearly labeled, and units were labeled using symbols that Von Manstein had never seen before, but the arrows and lines were as familiar to him as a loved one’s face.“You can tell General Guderian that if he doesn’t understand the plan after nearly five months of discussion, there’s nothing else I can do to help him.”The major winced in embarrassment, “My apologies, Herr General. General Guderian wanted to know if you could explain why this was in the possession of a spy.”Von Manstein’s heart skipped a beat. Less than two days before, he had successfully convinced Germany’s leader, Adolf Hitler, that his plan was the only chance for Germany to successfully defeat France and Great Britain.But now, images of German tanks surging through the Ardennes Forest towards victory were replaced with the horror of thousands of young, lifeless faces staring blankly up at a Flanders sky. Von Manstein tugged at the cloth around his knee – the knee that had been mangled on the Eastern Front in the last war. The war that ended the German Empire; the war that every single German officer promised themselves they would never again be repeated.But will be if the British and French know about the plan, Von Manstein thought to himself grimly. In that moment, he felt something that nearly forty years of military services tried to expel from his being: complete, and utter helplessness.“I don’t know,” Von Manstein said softly.“General Guderian was wondering if you could find out.”Von Manstein felt a flash of annoyance, “I am flattered that he thinks so highly of me, but I am not an interrogator. I am not even a constable. I fail to see what help I could be. Besides, now our first priority should be to act quickly to find out if the spy had co-conspirators who may also have this information.”The major nodded, “General Guderian is personally overseeing that operation. However, he was concerned about alerting other departments because—“Von Manstein inclined his head in understanding “—because it increases the risk that the plan is leaked or discovered.” It was unlikely, but it was at least possible that the spy was intercepted before he could warn his superiors about the plan. However, in their zeal to plug an imaginary leak, they might create new ones. “Tell me about this spy.”The major swallowed, “Perhaps Herr General you would like to look at the prisoner’s processing form first.”Von Manstein’s features twisted in annoyance at the major’s non-answer. And then as his eyes darted across the sheets of typed paper given to him by the major he understood. There were no answers – only questions.“A captured grand admiral? Better not tell Raedar. At this rate we’ll have more grand admirals than capital ships.”The major’s attempt at a polite smile failed as anxiety crept across his face. Von Manstein read on.“English spies love their literary references.”“Herr General…?”Von Manstein gestured at the page. “Falling through time and space using an emperor’s magic mirror.” Von Manstein paused expectantly. The major shook his head apologetically.“My apologies, Herr General, I’m afraid I don’t understand.”“Lewis Carroll…Alice in Wonderland,” amusement tugged at the corners of Von Manstein’s mouth. “An English schoolgirl chases a white rabbit down a rabbit hole. On the other side of the rabbit hole is a world of fantasy and nonsense.”“What does it mean, Herr General?”Von Manstein tapped his chin thoughtfully, “It could mean something, but more than likely I think this English spy is trying to keep the Abwehr and Gestapo up at night by feeding them nonsense that sounds meaningful.” If circumstances are different, It would almost be funny.He read on, then stopped. He read the line. Then he read it again. Then the line six more times: blauen skin und rote augen… “Blue skin and red eyes…” Saying it out loud made it sound even more absurd than simply reading it.Von Manstein looked at his watch and silently swore to himself. 2:30 am. He then looked at the major. The man was obviously too cautious to throw away his career on a practical joke in such poor taste. Both Guderian and his nervous aide obviously thought that the spy merited his attention. However, compared to how absurd Von Manstein’s world had become since 1918, a blue skinned, red-eyed man was within the realm of normal. Besides, Von Manstein faintly remembered a corporal serving in Von Manstein’s 4th Cavalry Division that had adopted a red-eyed albino rat. He was faintly aware that albinism, while uncommon, also manifested in people. It was possible.“Let’s see him,” Von Manstein resolved.Darting down a hallway and to an antechamber, Von Manstein and the major stopped in front of yet another reinforced door guarded by two sentries. The major nodded and they opened the door. Darkness enveloped them as the door creaked opened.Von Manstein nearly ducked. At the back of the room, two red orbs blazed to life. Von Manstein was briefly taken back to the blood-red flares that were fired by assaulting infantry battalions during a night attack. They were the harbingers of death and battle.Von Manstein walked in. “Good morning, general. Good to see you again, major,” a voice rumbled from the back of the room. It was, he thought, the strangest voice that Von Manstein had ever heard. The German vocabulary was structurally correct, but the tone was heavily accented. Von Manstein thought it sounded like heavily-accented Danish, but that scarcely did it justice. However, for all its imperfections in tone and cadence, it still radiated confidence. Von Manstein recognized that voice, for it was a voice that he himself had perfected over many years.This man is not a spy, Von Manstein thought to himself, he is a commander.The two sentries took up station on the other side of the door. Von Manstein noticed that the major stood close to the sentries and did not advance into the room. A light switch was flicked, and suddenly the red orbs had a face. A blue one. The figure sat cross-legged on a pull-out bed extended from the wall. The figure sat and waited.Von Manstein noticed that the major hung back with the sentries, and Von Manstein moved to the center of the room alone. “Good evening, Alice.”The figure mouthed the name before repeating it back: “Al-ee-iz?” The eyes then widen in understanding. “While I confess that the protagonist and I are both afflicted by curiosity, the similarities end there. The question is whether you are the Cheshire Cat or the Jabberwocky.”A rather roundabout way to ask ‘are you going to kill me?’ Von Mainstein thought. “That depends. What White Rabbit do you pursue?”“What every thinking being pursues: understanding.”“Was there anything in particular you were trying to understand when you were captured?”“Yes. I was observing a squad of six French scouts probing near Sarreguemines for defensive weaknesses. After successfully infiltrating, they managed to proceed four kilometers into German territory. The French sergeant decided to establish an observation post at a nearby religious center. A mistake.”Von Manstein prompted the being to continue. His facial expression seemed to express emotions couldn’t quite fathom. Regret? Incredulity?“After discovering the gap in German defenses, the sergeant should have immediately returned with that strategically important information. Instead, the scouting party advanced further based on the chance of obtaining information of mere tactical importance. Approximately one hour and forty-five minutes after crossing the German border they were spotted and were intercepted by an infantry squad. Another mistake.”“A mistake to intercept scouts?” Von Manstein challenged.“On the contrary, it was a mistake for such a small force to pursue on foot. The lieutenant commanding the squad was competent and efficient. He ordered his squad’s automatic projectile weapon to fire in order to force the scouting party to find cover. Then his riflemen made good use of the terrain to attack the scouting party’s flanks simultaneously. It was an extremely complicated maneuver to execute under fire.”“You are impressed?” Von Manstein asked in amusement.“With the soldiers, yes. That maneuver a level of initiative from individual soldiers that is difficult to expect without extensive training. The lieutenant’s performance was merely mediocre.”“You mentioned a mistake…”The being nodded, “The lieutenant saw the scouting party as a threat rather than an opportunity. A squad that well-trained could have no-doubt encircled the scouting party and taken them captive. Valuable intelligence was certainly lost.”“Lost? I don’ think so. We have you after all…” he looked at intake forms to find the being’s name: “Meet-Rown-Narooudoo.”“Mitth’raw’nuruodo, but I believe you will find it easier for us both if you address me by my core name, Thrawn. And I agree that you have me, but I believe you will find me less useful than the scouting party.”“We shall see,” Von Manstein said in a suddenly harsh tone. Thrawn didn’t seem to take notice.“I recommend that the lieutenant be decorated for his valor, but I also advise against promoting him higher than captain. His energy is not matched by insight.”Von Manstein found himself agreeing with Thrawn. The Prussian military tradition that formed the iron heart of the German Army had two archetypal leaders that appeared again and again throughout Germany’s history: Blücher and Gneisenau. Blücher was a hard-fighting, hard-charging, possibly illiterate muddy-boots general —a type of commander that would attack first and ask questions later. These commanders tended to be energetic and popular, but also made many mistakes. When those mistakes were made, Gneisenau would step in. Gneisenaus were cold, aloof, intellectual, and cultured. To Gneisenau, war was less a matter of sabers and bullets but of railway timetables and mobilization orders. However, the one complimented the other. While Von Manstein had seen his share of fighting, he was squarely in the Gneisenau tradition. His brilliance as a staff officer had saved him from the almost apocalyptic downsizing that occurred in the officer corps after the last war. And as a “Gneisenau,” he also realized that Thrawn had given him an opening.“Write that down, major,” Von Manstein said as he nodded in agreement with Thrawn’s assessment. The…creature, for lack of a better term, did possess a degree of military competence. Manstein wanted to test to see how far that went, and how much Thrawn would divulge. “I agree with your assessment. Now, I am curious as to what your assessment is of the plan.”Thrawn raised an eyebrow. “Plan?”“The one the Lieutenant Hartmann found when he captured you. The one detailing a proposed invasion of France and the Low Countries.”“It is true that I had some maps in my possession in various stages of completion. I will admit that when the lieutenant mistakenly assumed that I was an artillery spotter, the maps certainly did not help my denials. But my plan is simply the only logical solution to Germany’s military predicament. My only interest is I will be interested to see how accurate my predictions are.”Von Manstein paused and replayed the words “my plan” in his head. Awkward silence followed.“Is that particular plan of importance to you?” Thrawn askedVon Manstein paused, and he wondered if this Thrawn could hear the faint tone of possessiveness in his voice. He wasn’t sure how much to divulge. Von Manstein had little experience in interrogations, much less interrogating spies. However, given how much Thrawn had already divulged, Von Manstein had already concluded that if Thrawn was a spy he was probably a terrible one. A good general knew when to gamble, and so Von Manstein did.“That was my plan.”Thrawn nodded in salute. “You have my compliments.”“And you would have mine… except for the fact that you were captured less than forty-eight hours after I presented this exact plan.” Von Manstein’s narrowed eyes met Thrawn’s.“You are worried I might be a spy.”Von Manstein held his gaze, “Wouldn’t you in my situation?”Thrawn seemed to consider this for a moment. “No. If that is indeed the plan chosen by your high command for the upcoming campaign, then divulging my knowledge of its existence would merely guarantee my own execution.”Von Manstein cocked an eyebrow, “Are you suggesting that we execute you?”