Vietnam
Building Socialism: The Afterlife of East German Architecture in Urban Vietnam – review
In Building Socialism: The Afterlife of East German Architecture in Urban Vietnam, Christina Schwenkel unpacks how the city of Vinh was reconstructed with the aid of East Germany in the aftermath of its bombing by the US between 1964 and 1973. Schwenkel skilfully combines historical analysis and ethnography to explore Vinh’s urban evolution, highlighting the challenges created through socialist planning and the enduring societal impact of Cold War urbanisation, writes Xue Xuan. This post was originally published on the LSE Southeast Asia Blog.
In her book Building Socialism: The Afterlife of East German Architecture in Urban Vietnam, Christina Schwenkel tells of the neglected story of the Vietnamese city Vinh’s socialist reconstruction during the Cold War. This city was badly decimated by US air strikes between 1964 and 1973. To rescue Vinh from its ruins, East Germany provided substantial material and technological assistance that was designed to transform it into Vietnam’s model socialist city. However, this transformation was not without its challenges, as Vinh’s rapid ascendance was followed by a quick fall into “unplanned obsolescence”.
Schwenkel skilfully weaves historical records with ethnographic research to dissect the architectural forms and planning practices of postwar Vinh, while also capturing its residents’ lived experiences within this changing urban landscape.
Schwenkel skilfully weaves historical records with ethnographic research to dissect the architectural forms and planning practices of postwar Vinh, while also capturing its residents’ lived experiences within this changing urban landscape. This historical ethnography of Vinh’s postwar reconstruction offers an in-depth exploration of state-led socialist modernisation, its vision, implementation and subsequent impact. During the Cold War, information about these urban experiments among socialist countries was largely inaccessible and unknown to the external world. To expose these facts contributes to a better understanding of socialist modernisation. It also resonates with the “multiplicity of experienced modernities”, thereby shifting the focus away from the dominant narrative of capitalist spatial production.
Schwenkel contends that socialist planning was both a “utopian science” and a “fantastical art of projection”, often venturing into realms of impracticality.
Interestingly, the book does not dedicate a specific section to explain what socialist urbanism is. Instead, its unique characteristics are gradually revealed across several chapters through detailed documentation of historical events and objects. Schwenkel contends that socialist planning was both a “utopian science” and a “fantastical art of projection”, often venturing into realms of impracticality. She examines two visual devices in the service of modernist planning: figurative drawing and abstract blueprints, delving deep into how these visual renderings of rationalised spaces sought to represent a universal socialist future. However, when materialised in buildings and infrastructures, the rational planning was far from fulfilling its promise: it neither increased labour productivity nor moulded enlightened proletarians. The author employs the case of Quang Trung Housing Estate to concretise how practical problems like poor material conditions and conflicting spatial practices inhibited the rapid construction of mass housing and how residents’ uncivil behaviours serves to contest quotidian forms of urban governance, epitomising the dialectical relationship between civilization and backwardness. The ethnographic approach of this study offers the author an opportunity to deliver a nuanced understanding of the lived experiences associated with socialist urbanisation. This perspective underlines the agency of citizens, challenging prevailing views that often portray citizens as passive participants. Schwenkel traces manifold ways that residents in Quang Trung made the decayed buildings adapt to their changing needs and urban lifestyles. Such acts, as demonstrated in the book, were not arbitrary but planned, which serves as individualised ways to pursue the unfinished utopia.
When recounting the destruction of Vinh during the war with the US, Schwenkel pays particular attention to the contrasting visual techniques employed by the US and Vietnam in reporting and recording urban warfare.
A particularly fascinating aspect of Schwenkel’s analysis is the focus on affect. She skilfully draws together socialist planning and its afterlife in mass housing through the thread of affect, generating many thought-provoking ideas. When recounting the destruction of Vinh during the war with the US, Schwenkel pays particular attention to the contrasting visual techniques employed by the US and Vietnam in reporting and recording urban warfare. In contrast with the aerial photographs by the US military, those photos taken by Vietnamese photographers employ close-up shots in recording the architectural remains of everyday urban life. The intimate portraits of the destroyed buildings powerfully convey the sense of trauma perceived by the people. This sense of trauma further strengthened international solidarity between East Germany and Vietnam, as detailed in the chapter “Solidarity”. It also set the stage for East Germany’s involvement in Vinh’s postwar reconstruction, which is thoroughly explored in the chapter “Spirited Internationalism”. This international solidarity, as demonstrated in the book, was both political and affective, appearing on the surface as a form of brotherhood between East Germany and Vietnam, but at its core, it was characterised by an asymmetrical relationship. The middle part of the book elaborates how this international solidarity gave birth to socialist planning and architectural forms in Vinh.
