Did Vietnam have to pay back the Soviets / China?

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Not sure about what the Russians thought during the war, but afterwards, they apparently agreed to write their debt off: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/27/opinion/russians-vietnam-war.html "Brezhnev agreed to cancel all of Hanoi’s debts."

I think this is quite different from the Iran/Iraq war of the 1980s, which was also during the cold war and in which the Iraqi side bought lots of equipment from socialist countries - with the emphasis on 'bought'.

P.S. I think both the Chinese and the Russians probably had qualified economists who would be able to tell them that a repayment of the money spent for the war was .. unlikely. That does not mean that the question of wartime debt could not be used for political purposes - e.g. to pull the Vietnamese closer to the Soviet side by forgiving their debt.

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Turns out monetizing military conquest is surprisingly difficult.

Napoleon tried to get Spain to pay for its own occupation. That policy led to a series of uprisings that ultimately contributed to the downfall of Napoleon. (it tied up hundreds of thousands of french troops that could have been better employed else where)

The USSR also never quite figured out how to monetize its many military conquests.

But what is harder is, the monetization of military alliances!

The Soviets tried to collect some respect for helping the Chinese Communist during their revolution, didn't work out too well.

China's attempt to get Vietnam acknowledge China as the elder brother in the commune (which is a lot less than asking for a monetary contribution to services rendered) also did not wok out.

But turns out that's not just a problem limited to communists, or dictatorships.

The US also never found a way to get any of the allies to pay even a fraction of their fair share for collective defense.

So yeah good luck trying to collect.

I think the main reason is every party in these relationships know that the alliance or communal brotherhood isn't really true. It is really a big brother-junior brother, master-servant, lord-vassal type of relationship. And given that unspoken understanding, who would willingly pay.

And if the senior / bigger party tries to make an explicit demand as in the case of Napoleon, USSR and China, the result is revolt and conflict.

And this is also why War is rarely profitable (contrary to popular believe. Napoleon famously said the war will pay for (feed?) the war. And we all know how that turned out.) And in the US, every war resulted in a new series of taxes and monetary easing...

War is almost never profitable. (with some rare exceptions that feed the hopes of would be conquerors )

Upvote:0

After the Vietnamese victory East Germany demanded repayment for its “brotherly support” of Vietnam, whereupon the latter sent a large number of South-Vietnamese convicts to work as slaves in East-German factories. They and their children have a very obvious presence in Berlin and other big cities of the former East.

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