Your Instant Coffee Could Still Be Fighting The Vietnam War
Originally Published: 8 August 2020
"We are engaged in a war that seeks to turn the clock of history back and perpetuate white colonialism."
-Martin Luther King, Jr. (1967) on the Vietnam War
A forgotten relic of the Vietnam War, the village of Khe Sanh- located in central Vietnam- is blanketed with coffee plantations. A BBC documentary, 'The Coffee Trail with Simon Reeve', features the story of Ho Ver Nee, an 18-year-old (at the time of filming) coffee farmer. Working in the Khe Sanh region, he was digging a hole one day, when- suddenly- there was an explosion, knocking him unconscious to the ground. The camera zooms in on his amputated limb.
In 1968, during a siege lasting 66 days, the U.S. military dropped 5,000 bombs on Khe Sanh daily, exploding "the equivalent of five Hiroshima-sized bombs'. Khe Sanh contains hundreds of unexploded bombs from the Vietnam War. When asked about why people still work in the region, Ho Ver Nee says, "We're very poor and we don't have enough rice to eat". He smiles, modestly.
Ranked 42nd in the world as a producer of coffee during the 1980s, it would only take a few decades for Vietnam to rise to caffeinated glory. By the early 2000s, Vietnam was the world's second largest producer of coffee and largest producer of 'Robusta' beans- the variety used in instant coffee. Nescafé, a company that dominates the instant coffee market has materially profited from sourcing Vietnamese Robusta beans, while the profits landing in Vietnam's own pocket are minuscule in comparison.
Instant coffee is a common attendee at most breakfast tables. During lockdown, it helped people feel like they were doing something meaningful with their lives as they whipped up Dalgona coffee. Yet, the fact that your instant coffee could have started its journey sitting upon beds of unexploded bombs is symbolic of the unresolved issues arising from the Vietnam War.
INSTANT HISTORY
French colonists introduced coffee to Vietnam in 1857 by a single arabica tree brought by a French priest. At this point, Vietnam was part of French Indochina (present-day's Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam). Robusta only arrived 30 years later in 1908. A processing plant to manufacture instant coffee became functional in 1950. Then, as James Hoffmann notes in 'The World Atlas of Coffee', coffee cultivation in the Buôn Ma Thôt- located in the Central Highlands of Vietnam- "was interrupted by the Vietnam war."
Vietnam's coffee industry would grow significantly from the modest arabica tree it started out to be but not before it tasted the bitter brew of warfare.
THE VIETNAM WAR
If The Vietnam War's history was an entire library, some books have been increasingly checked out in recent years. Other books are well known by the public already. As for the remainder, they remain tucked away behind book-shelves, waiting to be read- not glamorous enough to be noticed but explain why coffee farmers such as Ho Ver Nee still work on land that could explode at any time.
The U.S. initially entered the Vietnam War to support South Vietnam, against communist North Vietnam. Vietnam became prey to 'the domino theory'- a justification used by the US to conduct imperialism out in the open. The theory was that if Vietnam fell under communist influence, it would create a domino effect, whereby other Southeast Asian countries would also follow suit. This may seem like a reasonable explanation without context but viewed through a Cold War lens, one can appreciate how frequently America cried wolf behind the iron curtain.
The American public themselves became increasingly opposed to the Vietnam war. Famous examples include Muhammed Ali who refused to be drafted for the war. Explaining his opposition he said: "My conscience won’t let me go shoot my brother, or some darker people, or some poor hungry people in the mud for big powerful America." Some historians contend that Martin Luther King's opposition to the war hurt the Civil Rights Movement. While that view is debatable, it is clear that some of King's own colleagues distanced themselves from him after his outspoken opposition and he faced harsh public criticism for his stance.
The war ended in 1975 when North Vietnamese forces captured Saigon, renaming it Ho Chi Minh City; North and South Vietnam were reunited under a communist government, still in force today.
U.S. 'defeat' in Vietnam continues to embarrass pages of American history. Yet, what should really embarrass America is the name of a barrel with an orange stripe. A textbook case of how America sold its soul to uphold its superpower status.
