Straining the Ties that Bind

With troubles elsewhere, Moscow cuts its Indochina aid

A joke currently circulating in Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon) recounts an apocryphal exchange of cables between Hanoi and Moscow. "Tighten your belts," wires Moscow in response to a Vietnamese plea for increased economic aid. Hanoi's reply: "Please send belts."

Such black-market humor contains more than a morsel of truth. Ever since the People's Republic of China canceled its Vietnamese development programs in 1978, the Soviet Union has supplied the Southeast Asian nation with everything from brandy to ball bearings. Since January 1979, when the Vietnamese invasion of neighboring Kampuchea (formerly Cambodia) caused most Western nations to suspend their Viet Nam aid programs, Hanoi's dependence on the Soviet Union has become near total. Today, money from Moscow is an important component of the economies of Kampuchea and Laos, and most especially of Viet Nam, which receives about $3 million a day in Soviet assistance.

The Soviet Union is already burdened by the effects of overcentralized planning and lagging industrial and agricultural production, of shouldering the Polish debt and of financing a war in Afghanistan. Lately, the U.S.S.R. has been selling gold to make up for a currency shortage caused by a serious shortfall in last year's grain harvest. As a result, Moscow has been cutting back on its aid to all of Southeast Asia. The Soviets were forced to reduce their 1981 grain shipments to Kampuchea by almost half, from a promised 100,000 tons to only 55,000. The price Viet Nam pays br Soviet petroleum rose from $4 to $16 per bbl. in 1981. This year, oil-import subsidies for Laos have been ended.

The percentage of aid supplied to Kampuchea by the entire Communist world is declining. Since October 1979, 488 million has been provided by the Soviet bloc. Last year the total was $103 million, and only five socialist countries--mainly the Soviet Union and East Germany--contributed at all. By comparison, 50 non-Communist donor nations to the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) sent $190 million in relief aid to Kampuchea in 1981.

This group--which includes Austria, India, the U.S., Israel and Thailand--will meet at the U.N. in New York City this week to decide the amount of assistance Kampuchea needs for the coming year. During the past four months, three separate U.N. missions have found that Kampuchea is short 278,000 pounds of food. Rice shipments alone will cost $500 a ton.

Without continued high levels of humanitarian aid to Kampuchea, Viet Nam will be hard pressed to maintain its presence there. Hanoi is in debt for $3 billion in foreign currency, almost half from non-Communist countries. Thus when those donor nations meet this week they will be confronted by a difficult moral and political choice: either to provide aid to Kampuchea and risk subsidizing the communization of the Khmer people, or to stop it and risk losing thousands of innocent lives.

In Viet Nam, the Soviet Union is still praised officially as the country's economic savior. Vietnamese factories with Soviet experts are termed "seething with friendship" by the Viet Nam News Agency. Under the current five-year plan (1981-1986), the Soviets have pledged to help Viet Nam with more than 100 development projects. Soviet engineers are already at work on a hydroelectric power plant north of Hanoi and are drilling wells at the site of the old Mobil Oil concession near Vung Tau.

In spite of such cheery cooperation, many Vietnamese are beginning to question the competence of their biggest benefactor. In seven years the Soviets have yet to complete a major development project.

The Thang Long bridge across the Red River is a strand of spanless girders; a much publicized Soviet highway from Savannakhet, in Laos, to Quang Tri is mostly a dirt track. The only construction projects that have been finished are those that enhance the Soviet image, like the ground satellite stations that allowed direct broadcast of the 1980 Moscow Olympics, or those that have some military application, like a ship-repair facility at Cam Ranh Bay.

Though Soviet-Vietnamese relation are basically solid, there are signs of stress. A Soviet request last June to assume management of Vietnamese development projects was denied. A more serious conflict occurred in December when the Vietnamese booted Pen Sovan, general secretary of Kampuchea's Communist Party, from the government, apparently for trying to chart a political course independent of Viet Nam. The Soviet Ambassador in Hanoi made his displeasure known at the government New Year's party by refusing to take his designated seat next to Foreign Minister Hun Sen. A long, embarrassing silence followed, until a quick-thinking Bulgarian plopped into the empty chair.

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