Years of Upheaval

by Henry Kissinger

  The absurd myth by which guilt for abandoning Cambodia has been assuaged runs like this: Cambodia was a peaceful, happy land until America attacked it. There was no reason for this attack; it was the product of the psychosis of two American leaders determined to act out their own insecurities on the prostrate body of an innocent people. They covertly dislodged the only political leader, Sihanouk, who held the fabric of the country together. Then American bombing turned a group of progressive revolutionaries, the Khmer Rouge, into demented murderers. By this elaborate hypothesis American actions in 1969 and 1970 are held principally responsible for the genocide carried out by the Cambodian Communist rulers after we left in 1975 — two years after all American military actions ceased — as well as for the suffering imposed by the North Vietnamese invasion of 1978.12

  The thesis has had some appeal to professional Nixon-haters and others because Cambodia can be presented as entirely a Nixon initiative, unlike Vietnam and Laos, where our involvement was inherited from two liberal Democratic administrations. It is a fevered absurdity, but it has to be dealt with. It is important for Americans and those who rely upon us to understand the sequence of events and the true responsibility for them.

  The master architect of disaster was North Vietnam, the impulse its imperial ambitions for Indochina. I will not go over in detail the reasons why we raided the North Vietnamese sanctuaries in Cambodia, first from the air and then by land; these are set out in White House Years, and the wisdom of those tactical actions will ultimately be judged by others. But the crucial point is that it was North Vietnam that dragged Cambodia into war. It was North Vietnam that occupied portions of Cambodia in 1965 to implant military bases from which it killed Americans and South Vietnamese for four years before there was any American response — and that response was limited to the narrow border where the North Vietnamese sanctuaries were located.

  On March 18, 1970, the neutralist chief of state Norodom Sihanouk was deposed by his own government and national assembly. The reason was Cambodian popular outrage at the continued presence of the North Vietnamese occupiers, and Sihanouk’s inability to get them to leave. When Cambodia’s new leadership demanded the departure of the North Vietnamese, the latter responded by a wave of attacks all over eastern Cambodia designed to topple the new government in Phnom Penh — a month before the US–South Vietnamese “incursion” into the sanctuaries, which lasted eight weeks. It was Hanoi that had spurned our proposal immediately to restore Cambodia’s neutrality, which I made to Le Duc Tho in a secret meeting on April 4, 1970. It was Hanoi that refused to talk of peace except with the prior condition that any non-Communist structure in Cambodia should be destroyed. It was Hanoi that rejected offers of cease-fire in October 1970, May 1971, October 1971, January 1972, and from October 1972 to January 1973. It was the Communist Khmer Rouge, organized, armed, and sponsored by Hanoi, that blocked Cambodia’s inclusion in the Paris Agreement, something the United States had repeatedly sought. The Khmer Rouge wanted to fight on to victory. Hanoi provided the military wherewithal and thereafter disclaimed any responsibility for negotiating a Cambodian peace settlement, dooming any diplomatic solution.

  It was Hanoi, therefore, if it was anyone, that brought the war to Cambodia and made possible the genocide by the Khmer Rouge. No doubt we overestimated Hanoi’s influence on the Khmer Rouge at various times; the Cambodian Communists were intractably different from the submissive Pathet Lao. Whether all our actions were wise must be left to future historians with no vested interest in refighting the contemporary debates. But there can be no doubt that the decision on a fight to the finish was Hanoi’s. Hanoi promoted the unconditional victory of the Communists, calculating — correctly, as it turned out — that the collapse of Cambodia would speed the demoralization of South Vietnam and that it would be able to deal with a fractious Cambodia at leisure afterward.

  Cambodia was misperceived in America as a separate “war” that we must avoid. But it was not any such thing. The enemy was the same as in Vietnam. North Vietnamese troops shifted back and forth across the border as if the concept of sovereignty did not exist. They did with impunity for years what produced for us in 1970, over eight weeks, a national crisis.

  America contributed to the disaster in Cambodia not because it did too much but because it did too little. In 1970, after American and South Vietnamese troops withdrew from their brief incursion into the sanctuaries — designed to destroy North Vietnamese base areas from which American and South Vietnamese had been killed for years — antiwar critics sought to achieve by legislation what had eluded them in the street demonstrations of May 1970. Between 1970 and the end of the war, the following restrictions on American assistance to Cambodia were passed into law, always over Nixon’s veto or vigorous objection:

  • The Fulbright amendment to the Armed Forces Appropriation Authorization for Fiscal Year 1971, enacted on October 7, 1970, specified that South Vietnamese and other free world forces (such as Thailand’s) could not use funds provided by the act to furnish military support and assistance to Cambodia. It also prohibited South Vietnamese or other free world forces from transferring to Cambodia any military supplies furnished under the act. Thus the ceiling placed on our aid was imposed as well on our allies in Southeast Asia, as if our primary national problem was to close every loophole by which Cambodia might be aided. It was passed three months after our incursion was over and on the same day that Nixon offered a cease-fire throughout Indochina — which the Communists quickly rejected.

  • The Cooper-Church amendment to the Supplementary Foreign Assistance Act of 1970, enacted on January 5, 1971, prohibited the use of funds for “the introduction of United States ground combat troops into Cambodia, or to provide United States advisors.” Thus the United States was barred by law from giving the Cambodians the kind of advice and training that they needed to become an effective fighting force.

