War without frontlines: smuggling and the erosion of state power in South Vietnam (1955–1975)

Abstract

This article examines the erosion of state capacity in the Republic of Vietnam (RVN) by tracing the evolution of cross-border smuggling networks along the Vietnam–Cambodia frontier between 1955 and 1975. It argues that smuggling was not merely a form of criminal activity, but a significant mechanism of wartime political economy that both sustained and undermined the state. Drawing on archival records from the National Archives Centre II (Vietnam), US advisory reports, and memoir literature, the study identifies a process of ‘institutional cannibalisation’, in which military actors increasingly appropriated state-controlled coercive and logistical resources. At the same time, some rank-and-file soldiers participated in smuggling as a form of ‘self-remuneration’ amid inflation and material scarcity. By integrating institutional analysis with lived wartime experience, this article argues that cross-border smuggling became increasingly embedded in the institutions of the Republic of Vietnam, transforming military and administrative resources into instruments of rent extraction and weakening the state’s capacity to regulate wartime economic flows.