Vietnam's Security Challenges: Dilemmas of Reform Communism‪.‬

This article evaluates internal and external challenges to the control of Vietnam's Communist Party (VCP). The VCP presently retains a monopoly on power amid extraordinary changes and challenges accompanying Vietnam's transformation into a vibrant trading nation, with a majority of its population born after the violent reunification of 1975. The VCP is coping with gradually rising demands for more political freedom and pluralism while simultaneously seeking to deal with external challenges from China, the United States, and the globalized trading system. Although Marxism in Vietnam is steadily crumbling, Vietnam's special form of Leninist authoritarianism, led by the VCP, is likely to continue for many years to come. Hostile outside forces cooperate with reactionary elements inside our country....