The author delves into the complexities of international solidarity as affective practice, highlighting the challenge of cultural differences, misaligned expectations, and the difficult balance between altruism and self-interest. The last part of the book features voices from the people of Vinh, who inhabited and used modernist architecture. Their affective attachments to the modernist architecture of the city are reflected in the various modifications they made to their residences, which subverts the narrow understanding of seeing modernist architecture as the product of rationality. To examine this state-sponsored, nationalist project through the thread of affect is very intriguing. It also piques my curiosity: how does affect relate specifically to socialist urbanisation as opposed to capitalist urbanisation? While the author briefly addresses this aspect in certain chapters, a detailed exploration is not provided.
The book not only sheds light on a lesser-known chapter of Cold War history but also propels readers to think about the lasting impact of architectural and urban planning decisions in shaping societal narratives and experiences.
The book’s strength lies in its methodological approach. Schwenkel’s transnational perspective, underpinned by extensive use of both German archives and Vietnamese sources, allows for a nuanced understanding of this complex historical interplay. By engaging with key informants in Vinh and delving into local archives, Schwenkel brings to the fore voices that have long been marginalised in historical discourse.
Building Socialism is a compelling read for scholars and enthusiasts of socialist urban planning and architecture, Asian urbanisation, and postcolonial studies. The book offers a comprehensive and nuanced understanding of the socialist modernisation in the postwar city of Vinh. It not only sheds light on a lesser-known chapter of Cold War history but also propels readers to think about the lasting impact of architectural and urban planning decisions in shaping societal narratives and experiences.
This book review is published by the LSE Southeast Asia blog and LSE Review of Books blog as part of a collaborative series focusing on timely and important social science books from and about Southeast Asia.
This post gives the views of the author, and not the position of the LSE Review of Books blog, or of the London School of Economics and Political Science.
Image Credit: khuanchai photo on Shutterstock.
The Little Prince Haunts New York
When I moved to New York, I set out to discover how my new adopted home had influenced that sense of tristesse in The Little Prince, which Saint-Exupéry wrote during his 1941–1943 stay in the city....
US serviceman sets himself on fire outside Israeli embassy in protest over Gaza genocide
Aaron Bushnell says he can no longer ‘be complicit in genocide’ in Gaza
A US airman has set himself on fire outside the Israeli embassy in Washington DC in protest against Israel’s war crimes in Gaza. Aaron Bushnell, an active duty serviceman, recorded a video en route to the embassy gates in which he said he could ‘no longer be complicit in genocide’. Despite the terrible protest he was about to make, he seemed quite calm and composed, saying that what he was about to suffer was nothing compared to the suffering of innocent Palestinians in Gaza:
I will no longer be complicit in genocide. I’m about to engage in an extreme act of protest. But compared to what people have been experiencing in Palestine at the hands of their colonisers, it’s not extreme at all. This is what our ruling class has decided will be normal.
Aaron Bushnell
Security personnel attempted to put out the fire before Bushnell was rushed to hospital with extensive burns, but family members said that he later died of his injuries.
Before the act, which he reportedly live-streamed, Bushnell sent a message to news agencies:
Today, I am planning to engage in an extreme act of protest against the genocide of the Palestinian people.
Bushnell is said to have worked in IT for the US air force. Whether that led him to seeing things that his conscience couldn’t bear is not know. His last words were ‘Free Palestine’. Police pointed guns at him as he burned.
The protest was reminiscent of Thich Quang Duc, Vietnamese Buddhist monk and the first of several to do so, who set himself on fire in protest against the persecution of Buddhists by the US-friendly South Vietnamese government in the 1960s. Duc’s sacrifice galvanised public opinion around the world and focused international attention on Vietnam.