“If you think I am a spy, then yes. However, it is clear that you do not.”A handful of moments passed, “Explain.”Thrawn shrugged, “If you believed I was a spy, I would be interrogated by your intelligence services rather than by a senior staff officer.”Former senior staff officer, Von Manstein thought bitterly. When the campaign against Poland drew to a close, Von Manstein opened up another front against General Franz Halder and the complacency within the General Staff. Their arrogance and laziness was unthinkable! Old Count von Schlieffen’s right hook through Belgium was daring enough in 1914 when the German Army stood as a colossus on the European Continent. But despite over two decades of study and soul searching, the professional head of the German Army – the symbol of nearly three centuries of Prussian military excellence – decided that he would obtain victory by repeating the exact same mistakes as their fathers and grandfathers had in 1914. Halder would have led an army that was smaller, less trained, and less motivated than the one that had fought the last war to its grave. And for pointing out the obvious, Von Manstein had been demoted and effectively exiled to Stettin. Stettin! He might as well have been transferred to advise Chiang’s armies in China – at least there he could see some action. But the fact that he had dedicated the last twenty years of his life to prepare for the chance to restore his Fatherland only to be cast out when the moment arrived still cut deep.Von Manstein forced down the bitterness as Thrawn continued.“Additionally,” Thrawn added with a wry smile, “Consider that a being such as myself…” he gestured to his blue visage, “is hardly suited to perform an extended espionage mission.”Von Manstein considered this for a moment. “There’s only one way to find out. Explain my plan to me.”“For what purpose?”“If you are a ‘warrior,’ as you say, you will be able to explain my thought process and my reasoning. Then we will see if you are really a soldier or,” he trailed off and looked back at the major who still had a hand hovering near his sidearm, “… a dead man.”Thrawn shrugs, “The explanation is that it is the only plan possible.”“There are no others?”“None that offer victory.”Von Manstein grimaced, “You overestimate your powers of flattery.”Thrawn’s features tightened, “And you underestimate my commitment to honesty.”“Then assess the other alternatives.”“You must attack, that much is clear.”“Is it clear?”“Certainly. This ‘Breetish’ Empire and French Republic have the potential to easily out produce Germany. Within less than a year, they will achieve decisive superiority in the production of armaments. Germany’s manpower problems are even worse. Both countries have colonial populations that may be utilized for military purposes. The British alone have a population of nearly half a billion. Even taking into account occupied territories, Germany’s manpower reservoir is less than ninety million.”“What of the possession of interior lines?”Thrawn paused, as if chewing on the words. “I know no such phrase. Are you referring to the defensive and logistical advantages enjoyed by Germany’s strategic position?” Von Manstein nodded and prompted Thrawn to continue, “A defensive campaign would guarantee success in battles…while also guaranteeing inevitable defeat in the war. It would result in a war of attrition…a war that Germany is destined to lose.”“So how do we attack?”“You cannot attack across your Rhine River. The cost in manpower and materiel would be catastrophic, and the benefits minimal—especially when accounting for the French Maginot defenses which are considerable. The purposes of such a defense are to force you to attack through the Low Countries.”“Why do the French want us to attack the Low Countries?”“It offers a narrow front with little room for maneuver. It would naturally devolve into a war of attrition which would inevitably lead to a French and British victory.”“But, for all that, you still plan to attack the Low Countries. Why?”“Because even the most intelligent beings fall victim to confirmation bias. By attacking the Low Countries at all, the French and British are comforted in having their expectations confirmed. Their reactions then become automatic and reflexive. French and British reinforcements are then rushed to the front lines to relieve the defenders.”“And then the real attack begins.”“Yes,” Thrawn confirmed.“Why the Ardennes?”“All beings fear the unknown,” Thrawn said casually. “It is clear that neither the British of French believe that the Ardennes Forest can be penetrated by armored forces of significant size. The plan gives your adversaries the illusion of the known, only to replace it with that which could never be imagined. Panic seeps into the high command and the political leadership and then trickles downwards.”“Then what?”“It is obvious. The fall of Paris and capitulation.”Von Manstein narrowed his eyes in suspicion, “How can you be sure that the French will capitulate?”“I cannot be sure. Based upon my knowledge of French art that Paris is an essential component of French nationhood.” Von Manstein’s eyes widened in confusion. Military conclusions based on French art? Thrawn continued. “Additionally, the fact that the vast majority of French manufacturing is found in Northeastern France means that the French will exhaust their ability to offer resistance.”Von Manstein couldn’t help but feel cynical. Officers of his father’s generation had said the same thing about the French after the capture of Napoleon in Northeastern France. The war was eventually won, but not before the cry of franc tireur became the phrase every Germany soldier heard in their worst nightmares.“What of the British?” Von Manstein asked.“A political question that can only be answered by politicians.”“But is not war politics by other means?” Von Manstein countered, reciting the oft-quoted and just as often misunderstand aphorism from Carl von Clausewitz.“Perhaps. Are you asking what I would do?”It was almost 3:00 in the morning, and Von Manstein wanted nothing more than to get a few hours of sleep. But despite himself, he realized that he was in fact asking what Thrawn would do. Von Manstein nodded.“Then I would immediately halt hostilities, evacuate German forces from France and the Low Countries, and sign a peace treaty.”“Such a peace treaty would be politically impossible, and to the German people morally indefensible. What are your reasons?”“France will have no choice, and its people will be pleased to escape calamity with its borders and population intact.”“Obviously. But I asked about Britain.” Von Manstein said with a touch of impatience.“Chamberlain is associated with appeasement and Munich. His inclination will be to symbolically resist Germany as long as he can. However, he understands that it will take years to mobilize a large enough ground force to seriously challenge Germany. If the British Army in France is captured as a vouchsafe, I predict Chamberlain will capitulate.”“That assumes Chamberlain stays in power. What if Chamberlain’s entire government capitulates. Democracies can be as fickle as they are weak.”Thrawn considered this. “That does alter the timetable, but not the overall result. It’s unlikely that a collapse in Chamberlain’s government would lead to a General Election. Therefore, the King would probably call on one of three individuals to lead the government: Clement Attlee, Lord Halifax, and Winston Churchill. Attlee doesn’t have enough support in Parliament to create a majority. Halifax, who would be your preferred choice, is too associated with appeasement. The likely choice would be Winston Churchill.”Von Manstein grimaced, “A drunken hardliner.”“Perhaps,” Thrawn mused. “But a romantic more than anything. Have you had an opportunity to study Churchill’s art?”Von Manstein’s eyes bulged in incredulity as he shook his head in the negative. “Why would I study the art of a British politician?”“Do you study an enemy’s mobilization charts and maps?”“This conversation suggests that we do.” Von Manstein countered.“Because in understanding them, you can outmaneuver them. Art provides a map of an adversary’s mind. Art also forces people to be honest in a way that words do not.” Von Manstein puzzled over this, but Thrawn continued without missing a beat. “Churchill’s paintings are pastoral landscapes that suggest nostalgia with England’s medieval past. However, his paintings also are extremely melancholic and emotive. Dark pools of water and shadows over pristine landscape suggest a note of helplessness to stop entropic decay, and yet a resolve to attempt to do so anyway. My conclusion is that he will not sue for terms.”“But you do think that Churchill will remain in power, do you?”Thrawn shook his head slowly, “If the parole of the British Army is contingent on peace, then the House of Commons will force him to sign. If that does not, then Germany will have to endure two or three years of impotent attacks before they seek terms.”“Britain held out against Napoleon for decades.” Von Manstein replied skeptically.“But Napoleon never threatened Britain with aerial siege warfare. Your world has grown smaller in a century. Besides, Britain did not lose an entire generation at Waterloo. It did at the Somme.”“Why such generosity towards the British and the French?”Thrawn shrugged. “You will need their support to defeat Germany’s main geopolitical foe.”“Which is?”“The Soviet Union, obviously.”Von Manstein snorted derisively, “You really think that the French are going to give their blessing as we fight a land war against Russia?”“They will give blessings, as well as more tangible benefits.” Thrawn said.“Why?”“The answer is simple. Germany is a strategic threat because it seeks to revise the terms of the Treaty of Versailles. While that makes Germany a threat to Great Britain and France, it does not make Germany an existential one. This Soviet Union however embraces the doctrine of worldwide communist revolution. Germany is only at strategic cross-purposes with those countries that opposed it in the last war. The Soviet Union is theoretically at cross-purposes with all non-communist states on the planet.”“What of the non-aggression pact that the Führer signed with them?”“Have you read your Führer’s manifesto?” Thrawn asked.Von Manstein winced at the memory. “Yes, I have.”“Then you must know that he has identified the Soviet Union as Germany’s chief strategic threat. His reasoning for doing so is deeply flawed, but his conclusion happens to be correct. Militarily, the Soviet Union is already the most powerful state in Europe -- and it has only begun to industrialize.”Von Manstein sneered, “And yet it can’t even invade Finland.”“Do you think that is a representative example of its military capabilities?” Thrawn asked skeptically.“Yes, because the rot in the system itself. The ‘Red Army’ isn’t red so much from its revolutionary zeal as much for the thousands of officers executed in the purges. The Red Army is a muscular, but braindead, army.”“Perhaps,” Thrawn said after a few moments. “For the next two or three years, at least. But when the Red Army is reorganized, it will – to draw on your analogy – have both the muscle and the brains to overwhelm the German Army. Their manpower pool is superior, their resources endless, and they have a decisive advantage numerically and in some cases qualitatively in armor, artillery, and aircraft. But more importantly, they have a military doctrine that is far superior to that of the German Army’s.”“I doubt that. Our results in Poland, and their results in Finland, provide enough of a verdict for the superiority of doctrine.”Thrawn inclined his head slightly. “In reading your history, the only meaningful difference I can find between Germany’s doctrine in the recent Polish campaign and the wars of unification is the existence of the internal combustion engine. Germany’s armies are going to war to fix an enemy in place, and to destroy them with mass-encirclements.”“Do you dispute our successes in 1866 and 1871?”Thrawn held up his hands in contrition, “Not at all. I merely point out the historical fact that German doctrine has always revolved around individual battles and campaigns – not wars.”Von Manstein sniffed. “Our doctrine has always been to empower our generals and officers. They are the best in the world. Everyone from Lieutenant Hartmann to General Guderian is prepared to assume command at a moment’s notice. Our doctrine is initiative.”