AGENT ORANGE
Under 'Operation Ranch Hand' (1961-71) during the Vietnam War, the U.S military sprayed various herbicides-including the notorious Agent Orange- "across more than 4.5 million acres" of Vietnamese land. Agent Orange was a defoliant that contained dioxin- a highly toxic chemical. It is said to have caused birth defect problems, cancer and other health issues, even years after the war. According to Vietnamese advocacy groups, it is estimated that "3 million people suffer from health problems related to Agent Orange. For years, The American government refused to acknowledge that these health claims had a direct correlation with Agent Orange. However, given that American veterans themselves suffered from Agent Orange's effects, the US eventually started paying them compensation. American veterans' battle for justice on suffering from Agent Orange has been a rollercoaster in every sense: legal and political, with celebratory wins and disillusioning losses. The Vietnamese victims received no compensation from the US.
In efforts to cradle relations with America after the war, Vietnamese officials would never bring up Agent Orange during diplomatic meetings. Another reason for the Vietnamese government's silence was the legitimate worry that Vietnam's export crops would be rejected for fear of being contaminated with the toxic chemical. This applied to other exports too. In his book ‘Black Gold’, Tony Wild mentions: "In the early 1980s the coffee industry was thrown into disarray when it was revealed that the chlorine bleaching process used for the production of coffee filters might lead to dioxin contamination." Many Vietnamese victims died without justice due to this mutual conspiracy of silence.
However, due to overwhelming, undeniable evidence over Agent Orange's health effects, cropping up over the years, the US has been forced to increase action. In 2019, the US launched a multi-million dollar ($183m), ten-year, clean-up operation at a Vietnamese air base.
A RED STAR SHINING UPON CAPITALISM
In 1986, Vietnam's communist government took a capitalist step. 'Đổi Mới' reforms were introduced, with the aim of establishing a "socialist-oriented market economy'. As part of the reforms, the Communist party "permitted privately owned enterprises in industries that produced commoditized crops," James Hoffmann also mentions in his book.
An article by the Guardian titled 'Vietnam 40 years on: how a communist victory gave way to capitalist corruption' discusses the impact of the Vietnam war on Vietnam's economic recovery. It mentions how the U.S. government practically punished Vietnam after the war by imposing a trade embargo, economically isolating the nation from other countries America had influence over and ensuring that "multilateral bodies including the IMF, the World Bank and Unesco" denied Vietnam aid. Scarred from the war, starved by failed collectivisation policies- a pariah nation- Vietnam had to surrender its right for justice. As the article remarks, Vietnam "stopped asking for the $3.5bn reconstruction aid or compensation for Agent Orange and war crimes. It even agreed to repay the old Saigon regime’s war debt of $146m. By 1994, the US was appeased and lifted the trade embargo that had been throttling Vietnam for nearly 20 years."
The article also includes a personal account from someone known as 'The Coffee Lady'. While her story may be singular, its reverberations are not.
The Coffee Lady, a Vietnamese woman, fell in love with an American soldier called Roland. Known by this name because some journalists would buy coffee from her in Saigon. The article tells their story:
"At short notice, he was sent back to the US, but for a while he carried on writing, and he told her that he would sponsor her to join him. Then he went quiet, and she came to understand that there was no chance he would come back for her. Scared that the new regime might be angry, she burned Ronald’s letters and never heard from him again. Years later, now aged 64, grey-haired and calm, sitting quietly outside a Buddhist pagoda, she can still feel the sadness."
The article goes on to mention how the Coffee Lady has only bought coffee from Trung Nguyen - one of the biggest Vietnamese coffee chains. It comments: “While she remained poor, the man who owns that company rode the new tide of free enterprise and is now reckoned to be worth $100m." Dang Le Nguyen Vu- the owner of the coffee company ‘Trung Nguyen Corporation’- is one of the few multi-millionaires in Vietnam.
The article is accurately titled "…how a communist victory gave way to capitalist corruption" pointing out Vietnam's social disparity which can be viewed through its coffee economy. Coffee farmers such as Ho Ver Nee risk their lives in fields with undefused bombs and barely earn enough money to eat rice, while other multinational companies, including a minority of Vietnamese owned ones, have earned a fortune.
Tony Wild also makes a powerful point in his book: “By deploying the promise of its cheap labour and factoring it into its projections, the government was able to attract development capital from institutions such as the World Bank, who foresaw a realistic route for the country into the global trading community. This is the colonialism in our era: the exploitation of cheap labour by the deployment of capital from wealthy lenders for the benefit of First world consumers.”
Justice failed and forgot that even after the war, peace never came for the Vietnamese people.
As for the bombs in Khe Sanh, they remain buried in the ground: unexploded, unhindered- along with history.