WAR IN CAMBODIA: A SOMBER PARALLEL TO THE VIETNAM CONFLICT
1. Pre WWII-1950s Cambodia
1.1. Cambodia became part of the Union of Indochina 1887.
1.2. A treaty signed in 1949 raised the country's status to that of an
associated state in the French Union, but
1.3. limitations on the country's sovereignty persisted.
1.4. King Norodom Sihanouk campaigned for complete independence, which
was finally granted in 1953.
2. 1954: Communist Viet Minh troops from Vietnam invade Cambodia.
2.1. The Geneva Conference of 1954 led to an armistice providing for the
withdrawal of all foreign forces from Cambodia.
3. An agreement between France and Cambodia (December 1954) severed the
last vestige of French control over Cambodian policy.
3.1. 1955: Cambodia admitted into the United Nations.
4. Cambodia under Sihanouk
4.1. Throughout the 1960s, Sihanouk struggled to keep Cambodia neutral as
the neighboring countries of Laos and South Vietnam came under
increasing Communist attack
4.2. Neutrality violated by Viet Cong (VC) and North Vietnamese Army (NVA)
using the Ho Chi Minh Trail
4.3. Geopolitical plays: A weak Sihanouk permitted the use of Cambodian
territory as a supply base and refuge by VC/NVA troops while accepting
military aid from the United States.
4.4. 1963: Sihanouk accused the United States of supporting
antigovernment activities and renounced all U.S. aid.
5. 1965: Following a series of border incidents involving South Vietnamese
troops, Cambodia severed diplomatic relations with the United States.
5.1. Sihanouk remained on friendly terms with the Communist countries,
especially Communist China.
5.2. Economic conditions deteriorated after the renunciation of U.S. aid, and
VC/NVA infiltrations increase.
6. Spring, 1969: the United States instituted aerial attacks against Communist
strongholds in Cambodia.
6.1. these bombings, are kept secret and later became an important issue in
U.S. politics (i.e., Pentagon Papers).
7. As Communist infiltration increased, Sihanouk began to turn again toward the
West.
7.1. July, 1969, diplomatic ties with the United States were restored.
7.2. August, 1969: Lt. Gen. Lon Nol, the defense minister and supreme
commander of the army, became premier.
8. Sihanouk attempts negotiating for the removal of VC/NVA, who now
numbered over 50,000 and occupied large areas of Cambodia.
8.1. There is growing dissatisfaction among many Cambodian army leaders.
8.2. Discontent with Sihanouk's rule was further heightened by rising
inflation, ruinous financial policies, and governmental corruption and
mismanagement.
9. 18 March, 1970: while Sihanouk was in Moscow seeking help against further
North Vietnamese incursions, Premier Lon Nol lead a coup d'état deposing
him.
9.1. Lon Nol abolished the monarchy, and established the Khmer Republic.
9.2. Sihanouk subsequently set up a government-in-exile in Beijing.
10.Soon after the coup, Lon Nol began fighting Communist forces on Cambodian
soil to restore sovereignty in its eastern regions, occupied by Vietnamese
communists as a result of Sihanouk's "neutrality" policies.
11.The war went badly for Lon Nol’s Khmer Republic.
11.1. In time Lon Nol's regime became completely dependent upon large
quantities of American aid.
11.2. By 1975, the government was reduced to holding little more than the
area around the capital of Phnom Penh.
11.3. April 1975: Lon Nol resigned and fled the country into exile.
12.Socialism in Cambodia 1975-1979
“In the new Kampuchea, one million is all we need to continue the revolution. We
don’t need the rest. We prefer to kill ten friends rather than keep one enemy
alive.”
~ Pin Yathay quoting a Khmer Rouge officer in “Stay Alive, My Son”, Cornell,
1987, p. 148
13.On 17 April 1975, Phnom Penh fell to the Khmer Rouge (i.e., the Red
Khmers)
13.1. In less than two weeks Saigon falls
13.2. The fall of the Cambodian capital signaled ultimate victory for a guerrilla
movement praised by the European and American left who labeled Lon
Nol a usurper and America puppet.
14.The new ruler of Cambodia, Pol Pot, (born Saloth Sar) ruled from 1975 to
1979 and presided over one of the worst genocides of the twentieth century.
14.1. Pol Pot (a nom de guerre, short for the French politique potentielle) had
been active in Cambodian politics since 1953.
14.2. He was well versed in socialism and communism; his ideological role
models were Lenin, Trotsky, Stalin, and Mao
15.Cambodia ironically renamed Democratic Kampuchea.
16.One of Pol Pot’s first acts was to implement a complete evacuation of Phnom
Penh and all major urban areas to the countryside
17.“Year Zero”
17.1. Under his four-year economic plan, Pol Pot’s stated aim was to turn
Cambodia into a Maoist agrarian utopia and
17.2. create a “new man” which was ideologically devoted;
18.He planned to nationalize and minimize all industry and finance the economy
through increased agricultural exports.
19.The new régime dictatorially assumed all legislative and judicial powers.
20.Every Cambodian was forced to become an unpaid agrarian laborer and
given limited rations and rest.
20.1. Killing Fields: Under the four-year plan, at least one million Cambodians
died as a result of starvation, disease, or execution (estimates run as
high as three million deaths).
20.2. Anyone suspected of betraying the government, possessing too high an
education, or looking “western” was executed.
20.3. Religion banned
21.A Khmer Rouge radio broadcast boasted that in order to build the new
agrarian communist utopia a population of only one or two million people was
needed.
21.1. The Khmer Rouge intended to achieve a radical and complete
redistribution of wealth, and
21.2. a fundamental transformation of human nature through the eradication
all individualist culture, personality, and economic uniqueness.
22.In their opinion, their policies were merely the ultimate and inevitable
culmination of the predicted Marxist historical dialectic.
22.1. They were going to achieve the kind of society which had eluded the
USSR, PRC, Cuba, and other scientific socialists (Heder, 1991; Stefoff,
1991; Vicheka, 2008; Yismut, Savin, Chandler, 2011).
23.Throughout the late 1970s relations with neighboring communist Vietnam
deteriorated.
23.1. Eventually, the Vietnamese army invaded on 7 January 1979 and
toppled Pol Pot’s Khmer Rouge government.
23.2. Pol Pot fled into the jungle near Thailand and led an unsuccessful
guerrilla war from there.
24.As the Cambodian people worked to rebuild their devastated economy, they
remained under threat from the Khmer Rouge until 1993.
25.Pol Pot died on 15 April 1998, in the Thai-Cambodian border area without
ever having been brought to justice for his heinous crimes.
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