“And as I said, energy is nothing without insight. Your General Guderian was tactically effective, but overextended himself to such a degree that he occupied the city of Brest-Litovsk – a city that, if I am not mistaken – was designated for Soviet occupation.”Von Manstein eyed Thrawn suspiciously before he continued. “Such occupation was not only needless, it may easily have precipitated war between Germany and the Soviet Union. A warrior needs to have the trust of his leaders, but an unfettered warrior will eventually become a warlord.”Von Manstein sneered, “On the other hand, in the Soviet Union there are no warlords or warriors. They’re all dead.”“Perhaps. However, ‘Deep Operations,”’ as it is called, is a doctrine concerned less with winning singular battles, but more with winning wars. The German Army can force France to capitulate, because all it needs to do is to win a battle. Against the Soviet Union, you could win all the battles and still lose the war.”Operation Bagration: Soviet Deep Operations in action.This was the scenario that kept Von Manstein up at night. The myth of the Russian steamroller kept the generals of the last war up at night, and despite the Führer’s belief in German racial superiority, Von Manstein was forced by his training to be pragmatic. Thrawn was right, and Von Manstein knew it. He had long felt that the army was unready to fight the British and the French, much less the Soviet Union. And now there was a possibility of fighting all three at once. Von Manstein shook his head.“If that is all true, why do you propose fighting a war that you think we are destined to lose?”“Because while Germany is destined to lose it, Germany at the head of an anti-communist alliance will emerge victorious. Every non-communist state in Europe has an interest in containing communism as a geopolitical and domestic threat. Germany does not need to be loved – simply hated less than the Soviet Union.”“Assuming that the Führer has a strategic objective other than revenge.” Von Manstein said, almost more to himself than to Thrawn.“Revenge?” Thrawn queried.“Against the British and the French. His popularity is based on giving voice to the resentment the German people felt after the betrayal of 1918.”“But…” Thrawn’s face was contorted with a mixture of bewilderment and revulsion. “Revenge is not a means to an end; the means is the end. And a foolish end at that. Do you sympathize with those wishes?”“Are you asking me as a German or as a strategist?”“Which role is more important to your country?”“Then,” Von Manstein paused thoughtfully. “as much as revenge seems the logical and necessary consequence of the humiliation suffered at Versailles, reasons of state take precedence.”“And what if your Führer disagrees?”Von Manstein looked to the wide-eyed major and the two sentries. In that moment, he felt drained of all energy. His body told him that the exhaustion was due to it being four hours past midnight. But his heart and mind said that it was because of nearly four decades of military service – and he felt every second of it.“Prussian Field Marshals do not mutiny.”“Perhaps,” Thrawn said.My apologies for the length, but this was ridiculously fun to write. For some reason, I felt that I could better simulate Thrawn’s thinking and analysis if it was in some kind of narrative. As to why he seems to know so much about Earth history, my assumption is that the Force mirrors naturally display cosmic crosspoints. My assumption is that he arrived on Earth right around the time period of the Munich Conference. This is just enough time for Thrawn to develop a general, though incomplete, understanding of Earth history and culture, but not quite enough time for him to integrate.I am also writing this Thrawn as an amalgamation of both the Legends and Canon Thrawn. Legends Thrawn is more villainous, but also appears to be a better strategist. For some annoying reason, Canon Thrawn’s weakness seems to be ignorance/ambivalence to politics. Clausewitz and Canon Thrawn would not get along. However, Canon Thrawn has a more distinctive voice — especially since Timothy Zahn has written more than a few Thrawn novels from the character’s perspective. I suppose that this Thrawn has the brain from Legends, but the voice of Canon.If I have time, I will update this later. I plan to address:—Thrawn’s thoughts on the Waffen SS as requested by the questioner (spoiler: he’s not a fan).—Thrawn’s analysis of Hitler’s art (that is actually the first scene I imagined in the story).—Von Manstein gets an opportunity to do something more than ask questions.—Von Manstein and Thrawn play chess.—Thrawn analyzes the Wehrmacht’s chances against the United States.I wanted to add more, but I am publishing this now before the semester begins as I do not know when I will have another opportunity to work on it.

(UN Photo)Meet Dr. Robert Kweku Atta Gardiner, Ghanaian civil servant and international diplomat. He was renowned in his time as a “respected statesman” and “world-class economist”, but since his death he seems to have been very much forgotten by history.Gardiner was born in 1914 in Kumasi, Gold Coast into a family of successful merchants. Though his father died when he was only 2 years old, his mother managed to provide all of her children quality educations. This eventually brought him to the United Kingdom, where he joined the West African Students’ Union. He assumed leadership of its “study group”, which met fortnightly to discuss global affairs in relation to the African continent. Throughout World War II he frequently discussed the relevance of the conflict to Africa (at a time when other prominent blacks dismissed the event as a European problem) and stressed the importance of the continent’s military preparedness.In 1943 Gardiner took his first professorship at Fourah Bay College-an alma mater for him-in Sierra Leone, specializing in economics. After a brief stint as an area specialist for the United Nations Trusteeship Council, he was given his first true chance to shine when he accepted a professorship at University College in Ibadan, Nigeria. The institution tasked him with establishing a new Department of Extramural Studies. Pushing against constraining university policy, Gardiner employed an exploratory strategy which saw the promotion of education in the countryside, experimental use of film, and traveling lectures. In 1952 an official visitation declared the department to be an astounding success. Rural education would remain a key concern of his throughout the rest of his career.The following year Gardiner accepted a request to return to the Gold Coast and become the Director of the Department of Social Welfare and Community in the colonial administration. While there he re-orientated the division’s priorities away from providing a safety net to the elderly towards establishing vocational schools and community centers to promote self-sufficiency. In 1955 for reasons unapparent he was transferred to the Ministry of Housing as Permanent Secretary. In 1957 the Gold Coast became Ghana, the first independent state in Africa (Liberia and Ethiopia aside). An interview with a journalist from the time about Africanising the civil service is revealing about his pragmatic approach towards administration:(Transatlantic Teleview still)Robert Mackenzie: “What’s your policy for the future? Do you hope to Africanise the civil service completely?”Gardiner: “Well, we don’t expect any sudden alteration in the trends already established. Some of the European members of the civil service have indicated their intention to leave, some have already left, and others have thrown in their lot with us. We don’t intend to build a service based exclusively on race. I hope we shall be reasonable enough always to seek the services of men wherever we can find them. But, the University College of the Gold Coast and the College of Technology are stepping up their program and we shall have most of our men coming from there, naturally.”But Gardiner did not stay in the Ministry of Housing for much longer. Prime Minister Kwame Nkrumah asked him to become Establishment Secretary (essentially, head of the entire civil service).(Kwame Nkrumah, US Government photo)Kwame Nkrumah is a man much more famous than Gardiner, for several reasons. Among them, he was a Marxist-inspired socialist, an uncompromising Pan-Africanist, and stubbornly idealistic.Gardiner was just about everything but. He despised George Padmore and his influence on Nkrumah (saying as one author puts it, “he had one idea and that it [socialism] was the wrong one”), his Pan-Africanism was patient and subtle, and he was a pragmatist rather than an idealist. Observers state that it was more the personality differences than the political ones that made things so tense between the two.One incident in particular however, best exemplifies the differences between the two. When Ghana became independent, it took over the Gold Coast’s holdings in several West African financial organisations established by the British so they could coordinate the economic activities and development of their colonies in the region. As Nigeria, the Gambia, and Sierra Leone were still colonies, the United Kingdom still had ultimate control over their assets and economies. In Ghana, there were concerns that the UK would manipulate finances so as to maintain control over the new nation’s economy. To alleviate these concerns, Gardiner, in his position as Establishment Secretary, drafted a detailed plan that upon ratification would allow Ghana full control over its assets in other West African states, free from British control. He thought that the regional financial organisations could be used as a basis for further integrating and growing African economies.Nkrumah was not so easily assured. He did not trust the British to honour such a protocol. Furthermore, he opposed Gardiner’s “regionalism”, which he thought would become such an end in itself that it would distract from the larger Pan-African ideal of a united continent. He withdrew Ghana’s capital from the organisations, and caused some bitterness and confusion when he ordered the other West African states to withdraw their assets from Ghana.In this way it is a shame that Nkrumah is honoured so often today and yet Gardiner is not. The former, for all his vision and idealism, never managed to promote a Pan-African doctrine that produced much tangible success. Had more emphasis in the continent been placed on Gardiner’s functional approach early on there might be less trade barriers throughout the African continent today.There’s one more event during Gardiner’s tenure as Establishment Secretary that’s worthy of mention. He was on occasion accused of being more of a bureaucrat than anything else. Nothing better exemplifies this than when in 1959 he dismissed his sister from her senior nursing position for an unexcused leave of absence. He later told The New York Times, "I had no choice. Her action was clearly contrary to the regulations."Gardiner was dismissed by Nkrumah later that year without explanation. Both men adamantly denied that politics had anything to do with it. In May Gardiner accepted his nomination as Deputy Executive Secretary of the UN Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA). By taking this “out” he neutralised his political standing in Ghana, but hurt his reputation in Africa. The UN was still seen as something of an outsider in the continent, and several countries were suspicious of that fact that Gardiner had appeared to have severed ties with Nkrumah, a man widely viewed as a nationalist hero.He had little time to take up his work however; shortly after relocating to UNECA’s headquarters in Addis Ababa, the newly-independent Republic of the Congo plunged into crisis and civil war. The Security Council established the UN Operation in the Congo (known by its French acronym as ONUC) and in August 1960 Gardiner was dispatched to the country to try and rebuild its civil service. In November he returned to his post at UNECA. Though he was later made Director of the Public Administration Division of the UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs, he spent most of the next few years advising the Secretariat on Congolese affairs and acting as a key negotiator in the continent himself. As one Associated Press report best put it:“Gardiner the African rather than Gardiner the international civil servant politicks with the best of the Congolese when they start playing politics. He has shown an understanding of the endless rounds of talk that precede any major decision in Africa.”