💾 Archived View for library.inu.red › file › noam-chomsky-cambodia.gmi captured on 2023-01-29 at 12:56:33. Gemini links have been rewritten to link to archived content
-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Title: Cambodia Author: Noam Chomsky Date: June 4, 1970 Language: en Topics: Cambodia, cold war Source: Retrieved on 30th October 2020 from https://chomsky.info/19700604/ Notes: The New York Review of Books, June 4, 1970
In 1947, commenting on the rising tide of “anti-Communist” hysteria in
the United States, John K. Fairbank made the following perceptive
observations:
Our fear of Communism, partly as an expression of our general fear of
the future, will continue to inspire us to aggressive anti-Communist
policies in Asia and elsewhere, [and] the American people will be led to
think and may honestly believe that the support of anti-Communist
governments in Asia will somehow defend the American way of life. This
line of American policy will lead to American aid to establish regimes
which attempt to suppress the popular movements in Indonesia, Indochina,
the Philippines, and China…. Thus, after setting out to fight Communism
in Asia, the American people will be obliged in the end to fight the
peoples of Asia.
This American aggression abroad will be associated with an increasing
trend toward anti-Communist authoritarianism within the United States,
which its victims will call fascism and which may eventually make it
impossible to have discussions like this one today. This American
fascism will come, if it comes, because American liberals have joined
the American public in a fear of Communism from abroad rather than
fascism at home as the chief totalitarian menace.[1]
These remarks have proved to be accurate. The events of the past few
weeks reveal, once again, how the American policy of “anti-Communism”—to
be more precise, the effort to prevent the development of indigenous
movements that might extricate their societies from the integrated world
system dominated by American capital—draws the American government, step
by fateful step, into an endless war against the people of Asia, and, as
an inevitable concomitant, toward harsh repression and defiance of law
at home.
The invasion of Cambodia by the United States and its Saigon subsidiary
comes as no surprise, in the light of recent events in Southeast Asia.
Since 1968, the United States has steadily escalated the war in Laos,
both on the ground, as the CIA-sponsored Clandestine Army swept through
the Plain of Jars in late 1969, and from the air. When the report of the
Symington subcommittee on Laos was finally released on April 20, the
Washington Post carried the front-page headline: US ESCALATES WAR IN
LAOS, HILL DISCLOSES. The headline was accurate; other evidence, to
which I shall return in a later article, shows that the subcommittee
hearings seriously understate the scale, and the grim effects, of the
American escalation. This American escalation provoked a response by the
Pathet Lao and North Vietnam, who now control more of Laos than ever
before, and led to devastation and population removal on a vast scale.
the destabilizing event in Cambodia—assiduously ignored by President
Nixon in his speech of April 30 announcing the American invasion[2] —was
the right-wing coup of March 18 which overthrew Prince Sihanouk and
drove him into an alliance with the Cambodian left and the mass popular
movements of Laos and Vietnam, which are dominated by left-wing forces.
The coup, and the events that followed, must be understood as a further
step in the internationalization of the Vietnam war. However, the coup
should also be seen in the context of developments internal to Cambodia
over the past several years. These factors are, of course,
inter-related.
Since early 1964 the United States has been conducting its war in
Indochina from sanctuaries scattered from Thailand to Okinawa. The
bombardment of Laos, which appears to have begun in May, 1964, and the
intensive bombardment of North and South Vietnam that followed in
February, 1965, make use of bases in Thailand, South Vietnam, Okinawa,
the Philippines, and Guam, not to speak of the naval units that control
the surrounding oceans. The control center for the bombing of North
Vietnam and Northern Laos is in Thailand, presumably, at Udorn airbase.
In 1968, the bombing of Laos greatly increased in intensity, when
aircraft formerly employed against North Vietnam were shifted to the
bombardment of Laos. In 1969, the bombing of Northern Laos was again
greatly intensified as infiltration fell off on the so-called “Ho Chi
Minh Trail.” Most of this area has long been under Pathet Lao control.
As a glance at the map makes clear, the bombing of Northern Laos takes
place in a region far removed from the “Ho Chi Minh Trail” and has no
direct connection to the war in South Vietnam. It is, in fact, directed
against civilian targets and has resulted in almost total destruction of
most settled areas and forced evacuation of much of the population.
Where people remain, they live, for the most part, in caves and tunnels.
According to American Embassy figures, the population remaining in the
Pathet Lao zones is over a million, well over a third of the population
of Laos. There may be as many as three-quarters of a million refugees in
the government-controlled areas. The planes that attack Northern Laos
are based in Thailand, whereas the bombing of Southern Laos (including
the “Ho Chi Minh Trail”) originates from Danang, Pleiku, and the Seventh
Fleet. Now the Thai bases are also being used to bomb Cambodia.[3]
The American escalation of the war in Laos provoked a response by the
Communist forces, which now control more of Laos than ever before. (I
shall return to the details in a later article.) Since this result was
predictable, the question naturally arises: What was the American
government hoping to accomplish by the 1968–9 escalation? Some regard
this escalation as merely another major error of the Pentagon and the
CIA, but there are grounds for skepticism. The objective of the bombing
seems to be to destroy the civil society administered by the Pathet Lao.
Quite possibly, the United States is pursuing in Laos the dual policy of
massive destruction in areas that are beyond the reach of
American-controlled armies, and removal of the population to refugee
camps and urban slums wherever this is feasible. This has been the
effect of the American escalation, and it is likely that it was the
intended effect, as in Vietnam.
To facilitate the all-weather bombardment of North Vietnam, advanced
navigational facilities were established in Northeastern Laos. One of
these, at Phou Pha Thi, became known to the American public when it was
overrun on March 11, 1968. It was seventeen miles from the border of
North Vietnam, on a mountain peak. There were American casualties, but
the number remains classified. The base had been established in 1966.
Other such facilities were established, but information is classified.
The CIA has also endeavored to maintain guerrilla bases in these
territories, long administered by the Pathet Lao.[4]
The United States also has employed extensive mercenary forces—the term
is precise—from South Korea, Thailand, and the Philippines, as well as
Chinese and Cambodian mercenaries. The number of these forces, taken
together with the troops from Australia and New Zealand, over the years,
has been about the same as that of the North Vietnamese claimed by the
Americans to be in South Vietnam. Of course, all of these forces and
their fire power are quite small as compared with the American occupying
army, even apart from the Pacific Naval and Air Command operating from
its privileged sanctuaries.
During the 1960s, Prince Sihanouk tried, with much success, to save
Cambodia from the spreading Indochina war. Nevertheless, the war has
spilled over into Eastern Cambodia. Those whose information is
restricted to American government propaganda may have visions of an
invasion of Cambodia by great North Vietnamese armies. The truth is
rather different. As American ground sweeps and aerial bombardment
devastated much of the Vietnamese countryside, Vietnamese resistance
forces have taken refuge in sparsely inhabited areas of Eastern
Cambodia, which have increasingly been used as rest-and-recreation areas
and, conceivably, command posts. At the same time, the armed forces of
the United States and its allies and collaborators have carried out
substantial military attacks against Cambodia. Evidence is meager, but
what there is supports these general conclusions.
The earlier stages are described as follows by the American journalist
Michael Leifer:
From the early 1960’s charges had been levelled from Saigon and later
from Washington that Cambodian territory was being used as an active
sanctuary for Viet Cong insurgents. Prince Sihanouk had denied the
charges consistently and the denials had always been substantiated as a
result of inquiries by the International Control Commission for
Cambodia, by Western journalists, and even by Western military attachés
stationed in Phnom Penh.[5]
In July, 1966, an American study team investigated specific charges by
the US government on the scene and found them to be entirely without
substance.[6] However, the team happened to be present immediately after
an American helicopter attack on the Cambodian village of Thlok Trach,
and its published report, relying on information supplied by Cambodian
officials, also mentions other specific attacks on villages. The Thlok
Trach attack was at first denied by the US, but was then conceded, since
eyewitnesses (including a CBS television team) were present. (This,
incidentally, is the usual pattern. To cite only the most recent case,
the bombing of North Vietnam on May 1, 1970, was admitted by the US
government, but, it appears, only after a report was filed by an
American newsman, Robert Boyd, who happened to be present near the site
of the bombing.[7] )
The Cambodians report many other such incidents. For example, on 24
February 1967, “a large number of armed forces elements consisting of
Americans, South Vietnamese and South Koreans entered Cambodian
territory and fired heavily on the Khmer defenders of the village of
Duan Roth…. On the same day…aircraft of the same armed forces heavily
bombed the Khmer village of Chrak Krank…[which] was then invaded and
burned by the United States-South Vietnamese troops” who occupied the
village until March 3.[8]
According to official Cambodian statistics, up to May, 1969, the United
States and its allies were responsible for 1864 border violations, 5149
air violations, 293 Cambodian deaths, and 690 Cambodians wounded.”[9]
In a review of events of 1967, Roger Smith writes that relations between
Cambodia and the United States “were strained because of periodic South
Vietnamese bombing of Cambodian villages along the South Vietnamese
frontier, armed incursions from Thailand, and, late in the year, a
reported South Vietnamese-inspired blockade of shipping to Phnom Penh
via the Mekong River.”[10] Additional problems were caused by the
activities of the Khmer Serei (Free Khmers), which, in the beginning of
1966, “declared war on Cambodia and claimed responsibility for
incursions across the border.”[11]
The Khmer Serei is led by an adventurer named Songsak, who fled Cambodia
by bribing a pilot of an aviation club (taking with him all its funds),
and the fascist Son Ngoc Thanh, who was the head of the Cambodian
government under the Japanese, and then switched his allegiance to the
CIA—not an unfamiliar pattern.[12] This group is made up of Cambodians
who were trained by the American Special Forces in South Vietnam and
have carried out operations against Cambodia from bases in South Vietnam
and Thailand.[13] We shall return to this interesting organization and
its recent activities in a moment.
