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7.
Vietnam's essential objectives to consolidate control over
Laos and Cambodia as client states and to keep China at bay.
Her dependence on Soviet Union a function of her bad relations
with China, not of her cool relations with ASEAN (and West).
Cambodia settlement on Vietnam's term would therefore have only
marginal effect on her dependence on Moscow. Vietnam still an
attractive investment for Moscow, though there will be growing
Soviet concern that Vietnam's unwillingness to work towards
modus vivendi within South East Asian countries adds unnecessarily
and unprofitably to the bill.
8. China, under present leadership, likely to pursue cautious
policy towards non-Communist South East Asia, maintaining party
to party links at subsistence level, without being ready to
abandon them altogether.
9.
Japan wants stability in South East Asia for both strategic
and economic reasons. Concerned to keep Malacca Strait under
friendly control. Sees natural complementary relationship with
ASEAN countries as reliable source of raw materials and growing
market for Japanese goods and services.
equivocal.
ASEAN view of Japan
10. ASEAN confused and anxious about US role. Fear post-Vietnam
withdrawal symptoms, plus schizophrenia about China/Taiwan have
led to loss of US ability to be interested in/worry about South
East Asia. Hence ASEAN eagerness to institutionalise 'dialogues'
with other allies EC, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, Japan.
11.
EC-ASEAN dialogue important symbolically, but easier to
declare support and esteem than to give tangible expression to it.
Dialogue unsatisfactory both in form and substance; risk of dis-
appointment not yet acute but growing.
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