(Robert Gardiner, 2nd from the left, in Leopoldville with Congolese officials. UN Photo.)In this role he managed to facilitate the reconvening of the Congolese Parliament, secure a ceasefire between UN Peacekeepers and secessionist troops of the so-declared State of Katanga, and hammer out an agreement between Congolese Prime Minister Cyrille Adoula and Katangese President Moise Tshombe. It was only natural that in January 1962 Gardiner was appointed Officer-in-Charge of ONUC. Over time it became more and more apparent that Tshombe was resisting attempts to reconcile with Adoula and return Katanga to central government control. He reportedly threatened to resign if he was not allowed to be more firm with Tshombe. In December, following four days of unprovoked attacks by Katangese forces, UN Peacekeepers launched an offensive to once-and-for-all assert their authority and eliminate armed opposition. The operation proceeded well, and Gardiner somewhat out-of-character told the press, “We are not going to make the mistake of stopping short this time. This is going to be as decisive as we can make it.” Later, when without explicit authorization from the Secretariat UN troops crossed the Lufira River unexpectedly and routed Katangese forces, Gardiner was rumored to have been responsible. With Katanga out of the picture, the situation in the Congo deescalated and he vacated his post on 1 May 1963. A Kenyan newspaper recommended that he be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for his service.Gardiner returned to Addis Ababa, this time to assume his duties as Executive Secretary of UNECA (he had actually been promoted in January 1962, but had been preoccupied with the Congo). UNECA was still very much in its infancy and dominated by its Western creators. As an economist, Gardiner wanted data he could analyse. This was incredibly lacking, in part because Africa had few experts who could collect such information. In order to rectify this problem, he established three paths for expert education:FellowshipsWorkshops and seminarsFormal training at institutionsBy 1968 a total of 1,600 professionals had been trained, and a few hundred more were well on the way. Those not employed by UNECA found work in their own respective countries, greatly improving Africa’s domestic demographic and statistical services. He also used his position to promote African financial and economic organisation and self-sufficiency. He stated that African development plans too often relied on foreign aid, which should be secondary to local efforts. Gardiner also took particular concern in improving rural education and health services and sought to increase the flow of commerce within the continent by removing trade barriers and economic interaction with the rest of the world. Among his more “radical” positions was support of land reform.During his tenure he engaged himself in plenty of other activities, too innumerable to list here. But in 1965 BBC Radio approached him to deliver their annual prestigious Reith Lectures. Gardiner was the first African to be given such an offer. He surprised most of the UK by using the occasion to discuss racism. Here’s an excerpt from a book he published the following year based on his broadcasts:"Here we come, I think, to the crux of the misunderstanding that has led to so much rancour and so much bloodshed. For it has been the conviction — conscious and unconscious — of many colonizing powers that on the other side of the confrontation there is nothing. Too often have they failed to recognize that even the poorest people, even those whose way of existence is evidence of a complete inability to meet the challenge that nature poses to man, even people such as these can have their own dignity and can be jealous of it."Gardiner was later one of the original sponsors of Minority Rights Group International. In spite of such beliefs, he advocated that Africa take a “pragmatic” approach towards the white supremacist regime of South Africa. It would benefit no country in such a vulnerable continent to shun their most industrialised and economically developed member, he thought.When Nkrumah was deposed via military coup in 1966, Gardiner was reportedly pleased, as a troublesome economic policy had put strain on Ghana’s food supply. In 1969 Prime Minister Kofi Busia attempted to bring Gardiner back to the country to “groom” him for the presidency. Gardiner had even submitted a letter of resignation to UN Secretary-General U Thant when he was informed that the Ghanaian government wished for him to remain at his post. A group of ministers opposed to a Gardiner presidency had won out over Busia. When Thant retired in 1971, there were even talks that Gardiner would succeed him. Without a a doubt he would’ve made a fine Secretary-General, but that honour wouldn’t be bestowed on a Ghanaian until 1997.(UN Photo)In 1975 Gardiner retired from UNECA and returned to Ghana. Another military coup had deposed Busia and installed a Supreme Military Council to govern the country. Gardiner had been critical when it arrested two journalists for unfavorable reporting. Nevertheless, he joined the regime as Commissioner for Economic Planning. A civilian and an expert economist, his appointment brought some hope to observers that Ghana’s situation could be improved.But the challenges facing Gardiner were large. He hoped increased industrialization and productivity would right the economy by increasing employment and reducing the trade deficit, but these things were never really achieved. In one final, vain attempt to preserve regional integration he went to Nairobi in 1977 to try and rescue the struggling East African Railways and Harbours Corporation. Unfortunately Kenya, Uganda, and Tanzania weren’t exactly getting along at that time and the company dissolved into three national organisations. In perhaps his last act of honor, he applied himself personally in an anti-corruption campaign to curtail embezzlement of foreign aid. He resigned in May 1978, his reputation tarnished. He claimed that ill health had forced him into retirement, but he probably did it to sever his ties with the struggling government and economy. Gardiner then engaged himself in various academic capacities until his actually declining health forced him to really retire. He died in 1994.Aside from the occasional passing mention in a speech or editorial, little has been said about Gardiner since his passing. But if his idea of economic development had been more largely accepted, or perhaps if he had reached the Ghanaian Presidency or UN Secretariat, there’s little doubt that his greatness would be honoured. In the words of historian Marika Sherwood, he truly was “an unrecognised Ghanaian Pan-Africanist Par-Excellence”.

Q. How was corruption in the Republic of Vietnam?A. Four takes on corruption.Foreign Policy and the Complexities of Corruption: the Case of South Vietnam. The State Department historian looks back at the relationship between the United States and South Vietnam during the Vietnam War years, assessing the impact that tolerance of corruption in diplomatic partners can have on outcomes.Bribes, Corruption and Lost Wars actually makes a lot of sense, and I can attest to the accuracy.A Failure of Leadership in South Vietnam is a new book from a counterinsurgency official.Vietnam 40 years on: how a communist victory gave way to capitalist corruption is another long read from the Guardian, looking back at the revolution and the current state of corruption with a new term “Red Capitalists”.Vietnam is by no means a basket case. Its recovery from war is close to miraculous, particularly in cutting back poverty while developed nations such as the UK were increasing it. But the reality now is that it has ended up with the worst of two systems: the authoritarian socialist state and the unfettered ideology of neoliberalism; the two combining to strip Vietnam’s people of their money and their rights while a tiny elite fills its pockets and hides behind the rhetoric of the revolution. That, finally, is the biggest lie of all. Victorious in war but defeated in peace, the claim by Vietnam’s leaders to be socialist looks like empty propaganda. In the words of one former guerrilla who risked his life for this: “They are red capitalists.””We traded millions of lives for independence and equality. I imagined corruption would end after the war, but it didn’t.”FOREIGN POLICY AND THE COMPLEXITIES OF CORRUPTION: THE CASE OF SOUTH VIETNAMTHE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL > JUNE 2016BY STEPHEN RANDOLPHAs illustrated in other articles in this issue of The Foreign Service Journal, the U.S. government recognizes corruption as a major issue, prevalent around the world, with a range of damaging forms and effects. While details vary locally and over time, the dynamics of corruption, the problems that follow in its wake, and the difficulties in addressing it have broad continuity over time, and so a historical case study can offer perspectives that remain useful today.In the aftermath of the fall of Saigon in April 1975, thousands of South Vietnamese fled to the United States, including many senior civilian and military leaders. Seeking to capture their stories and analyses “before memories faded and before mythology replaced history,” the RAND Corporation, which had been deeply involved in the war since its inception, assembled a small team to interview these senior leaders as quickly as possible on their arrival in the United States, focusing on the causes of South Vietnam’s sudden and catastrophic collapse.Respondents included 23 military leaders and four from the government. These leaders attributed the fall of South Vietnam to a series of linked causes, the most fundamental of which was, in their view, “pervasive corruption, which led to the rise of incompetent leaders, destroyed army morale, and created a vast gulf of social injustice and popular antipathy.” They considered corruption the “fundamental ill” within South Vietnam’s body politic, manifesting itself in four ways: racketeering; bribery; buying and selling important positions and appointments; and pocketing the pay of “ghost soldiers,” whose names were carried on the duty roster but were either nonexistent or who paid their commanders to be released from duty.As one commander put it, the pervasive corruption “created a sense of social injustice” by creating “a small elite which held all the power and wealth, and a majority of middle-class people and peasants who became poorer and poorer and who suffered all the sacrifices.”Evolution of a “Fundamental Ill”This summary would have surprised few Americans who served in Indochina or dealt with the war at the policy level. Throughout the 21 years of decisive American engagement with South Vietnam, from the time of Ngo Dinh Diem until the fall of Saigon, corruption was invariably and routinely identified as a pervasive issue in the country, one with corrosive effects in every aspect of the state and society.In September 1954, during the first days of America’s involvement, a Special National Intelligence Estimate opened with an offhand reference to Premier Diem’s struggles with “the usual problems of inefficiency, disunity and corruption in Vietnamese politics.” Two decades later, just weeks before the North Vietnamese attack that would overwhelm South Vietnam, Senator Dewey Bartlett (R-Okla.), returning from a fact-finding mission, reported to President Gerald Ford in March 1975: “Corruption should be ferreted out, there should be freedom of the press and proper use of the courts and police. This will help them to develop their resolve and will strengthen their capability to develop in peace.” Along with its deadly effects within South Vietnam, the readily visible corruption provided an easy and unanswerable point of attack for opponents of the war in the United States, and a ready justification for Congress’s reluctance to support this American ally.Corruption in South Vietnam was invariably and routinely identified as a pervasive issue in the country, one with corrosive effects in every aspect of the state and society.Why, then, did this