The Cambodian Government White Paper of January, 1970 (see note 9)
covers events up until May, 1969. Since then, there have been many
further incidents. The American biologist Arthur Westing, who was
investigating American defoliation in Cambodia (see note 9), inspected
the site of one such incident shortly after it occurred last November.
He describes this as a “particularly vicious” case. A village was
attacked, and houses, a school, livestock, a hospital marked with a
giant red cross on its roof, and a well-marked ambulance trying to
retrieve wounded were all destroyed by bombs, rockets, and napalm. The
ICC reported no evidence of the presence of Viet Cong, nor could the US
produce any photographic (or other) evidence, despite daily
reconnaissance flights. The US chargé suggested that “our pilots must
have lost their cool”—for about forty-eight hours.
Westing speculates that the attack may have been “a punitive or
retaliatory measure following the destruction of a US helicopter last
October 24 and particularly of a US F-105 on November 14, both shot down
in the course of attacking Dak Dam in casual and callous disregard of
Cambodian neutrality.”[14] The American government apologized and paid
$11,400 in reparations. I shall return below to other recent incidents
reported by Americans present at the scene.
As in the case of Laos, it may be asked what the United States hoped to
achieve by these repeated attacks on Cambodia, in which, so far as is
known, no Viet Cong or North Vietnamese was ever killed and no damage
was done to any Vietnamese military site. Again, it is possible that
“faulty intelligence” is to blame. I suspect, however, that the aerial,
naval, and ground attacks were for the most part capricious or vengeful,
as appears to have been the case in the incident that Westing reported.
The American military does not recognize the right of others to defend
their own territory from American attack or overflight, or to interfere
with American plans by inhabiting areas that the US government feels
should be cratered or defoliated. And when such people aggressively
insist on these rights, the US authorities feel free to react as they
choose. Where we have evidence at all, it appears that the American
attacks on Cambodia were governed by such assumptions, though it is
possible that in some cases it was believed (apparently falsely) that
Vietnamese military targets were being attacked.
A European resident of Phnom Penh described to a reporter a visit,
before the recent coup, to Svay Rieng town in the “Parrot’s Beak” area,
five kilometers from the closest border point:
During lunch, an American plane came over and looped the loop over the
governor’s house. The plane kept diving at a Cambodian flag which was
flying in the front garden. A policeman took out his pistol and fired a
few shots at the plane. I suppose if he had hit it, the Americans would
have come in and napalmed the whole town.[15]
An exaggeration or a joke? One can hardly say so, given what evidence we
have regarding American military actions.[16] Very likely something of
the sort accounts for many, perhaps most, of the attacks on Cambodia.
The first attested case of a Viet Cong installation within Cambodia was
in November, 1967, when American journalists claimed to have found a
Viet Cong campsite four miles within Cambodian territory (see Leifer,
op. cit.). Since that time, Viet Cong and NVA forces have taken refuge
in Eastern Cambodia after intensive bombardment and American ground
sweeps in South Vietnam, using these territories much as the United
States makes use of Thailand, Vietnam, the Philippines, Taiwan, Japan,
Okinawa, Guam, Hawaii, and the oceans of Asia and the Pacific. (The
analogy is, of course, inexact, since the Vietnamese obviously do not
dispose of anything like the resources that the United States employs
for its war against the people of Vietnam, Laos, and now Cambodia.) T.
D. Allman, one of the most knowledgeable and enterprising of the
American correspondents now in Cambodia, describes the situation as
follows:
…although tens of thousands of Vietnamese Communist troops have been for
long on Cambodian soil, they have been lying low in the border regions
and causing little trouble…. The arrangement has meant the presence of
foreign troops on Cambodian soil, but it has also allowed Cambodia,
alone among its neighbors, to pass through the dangers of the Vietnam
war without having its countryside ravaged and its population
brutalized.[17]
I will not take the space to comment on the hypocrisy of the reference
to “sanctuaries” by the American government and its propagandists and
apologists. Perhaps the most appropriate remark, in this connection, was
made by Prince Sihanouk after the coup:
The cynicism of the United States executive reached its peak when he
demanded that the resistance forces of our three peoples [i.e., of
Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia] evacuate their own countries in response to
the withdrawal of a part of the United States forces, and especially
when our resistance has become “foreign intervention” on our own soil.
Where then should our liberation armies go? To the United States?[18]
Sihanouk is quite correct. When President Nixon refers to the lack of
sincerity on the part of the “North Vietnamese” (an expression now used
by American propaganda as a cover term for Cambodians, Lao, South
Vietnamese, and North Vietnamese who obstinately refuse to obey American
orders) in Laos, Cambodia, and South Vietnam, to their continued
aggression in the face of American withdrawals which now leave in South
Vietnam a force considerably larger than the entire North Vietnamese
Army, the meaning of his words is, plainly, that these “aggressors” have
refused to surrender to the right-wing governments that the United
States has installed and the native military forces that it organizes,
trains, supplies, pays, and “advises.” With equal justice, Hitler might
have spoken of the aggressiveness of the French Maquis, who were of
course supplied and advised by the Anglo-Saxons, and Tojo of the lack of
sincerity of the Chinese bandits, who refused to accept the rule of Wang
Ching-wei, whom the Japanese installed as a puppet ruler in 1940.
But Wang Ching-wei had at least been a leading Chinese nationalist, not
a General Thieu. Nor did the Germans deploy an expeditionary force on
anything remotely approaching the American scale to ensure the rule of
the Vichy government. It cannot be stressed too strongly that what is
remarkable about the Indochina war is the inability of the American
invaders to establish indigenous governments that can rule effectively
and control their societies with their own means. In this respect, the
United States in Indochina still falls short of its distinguished
predecessors, though the American White House easily matches them in
cynicism and mendacity, and surpasses all current competitors in its
reliance on violence and terror.
To return to Cambodia: the country was, then, partially drawn into the
Indochina war, though Prince Sihanouk managed to maintain neutrality by
a delicate balancing act and to save it from the terror that ravaged
Vietnam and Laos. The contrast between Cambodia and its immediate
neighbors was described by T. D. Allman, just a few months ago, as
follows:
A few days later, in a commercial plane, I flew over Svay Rieng
province. From the air the frontier is now clearly defined: beyond the
parrot’s beak peninsula of neat Cambodian rice fields and villages the
land is pitted by literally hundreds of thousands of bomb and shell
craters. In some cases the years of day-and-night bombing have changed
the contours of the land and little streams form into lakes as they fill
up mile after square mile of craters. Above this desolation and along
and just across the Cambodian frontier, the American helicopters and
planes whirr continually, firing their guns and cannon, dropping their
bombs.[19]
The March 18 coup against Sihanouk marked the end of this period of
fairly effective neutrality. It is safe to predict that the frontier
will no longer be so clearly defined.
Evidently, it was the coup of March 18 that destabilized the Cambodian
situation. It created an entirely new situation within Cambodia, and may
also prove to have affected significantly the long-term relations among
the peoples of Indochina. Cambodia, like the other states of the region,
is a mélange of ethnic groups. The large majority of its population of
about 7 million is Khmer (the term is often used as synonymous with
“Cambodian”), but there are substantial Chinese and Vietnamese
minorities of perhaps about half a million each, in addition to mountain
tribes. Many Vietnamese were brought to Cambodia (as to Laos) by the
French to work in rubber plantations (in Laos, in the mines), but also
to serve as administrators for the colonial government and private
businesses. They also succeeded in taking over a large share of local
commerce.
The French capitalized on feelings of inferiority toward the Vietnamese
among the native Khmer and Lao, and by so doing, no doubt intensified
these feelings, which remain an important factor in current politics.
