The Fate of Cambodia: Dealing With the Devil

Nearly 11 years after its army toppled the Pol Pot dictatorship, Vietnam has withdrawn the last of its troops from Cambodia and the Khmer Rouge have embarked on a major new military campaign to topple the Phnom Penh government.

In Washington, Cambodia remains at the bottom of Bush Administration priorities as U.S. policy meanders along the same cynical course it has traveled for the past decade: Cambodians take a back seat to U.S. accommodation of China and continuing hostility to Vietnam and its sponsor, the Soviet Union.

Certainly U.S. officials detected something unsavory in Beijing’s patronage of a regime responsible for the deaths of more than a million Cambodians by murder, torture or starvation. But if criticizing China meant jeopardizing commercial ties with a nation of more than a billion people, it hardly seemed worth the effort. Thus, if the Chinese wanted to arm the Khmer Rouge in order to bleed Vietnam, that was all right with Washington. In the final analysis, when U.S. officials assayed the resulting battlefield, they saw Chinese-backed communists killing Soviet and Vietnamese-backed communists. And if all those communists wanted to kill each other, the United States wasn’t about to try to stop them.

To avoid suggestions that it was encouraging the Khmer Rouge, the United States cast its lot with a broad coalition of opponents to the Phnom Penh government. It was a coalition allowing the Khmer Rouge to be deodorized by two non-communist resistance armies, among them one headed by Prince Norodom Sihanouk. The fact that this coalition was dominated by the Khmer Rouge didn’t seem to bother Washington, which argued that the real culprits were actually the Vietnamese. As recently as last March, David Lambertson, then deputy assistant secretary of state for East Asia and the Pacific, said that Vietnam’s occupation “is the root cause” of the civil war in Cambodia. Eliminate the Vietnamese “hegemonists,” as they are known at the State Department, and presumably the war would end.

But now the Vietnamese have pulled out and war has resumed with a vengeance, leaving world leaders to ponder whether or not the Khmer Rouge will overrun the country. The Bush Administration’s new point man for Cambodia, Assistant Secretary of State Richard H. Solomon, recently testified before a House Foreign Affairs subcommittee that what we are witnessing now is “a process of negotiation combined with testing of strength.”

Solomon and Sihanouk argue that as the Khmer Rouge “test their strength” at the Thai border (by killing more Cambodians), they will persuade the intransigent government in Phnom Penh--which until now has refused to share power with them--to negotiate a peace settlement. Eventually war will bring peace and the Khmer Rouge will agree to assume a minor role in a new democratic Cambodia. According to Sihanouk, “The Khmer Rouge have given me their oath that they will observe and implement my plan for a fair solution to the ‘Cambodia problem.’ ” While the Bush Administration has been less trusting of the Khmer Rouge leadership than Sihanouk, it nevertheless defends giving them a role in a new government. According to Solomon’s testimony (presented before the final troop withdrawal) they must be included, because “there’s virtually a certain chance that if the Khmer Rouge is frozen out, that leaves them really the only option of immediate civil war.”

That analysis has already proved correct. But Solomon also believes that the Khmer Rouge will try to shoot their way back to power regardless of whether they’re included in a new government. “I would make that an operating assumption,” Solomon told the House subcommittee. “I assume the struggle will go on.” Unfortunately, Solomon’s analysis points to the one incontrovertible fact that U.S. policy has consistently ignored. The problem isn’t Vietnam. It’s the Khmer Rouge and how to stop them.

But rather than pick a fight with China by insisting that it stop sending weapons to the Khmer Rouge, the United States remains silent on this unseemly alliance. Rather than pressure Thailand, whose generals profit from the transit of war materiel from China to the Khmer Rouge, the United States stands by as the Thais provide sanctuary for the Khmer Rouge. Rather than support an international force that could certify one way or another whether the last Vietnamese troops had left Cambodia, the Bush Administration opposed such a force. Why? Perhaps so it can claim the Vietnamese are still in Cambodia and justify its appeal to Congress to arm Sihanouk.

For the past decade the United States has been advocating Vietnam’s withdrawal from Cambodia. Yet as recently as a year ago, U.S. officials were predicting that once Vietnamese troops pulled out, the Khmer Rouge would triumph. While these same officials pay lip service to the depravity of the Khmer Rouge, Solomon acknowledges that “there is a tension, if you like, between our moral policy--which is very clearly to see these people (the Khmer Rouge) excluded--and looking for ways to deal with the realities of the situation.”

In fact, the tension arises from a policy that is morally indefensible. With Vietnamese troops out, the United States has lost the flimsy basis it once had for supporting a coalition that includes a band of ruthless killers, while at the same time rejecting an alliance with the regime in Phnom Penh. Whatever its faults, no one has accused the latter of murdering a million people. Hardly a subtle distinction.

Solomon suggests that if Sihanouk had agreed in the Paris talks to a government without the Khmer Rouge, the United States would have gone along. If it is morally defensible, or practical, to embrace Phnom Penh with Sihanouk’s seal of approval, might it not be equally so without it? There are sound reasons for dumping the Khmer Rouge and starting to think about a future for Cambodia without them. It’s time to tell Sihanouk that if he wants continued support, he must break with his Khmer Rouge allies and deal directly with Phnom Penh.

For 11 years the Bush Administration has adhered to a policy of isolating Cambodia economically, of preventing major foreign investment and aid. At one point President Reagan went so far as to try to block American school children from sending pencils and pens to Cambodia. More recently the Bush Administration went to the extent of blocking a United Nations study that would have assessed the state of Cambodia’s infrastructure so that aid agencies could plan for the day when there would be no more war in that country.

After 10 years, U.S. policy has accomplished nothing except to ensure the continuation of a pointless war, the abandonment of 300,000 Cambodian exiles in Thai refugee camps and the impoverishment of a nation that only recently survived the century’s latest holocaust.

Now, by following Sihanouk’s lead, the United States embraces a policy that could result in the return of the Khmer Rouge. Will George Bush stand by Sihanouk if the Khmer Rouge capture a province or two? Will he stick with him if the Khmer Rouge march into Phnom Penh? And finally, does anyone really believe that if the Khmer Rouge return, they will hand over power to Sihanouk?