phenomenon persist, and even grow progressively more egregious over time? The basic conditions were set at South Vietnam’s birth in 1954, when the country emerged suddenly from its colonial past. With very few competent civil servants, with no functioning political system or tradition of democracy or transparency in government and with deep divides across religious, regional, ethnic and class lines, the new government built a military establishment from scratch. Few expected the state to last more than a couple of years. With the advent of active insurgency, the government of the Republic of Vietnam faced a deadly and immediate challenge that absorbed all of its attention.The massive intervention of American forces that followed within a decade added to the challenge in fundamental ways by infusing vast amounts of money and resources into South Vietnam and conducting military operations that created massive turmoil and dislocation across the country. As the nation moved from crisis to crisis, hampered by a sclerotic and limited government bureaucracy, corruption was always an issue to address later.At the same time, as U.S. involvement grew during the mid-1960s, American advisers were brought in who considered action against the corruption that had grown with the American investment in the nation to be an integral element of the war for “hearts and minds,” and therefore an essential component of pacification and a high priority for action. There were, however, serious obstacles to taking decisive action, reflecting the basic nature of the U.S. relationship with South Vietnam.Anti-Corruption Efforts StymiedThe most vigorous and sustained attempt by the United States to effect change in this area occurred in late 1967, as “Blowtorch” Bob Komer established the Civil Operations and Revolutionary Development Support program, known as CORDS. Recognizing President Nguyen Van Thieu’s long-standing caution in attacking corruption, Komer sought leverage that the Americans could use to encourage a more aggressive approach to the problem.Embassy Saigon’s Minister-Counselor for Political Affairs John A. Calhoun noted a fundamental problem with Komer’s approach: it “entails an invasion of the sovereignty of the Republic of Viet-Nam so great that it could and would be argued thereafter that the United States is indeed the neo-colonialist power its critics and enemies allege it to be. … I believe that the more representative government which is emerging in Viet-Nam must be the vehicle for eliminating the social evils which beset the people. I do not think we can or should do this job for them.”The issue came down to the relationship of the United States to South Vietnam. There was a basic tension, never resolved, between helping the South Vietnamese and compelling them to accept American solutions. Or as a CIA analysis later summarized the conflict in American objectives: “The GVN [Vietnam Government] must be invigorated and reformed, and the peasantry must be won over to the government side, but all of this must be done without disturbing the political, social and economic structure bequeathed by the French colonial regime.” Put another way, corruption was not incidental to the political system of South Vietnam; it was an integral and defining characteristic of that system.There was a basic tension, never resolved, between helping the South Vietnamese and compelling them to accept American solutions.Komer sought less intrusive means of encouraging action—regular liaison with South Vietnamese officials, review of plans and budgets, and the threat or action of withholding resources. The most effective measure seems to have been the gradual accumulation of information on corrupt or incompetent officials, providing that information to both the South Vietnamese and the American chains of command. The expectation was that the South Vietnamese would eventually act, if sufficient evidence could be found to justify a dismissal.The original proposal for this program included suspending assistance if the South Vietnamese failed to react to the information, but this was a step Komer was unwilling to take—weakening support for allies in a theater at war was a very difficult course of action to propose. Ultimately, Komer succeeded in persuading the South Vietnamese to dismiss a limited number of officers, but with no guarantee that their successors would be any improvement.Setting Good Governance AsideThe Tet Offensive in early 1968 changed the war in every respect. For the communists, the successive waves of the offensive cost them dearly, the losses concentrated among the Viet Cong. Increasingly the war fell to North Vietnamese soldiers, infiltrating down the Ho Chi Minh trail. On the American side, the offensive ultimately persuaded President Lyndon Johnson not to run for a second term, and to seek a negotiated settlement.Incoming President Richard Nixon had an entirely different perspective on the nature of the war than his predecessor. Nixon and his national security advisor, Henry Kissinger, were classic realists. In part due to their basic outlook on power, and in part due to the change that the Tet Offensive had had on the war, Nixon and Kissinger were not so much interested in winning “hearts and minds,” as they were on ensuring physical control of the population. Similarly, they were more interested in ensuring a stable and acquiescent South Vietnamese government than in abstract notions of good governance.As Nixon summarized it in a conversation with British counterinsurgency expert Robert Thompson, he thought that Thieu was “getting an undeservedly bad reputation.” Nixon commented that while some people wanted the administration to pressure Thieu to “crack down on corruption, broaden the base and go forward with land reform, he, the president, didn’t care what Thieu did as long as it helped the war.” The emphasis on good government as a means of ensuring popular support for the GVN dissipated, as did the willingness to expend political capital on encouraging South Vietnam to combat corruption. In late 1971 Deputy National Security Advisor Al Haig, on a fact-finding mission to South Vietnam, noted: “Thieu’s actions against corruption have been inadequate. He has not spoken out against corruption as strongly as he should, and he has not removed the more notoriously corrupt officials.” This was one of a litany of problems Haig identified in the South Vietnamese government, and like most of the others, was never effectively addressed.In the end, the Nixon administration’s implicit tolerance for corruption served as other elements of its policy toward Vietnam to maintain a short-term stability in the government at the expense of its long-term prospects. The fall of South Vietnam stemmed from a range of causes. But, among those closest to the events, corruption was considered the most damaging, “largely responsible for the ultimate collapse of South Vietnam.”Stephen Randolph is the State Department historian. A 1974 graduate of the United States Air Force Academy, he served for 27 years on active duty in the Air Force, retiring as a colonel in 2001. He flew F-4s and F-15s, with a tour in Operation Desert Storm; held senior staff positions on the Joint Staff and the Air Staff; and then joined the faculty at the National Defense University, serving for 15 years before moving to the State Department in 2011. He is the author of Powerful and Brutal Weapons: Nixon, Kissinger and the Easter Offensive (Harvard University Press, 2007).Read More...Uncovering the Lessons of Vietnam, by Stephen Randolph (The Foreign Service Journal, July/August 2015)The Fall of South Vietnam: Statements by Vietnamese Military and Civilian Leaders, by Stephen T. Hosmer, Konrad Kellen, Brian M. Jenkins (RAND)Bribes, Corruption and Lost WarsMay 14, 2011by William P. MeyersCorruption, the taking of bribes by politicians and government employees and the theft of public funds, is a nearly universal practice. But it is also a spectrum, with come governments having very little corruption, and ranges to governments that exist almost exclusively. South Vietnam (the Republic of Vietnam) during the 1960s is noted for its high degree of corruption. It is generally agreed that government corruption was one of the main reasons the government eventually collapsed and the south was unified with North Vietnam, the Socialist Republic of Vietnam.I am reading Understanding Vietnam by Nilm L. Jamiseson and a section on the cultural aspects of corruption in Vietnam explained what happened in a way I had never considered. This contrasts with other histories I read that described the corruption, but implied it was simply due to defects in human character. This new understanding also sheds light on the collapse of the Chiang Kai-Shek regime in China in the late 1940s. It also explains a lot about many of today's regimes, including, on a smaller scale, the behavior of all too many individuals in local government in these United States of America.In Vietnam (I will call South Vietnam just Vietnam from this point forward) traditional status was highly dependent on wealth. However, leaders were supposed to show their wealth by providing feasts for their villages, and through other forms of ostentation public distribution of their wealth. In a village economy men competed for status by sharing with the less fortunate. Their families had priority, of course, but it was not too bad of a system.When the U.S. invaded in the 1960s the shock to the Vietnamese economy was profound. Government employees, including military employees, changed in a few years from being highly respected and decently paid members of a mainly traditional society to among the poorest citizens.American privates had higher salaries than Vietnamese generals. For that matter, call girls whose clients were American enlisted men made more money. The influx of American money drove inflation, but while America paid for military supplies and all sorts of economic programs, no one thought to make payments to the Saigon regime to increase the salaries of soldiers and bureaucrats. High-ranking military officers would moonlight as taxi drivers to try to make enough pay to keep their families from losing face due to poverty.Their wives came to the rescue, and that was also due to cultural traditions. In Vietnam women had traditionally done the marketing and small scale craft making that kept families afloat. Men, mostly, did not engage in business. While men went about their hierarchically controlled, government-dictated lives, women had to do more than make ends meet: they had to maintain their family's status in society. "During the late 1960s and early 1970s it was often impossible to be a dutiful and virtuous family man and a dutiful and virtuous military officer or civil servant ... his womenfolk kept reminding him that prices were up again in the market and the children needed new shoes." Women ran the free market show, which largely consisted of diverting American-donated goods into the black market. "As Madam General called Madam Colonel who called Madam Head Clerk ... the daily flow of money and of goods throughout the country was anticipated and careful plans were formulated for diverting some percentage of this bounty."This looking deeper contrasts with A Bright Shining Lie: John Paul Vann and America in Vietnam by Neil Sheehan, which is better at providing insight into the American side of the war. Americans were concerned about the corruption of Vietnamese officials and military men, but their answer was classroom training about the importance of good governance standards. That they paid their girlfriends more than they paid men they expected to die fighting communists did not seem to cross anyone's mind.Corruption has its own cultural momentum. Simply raising pay is not a sure way of stamping out corruption. Lowering pay somewhat is not likely to cause most honest civil servants to suddenly be selling their souls. Nevertheless, poor pay in the long run does breed corruption and incompetence.A single word, corruption, encapsulates a wide variety of social pressures. Americans thought that the corruption of Vietnam was due to weak ethical values in the national culture. American soldiers did not need to steal food from peasants to fill their bellies. Their corruption was at a higher level, the corruption of an entire nation by wealth from industrial production and imperialist domination.That era of American global economic supremacy is coming to an end. The corruption (lack of self-control and external control) of the banking sector and Wall Street almost brought the entire nation to its knees in 2008. The same gang funded Barack Obama's presidential campaign, just like they funded Clinton and Bush before him. So we have had much talk of reform, but very little reform.Millions of people died violent deaths in Vietnam during the French and American interventions and civil war. Corruption was problem, but it was also a symptom of the larger problems of that era. The problem now is we still have an American economy and government built for imperialism. The cracks in that system will continue to widen as the imperialist overhang continues to crumble.A Failure of Leadership in South VietnamBY JERRY MORELOCK4/14/2017 • VIETNAM MAGAZINEWas the Vietnam War essentially “unwinnable” because of the incorrigibly venal, consistently corrupt and—worst of all—egregiously incompetent South Vietnamese government officials and senior military commanders? Frank Scotton, a former foreign service officer who spent at least part of every year from 1962 to 1975 in Vietnam working for the United States Information Agency, thinks so.In his extensive and detailed memoir, Uphill Battle: Reflections on Viet Nam Counterinsurgency, Scotton looks back on the 1975 fall of Saigon and the final North Vietnamese offensive that quickly overwhelmed the U.S.