They adopted the standard colonialist policy of using minorities or
outsiders to help control native populations. Jean Lacouture describes
the French colonial system as one of “double domination: that of the
[French] administration over the three Vietnamese regions and that of
the Vietnamese cadres over the two small countries of the west [Laos and
Cambodia].”[20] The French scholar Jean Chesneaux writes:
If the popular movements of Cambodia were repressed by “Annamite
riflemen,” it was the “Cambodian riflemen” who were brought in to
restore order among the Vietnamese of the lower Mekong.[21]
(The Americans do much the same, relying on Khmer mercenaries in South
Vietnam—see note 32—and using the Saigon Army to restore order in
Cambodia.)
At the same time, there is a Khmer minority of about 700,000 in the
western part of South Vietnam. According to Chesneaux, the Khmer
minority, oppressed by Saigon’s policies of racial discrimination, gave
“massive support” to the NLF.[22] He also reports that the Khmer
peasants in Cambodia took no part in the recent pogroms initiated by the
Lon Nol government against the Vietnamese minority in Cambodia.
Such observations suggest that there has always been a possibility of
peaceful cooperation among the peoples of Indochina—the Viet, the Lao,
the Khmer, the Chinese, and the mountain tribesmen—if the Western
imperialists, whose presence has exacerbated all potential conflicts,
were to depart. It is interesting, in this connection, that the 1962
Congress of the NLF of South Vietnam called for a neutralist bloc
including South Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia. The United States, hoping
to convert South Vietnam into a permanent base for its colonial
operations, showed no interest in this idea (if, indeed, it even took
official notice of it).
In 1965 Prince Sihanouk convened a “Conference of the Indochinese
People” in Phnom Penh. It brought together representatives of the
Democratic Republic of Vietnam (North Vietnam), the NLF of South
Vietnam, the Pathet Lao, the ruling Sangkum party of Cambodia, and other
South Vietnamese “opposed to American hegemony.”[23] It was able to
achieve very little, coming, as it did, immediately after the initiation
of the intensive and regular bombardment of South and North Vietnam in
early February, 1965.
As the Vietnam war expanded, tensions began to develop between Sihanouk
and the Viet Cong. Sihanouk’s press began to speak of Viet Cong support
for the small local guerrilla groups, the so-called “Red Khmer” or
“Khmer Viet Minh.” T. D. Allman, reviewing these developments just a few
months ago,[24] described the conflicts as more potential than real, if
only because Sihanouk’s “enormous popularity continues undiminished in
the countryside.”
Immediately after the March 18 coup, the leadership of the “Red Khmers”
approached Sihanouk and offered to join him in opposition to American
imperialism.[25] Sihanouk accepted this offer and called for guerrilla
war. In his speech to the closing session of the April 1970 Summit
Conference of Indochinese Peoples in Peking (see note 18), Sihanouk said
that US imperialist aggression has created a new unity among the peoples
of Indochina:
This process of union and cooperation is in the line of history, in the
same way as decolonization and liberation of oppressed peoples in the
Third World. Only yesterday the colonial powers divided these peoples in
order to “rule” them, and they did not accept decolonization until
forced to do so by armed resistance. Today the old colonialists have
been replaced by imperialists and neo-colonialists, and there is no
hope, through diplomacy, negotiations, conferences or even friendly
neutrality, of avoiding the mortal danger that they represent. Wherever
this danger appears, armed struggle alone is the only way to eliminate
it.
His closing words were: “Long live the united peoples of Indochina.”
Whether real unity among the Indochinese peoples will be achieved
remains to be seen. Some of the best-informed observers are optimistic
in this regard. Jean Chesneaux writes:
The history of Viet-Lao-Khmer relations has not bequeathed these peoples
with a burden of colonial conflicts: the frontiers fixed by colonization
have not been placed in question. The moral relations among them are
also disentangled from the frictions of the past…. Cambodia today is
plunged directly into the war by an external initiative, the promoters
of which doubtless did not gauge all of the consequences: in particular,
the development of solidarity among the Vietnamese, Laotians, and
Cambodians.[26]
In the past, Sihanouk hoped, with much reason, that China would, in the
long run, be the guarantor of Cambodian neutrality against possible
Vietnamese incursions. China has no reason to want a powerful bloc of
unified states to its south controlled either from the outside or by one
dominant member, any more than the USSR in the postwar world looked with
favor on a Balkan alliance dominated by Tito.[27] Hence it is opposed to
American domination of Indochina, as it would no doubt oppose Thai or
Vietnamese domination were either to appear likely. American propaganda
naturally insists that China hopes to rule the region itself, or to do
so through its “puppet” in Hanoi, but these claims are supported by no
evidence or serious argument. Sihanouk, though himself strongly
anti-Communist in the past, appears to have had faith in China’s
intentions, in part for the general reasons just mentioned, but in part
also because of China’s attitude since his regime was established.
Michael Field comments:
…as he [Sihanouk] frequently remarks, China has behaved in an exemplary
fashion towards Cambodia; its independence and territorial integrity
have been harassed, not by the Chinese colossus but by South Viet Nam
and Thailand, camp-followers of the West.[28]
Now, of course, Sihanouk has formed a direct alliance with the Cambodian
left and with China. It remains to be seen how the situation will
develop under these changed circumstances, though it would appear that
China’s long-term goals should remain unaltered, even after Cambodia’s
most popular political personality, the formerly anti-Communist
spokesman for Cambodian nationalism, has been driven into an alliance
with the Communists.
The immediate background for the Cambodian coup of March 18 is described
as follows by the commentator for the Far Eastern Economic Review:
The underlying cause for Sihanouk’s fall probably lay in the fact that
although he revolutionised Cambodia’s foreign policy, and his own
relations with the peasants and workers, he left the traditional Khmer
elite free to occupy office and eventually use their traditional power
against him.[29]
The report notes that “the common people continued to revere Sihanouk,”
but a “tiny minority…brought Sihanouk down.” However,
The new rulers, as they busy themselves taking back in power and
financial opportunities what Sihanouk took away from them, doubtlessly
will have a much harder time retaining the loyalty of the
countryside—where all real Asian revolutions begin and are won. By
biting off the hand which fed them, the tiny group of aristocrats, army
officers and businessmen which toppled Sihanouk may have insured its own
doom.
The coup, Allman writes elsewhere,[30] was not only short-sighted, in
that it upset the delicate balance that Sihanouk had maintained, but
also selfish. The main complaint of the tiny elite that staged the coup
is that Sihanouk “had deprived the aristocracy, the bourgeoisie and the
army of their traditional slice of the financial action and of their
accustomed place in the sun. It was an upper-class coup, not a
revolution.”
This fact must be appreciated. It goes a long way toward explaining the
American invasion of Cambodia.
The March 18 coup was the culmination of a carefully prepared series of
actions taken over the past several years that slowly eroded the
position of the Cambodian left—tenuous at best—within the government. In
the elections of 1966, Sihanouk departed from his usual practice of
endorsing candidates. Under the conditions of Cambodian society, the
result was a general victory for the most corrupt and the wealthiest
candidates, those who could freely distribute bribes, patronage, and
promises. As Jean Lacouture put it: “Khmer society received the kind of
representation, manipulated by money and feudal conditions, which was
natural to it in this period of its history.”
The only exceptions were three left-wing delegates—Hu Nim, Hu Yuon, and
Khieu Samphan—who won easily. At the time, Sihanouk was warned by the
leftist minister Chau Seng that a right-wing coup led by Lon Nol might
be in preparation, but he apparently felt that he could keep the right
under control, relying on the loyalty and support of the people. Step by
step, he succumbed to right-wing pressures that were directed as much
against his economic reforms as against his personal power, with its
extensive and unique popular base among the peasantry and the small
urban proletariat. By the end of 1969, much of Sihanouk’s “Khmer
socialism” had been dismantled,[31] and the few left-wing members of the
government had been removed. To a large extent, these developments must
be seen as an internal struggle for power among the Cambodian elite.
While this shift to the right was taking place within the government,
the radical left took on a more activist policy in the cities, with
demonstrations and popular agitation, and rebel groups were formed in
rural areas. The intensification of the Vietnam war, with the spill-over
into Cambodia, also served to increase the polarization within Cambodia
that was held in check by Sihanouk’s personal popular strength.
Several months before the coup, members of the Khmer Serei began
crossing into Cambodia and “rallying” to the Cambodian army with their
arms and equipment. In retrospect, it appears that the Khmer Serei may
have been a “trojan horse” infiltrated into the Cambodian forces,
perhaps by the CIA, to stiffen the right-wing elements that were
readying the anti-Sihanouk coup.[32]
On March 4, General Lon Nol, then President of the Council of Ministers
and Minister of Defense, took on in addition the post of Minister of
Information, thereby gaining control of the press, radio, and
television. A few days later the army organized anti-Vietnamese
demonstrations in Svay Rieng province, and staged a demonstration in
Phnom Penh, where soldiers in civilian dress sacked the PRG and DRV
embassies. Sihanouk, who was then visiting Paris, noted the rising
threat to his rule, and commented:
If I do not obtain satisfaction that the Communists will respect
Cambodia’s neutrality, then I will resign. A showdown between the
extreme right wing and myself is most probable.