Another victim of Israel’s genocide and war crimes, Bushnell clearly hoped that his protest would do the same and shock a complacent US government and (in part) public into action against the apartheid occupation regime and its war crimes.
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Making Endless War: The Vietnam and Arab-Israeli Conflicts in the History of International Law – review
In Making Endless War: The Vietnam and Arab-Israeli Conflicts in the History of International Law, Brian Cuddy and Victor Kattan bring together essays exploring attempts to develop legal rationales for the continued waging of war since 1945, despite the general ban on war decreed through the United Nations Charter. Linked through a nuanced comparative framework, the essays in this timely collection show how these different conflicts have shaped the international laws of war over the past eight decades, writes Eric Loefflad.
Making Endless War: The Vietnam and Arab-Israeli Conflicts in the History of International Law. Brian Cuddy and Victor Kattan. University of Michigan Press. 2023.
Find this book: 
For Jeff Halper, an American-Israeli anthropologist, co-founder of the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions, and proponent of a single democratic state in historic Palestine, the decision to become an Israeli in the first place had a great deal to do with the Vietnam War. True to the counter-culture protests that arose in response to the War, the activist Halper, like so many young, idealistic American Jews of his era, viewed Israel as a more direct conduit to his heritage than a homogenising suburban upbringing could ever allow for. This search for meaning was coupled with a widespread difference in how the Vietnam War and Israel’s wars were broadly characterised in Halper’s contexts of influence. For many Americans who opposed intervention in Southeast Asia, Israeli violence differed in its “purity of arms.” According to this framing, in direct contrast to an American government waging wars half a world away, Israel zealously fought for its very survival right at its doorstep. It was witnessing the demolition of Palestinian homes to make way for Israeli settlers in the West Bank that caused Halper to renounce this narrative and rededicate his life.
the collection centres on the broad theme of how mostly American and Israeli lawyers, statesmen and military officers used issues that arose in the two conflicts to proclaim exceptions to the general ban on war as entrenched in 1945 through the United Nations Charter.
While Halper’s journey may be a unique one, it is nevertheless a testament to how intersections between post-Second World War conflict in Southeast Asia and the Middle East shaped the lives of so many different people in so many different ways. For anyone interested in how this multitude of individual experiences might be understood in relation to broader systemic forces, especially the variable medium for navigating “legitimate” violence deemed the “laws of war”, historian Brian Cuddy and international lawyer Victor Kattan’s Making Endless War is an invaluable resource. Comprised of ten robust chapters and an insightful forward by Richard Falk (a leading international legal critic of the Vietnam War and later the one-time United Nations Special Rapporteur for the Occupied Palestinian Territories), Making Endless War proceeds on a roughly chronological basis from 1945 to the present day, tracing developments and unearthing connections between the two (meta-)conflicts. With chapters confronting a variety of issues from multiple perspectives, the collection centres on the broad theme of how mostly American and Israeli lawyers, statesmen and military officers used issues that arose in the two conflicts to proclaim exceptions to the general ban on war as entrenched in 1945 through the United Nations Charter. While its detailing of legal doctrine is truly world-class, Making Endless War’s revelation of the individual personalities, diplomatic intrigue and political struggles behind ostensibly “apolitical” technicalities is equally outstanding.
Vietnam, emboldened by its resistance to the US, led efforts in the 1970s to include non-state national liberation movements within a regime of the laws of war that hitherto only granted rights to state actors.