-trained and -equipped Army of the Republic of Vietnam. He concludes: “There really never had been anything wrong with the courage and endurance of the [ARVN’s] basic soldiers, experienced noncommissioned officers, and junior officers. The problem was inadequate leadership higher up the chain of command.”BY HISTORY NETThe reason inept ARVN generals kept their jobs is no secret, Scotton says. In a corrupt system maintained by patronage, blind loyalty to political bosses in Saigon easily trumped battlefield competence in the selection of generals. The military leadership problem was worsened, Scotton notes, “by the deaths in combat or helicopter crashes of some of the best officers, who led from the front.” Most telling is the author’s conclusion that the South Vietnamese government, our crucial ally in the war, “failed to develop a viable political ideal for which men would risk dying.”Although most Americans who served in Vietnam were involved in combat against North Vietnamese regulars and Viet Cong main force guerrillas, Scotton fought the “other war,” the counterinsurgency effort (then variously called “revolutionary development” or “pacification”), a grassroots program to get South Vietnam’s population to support the Saigon government. Over the years, he worked closely with a cast of South Vietnamese and American officials, civilian and military, that reads like a “Who’s Who” of counterinsurgency, notably including John Paul Vann, Robert Komer and William Colby.Uphill Battle seems a particularly apt title for this memoir. Scotton describes his efforts to build effective counterinsurgency programs at theSo local level against dedicated and experienced Communist operatives, South Vietnamese government corruption and frequent opposition (or, at best, indifference) from senior U.S. officials in Washington and Saigon.Considering that Scotton wrote this book four decades after the events he describes, it is a remarkably detailed account of his experiences. He explains that “stored boxes of maps, correspondence, books and other research material” helped him reconstruct his experiences so thoroughly. Although readers may find Scotton’s frequent barrage of unfamiliar Vietnamese names (of individuals and places) tough going, those who persevere will be rewarded with a truly first-rate firsthand account of Vietnam’s “other war.”Scotton has included very useful appendices, chiefly an extensive glossary of Vietnam War abbreviations and terms, as well as a “Persons of Interest” list, identifying more than 160 people that he mentions. The book has 16 pages of personal snapshots showing Scotton with various Americans and Vietnamese between 1962 and 1972. Readers would have greatly benefited, however, from the inclusion of at least one map showing the locations of the countless places the author refers to.Finally, Scotton deserves praise for giving all proceeds from the book’s sales to the publisher, Texas Tech University, “in appreciation for the university’s maintaining the Vietnam Center and Archive.” In an era when seemingly every high-ranking politician and government official feels compelled to write a book hoping to cash in on his or her public service, Scotton’s stance is refreshingly principled: “It is ethically questionable for retired officials to profit from their own accounts of service for which they have already been compensated.” Well done, Mr. Scotton.First published in Vietnam Magazine’s April 2016 issue.Vietnam 40 years on: how a communist victory gave way to capitalist corruptionNick Davies Wed 22 Apr 2015 06.00 BST Last modified on Wed 29 Nov 2017 19.41 GMTSouth Vietnamese soldiers sleeping on board a US Navy troop carrier in 1962. Photograph: AP/Horst FaasEarly one morning in February 1968, when the fighting in central Vietnam had reached a new level of insanity, a group of South Korean soldiers swept into a village called Ha My, a straggly collection of bamboo huts and paddy fields about an hour outside the city of Danang. They were from a unit called Blue Dragon, which was fighting alongside the Americans, attempting to suppress the communist uprising.For weeks, they had been herding farmers and their families into a crowded compound that the Americans called a “strategic hamlet”. By taking the farmers out of their villages, they hoped they could starve the communist guerrillas of food and shelter. And for weeks, the farmers and their families had been escaping, trailing back to Ha My, loathing the captivity of the strategic hamlet, needing to farm their land. Now, the Blue Dragon soldiers had had enough.In the hour that followed their arrival, the Koreans herded the waking villagers into small groups and then, methodically, opened fire. An hour later, they had killed 135 of them. They then burned their homes and bodies, and bulldozed the whole mess into mass graves. For years the truth lay buried, too.Now there is a monument to that massacre, built 30 years later at the expense of Blue Dragon soldiers who came back offering genuine remorse. But there is something wrong. The monument stands proud, as big as a house, with ornate roofing that shelters two collective tombs and a large gravestone carrying the names of the adults and children who died. But there is no explanation for their deaths.The villagers say that when the monument was first built, the back of the gravestone displayed a vivid account of what happened that day. One even has a copy of the words, which turn out to be a powerful poem recalling the fire and blood, the burning flesh, the bodies in the sand: “How painful to see fathers and mothers collapse into pieces beneath the flames … How terrifying to see children and babies screaming and crying, reaching out, still suckling on the breasts of dead mothers … ” But, the villagers say, some South Korean diplomats paid a visit before the official opening and complained about the poem; instead of standing up to them, Vietnamese officials ordered that it be covered up with a tableau of lotus blossom. A Korean anthropologist, Heonik Kwon, who was studying Ha My at the time, recorded one villager saying this denial of the truth was like a second massacre, “killing the memory of the killing”.Why would the Vietnamese compromise like that? Why would the people who won the war allow the story of that war to be defined by the losers?The villagers say the answer is simple: South Korea had become one of the biggest foreign investors in their economy, and had offered to pay for a local hospital if the massacre poem was concealed. So the Vietnamese authorities agreed; they could not afford to resist. And there is the heart of what has happened to Vietnam since the war ended 40 years ago, on 30 April 1975.A month spent travelling there at the beginning of this year – talking to farmers, intellectuals, academic specialists and veteran fighters from both sides of the line – revealed numerous falsehoods and compromises that have been forced on the Vietnamese people by the powerful in pursuit of profit. The US has succeeded in promoting a false account of the cause and conduct of its war. In spite of losing the military conflict, the Americans and their allies have returned with the even more powerful weapons of finance, forcing the Vietnamese down a road they did not choose. Now, it is their leaders who are telling the biggest lie of all.US army helicopters provide covering fire for South Vietnamese troops as they attack a Vietcong camp near the Vietnam-Cambodia border in March 1965. Photograph: AP/Horst FaasNguyen Hao Thu, aged 90, lives in a bright and beautiful flat in Hanoi. She chatters like a bird in fluent French and broken English, describing how, as a young woman, she saw her country crushed between two powerful enemies. First, it was the French who refused to let go of their colony at the end of the second world war. In 1946, aged 21, Thu took to the jungle and joined the guerrilla struggle, specialising in mixing acid, saltpetre and alcohol to make gunpowder: “I was very happy in the forest. With the powder in the bomb, you can – pop! – realise our dream.”And that dream was not simply nationalist, to expel the foreign invader. It was specifically communist and revolutionary. Thu recalled a childhood during which the French took away her father, a kindergarten teacher; she used to bring food to him in jail when she was just seven years old. “I hated all the people who wanted to fight and occupy Vietnam. In my mind, I became communist,” she said. Her family were comfortably middle‑class, but during the 1930s, she said, their home was used as a meeting place for the underground Vietnamese Communist party. She remembered reading Marx and Lenin and how, when she was 16, the French executed one of her friends. “Sincerely, I am communist.”Le Nam Phong is nearly as old as Thu. He was 17 when he signed up as a common soldier to fight the French in 1945. He spent the next 30 years at war, rising to become a lieutenant general in the army of North Vietnam and a key figure in the eventual destruction of the US military machine. Sitting outside his comfortable home, slicing a mango on a warm evening, he remembers his own revolutionary motive: “Socialism? Yes, of course. The purpose of all the fighting was to build a socialist society, to gain freedom and independence and happiness. During the first days against France and against the US, we already had in mind the society we wanted to create – a society where men would not exploit other men; fair, independent, equal.”We already had in mind the society we wanted – one where men would not exploit other men: fair, independent, equalThis is where the US’s own account of its behaviour begins to fall apart. The American version of events has it that when the French were defeated in 1954, the US army became involved in order to protect the nation of South Vietnam from the threat of a takeover by communists from North Vietnam. The reality is that the French had alienated people all over Vietnam, driving them into the arms of Ho Chi Minh’s Communist party. And, more important, there were no two separate nations. In 1954, in spite of the victory of the Vietnamese army, France and its western allies hung on to power in their southern stronghold. At an international convention in Geneva, all sides then agreed that the country should be divided – temporarily – into South Vietnam and North Vietnam, until July 1956, when an election would deliver a new government for the nation as a whole.The then US president, Dwight Eisenhower, later admitted that if that election had been allowed to take place, some 80% of the Vietnamese people would have voted for Minh and the new socialist society – and the Vietnamese we spoke to concurred. But the US would not allow it. Instead, they turned to a notorious CIA officer, Edward Lansdale, who proceeded to use a dexterous combination of bribes and violence to install a new government in Saigon, headed by the Catholic politician Ngo Dinh Diem. He was autocratic and nepotistic, but anti-communist and pro-American. In October 1955, Lansdale rigged an election in the South to make Diem president. The national elections were cancelled. The “temporary” division now became a prolonged pretence that Vietnam really was two different countries, the South as the passive victim of invasion from the North.