He went on to speak of the possibility of a coup d’état, led perhaps by
General Lon Nol. He observed that many army officers are naturally right
wing and “are nostalgic about American aid, which would enable them to
lead an easy life.” “The Americans are inside the castle walls—that is,
inside our homes.” He expressed certainty that right-wing leaders in the
government were in contact with the United States, “whether through the
embassy, the CIA or any such like organization, I do not know.”[33]
On March 18, the coup took place, led by General Lon Nol and Sirik
Matak. A tiny Cambodian elite, hoping to win for itself a larger share
of control in the economy and political life and resentful of Sihanouk’s
personal authority and prestige, plunged the country into civil war and
set the stage for the American invasion that now threatens to turn
Cambodia into another Laos or Vietnam.
The role of outside governments in the March 18 coup can only be
guessed, and will probably never be known in any detail. Most observers
take for granted that the Americans played a role. Chesneaux, for
example, states that “the taking of power by the Lon Nol group is the
result of a long series of attempts by the Cambodian right, supported by
the United States.”[34] As already noted, the actions of the Khmer Serei
provide evidence for this view. The role of the French government is
also open to some speculation. There are those who feel that the French
government may have been directly implicated in the coup. Certainly, it
gave little support to Sihanouk when the coup took place. Jean Lacouture
describes the behavior of the French government as follows:
It now seems established that Prince Sihanouk, upon learning of the Lon
Nol coup, telephoned directly to the Elysée—where, six days earlier, he
had been the guest of M. Pompidou—to determine whether Paris would
support him: if assurance would have been given him, he would have
attempted, come what may, to land the next day in Phnom Penh. The
response was so evasive, we have been told, that the prince set off for
Moscow and Peking. One might judge that this was one of the moments when
the elimination of General de Gaulle has played a role in international
politics.[35]
Elsewhere, Lacouture notes that “in private circles, many Vietnamese and
Khmers who support Prince Sihanouk are asking if one must not see, in
this ‘neutrality’ of France face to face with the destruction of the
policy of neutrality, one of the results of M. Pompidou’s trip to the
United States.”[36] An interesting speculation indeed.
Immediately after the coup pro-Sihanouk demonstrations broke out in many
places. About eighty to one hundred Cambodians, all unarmed, were killed
in the repression of these demonstrations. (“Significantly,” notes
Allman, “no Vietnamese was killed”). Jean-Claude Pomonti of Le Monde
reports:
Repression of pro-Sihanouk demonstrations among the peasants toward the
end of March in the wake of the coup could only have served to swell the
small bands of insurgents generally referred to, rightly or wrongly, as
“Red Khmers.” Many peasants, fearful of arrest after the demonstrations,
took to the jungle rather than return to their homes. And today the Red
Khmers are in a position to exploit the discontent in the country areas
where the army opened fire on the peasants. The conditions for an active
rebellion have been fulfilled one by one.[37]
Pomonti continues:
Information coming in from the provinces early last week seems to
confirm that Khmer peasants in Viet Cong areas are now armed and
trained. The nucleus of a “liberation army” is very probably being
constituted, and the Phnom Penh government could find itself in a more
precarious position before long, particularly if it fails to reassert
its authority in the areas abandoned for more than two weeks by the
central government.
He quotes a diplomat who says:
It did not surprise me in the least to hear announcements of liberated
zones being established…or of a “liberation army” being formed. It would
not surprise me either if the Viet Cong say they are pulling out of
certain zones and that from now on dealings should be with the “new
Khmer authorities.” Then they might well announce the return of Prince
Sihanouk to one of these zones—armed with a powerful radio transmitter.
Le Monde comments editorially that “the ‘Red Khmer’ movement is led by
able men, and now that it has some support in the countryside, it can no
longer be dismissed—as Washington tends to do—as a mere appendage of the
North Vietnamese Communist Party.” The new government in exile announced
by Sihanouk from Peking will probably include the three delegates to the
Cambodian parliament mentioned earlier, who were elected with
“overwhelming majorities” in the last (1966) elections and “can hardly
be considered ‘Vietnamese agents.’ “[38] They are generally regarded as
the only delegates elected who represented something other than the
feudal and wealthy elements in Cambodian society (see Roy, op. cit.),
and they appear to have a reputation for honesty and integrity that is
rare among Cambodian politicians.
Among those who have joined Sihanouk in China are Huot Sambath,
Cambodian delegate to the United Nations, Penn Nouth, one of his
long-term associates and advisers. (Field describes him as “a close
collaborator of Sihanouk and with him an architect of Cambodian
neutrality”), and Chau Seng, formerly Minister of Education and Minister
of National Economy and editor of the leading left-wing journal, one of
the outstanding personalities and political figures of Cambodia until
his exile, to Paris, in 1967, during the early stages of preparation for
the takeover by the right.
On departing from Paris to join Sihanouk, Chau Seng said that the coup
has advanced the revolutionary cause by five years. Commenting,
Lacouture writes:
Has anyone ever seen such incompetent sorcerer’s apprentices as the
plotters of Phnom Penh who, in less than a month, have thrown their
country into a civil war and brought it to the edge of an international
war, and who have made the most important and prestigious personality of
their country the unconditional ally of the revolutionary movement?[39]
Lacouture, who sees the hand of the Americans behind the coup, describes
it as “a suicide operation for the American party, who have offered
their enemies an opportunity to deploy themselves, with a popular base,
over the whole Indochina theatre.”
As already noted, the view that the perpetrators of the coup “may have
ensured their own doom” is shared by Allman. Henry Kamm of The New York
Times notes further that, among foreign observers in Phnom Penh,
disenchantment with the new regime “has set in with a vengeance”:
The uncharitable feelings of most observers toward the Lon Nol
government are compounded of evidence of their military futility,
revulsion over atrocities and callousness toward the large Vietnamese
minority, scorn for the political naïveté that led the leaders to put
real faith in the possibility of help from the International Control
Commission or the United Nations to drive out the Vietcong, and
impatience with a cacophony of blusterous and chauvinistic talk and
empty mock-martial gestures such as putting high school girls in khaki
shirts to cover an air of feckless irresolution. [40]
He also notes that the US government seems to share this contempt, as
one must conclude from the manner in which it has carried out the
invasion, hardly bothering even to inform the Cambodians:
Whatever the reason, America seems clearly to have decided to make war
in Cambodia without the Cambodians. And it is a measure of the low
morale of Cambodia that she accepted this without immediate outcry as
though, like the Vietnamese Communist incursion, it is a fact of life
beyond her control.
A diplomat in Phnom Penh stated recently that “We probably shall look
back on these days as the opening phases of the Cambodian civil war.”
Citing this observation, T. D. Allman writes:
…for the first time since independence in 1953, Cambodians were killing
Cambodians…the Phnom Penh government’s hold on the rural population was
in doubt.
The average Cambodian wants most of all to live in peace, but already he
is being urged to choose sides. On the government side are the army,
most of the business class, the aristocracy, the intellectuals and
government functionaries. Ranged against the new government are some
40,000 Vietnamese troops [i.e., NLF and North Vietnamese]—who so far
have taken only a small role in the anti-government movement—the tiny
Khmer Rouge guerrilla movement, and most importantly, a sizable but
unknown proportion of Cambodia’s six million peasants who still see
Sihanouk as a god-king and the nation’s only leader.[41]
Speculating a year ago about the prospects of the Cambodian rebels for
success, Michael Leifer wrote that these prospects “will depend
(discounting external factors) not only on the exploitation of genuine
grievances but also on an ability to identify with the nationalist cause
for which Prince Sihanouk has been the most ardent and passionate
advocate. This would seem unlikely.”[42] Before March 18, this was a
reasonable assessment. Now, however, Sihanouk, the “most ardent and
passionate advocate” of the national cause, the person whom one American
expert described as being “a significant expression of the Cambodian
people’s will,”[43] has identified himself with the rebels. It is
doubtful that the right-wing Lon Nol government, with its narrow urban
base, can counter this popular force or win it over.
The March 18 coup reflects a split within the Cambodian elite, the exact
nature of which is not entirely clear. However, two things do seem
clear. First, the best known members of the Cambodian left are now
aligned with Sihanouk. Second, the Cambodian left is now in a position
to mobilize the peasantry, capitalizing on Sihanouk’s personal prestige
and with the backing of the Vietnamese resistance forces; while the Lon
Nol government, isolated from the peasantry, will increasingly be driven
into an alliance with the extreme right-wing forces in Indochina, the
Saigon authorities, and the Americans.