One illustration of how this text accomplishes its multi-faceted, but nevertheless cohesive, focus across chapters concerns the debate on the revision of the laws of war via two Additional Protocols to the Geneva Conventions. In Chapter Five, Amanda Alexander explores the significance of how Vietnam, emboldened by its resistance to the US, led efforts in the 1970s to include non-state national liberation movements within a regime of the laws of war that hitherto only granted rights to state actors. Following this, in Chapter Six, Ihab Shalbak and Jessica Whyte centre the Janus-faced quality of what this revision meant for the Palestinians. While it provided their cause with a newfound degree of institutional legitimation, it also constrained Palestinian efforts to unite themselves as a revolutionary people whose struggle could not be divided along the lines presumed by the law. From here, co-editor Victor Kattan presents an account in Chapter Seven of how Israel moved from being the sole dissident resisting revision in the 70s (due to its application to the Palestinians) to being joined by the US in the 80s. This coincided with the ascent of the Reagan Administration in the 80s where an influential grouping of Neoconservatives and Vietnam veterans – invoking arguments pioneered by Israel – similarly prevented the US from ratifying the Geneva Convention’s Additional Protocols. Finally, in Chapter Eight, Craig Jones examines how, despite their nations’ disavowal, American and Israeli lawyers became adept at using the laws of war to enable, as opposed to constrain, violence through developing a regime of so-called “operational law” that integrated international and domestic legal standards in a manner “…designed specifically to furnish military commanders with the tools they required for ‘mission success’” (215).
With the ascent of the Reagan Administration in the 80s […] an influential grouping of Neoconservatives and Vietnam veterans – invoking arguments pioneered by Israel – similarly prevented the US from ratifying the Geneva Convention’s Additional Protocols
When reading Making Endless War in this present moment, it is naturally impossible to disconnect its insights from the most recent bloodshed in Israel-Palestine that erupted almost immediately following the collection’s release. Fortuitous in the most horrific way possible, Cuddy and Kattan provide an invaluable service in exposing the impossibly high stakes of the despair invoking “endlessness” that animates their collection’s poignant title. However, by connecting the greater Arab-Israeli conflict to the Vietnam War, the editors make a significant contribution in decentring the widespread viewpoint that the Palestinian-Israeli conflict is fundamentally unique – a presumption that unites pro-Israel and pro-Palestine advocates who agree on virtually nothing else. In this way, Making Endless War provides a powerful statement on how episodes of violence, however specific they might appear, cannot be understood independent of greater forces – including (and perhaps especially) the principles and institutions that present their mission as an effort to constrain armed conflict. As such, Cuddy and Kattan’s collection can be viewed as a major innovation in building a greater genealogy of global violence.
Making Endless War provides a powerful statement on how episodes of violence, however specific they might appear, cannot be understood independent of greater forces – including (and perhaps especially) the principles and institutions that present their mission as an effort to constrain armed conflict.
While their comparative framework might be viewed as limited in its representations, the editors are eminently aware of this, and this very awareness forms a cornerstone of their methodology. On this point, they deliberately confront the significance of how, especially within the centres of global power, “[t]he Vietnam War and the multiple Arab-Israeli conflicts became cultural moments that captured the public imagination in ways few other conflicts did, even those that were more lethal (262).” With this comparative captivation itself an important finding, there is no reason why the insights developed through Making Endless War cannot be extended to include the multitude of other forces, fixations, and personalities that can be located within the many ideologies of war that shape our lives. The Palestinian-Israeli conflict is a particularly vast and gut-wrenching repository of said ideologies. Sadly, there is no shortage of material for interested scholars to draw upon.
This post gives the views of the author, and not the position of the LSE Review of Books blog, or of the London School of Economics and Political Science. The LSE RB blog may receive a small commission if you choose to make a purchase through the above Amazon affiliate link. This is entirely independent of the coverage of the book on LSE Review of Books.
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War criminal Kissinger, one of history’s biggest mass murderers, dead at 100
Right-wing friend of dictators and murderers, whose orders killed millions, has died
Henry Kissinger, adviser to two presidents and betrayer of another, is dead at the age of one hundred.
A war criminal responsible for the US carpet-bombing of neutral Cambodia – personally selecting targets – that led to the Pol Pot genocide, the fall of democratically-elected left-wing president Allende and his replacement with mass-murder Augusto Pinochet, Indonesia’s genocide in East Timor, Pakistan’s slaughter in Bangladesh, and who played a key role in the passing of information from the Democrat US president Lyndon Johnson’s camp to Richard Nixon, causing a delay of years in the end of the Vietnam war – and a string of other war crimes and mass slaughters, Kissinger and his hate and fear of the left was responsible for the deaths of at least three million people, according to his biographer.
He will be lamented only by his family and by lovers of imperialism and racism – which means that the tributes will be pouring from both sides of the house in the US and UK, and no doubt from the Israeli regime and its supporters.
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