* * *At first, the US, which had been funding the French war, was content to pour money into South Vietnam’s army, and to send its own troops only in the guise of “advisers” – 16,300 of them. By March 1965, it was sending its own men into combat. At the peak of the fighting, in 1969, the US was using 550,000 of its own military personnel, plus 897,000 from South Vietnam’s army and thousands more from South Korea and other allies. By the time the war was over, the number of dead was beyond counting, possibly as high as 3.8 million, according to a study by the Harvard Medical School and the University of Washington.The British foreign correspondent James Cameron described US actions as “an offence to international decency, both disgusting and absurd”. Writing in 1965, he looked back at the path to war: “It was clumsy and cruel and thoughtless and without consideration. Step by step, the west blundered and floundered into a dilemma they never completely comprehended and never in fact sought: from the very beginning, they argued in cliches.”The violence of those years still lives with those who suffered its grand assault. In a small house in Saigon, as many Vietnamese still call Ho Chi Minh City, a former member of the communist guerrillas remembered the US bombers roaring down on their jungle camp, and how he and his comrades hid in shallow foxholes: “We had very strong rice wine. If you drink it, it would bring tears to your eyes. We used to call it ‘tears of the motherland’. It stopped us being frightened.”The US dropped more high explosives on Vietnam than the allies used on Germany and Japan together in the second world war. It also dropped napalm jelly, which stuck to its victims while it roasted their skin; white phosphorous, which burned down to the bone; fragmentation bombs, which hurled ball bearings and steel shards in all directions; and 73m litres of toxic chemicals, including 43m litres of Agent Orange, which killed vegetation and inflicted illness on those who were exposed to it.Infamously, the US also bombed Hanoi – a city full of civilians with no air force to defend it. A woman who was eight at the time remembered wearing a leafy branch on her back as flimsy camouflage against F-111 bombers flying at twice the speed of sound. A man who worked on an anti‑aircraft battery says he went home after a night of fruitless defence to find his neighbourhood obliterated: the only sign of his son was a dismembered leg, which he identified by a scar.On the ground, the US assault was just as powerful. In a village in the Mekong delta, a peasant farmer in her late 60s sat peacefully in her home, with its floor of baked mud. She remembered the day her mother in law, who was working in the fields nearby, made the mistake of running when a US helicopter thundered down towards her: a missile caught up with her and smashed her to pieces against a coconut tree. “We had to go to collect her. We had to pick up her teeth.” The helicopter gunships killed three of her brothers as well, she said. All these years later, she added, she still has trouble sleeping, and is full of fear if she hears any sound that could possibly be a helicopter.A US paratrooper guides a medevac helicopter down to pick up soldiers injured during a five-day patrol in Vietnam in April 1968. Photograph: AP/Art GreensponMany Americans now believe that the notorious massacre of villagers at My Lai was a unique or rare event, but the journalist Nick Turse found a different picture in the US National Archives in June 2001. He discovered files that recorded the findings of a secret US task force, the Vietnam War Crimes Working Group. They showed that the army had substantiated more than 300 claims of massacre, murder, rape and torture by American soldiers.Turse then visited Vietnam. In his book, Kill Anything That Moves, he describes trying to find the site of an incident from the files in which 20 women and children were said to have been killed in a hamlet in the central highlands. Following local people, he says, he stumbled across memorials to five other massacres in the same small area: “I’d thought that I was looking for a needle in a haystack; what I found was a veritable haystack of needles.” He concluded that a combination of racial indifference to the life of mere “gooks”, official pressure to raise the number of “kills” and the designation of rural areas as “free-fire zones” meant that “killings of civilians were widespread, routine and directly attributable to US command policies”.Those who survived were sometimes taken prisoner and subjected to harsh abuse. In 1970, a group of US congressmen visited the notorious Con Dao prison. There they found men and women shackled in “tiger cages”, starved, beaten, tortured and reduced to eating insects. In spite of the uproar when this was reported, the prison stayed open.* * *Until a couple of years ago, journalists from one of the big newspaper groups in Saigon used to stop to buy their coffee from an amiable woman who spent each day on the pavement in front of their office. Few of them knew her name. They used to call her the Coffee Lady. She has her own small story about the war, but mostly she has a story about what has happened since peace came. This is the context in which the Vietnamese Communist party now tells its lies.She remembers Liberation Day: the wild rejoicing because the war was over; the sheer pride that communist forces had beaten what everyone said was the biggest army in the history of the world; the hopes for a better life. There was fear, too. There were rumours of violent retribution and looting. The Coffee Lady was worried about crazy people picking up the guns she could see lying in the street. And she was sad, for a very personal reason.A few years earlier, she had worked as a waitress on a US base at Vung Tau, on the coast near Saigon, and there she had met a soldier called Ronald. He came from New York and he flew surveillance missions over Vietnam and Cambodia. They fell in love. At short notice, he was sent back to the US, but for a while he carried on writing, and he told her that he would sponsor her to join him. Then he went quiet, and she came to understand that there was no chance he would come back for her. Scared that the new regime might be angry, she burned Ronald’s letters and never heard from him again. Years later, now aged 64, grey-haired and calm, sitting quietly outside a Buddhist pagoda, she can still feel the sadness.The Coffee Lady belonged to neither side in the conflict. She was simply a Vietnamese woman, in love with an American man and in search of a decent life. Liberation Day did not bring easier times. At first, she found work in one of the new cooperative factories. There, she sat bowed over a sewing machine for 11 hours a day, earning nothing more than a ration card that entitled her to small amounts of low-quality rice and even smaller amounts of meat. For years, she shared a tiny house with her brother, who spent his days in another textile workshop. The economy ran into a decade of depression. “Life was tough for ordinary people,” she said.The US left Vietnam in a state of physical ruin. Roads, rail lines, bridges and canals were devastated by bombing. Unexploded shells and landmines littered the countryside, often underwater in the paddy fields where peasants waded. Five million hectares of forest had been stripped of life by high explosives and Agent Orange. The new government reckoned that two-thirds of the villages in the south had been destroyed. In Saigon, the American legacy included packs of orphans roaming the streets and a heroin epidemic. Nationally, the new government estimated it was dealing with 10 million refugees; 1 million war widows; 880,000 orphans; 362,000 war invalids; and 3 million unemployed people.The economy was in chaos. By the time Liberation Day arrived, inflation was running at up to 900%, and Vietnam – a country full of paddy fields – was having to import rice. In peace talks in Paris, the US had agreed to pay $3.5bn in reconstruction aid to mend the shattered infrastructure. It never paid a cent. Adding insult to penury, the US went on to demand that the communist government repay millions of dollars borrowed by its enemy, the old Saigon regime. Vietnam desperately needed the world to provide the trade and aid that could turn its economy around. The US did its best to make sure it got neither.As soon as it had lost the war, the US imposed a trade embargo, cutting off the war-wrecked country not only from US exports and imports, but also from those of other nations that bowed to American pressure. In the same way, the US leaned on multilateral bodies including the IMF, the World Bank and Unesco to deny Vietnam aid. The US acknowledged that Agent Orange was likely to cause serious illness and birth defects and paid $2bn compensation – but only to its own veterans. The Vietnamese victims – more than 2 million of them – got nothing.South Vietnamese soldiers escort terrified children after a napalm attack in June 1972. Photograph: Nick Ut/APIt is not clear how any economic model could have survived this hostile encirclement. Inevitably, Vietnam’s socialist project began to collapse. It adopted a crude Soviet policy that forced peasant farmers to hand over their crops in exchange for ration cards. With no incentive to produce, output crashed, inflation climbed back towards wartime levels, and the country once again had to import rice. In the early 1980s, the leadership was forced to allow the peasants to start selling surplus produce, and so capitalism began its return. By the late 1980s, the party was officially adopting the idea of “a market economy with socialist orientation”.It was this shift that allowed the Coffee Lady in 1988 to leave the textile factory to become a trader. Each morning, she says, she would get up at 4am to prepare coffee in time to travel across the city. By 5am, she was sitting on a small chair outside the newspaper office. Change was all around her during the 1990s. Foreign investors were allowed to come in and private businesses were encouraged – free trade, free markets, profits for some, wages for others. Behind the scenes, the government was sending signals of compromise to Washington. It stopped asking for the $3.5bn reconstruction aid or compensation for Agent Orange and war crimes. It even agreed to repay the old Saigon regime’s war debt of $146m. By 1994, the US was appeased and lifted the trade embargo that had been throttling Vietnam for nearly 20 years. The World Bank, the IMF and other donors began to help. The economy started growing by up to 8.4% a year, and Vietnam was soon one of the world’s biggest exporters of rice.Crucially, throughout the 1990s, there were still strong factions within the Communist party that defended socialism against the new tide of capitalism. In spite of the economic chaos, they had succeeded in engineering a dramatic reduction of poverty. When the war ended, 70% of Vietnam’s people lived below the official poverty line. By 1992, it was 58%. By 2000, it was 32%. At the same time, the government had constructed a network of primary schools in every community, and secondary schools in most; it had also built a basic structure of free healthcare. For a while, the socialist factions still had enough political muscle to direct the new capitalist vehicle. Three times during the late 1990s, the World Bank offered extra loans worth hundreds of millions of dollars if Vietnam would agree to sell its state-owned companies and cut its trade tariffs. Each deal was rejected.Three decades after the communist victory, Vietnam was part of the global capitalist economy. The west had won after all.But from 2000, the rate of change accelerated and the political balance shifted. Reflecting persistent pressure from international donors and foreign investors, Vietnam now approved the sale of its state-owned companies. It also struck a trade deal with the US, and finally hit a peak in 2006 when it was given membership of the World Trade Organisation, which meant it could reap yet more foreign investment and aid. Three decades after the communists emerged as victors in the war, it was now a fully integrated member of the globalised capitalist economy. The west had won after all.On the pavement in Saigon, the Coffee Lady watched all of this unfold, and yet she saw no change in her life. “I earned the same, lived in the same room,” she says. “There were more things in the shops, but the prices kept going up. The country changed, but not for people like me. The people who had connections got richer.” All throughout these years, she had stuck with the same brand of Vietnamese-made coffee, Trung Nguyen. While she remained poor, the man who owns that company rode the new tide of free enterprise and is now reckoned to be worth $100m.