The bankruptcy of the elite that managed the coup is reflected clearly
by its resort to terror against the Vietnamese minority, reported in
ample detail in the press. The reports of Cambodian military operations
fortify this impression of weakness and ineptitude. We know what to
expect when we read the description of the commanding officer who sent
Cambodian peasants, ethnically Vietnamese, who were described as
“volunteers,” to be mowed down by a cross-fire, in a well-publicized
story:[44]
The Cambodian commandant, an elegant youngish man, shirtless and wearing
a heavy gold necklace, lay like a sultan on an army bed in a clearing
among the bamboo trees…. [He] lounged on his bed, coolly talking into
the field telephone. Then he asked whether there was news in Phnom Penh
of help from the Americans.[45]
It is interesting to observe the Viet Cong strategy in the same
incident. According to a detailed report by Allman[46] the Viet Cong
captured the village of Saang, killed eight soldiers, and then
“distributed arms and ammunition to the villagers in the name of the
‘Sihanouk’ army.” Three Cambodian spies reported that “the Viet Cong
were backed by local Khmer and Cham villagers, who had joined the
Communist forces.”
More generally, Le Monde reports that “the NLF in Cambodia is not trying
to capture the capital, but to establish ‘freed zones’ where the ‘Red
Khmers can build up their own armies…they would rather arm the peasantry
than establish a puppet regime.”[47] Jean-Claude Pomonti reports, after
the American invasion, that the aim of the war
…is no longer to push [the Viet Cong] out of Cambodia but to prevent
their gaining enough local support and power to sooner or later threaten
General Lon Nol’s government. On one side, an embryonic Khmer Communist
Party, backed by active and vital support from the Viet Cong, has
temporarily allied with Prince Sihanouk to organize a liberation army.
On the other, a large segment of the upper class has called for foreign
aid in order to build up its authority throughout the country.[48]
Pomonti’s report has a familiar ring to it.
The Viet Cong strategy of establishing freed zones in which the Red
Khmers can build up their own armies, based on the peasantry, no doubt
explains Stanley Karnow’s observation that “the Communists have
carefully refrained from moving against towns they could probably
capture without firing a shot.”[49] As he also notes, they have not even
attempted “to prompt uprisings in areas like western Battambang
Province, where a local left-wing dissident movement has been implanted
for years.” They appear fully confident that, without the commitment of
major forces,[50] they can create a peasant-based guerrilla force loyal
to Sihanouk that will restore him to power, this time in a firm alliance
with the Cambodian left and a peasant-based popular movement. Reports
from the field support this judgment. No doubt the Americans agree as
well. This is surely one major reason for the invasion of Cambodia
during the last week of April.
There were, no doubt, other supporting reasons. Nixon implied in his
April 30 speech announcing the invasion that the alternatives were
escalation or defeat. That seems a not unreasonable assessment. The
invasion may indicate that “Vietnamization” is so fragile that even
reduction of American forces to a quarter of a million men is regarded
as unfeasible in Washington—that it is feared that to secure this
immense army of occupation much wider areas of Indochina must be turned
into free fire zones, empty and desolate.
However, it is hardly clear that there are “reasons,” in any serious
sense, for the new escalation, any more than one can hope to construct a
sensible and reliable explanation for the thinking, such as it was, that
led to the unprovoked bombardment of North Vietnam in 1965. Shortly
after the anti-Sihanouk coup in 1958, the Saigon government diplomatic
representative in Phnom Penh (later a minister under Diem), who appears
to have been implicated in the coup, told a reporter:
You must understand that we in Saigon are desperate men. We are a
government of desperadoes.[51]
An accurate description, which applies with equal force to those who
design American policy. These men have enormous power at their command
and can do very much as they wish, with few restrictions. As recent
events once more reveal, the Constitution and unorganized public opinion
serve as no serious constraint, and international law and our “solemn
treaty obligations”—to the UN Charter, for example, which remains, if
anyone cares, “the supreme law of the land”[52] —have long faded from
consciousness. Reference to them has become “moralistic” or “naïve,” as
it no doubt is.
More seriously, the victims have absolutely no way of striking back at
the United States, the source of aggression, and it is unlikely that
their allies will risk the fury of American nuclear attack by
threatening the United States with retaliation. Therefore, the American
government can “experiment” with one technique of destruction after
another—”population control methods” and other police state tactics,
assassination teams to destroy the enemy “infrastructure,” defoliation,
forced evacuation, concentration of the population in camps and urban
slums, bombardment on a scale unknown in human history,[53] invasion of
other countries, and whatever other ideas happen to occur to them. The
disparity of force between the American government and its victims is so
enormous that American planners can pretty much do as they wish, without
fear of serious retaliation. In such a situation, it is quite pointless
to try to explain the actions of these frightened and limited men on
rational grounds. They have the force at their command, and can use it
with impunity. Further explanations are in a sense superfluous.
President Nixon wishes us to believe that after a right-wing coup in
Cambodia, the Viet Cong and North Vietnamese have become a more serious
military threat to South Vietnam. This is as convincing as his fantasies
about North Vietnam surrounding the South with its awesome military
might. He also alluded ominously to the sanctuaries in Svay Rieng
province (“Parrot’s Beak”), “as close to Saigon as Baltimore is to
Washington,” and spoke of the rapid NVA build-up in Cambodia in April.
As to the latter, military sources in Saigon report that they know of no
Communist build-up in Cambodia.[54] What of the prior situation in the
densely populated flat riceland of Svay Rieng province? The province was
visited by T. D. Allman a few months ago. [55] Four things, he wrote,
seem evident as a result of his investigation. I quote:
1. The Vietcong use Cambodian territory much less than the Americans in
Saigon claim.
2. US aircraft violate Cambodian air space and bomb and strafe Cambodian
territory in violation of the US guidelines, frequently with no cause at
all, and much more often than the US admits.
3. In fairness to all sides, it is obvious that the Americans, South
Vietnamese, Vietcong and North Vietnamese are all making some degree of
effort to keep the war out of Cambodia.
4. The Cambodian effort to hold ground against all comers belies any
reports that they have an “agreement” with the communists—or for that
matter with the Americans.
He describes this dangerous “sanctuary” as “an absolutely flat
country—rice paddies, villages, occasionally a small grove of
trees…scanning the open horizon, broken only by Cambodian villages and
mango groves, there seemed no place the Vietcong could hide, let alone
establish a permanent sanctuary.” Allman spent a day in the isolated
district of Chantrea. The evening before, American planes had bombed and
strafed a village “2300 metres inside Cambodia and clearly visible
across a rice field,” killing two farmers and destroying a hectare of
paddy. The district officer stated:
There are no Vietcong in Chantrea district. They never enter our
territory more than 500 metres, even at night. Mostly they are passing.
There are no camps here. No sanctuaries.
During 1969 [the district officer added], in this one district of Svay
Rieng province, nine Cambodians were killed by American bombs or guns;
20 Cambodians were wounded; 100 hectares of rice paddy was damaged; and
more than 100 farm animals were killed; no Vietcong were killed by
Americans, and no Cambodians were killed by Vietcong.
As they spoke, a policeman entered to report bombing and strafing 200
meters inside Cambodia: “Incidentally, there is no one there [the
policeman reported]. No Vietcong, no Cambodian. But one rice field and a
grove of mango trees are being destroyed.”
From these accounts, it is not difficult to predict the character of the
invasion of Svay Rieng province, now in its initial stages. It will lead
to the destruction of villages and the displacement of population, but
probably little else. Early reports indicate that this is exactly what
is being achieved. James Sterba reports that “few people were to be seen
in the Parrot’s Beak…but animals were everywhere,” water buffalo and
herds of cattle near abandoned houses. [56] The ARVN soldiers as usual
were stealing chickens. “Dozens of houses were burned by South
Vietnamese troops in the Parrot’s Beak. Their charred frames dotted the
landscape.”
American troops will be unable to match the ARVN accomplishments, since
the “Fishhook” area that they are invading is more thinly settled. But
at least they are trying:
…troops of the US 11^(th) Armored Cavalry Regiment burned down at least
five villages, each with 30 to 40 houses. Officers said they were told
to burn the villages because they could be of use to North Vietnamese
and Viet Cong troops. The Americans met no resistance. Villagers fled.
[57]
Peter Arnett is quoted as reporting that American troops entering Snoul
were ordered to “blow the town away.”[58]
Returning to our comrades in arms, Gloria Emerson reports from Prasaut,
totally abandoned before the South Vietnamese troops entered.
French-speaking General Do Cao Tri (“smoking a pipe and holding a
swaggerstick”) did not discourage his troops from writing anti-Cambodian
slogans on the walls of buildings, for example: “Now is the time for the
killers to pay in blood,” a reference to the Cambodian massacre of
eighty-nine Vietnamese in Prasaut on April 10, when the Lon Nol
government was desperately attempting to hold its authority by brutally
fanning ethnic hostilities:
If this was a triumphant day for the South Vietnamese, it was a
bewildering, frightening one for the Cambodians who hid inside their
houses near Route 1 or fled their homes. Close to the Vietnamese border
at Godauha, only a few men watched the South Vietnamese troops pass.
