In 1975 Ho Chi Minh’s dream of an independent and united Vietnam was achieved. The Communist government immediately embarked on a wide-range program of integration of the south. All private businesses and ownership of land were abolished. Farms were reorganized into collectives, which received all planting and harvesting orders from the government. Former officers in the South Vietnamese military and government officials were rounded up and sent to special reeducation camps, where they received political indoctrination lessons. For most, the periods in the reeducation camps lasted years. For some, the indoctrination also included torture.
The transition from a war economy to a peace economy proved to be very difficult for the Vietnamese government. The military consumed a third of the nation’s budget—in the 1980s, Vietnam had approximately 1.2 million people in uniform, giving it the fourth largest military organization in the world. A famine in 1985 devastated the country, and inflation was running at four hundred to six hundred percent.
Gradually the government began making some reforms. A few private businesses were allowed to form, and farmers were allowed to market some produce privately instead of through the collective. International companies were allowed to establish businesses in the country. There were some political changes as well. Vietnam’s government liberalized its censorship of the press and of writers and artists and also allowed for a measure of dissent. Nevertheless it remains a one-party, Communist dictatorship to this day.
After the war, the United States and Vietnam did not have any diplomatic relationship. The United States had imposed an economic embargo on Vietnam and made it illegal for U.S. nationals to travel to the country. The first steps in changing this adversarial relationship occurred in 1987, when officials from both countries opened talks to resolve the fate of MIA U.S. servicemen. In 1991 U.S. Secretary of State James Baker announced that the U.S. government was ready to take steps toward normalizing relations with Vietnam. In 1991 the travel ban for U.S. citizens was lifted. In 1994 President Bill Clinton announced the lifting of the trade embargo, and in 1995 announced the normalization of relations with Vietnam, including the opening of embassies and the exchange of ambassadors, saying, “The time has come to move forward and bind up the wounds from the war.”