Welcome Shift on Cambodia : U.S. Support for Resistance Coalition Ends

The announcement that the United States will open a dialogue with Vietnam over the war in Cambodia marks a major--and decidedly welcome--shift in U.S. policy towards Indochina. It effectively ends U.S. support for a Cambodian resistance coalition that included the bloody Khmer Rouge.

By enlisting Hanoi’s help, Secretary of State James A. Baker III said Washington hopes to end a decade of fighting in Cambodia and prevent the Khmer Rouge from returning to power. But he cautioned that the talks will be confined to Cambodia, and do not signal the normalization of relations between the United States and Vietnam.

The new approach, however, does suggest a new realism about Indochina, one driven less by ideology and more by pragmatism. It is a significant acknowledgement that it’s time for the United States to move beyond the painful wounds left by the Vietnam War, especially now that Vietnam is being forced to change, too, as it receives less aid from the financially strapped Soviet Union.

Baker’s announcement, after conferring with Soviet Foreign Minister Eduard Shevardnadze, came at the conclusion of talks in Paris. There, members of the United Nations Security Council met again to attempt to draft a cease-fire between Cambodia’s rival factions and to provide an interim U.N. administration pending free elections.

The United States has long shunned Cambodia’s current Vietnam-backed Communist government of Prime Minister Hun Sen. It has insisted instead on supporting a coalition of non-Communist groups headed by Prince Norodom Sihanouk, a former Cambodian ruler. The triumvirate, however, includes the Khmer Rouge, who were responsible for 1 million to 2 million deaths while they controlled Cambodia from 1975 to 1978.

The result, at best, has been an uneasy alliance in which the Khmer Rouge has been the least cooperative member. Most recently, Khmer Rouge representatives refused to attend peace talks in Tokyo to discuss forming a multifaction council to organize a free election.

Meanwhile, even as the Paris talks began, the Khmer Rouge was threatening new attacks against the Hun Sen regime if its terms were not met. Baker said in Paris that Washington would no longer recognize control by resistance groups--including the Khmer Rouge--of Cambodia’s U.N. seat.

Baker’s announcement comes as mixed signals on Cambodia and Vietnam are coming out of Washington. For example, a week after the House voted in June to continue aid to the non-Communist resistance groups in Cambodia, the Senate Intelligence Committee voted to cut off such aid. The contradictory positions are to be worked out later this month.

The policy shift should mark the beginning of a consistent and compassionate Cambodia policy.