They stared with tight, sullen faces. Just outside Prasaut, the doors of
the wooden houses that stand on stilts were empty and silent. There were
thick locks on the doors of the better houses, and portraits of Prince
Sihanouk, the deposed Chief of State of Cambodia, still hung on the
walls of one porch.[59]
The Observer (London), May 3, cites
…reports that seem to carry a grimmer significance. Apart from the Viet
Cong casualties, the Americans have announced that scores of “persons”
have been detained by the allied forces. They have been led out of the
area under guard, blindfolded with their hands tied behind their backs,
suspected of being North Vietnamese soldiers. The area is inhabited by
many civilians, both Vietnamese and Cambodians, families of rubber
plantation workers and woodcutters.
This lends a fearful emphasis to the remarks of American officers on the
spot that American observation and gunship helicopters have been given
clearance “to fire on anything that moves” in an area extending about
three miles north and west of the ground operations.
What of the Cambodian troops? Jack Foisie, reporting from Svay Rieng,
describes “the churlishness of Cambodian army troopers who appeared
dismayed that the Saigon government army was occupying their town, even
though at the moment they were allies”[60] —a fact too subtle,
apparently, for the simple peasant mind to comprehend.
And so we proceed to save the people of Cambodia from Vietnamese
aggression, just as we have been saving the Lao and the Vietnamese
themselves.
It is difficult to believe that American strategists expect to find the
highly mobile Viet Cong and North Vietnamese troops sitting and waiting
after several days of obvious preparations for an invasion, any more
than they expect to find Pathet Lao and North Vietnamese troops
strolling through the market place when they wipe out a Lao village from
the air. The experience of earlier sweeps within South Vietnam has been
that there was little contact with Communist forces, and virtually no
correlation between contact and prior intelligence. This is a story in
itself, still largely untold. For example, a map of Operation Junction
City in the 1966–67 Yearbook of the 25^(th) Infantry Division shows
extensive “objective” areas that were devastated prior to the sweep, but
virtually no “contact”—sniper fire or soldiers, dead or alive—within the
objective areas, several of which were heavily settled.[61]
It is a virtual certainty that great victories will be claimed in the
Cambodian invasion, and that the military will release reports of arms
caches and rice destroyed, military bases demolished, and much killing
of “North Vietnamese,” i.e., people who find themselves in the way of an
American tank or in an area bombed or strafed. So many reputations and
careers are at stake that glorious victories are guaranteed.
Furthermore, some of these reports may even be correct. On probabilistic
grounds alone, one would expect that American military intelligence
can’t always be wrong about everything. The headquarters of the
Vietnamese resistance forces and the bases that they use for R-and-R
must be somewhere, and they may well be found and destroyed during the
American-Saigon sweep. Whether the invading troops will withdraw remains
to be seen. That the countryside will be devastated and its population
removed or destroyed is reasonably certain. Very probably, if these
territories are abandoned by the invading forces, some, at least, will
be joined to the area on the South Vietnamese side of the border as an
extended free fire zone.
The amazing, unanticipated popular revulsion against the American
invasion of Cambodia indicates that it will be very difficult, in the
short run at least, for the government to make use of American ground
troops to ensure its control of those who remain refractory. The
Pentagon will therefore have to learn to rely more effectively on the
technology of destruction. Chances are that a ring of fire and
devastation will surround the outposts of the “free world” in South
Vietnam, protecting the American army of a quarter of a million men and
its permanent bases from attack. If Eastern Cambodia must be sacrificed
to this end, neither General Thieu nor his employers can be expected to
shed many tears.
As in Laos and Vietnam, the United States is intervening—whatever its
immediate reasons—to support reactionary, even feudalistic elements, and
to suppress an emerging peasant-based movement of national independence.
As I have already noted, there is some evidence that the CIA had a
finger, and perhaps a hand, in the March 18 coup. In any event, when
Sihanouk refused to retire to France like a well-behaved Bao Dai, as the
Viet Cong strategy of arming the peasants and encouraging the formation
of a pro-Sihanouk Cambodian liberation army became evident, American
intervention became essential. Tad Szulc reported from Washington that
“The Khmer Rouges, the Cambodian equivalent of the South Vietnamese
Vietcong guerrillas, may become an important political element in
Cambodia, in the opinion of US Government experts on Indochina.”[62] The
Khmer liberation forces, if they continue to expand, can be expected to
link up with the NLF (now the Provisional Revolutionary Government of
South Vietnam), the Pathet Lao, and the North Vietnamese in a general
Indochina war against the rightwing elements backed by the United
States.
It is widely admitted that the revolutionary groups we confront in Laos
and Vietnam—and soon, very likely, in Cambodia—are the only indigenous
forces that have any immediate prospect of mobilizing mass support in
Indochina. For example, a recently published RAND Corporation study
concedes that apart from the Neo Lao Hak Sat (the political party of the
revolutionary movement in Laos), there is no “broadly based political
organization” in Laos, a country run by an “extremely small elite,”[63]
to be more precise, hardly more than a façade for the Americans.
Similarly, the Council of Vietnamese Studies of SEADAG (the Southeast
Asia Development Advisory Group) in its meetings of May 3, 1969,
struggles with the fact that the NLF is the “best organized political
group,” the “strongest political group in South Vietnam.”[64] The same
conclusions are reached in scholarly literature. For example, the
Vietnam scholar Allen Goodman concludes:
Indeed, it would appear that the organization of a cadre structure and
the nurturing of strong local governments will continue to be the forte
of the Viet Cong as South Vietnam approaches peaceful conditions. The
ultimate victor in South Vietnam will not be that party which
necessarily wins the war, but rather that party which organizes for
peace.[65]
Thus the United States is forced to resort to the Phoenix program to
destroy the Viet Cong “infrastructure,” and to the other means of
annihilation and population control with which it experiments throughout
Indochina. In Cambodia too it is likely that the United States will have
to undertake intensive bombardment of civilian targets, as in Laos, or
direct occupation, as in South Vietnam, to maintain in power the
right-wing elements to which it is committed.
Nor is this likely to be the end. The Far Eastern Economic Review
comments editorially that there are grounds for “claiming that the
revolutionary situation in the region is excellent.” Extending their
“gloomy speculations” about Indochina, they proceed:
…to envisage a people’s war, supplied and supported from Laos, engulfing
the northeast and north of Thailand, eventually linking up with
dissidents in the south fomented by Ching Peng and the rump of the
Malayan Communist Party, and spreading across the country to join hands
with the numerous factions in open revolt within Burma. From here the
revolutionary line leads via the Nagas and other minorities to the
Naxalites and West Bengal.[66]
It is not difficult to imagine other reasons, in each of the countries
named, for the expansion of “people’s war.” The American involvement
alone is a contributing factor. The US can hardly expect to turn
Thailand into a military base for its Southeast Asian wars without
calling forth a response by “Communists” who refuse to follow the
rules.[67] Domestic reasons are also not difficult to conjure up. The
editorial comment in the Far Eastern Economic Review also notes that
“China would probably be much happier with a neutralist Laos and a
neutralist Cambodia.” This is no doubt true. Sihanouk, for one,
continually emphasized this point, as noted earlier. The United States,
however, is unlikely to permit this option.
By its insistence on imposing rightwing governments with virtually no
popular support on the people of Indochina, the United States may
ultimately succeed in bringing about a Pacific or even a global war.
Though this may not appear likely at the moment, it is easy to imagine a
sequence of events that would lead to this consequence. In any event,
the future for the people of Southeast Asia is dim. The United States is
using its incomparable technological resources and its internationally
based military forces to occupy and destroy vast territories, to uproot
and demoralize the population, to disrupt social life in the areas it
cannot physically control. So long as the American people tolerate these
atrocities, the people of Southeast Asia can look forward only to
continued misery.
In an earlier essay, I noted that the American policy of conquest in
Indochina has continued, without fundamental change in goals, for twenty
years.[68] It is important to reiterate that this policy has been seen,
from the start, as a central component in global American strategy. In a
perceptive article, Walter LaFeber observed several years ago[69] that
when Eisenhower announced his “falling dominoes” theory on April 7,
1954, he referred specifically to Japan:
[Communist success in Indochina] takes away, in its economic aspects,
that region that Japan must have as a trading area or Japan, in turn,
will have only one place in the world to go—that is, toward the
Communist areas in order to live. So, the possible consequences of the
loss are just incalculable to the free world.
LaFeber added that “This thesis became a controlling assumption: the
loss of Vietnam would mean the economic undermining and probable loss of
Japan to Communist markets and ultimately to Communist influence if not
control.”[70] Although the Indochina war in part develops through its
own dynamics—the President is hardly likely to be willing to face the
domestic political consequences of an American defeat, even if the
alternative is a possible global war—it seems to me, nevertheless, that
LaFeber is correct in identifying this “controlling assumption,” and in
arguing that it is an important factor in accounting for the persistence
of our effort to control Southeast Asia.
