ABSTRACT
Marxist theory reflects this reality by locating the sources of revolution in both objective and subjective conditions. The weakness of their nationalist rivals was, of course, no guarantee that the Communists themselves would succeed. In retrospect, it appears that the Communists had a clearer view. A generation of United States (US) technology and advice was unable to remedy the manifold deficiencies of the Republic of Vietnam. The prospects that such a view could become a reality appeared increasingly problematical, and in 1979 a Party plenum called for a slowdown in the pace of socialization and the encouragement of material incentives to increase production. Perhaps the most significant legacy of the Communist victory in Vietnam was in the United States, where defeat undermined public confidence in the strategy of containment that had served as a benchmark for foreign policy since the beginning of the Cold War. The Vietnamese invasion of Cambodia had serious repercussions on Vietnamese foreign policy objectives beyond Indochina.
