Evaluate the political and economic impact of the Vietnam War on Vietnam after 1975.

The question requires that candidates make an appraisal of the political and economic impact of the Vietnam War on Vietnam after 1975, weighing up the importance or otherwise of the impacts. Candidates may identify the scale of the impact of this war on Vietnam and the fact that war did not bring peace or guaranteed independence to Vietnam. After fighting the Americans, the Vietnamese then had to fight wars against the Khmer Rouge (1978) and China (1979) before their independence was secured. The main political impact of the Vietnam War was the political unification of the country under communist rule. This led to the mass migration in 1975 of 140 000 South Vietnamese political leaders, army officers and skilled professionals who feared reprisals for supporting the US during the war. Hundreds of thousands of South Vietnamese were put into camps by the new regime and many were not released until the late 1980s. The economic effects of the Vietnam War were devastating and Vietnam would take decades to recover. Most of its population were unemployed, two million had died and millions were displaced. Vietnam’s infrastructure was destroyed, making transportation and communication difficult; Vietnam also faced embargos for decades as a result of the war. Candidates may also discuss the impact of chemical warfare on Vietnam. Vast areas of land, particularly in central Vietnam, were left uninhabitable and thousands of people were left unable to work and to provide for themselves due to war injuries.