One can, of course, trace the policy of expansion into Asia far back in
American history. The postwar American effort to dominate Southeast Asia
has an element of “rationality,” according to the perceived interests of
many of those who manage American society—unfortunately for the people
of Indochina and the United States, who will pay the price. It is not
unlikely that the price will be that described by Professor Fairbank, in
the remarks quoted earlier: a war against the people of Asia and a
growing totalitarian menace in the United States.
None the less, the grim game is far from ended. So long as the war
continues, it may be impossible to reduce inflation and unemployment to
“tolerable” limits without imposing the kinds of controls that are
unacceptable to the business community. If so, American workers may
refuse to continue to sacrifice their jobs and livelihood in the cause
of American domination of Southeast Asia. Perhaps much wider circles can
be drawn into the movement against the war. There is no doubt that many,
many people are confused and troubled. With serious work, they might be
brought to join those great numbers who actively oppose the war. There
is resistance in the military and continuing resistance to military
conscription—according to a recent report,” “The Oakland induction
center, which processes draftees for all of Northern California and a
portion of Nevada, says more than half of the young men ordered to
report fail to show up—and 11 percent of those who do show up refuse to
serve.”[71]
Many more people are refusing to support criminal acts by payment of war
taxes. As I write, there is an unprecedented student strike. Acts of
sabotage directed against the military are on the increase. An
underground is developing, as such “criminals” as Daniel Berrigan refuse
to accept the legitimacy of the authority that has sentenced them to
prison for trying to impede the war machine. Congress is seething, and
state legislatures are registering opposition in surprisingly strong
ways. In short, those who still hope to subdue and hold their Southeast
Asian colonies have plenty of trouble in store for them, here as well as
there.
To pursue the war, the government will have to subdue dissent and
protest, which is sure to take more militant forms as the war expands
and its character becomes continually more clear. It may have to make a
choice between abandoning this war, with long-term and unforeseeable
consequences for American imperial policy, and jettisoning what remains
of the structure of American democracy. The choice might arise fairly
soon. Consider, for example, the legislation introduced by Senators
Hatfield, McGovern, and others to cut off funds for continuation of the
war. This was a courageous move on their part. It establishes a sharp
criterion by which it can be determined whether any congressman is for
war or for peace in Indochina. Suppose that it becomes law. Then the
choice will be posed quite clearly. I would hesitate to predict the
outcome.
Notes
For evidence on American defoliation in Cambodia, see “Report on
herbicidal damage by the United States in Southeastern Cambodia,” A. H.
Westing, E. W. Pfeiffer, J. Lavorel, and L. Matarasso, Dec. 31, 1969,
Phnom Penh, in T. Whiteside (ed.), Defoliation, N.Y., Ballantine, 1970.
They note, incidentally, that “despite a week of free and unhampered
travel by automobile, on foot, and by low-flying aircraft along hundreds
of kilometers of the border, we could find no evidence of Viet Cong
activity in Cambodia; nor did our repeated conversations with Cambodians
and Europeans living along the border suggest any such activity.” But
they do report extensive damage from defoliants, in direct and
apparently deliberate over-flights.
CIA involvement with the Khmer Serei is not in doubt, however. Some
details were publicly revealed during the recent appeal of Green Beret
officer John J. McCarthy, Jr., who had been convicted for killing a
member of Khmer Serei. See The New York Times, Jan. 28, 1970.
Prince Sihanouk goes on to ask: “Have the US aggressors, through some
operation of the Holy Ghost become pure-blooded Indochinese? Who
escalated the war in Laos and Cambodia? From which airfield (certainly
not from Gia Lâm) do the one thousand daily air-raids over Laos take
off? Do the ‘Columbia Eagle’ and the ‘Caribou’ planes that are flying an
entire arsenal of weapons for Lon Nol and Sirik Matak and their
mercenaries come from General Giap? And the hundreds of CIA ‘special
advisers’ who have arrived in Vientiane, are they a ‘present’ from
Premier Pham Van Dong?”
Their presence was noted by the American press a week later. The New
York Times, May 3, states that 2000 well-armed members were flown into
Phnom Penh the preceding night (in fact, Kim Keth, who claims that the
K.K.K. has 4500 armed members, arrived in Cambodia in 1956, and claims
to have been an interpreter for the American Embassy in Phnom Penh until
it was closed, when he became an actor). Kim Keth states that they
detested Sihanouk. Other sources report that Sihanouk always permitted a
pro-K.K.K. paper to operate, though left-wing papers were suppressed in
recent years. One would like to learn more about their activities in
Cambodia and South Vietnam in the past fifteen years.
It is interesting that Premier Lon Nol requested the use of these troops
from President Nixon directly. Obviously, he understands very well who
runs Indochina.
It is perhaps relevant that an anti-Sihanouk coup attempted in 1958 is
widely assumed to have been inspired by the CIA. See Field, op. cit.,
for a brief (and somewhat skeptical) account.
[1] Cited by Jim Peck in an excellent discussion of postwar American
Asian scholarship, forthcoming in the Bulletin of the Concerned Asian
Scholars, 1737 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge, Mass.
[2] I will not discuss the content of this speech, which was an insult
to the intelligence and an expression of contempt for Congress and the
American people.
[3] Sidney Schanberg, New York Times, May 7.
[4] Much of this information is presented in the report of the Symington
sub-committee: Hearings before the Sub-committee on US Security
Agreements and Commitments Abroad of the Committee on Foreign Relations,
US Senate, 91^(st) Congress, first session, October 20–28, 1969,
Government Printing Office, 1970. Other details come from interviews
with refugees and on the scene reports by journalists and other visitors
to the bombed areas.
[5] Michael Leifer, “Rebellion or Subversion in Cambodia,” Current
History, February, 1969.
[6] Is Cambodia Next?, Russell Press, Washington, D.C., 1967. An ABC
television crew had also been unable to substantiate the American
charges. Both groups were free to travel anywhere in Cambodia and
checked locations specifically alleged to be base camps and transit
routes.
[7] Details are still obscure, but this appears to be the order of
events, as well as I can reconstruct from the information in the Boston
Globe and New York Times, May 3. In his statement of May 2, in which he
discussed the possibility of a resumption of the bombing of North
Vietnam, Secretary Laird made no mention of the attack that had already
taken place. Later, the Pentagon admitted the raid (presumably after
Boyd’s story was intercepted), but claimed that it was a “protective
reaction” against anti-aircraft guns. Boyd reports that he heard several
dozen explosions but heard no defensive fire and saw no smoke from
anti-aircraft.
[8] UN Document s/7820 15/3/6, quoted in Is Cambodia Next?
[9]
T. D. Allman, Far Eastern Economic Review, Feb. 26, 1970. Cited in an
informative discussion of the Cambodian situation in Vietnam
International, April, 1970, 6 Endsleigh St., London, WC1. Allman
noted that the number has continued to rise, and that not all
such incidents are reported. More details are given in a
Cambodian Government White Paper, Jan. 3, 1970. The report also
notes that not a single Viet Cong body has ever been found after
US-Saigon bombardments or ground attacks.
[10] “Cambodia: between Scylla and Charybdis,” Asian Survey, January,
1968.
[11] Michael Leifer, “Cambodia,” Asian Survey, January, 1967.
[12] For example, the dictator of Thailand under the Japanese, who had
in fact declared war against the United States, was reinstalled by an
American-backed military coup in 1948; the liberal Pridi Phanomyong, who
had worked with the OSS against the Japanese during the war and later
won easily in the only relatively free election in Thailand in 1946,
soon found his way to Communist China, where at last report he still
remains. It should, incidentally, be noted that the involvement of a
Southeast Asian political leader with the Japanese in itself proves very
little, since there were many possible motivations, including opposition
to Western colonialism.
[13] This characterization of Son Ngoc Thanh and Songsak is given by
Daniel Roy, “Le Coup de Phnom-Penh,” Le Monde diplomatique, April, 1970.
Other sources indicate that Songsak was a millionaire who did not need
to resort to petty theft, and that Son Ngoc Thanh is essentially an
apolitical opportunist. For example, the English journalist Michael
Field suggests in his book The Prevailing Wind (Methuen, 1965) that
Thanh gravitated toward the South Vietnamese and the Thais (i.e., the
American-supported right-wing dictatorships) only when he could receive
no other support in his effort to oppose the far more popular Sihanouk.
Those familiar with internal Cambodian politics regard the information
that is available to Westerners as being of highly uncertain quality,
and any effort at detailed interpretation must surely be taken with
caution.
[14] Letter, New Republic, March 28, 1970.
[15] Allman, Far Eastern Economic Review, Feb. 26, 1970.
[16] For innumerable examples taken from the press see In the Name of
America, Turnpike Press, 1968. Capricious terror bombing of civilians
has been reported even from sources highly sympathetic to the Pentagon,
for many years. See, for example, Richard Tregaskis, Vietnam Diary,
Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1963.
