World’s Isolation of Cambodia Only Invites Pol Pot’s Return

Will the world see a second Khmer Rouge holocaust in Cambodia in the 1990s? The Vietnamese have just stepped up their timetable to withdraw the forces that saved Cambodia from Pol Pot. Wednesday, they announced that they would withdraw their forces by this September whether or not there is sufficient agreement among the contending forces to protect against the Khmer Rouge.

This action was foreshadowed in Hanoi in February when Nguyen Thi Binh, the vice chairman of Vietnam’s Committee on Foreign Affairs, said that Vietnam did not “have the power to force all parties to an agreement” but planned to withdraw anyway. Nguyen thought that the Vietnamese-backed government, the People’s Republic of Kampuchea, would by then be able to “stand firm.” She recognized, however, that if there was “no settlement and no ending of aid to the Khmer Rouge and others, then the danger (of a return of the Khmer Rouge) will really be there.”

She concluded: “For our part, we have done all in our capacity to help the Cambodians recover from the genocide. The international community has a responsibility now. Only Vietnam has helped Cambodia so far. Other countries, including the U.S., now have to help. We have done what we can. We have to help ourselves now.”

But what is the United States planning to do to help? If things are left to the only congressional subcommittee--Asian and Pacific affairs--that holds hearings on this subject, we would probably pump more weapons into the area.

Stephen Solarz, chairman of the subcommittee, said last month that he was seriously considering pressing for lethal aid to Prince Sihanouk because “. . . at the end of the day the non-communist resistance may be the last best hope the Cambodians have of preventing a fate which could be worse than death.”

But all military estimates show that the main bulwark to the return of the Khmer Rouge is the Cambodian government itself and its militia. Moreover, David Hawk of the Cambodia Documentation Center warned the congressman at the March 1 hearing, “just last week, Sihanouk was wanting arms to fight (the government of Cambodia Premier) Hun Sen.”

On March 15 Sihanouk showed up in a Beijing press conference with Khmer Rouge leader Khieu Samphan, calling, jointly, for just such lethal aid and for a new High Council for National Defense with the Khmer Rouge. So there is not, to put it mildly, much certainty that this new lethal aid would be used against the Khmer Rouge.

George Santayana once defined a fanatic as one who redoubled his efforts as he lost sight of his goals. U.S. policy now risks such a characterization.

The main emphasis of U.S. policy should be preventing the return of the Khmer Rouge. But in the past, and still today, our real policy has been to join with China and the member countries of the Assn. of Southeast Asian Nations in forcing the Vietnamese forces out of Cambodia. Meanwhile our high-flown declaratory policy was to engineer a four-way provisional government (including the Khmer Rouge as one of the participants) that would bring democracy to Cambodia. The first goal is being achieved at considerable risk of a second holocaust. The second goal is a dangerous mirage.

After all, the Khmer Rouge is trying to obstruct or subvert any agreement. Prince Sihanouk is congenitally incapable of compromise so long as there is any alternative. And the People’s Republic of Kampuchea has invested 10 years in building up a government that controls the entire territory and knows full well that the population cannot abide injecting the Khmer Rouge, as a group, into even a provisional government.

Instead, Prince Sihanouk ought now to be encouraged to drop out of the Khmer Rouge coalition. His embrace of the Khmer Rouge is destroying his credibility in Cambodia and abroad anyway.

Meanwhile, the international community should press the Chinese and the Thais to stop helping the Khmer Rouge with their arms and sanctuaries; the Khmer Rouge was, after all, resurrected simply and solely for the purpose of helping drive the Vietnamese out of Cambodia.

The world can have high assurance against the return of the Khmer Rouge. But to do so, all concerned would have to work with what already exists, the Hun Sen government, by easing pressure on it.

Probably, the world can also have the incorporation of Prince Sihanouk into such a government. In Phnom Penh in February, Hun Sen said he had twice offered Prince Sihanouk the position of chief of state and was prepared, if Sihanouk left the Pol Pot coalition, to try again. But the Khmer Rouge-Sihanouk coalition would have to be broken up by giving the imperious and mercurial Sihanouk no other choice than to deal with Hun Sen. He has to be told that with or without him, the United States and others will simply recognize the People’s Republic of Kampuchea.

What we don’t need are more arms. And what won’t help is a policy of isolating Cambodia--as if the present government, rather than the Khmer Rouge, were the real problem.