* * *In an office across the city sat Nguyen Cong Khe. For years, he edited Thanh Nien, the newspaper that was based in the building outside which the Coffee Lady plied her trade. During his editorship, Khe upset some powerful people, disclosing links between a Saigon gangster and senior officials, then publishing the story of a huge scandal that implicated some very well‑connected families in the theft of public funds. That was risky. Vietnam runs a clumsy system of official censorship, calling in editors every week – on Tuesdays in Hanoi and Thursdays in Saigon – to tell them what to cover and what to conceal. For his efforts, in 2008, Khe was sacked.In November last year, Khe took another risk by using the New York Times to call on his government to allow a free press. Sitting in the office where he now runs a news website, he went further. Insisting that his name be attached to this appeal, he said what others will say only behind one hand: that the leadership of the Vietnamese Communist party have become traitors to their own cause.“At the very outset, those who made the revolution installed a government [that] had a very good intent to develop the country and to be prosperous in the fairest way, but things went wrong somewhere. Those who joined the revolution, who swore to be transparent – eventually they betrayed their commitment and their ideology.”Khe was himself part of the revolution. As a student in the early 1970s, he agitated against the Americans and spent three years behind bars. He was a party member for years. He understands why the leadership turned to the tools of capitalism to kickstart the economy, but he has seen the dark side of the neoliberal coin – the corruption and the inequality.You can see it on the streets. Despite its dark past, Saigon has boomed into a seething mass of commercial activity. But it is, nonetheless, a city in the developing world, with signs of poverty on every side. And then there is Dong Khoi Street – an island of self-indulgent wealth where the new elite can buy a T-shirt from Hermes for $500, a watch from Versace for $15,000, or a dining-room table with four chairs covered in gold-leaf calf skin and stuffed with goose feathers for $65,000. And on the corner, the Continental Hotel sells meals that would cost a week’s pay for a worker, in a restaurant called – with one final slap in Ho Chi Minh’s face – Le Bourgeois.Khe reckoned that for every $10 assigned to any public project, $7 is going into somebody’s pocket. Really? So 70% of Vietnam’s state budget is being stolen? That would be a theft of staggering proportions. We spoke via a translator. He nodded, and twisted one hand in the air: “Between 50 and 70%.”Transparency International last year reported that Vietnam is perceived to be one of the most corrupt countries in the world, doing worse than 118 others and scoring only 31 out of a possible 100 good points on its index.Nobody claims that the corruption is new. There is a well-established tradition of public officials in Vietnam selling their influence and favouring their families. But the allegation is that it has hit new levels under the current leadership. People say that the problem was boosted specifically by the privatisation of Vietnam’s huge state-owned companies and the opportunities that provided some politicians and officials to appoint themselves and their families as executives. The British academic Martin Gainsborough, who spent years in Vietnam doing fieldwork for his research on development in south-east Asia, wrote: “Rather than being inspired by reformist ideals, officials have been motivated by much more venal desires … What we often refer to as ‘reform’ is as much about attempts by rival political-business interests to gain control over financial and other resources.”For three months recently, an extraordinary website published detailed allegations about the behaviour of named members of the Vietnamese power elite. The site called itself Chan Dung Quyen Luc (“Portrait of Power”) and backed up its claims with documents, audio and video footage. It has never been verified, but observers speculated that it was the work of a very powerful politician using inside information to try to damage rivals. It claimed to provide glimpses into a secret world of theft.The site attacked one very senior figure, claiming that a local official had delivered a suitcase containing $1m in cash to his home, as a result of which he had agreed not to collect $150m of tax due from a property company who were involved in a “giant development”. The company had then given him and the local official free villas. The site went on to finger two leading politicians, claiming that one had blocked the prosecution of a corrupt banker and was now receiving healthy backhanders; and that the second had diverted $1bn from a state company into the bank account of his sister, who was now running 20 different businesses. It also accused a senior military figure of using his son’s company to sell army land for personal profit. In his case, the website displayed a letter from bank employees who claimed he was part of an “extremely large-scale corruption network”, with bank accounts worth millions of dollars.Vietnam Is Sentencing Corrupt Bankers to Death by Firing SquadFrom time to time, the state acknowledges corruption and cracks down. In high-profile trials at the end of last year, four executives from former state-owned companies were sentenced to death for bribery and fraud; two others were sentenced to life in prison. Khe does not believe these trials are tackling the scale of the problem. He shrugged: “We traded millions of lives for independence and equality. When I was in prison I imagined the country would be clear of corruption after the war, but it didn’t happen. The development of the country should proceed, so we don’t go against those who make money legitimately. But we can’t allow those who make illegitimate money to continue to make poor people poorer.”We traded millions of lives for independence and equality. I imagined corruption would end after the war, but it didn’t.There he hit the most painful nerve. Despite its earlier track record of spreading economic success quite evenly, Vietnam no longer stands up for the poor as it once did. A 2012 report for the World Bank noted that “inequality is back on the agenda”. Between 2004 and 2010, income for the poorest 10% of the population fell by a fifth, it found, while the richest 5% in Vietnam were now taking nearly a quarter of the income.The worst of this inequality is in the rural areas. Millions of farmers have been driven off their land to make way for factories or roads. In the early 90s, nearly all rural households (91.8%) owned land. By 2010, nearly a quarter of them (22.5%) were landless. A relentless tide of poor peasants has poured into the cities, where they have been joined by hundreds of thousands of workers who have been made redundant as the private owners of the old state-owned companies set about cutting costs. This wave of men and women has swirled into the “informal sector” – hidden away in sweatshops in private houses or sitting trading on the pavements – and into the sprawling network of new industrial parks and export‑processing zones.In the informal sector, there is no protection at all. In the industrial areas, protections have become noticeably weaker. Prof Angie Ngoc Tran is a specialist in the study of labour in Vietnam. In her book, Ties That Bind, she explains how the country’s labour code – which was once famously progressive – has been watered down, partly as a result of lobbying by groups such as the US Chamber of Commerce. The state-sponsored unions have been weakened and have never called a strike. Tran concludes: “With the surge of capital entering Vietnam by way of foreign investment and the privatisation of state-owned enterprises, the state is becoming less and less of a government acting on behalf of the people. At times, some state organs and institutions are in alliance with the capitalists.”Every worker is guaranteed a minimum wage. Originally, in 1990, this was set at a level that matched the “living wage” – meaning that it covered the essentials of life. But over the years, for fear of losing foreign capital, the government has allowed it to be cut, frozen and overtaken by inflation, with the result that by April 2013, the government’s own union was protesting that wages now covered only 50% of essential costs. Most city workers, the federation said, were “destitute and physically wasted away … They rent cheap, shabby rooms and cut daily expenses to a minimum … suffer serious malnutrition and other health risks.”Meanwhile, healthcare and schooling are no longer free. The World Bank report noted that “incomes are beginning to matter more for determining access to basic services”, and that the government was spending considerably more on hospitals for the better off than it was on communal health centres for the poor.Vietnam is by no means a basket case. Its recovery from war is close to miraculous, particularly in cutting back poverty while developed nations such as the UK were increasing it. But the reality now is that it has ended up with the worst of two systems: the authoritarian socialist state and the unfettered ideology of neoliberalism; the two combining to strip Vietnam’s people of their money and their rights while a tiny elite fills its pockets and hides behind the rhetoric of the revolution. That, finally, is the biggest lie of all. Victorious in war but defeated in peace, the claim by Vietnam’s leaders to be socialist looks like empty propaganda. In the words of one former guerrilla who risked his life for this: “They are red capitalists.”• Additional research by Calvin Godfrey. Follow the Long Read on Twitter: @gdnlongreadIs Vietnam corrupt? (Quora.com)Flag of PetroVietnam flutters next to Vietnamese flag and Communist Party flag in front HQ of PetroVietnam in Hanoi Jan 11, 2016. REUTERS/KhamWhat's behind Vietnam's corruption crackdown? (Reuters.com)HANOI (Reuters) - Vietnam’s crackdown on high level corruption has led to the arrest of dozens of officials from state oil firm PetroVietnam and the banking sector.As well as shedding light on graft, mismanagement and nepotism within state firms at a time privatization is accelerating, the arrests show the ascendancy of a more conservative faction within the ruling Communist Party.HanoiVietnam Corruption ReportSaigonCorruption continues to be pervasive in Vietnam's business environment. Companies are likely to experience bribery, political interference and facilitation payments in all sectors. The land administration, construction sector, and public administration are especially prone to corruption. The Vietnamese Penal Code and the Law on Anti-Corruption criminalizes public sector corruption, in the form of attempted corruption, facilitation payments, extortion, abuse of office, fraud, money laundering, and active and passive bribery. Punitive measures range from fines to capital punishment, depending on the severity of the corruption case. Enforcement of the anti-corruption framework is lacking. Gifts are criminalized by law, but there are exceptions for special occasions gifts with a value below VND 500,000. Facilitation payments are illegal but common in practice.Last updated: September 2017GAN IntegritySaigonVietnam's Corruption Crackdown Is All About Protecting Its Economic Miracle From Its SOEs (forbes.com)Danang