[17] Far Eastern Economic Review, “Anatomy of a Coup,” April 9, 1970, an
excellent analysis of the immediate background of the March 18 coup. A
more far-reaching analysis of the events leading up to the coup appears
in the article by Daniel Roy cited above. These events are placed in the
relevant historical context by Jean Lacouture, “Opération-suicide.” Le
Nouvel Observateur, 20 April. For additional background, see the
articles by Michael Leifer cited above, and also Roger M. Smith, “Prince
Norodom Sihanouk,” Asian Survey, June, 1967, and the articles already
cited.
[18] Speech to the closing session of the Summit Conference of
Indochinese Peoples, which took place at an unidentified location in
South China on April 25, 1970, translated and slightly shortened by
Maria Jolas. I use her translation, and a few sentences quoted by
Stanley Karnow, Washington Post; May 1.
[19] Far Eastern Economic Review, Feb. 26.
[20] Lacouture, op. cit.
[21] Le Monde diplomatique, May, 1970.
[22] One of the vice-presidents of the NLF is a Buddhist monk of the
Cambodian minority, who joined the NLF after a destructive Saigon Army
sweep through his province in 1961. See George M. Kahin and John W.
Lewis, The United States in Vietnam, Dial Press, 1967.
[23] Lacouture, op. cit.
[24] Far Eastern Economic Review, Feb. 26.
[25] Lacouture, op. cit.
[26] Chesneaux, op. cit.
[27] As has been frequently observed, this was probably one reason why
Stalin did not support the Greek Communist guerrillas in the 1940s,
contrary to American propaganda claims which continue to this day.
[28] Field, op. cit.
[29]
T. D. Allman, April 2.
[30] Far Eastern Economic Review, April 9.
[31] On the actual character of “Khmer socialism,” see Field, op. cit.
Some observers see the conflict between the “socialists” and those in
favor of “liberalization of the economy” as essentially a struggle
between elements of the Cambodian elite. Others regard “Khmer socialism”
as being a step toward an egalitarian and modern society, within the
specific context of Cambodian history and culture. I do not have enough
information to attempt a judgment.
[32] Cf. Roy, op. cit., for this and other details. Among the current
American allies in Cambodia are also several thousand “semi-pirates,
semi-mercenaries” of the Khmer minority in South Vietnam, organized in
the “National Liberation Front of the Khmers of Kampuchea Khrom”
(K.K.K.). Their history is interesting. They were “formed under the
Japanese occupation, then mercenaries for the French during the first
Indochina war, and of the Americans during the second….” The leader, Kim
Keth, formerly a French parachutist, explained that they “like to eat
the flesh of Vietnamese, particularly the liver, which is the best.” See
Pomonti, Le Monde, April 25, 1970.
[33] John L. Hess, New York Times, March 13.
[34] Chesneaux, op. cit. In the same issue of Le Monde diplomatique
François Honti comments that “It is now certain that those who took it
upon themselves to abandon [Sihanouk’s policy of neutralism] received
serious encouragement from American military circles hopeful of being
able to count on Phnom Penh for a friendly government and to cut off the
Viet Cong and North Vietnamese troops from their ‘Cambodian sanctuary.’…
One might ask whether the United States, unable to win the war in
Vietnam, is making a wise calculation in enlarging the field of
battle….”
[35] Lacouture, op. cit.
[36] Lacouture, Le Monde diplomatique, May, 1970.
[37] Le Monde Weekly Selection, April 22, 1970. Pomonti is one of the
very few correspondents to have reported in depth from Cambodia.
[38] Ibid. Assuming, that is, that they are alive. After their
disappearance, during the general purge of the left several years ago,
they were rumored to have been assassinated. Recently, the Cambodian and
French press have stated that they are alive and with the guerrillas,
and I was given the same information in Hanoi a few weeks ago, but I do
not know how firm the evidence is. Added in proof: the new government
has since been formed and the three are listed with major ministerial
posts (national defense, information and propaganda, and interior
communal reforms and cooperatives). Tillman Durdin, New York Times, May
6.
[39] Lacouture, le Nouvel Observateur, 20 April, 1970.
[40] New York Times, May 3. A former American teacher in Cambodia
informs me that such “mock-martial gestures” involving students were
common practice under Sihanouk.
[41] Far Eastern Economic Review, April 9.
[42] Current History, Feb., 1969.
[43] Roger Smith, “Prince Norodom Sihanouk,” Asian Survey, June, 1967.
[44] See Le Monde, April 23.
[45] Victoria Brittain, “Cambodia’s Grim Lesson,” New Statesman, May 1,
1970.
[46] Washington Post, April 22.
[47] Le Monde Weekly Selection, April 29.
[48] Le Monde Weekly Selection, May 6.
[49] Washington Post, April 24.
[50] “According to well-informed sources there are about 24,000
Communist troops in Cambodia or on the border.” (Ian Wright, London
Guardian, April 27). Other estimates go as high as 50,000. As noted
earlier, prior to the coup they remained in uninhabited areas. Wright
reports that American military sources give little credence to Cambodian
army reports of VC and NVA military action. Actually, official American
government statements are almost worthless unless subject to independent
check. I shall return to this matter, in connection with Laos, in a
later article.
[51] Field, op. cit.
[52] A fact that leads to some weird contortions. For example,
Ambassador William Sullivan, now Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for
East Asian and Pacific Affairs, makes the absurd claim that the Truman
Doctrine is a “parsing” of the UN Charter (Symington Subcommittee
Hearings).
[53] According to Pentagon sources, aerial bombardment of Indochina from
1965 through 1969 reached 4.5 million tons, nine times the total tonnage
in the entire Pacific theater in World War II. This is about half of the
total ordnance expended.
[54] Robert G. Kaiser, Washington Post-Boston Globe, May 3.
[55] See Far Eastern Economic Review, Feb. 26, 1970.
[56] New York Times, May 3.
[57] AP, Boston Globe, May 4.
[58] CBS radio news, May 5. They did: “Front line reports said American
tanks and aircraft strikes that included napalm drops against Communist
defenders destroyed the town of Snoul inside Cambodia on Tuesday. UPI
correspondent Leon Daniel reported some of the GIs looted goods from
deserted shops Wednesday as they swept through the town of 10,000 in the
heart of rubber plantation country.” Henry Huet reports from Snoul that
it was reduced to rubble with tank guns and air attacks the day before
it was assaulted. The French manager of a rubber plantation informed him
that between fifty and sixty North Vietnamese had driven off a 500-man
Cambodian garrison on April 22. They armed the 1600 workers, 95 percent
of whom are Cambodians, and took them along as they fled from US tank
and air attacks. “They gave guns to the people and now they are fighting
with the Viet Cong,” the plantation manager reports. Boston Globe, May
7. Daniel reports that the only dead he saw were Cambodian civilians,
including “a little girl horribly maimed by what must have been napalm.”
The US Army claimed to have killed 88 Communist troops in the area.
Daniel doubts it. Boston Globe, May 8, 1970.
[59] Gloria Emerson, New York Times, May 3.
[60] Los Angeles Times-Boston Globe, May 5.
[61] Further evidence of major war crimes, as hardly need be stressed.
These facts were brought out at a press conference held in Boston, May
7, under the auspices of the National Committee for a Citizen’s
Commission of Inquiry on US War Crimes, 156 Fifth Avenue, Room 1005, New
York 10010. I might add that they desperately need funds to continue the
important work of permitting former soldiers, many of whom are eager to
cooperate, to testify concerning their experiences. It is difficult to
overestimate the importance of bringing out this kind of information
about the nature of the war.
[62] New York Times, April 19.
[63]
P. F. Langer and J. J. Zasloff, The North Vietnamese and the Pathet
Lao, RM-5935, September, 1969. They claim, however, that the
Pathet Lao could not function without North Vietnamese control.
Their evidence, and other evidence that is available, does not
seem to me to support this conclusion.
[64] In a letter to The New York Review, Feb. 26, 1970, I naively
accepted Samuel Huntington’s statement that the Council is primarily
concerned with fund-raising for scholarly research on Vietnam. Having
read the report of this meeting, which is concerned to find a proper
strategy for ensuring control at the national level for “our side,”
given the insistence of the public on scaling down the US military role,
I would like to retract my acquiescence.
[65] “South Vietnam: Neither War nor Peace.” Asian Survey, February,
1970.
[66] April 9, 1970.
[67] On the American role in creating guerrilla activity in Thailand,
see some interesting comments by George Kahin in No More Vietnams?,
Harper, 1968 (Pfeffer, ed.), with the assent of Chester Cooper of the
State Department.
[68] “After Pinkville,” New York Review, Jan. I, 1970. See the
references there for much more extensive discussion.
[69] “Our illusory affair with Japan,” Nation, March 11, 1968.
[70] A similar analysis has been developed by others since. See the
references in “After Pinkville”; also, Peter Wiley. “Vietnam and the
Pacific Rim Strategy,” Leviathan, June, 1969.
[71] New York Times, May 5.