The Striving for Avant-garde Foreign Policy 1975–78

Abstract

There were obvious trends that supported Vietnam’s class analysis and formal reasoning on the development of international relations when the People’s Army of Vietnam occupied Saigon on April 30, 1975. Simultaneously with the victory of the DRV over the U.S. and the American-backed regime in South Vietnam, several Marxist regimes, supported by the Soviet Union and its bloc or by China, came into power as a result of Cold War struggles and the decolonialization process during the years 1975–76. Besides the victories of the national Marxist movements in the Indochina Peninsula, the demolition of the Portuguese colonial system created new regimes and helped the Soviets gain more influence in the Third World. Coincidentally, Vietnam’s archenemy, the United States or American imperialism (de quoc My), as the Vietnamese put it, was reducing its military presence in Asia and losing its influence in the Asian Pacific area. The Watergate scandal, culminating in the resignation of President Nixon, was further understood to be a symptom of the general crisis of American imperialism. Similarly, the high tide of the Non-Aligned Movement, as a representative of the Third World, occurred in the latter part of the 1970s, giving proof of the progress of the world’s national liberation movement.