  • The Symington-Case amendment to the Substitute Foreign Assistance Act and Related Assistance Act, enacted on February 7, 1972, limited the total number of “civilian officers and employees of executive agencies of the United States Government who are United States citizens” in Cambodia to 200 at any one time. It also limited the number of third country nationals employed by the United States in Cambodia to 85. This made any effective military or civilian advice to the Cambodians impossible.

  • The Second Supplemental Appropriations Act for Fiscal Year 1973 (signed into law reluctantly by Nixon on July 1, 1973) prohibited the use of funds appropriated in the act to “support directly or indirectly combat activities in or over Cambodia, Laos, North Vietnam and South Vietnam or off the shores of Cambodia, Laos, North Vietnam and South Vietnam.” Also, it prohibited any funds appropriated under any act to be used after August 15 for the above purposes. Thus any American military action anywhere in or around Indochina became illegal. With it vanished any Communist fear of a penalty for violating the Agreement.

  • The Continuing Appropriations Act for Fiscal Year 1974 likewise prohibited the use of any funds to finance directly or indirectly combat activities by US forces “in or over or from off the shores of North Vietnam, South Vietnam, Laos or Cambodia.” This continued the prohibition of the previous year.

  • The Foreign Assistance Act of 1973, which became law on December 17, 1973, provided that no funds authorized or appropriated under any provision of law would be available to finance military or paramilitary combat operations by foreign forces in Laos, Cambodia, North Vietnam, South Vietnam, or Thailand unless such operations were conducted by the forces of the recipient government within its borders. This meant that allies like Thailand, threatened from Indochina, could not use our equipment — and therefore not their forces — to assist the countries whose survival they judged important to their security.

  In addition, the Congress limited any aid for Cambodia to $250-$300 million a year, about 2 percent of what was being spent to help Vietnam.

  These cumulative constraints not only prevented effecti
ve American assistance; they also precluded our allies in Southeast Asia from committing the horrible offense of helping their Cambodian neighbors. Military advisers were prohibited, which our Embassy in Phnom Penh interpreted to bar even field trips by our military attachés. Thus the Cambodian army grew in size but not in competence. Our restrictions forced it to rely on firepower rather than mobility (and the rigidity our critics imposed was then used by them as an indictment of the Cambodians’ military effort). To stave off disaster we could look only to American air power — until that too was prohibited.

  Sadly, Cambodia became a symbol and a surrogate for the whole controversy over Vietnam. To Nixon it was “the Nixon doctrine in its purest form,”IV meaning that our policy was to help it defend itself without American troops. To his opponents it was an opportunity retrospectively and symbolically to defeat by legislation both our incursion into the sanctuaries and Nixon’s very effort to achieve a defense against aggression by building up local forces. They sought, and succeeded, in imposing on Cambodia the restrictions they had failed to inflict on South Vietnam. Their failure over South Vietnam meant that we were strong enough there to prevent collapse; but their success over Cambodia doomed that country and therefore South Vietnam as well. The restrictions made inevitable the diplomatic impasse that served Hanoi’s purposes. Once Hanoi was committed to conquest and the Khmer Rouge to total victory, the only way to extricate ourselves honorably was to demonstrate that these goals were unfulfillable. Our domestic divisions produced the opposite result. The restrictions on our aid saved the Khmer Rouge from defeat in 1970–1972 when it was still an embryonic force; and thereafter they prevented the leverage over the Khmer Rouge and Hanoi that was essential to induce a political negotiation. Antiwar critics who made the collapse of Indochina inevitable then turned on those who had sought to resist the Communist takeover and blamed them for the resulting carnage.

  The Lost Opportunity

  EVER since Cambodia achieved independence in 1954, Prince Norodom Sihanouk had performed a masterful if precarious balancing act. By maneuvering between the contending forces pressing on his country, Sihanouk preserved Cambodia’s peace, neutrality, and safety. An hereditary ruler, he anchored himself in the affection of his people. Western in his style of life, he nevertheless managed to deal with his Communist neighbors, preempting their demands and thereby mitigating some of the worst of their ambitions. The Laos settlement of 1962 convinced him that the United States would be unable in the long term to stem Hanoi’s domination of Indochina. He attempted to cope with the inevitable by loosening his ties with the United States and turning a blind eye to North Vietnamese violations of Cambodia’s sovereignty, territorial integrity, and neutrality. After 1965 he acquiesced when Hanoi established sanctuaries on Cambodian soil, in effect expelling Cambodian authority from a strip of territory paralleling the South Vietnamese frontier.

  But Sihanouk welcomed — though he could not always avow it — American efforts to stem the Communist tide in South Vietnam. Starting in 1968, he privately invited American attacks on the Communist sanctuaries, hoping that we could drive the North Vietnamese out of his country. When in 1969 the Nixon Administration took the hint and started bombing the sanctuaries, Sihanouk in public took the not excessively subtle position that, as long as Cambodians were not hurt, it was an affair between the Americans and the North Vietnamese, and that indeed he did not know what took place on territory from which Cambodian authorities had been expelled. While our air attacks on the sanctuaries were going on in 1969, he reestablished diplomatic relations with Washington and warmly invited President Nixon to visit Phnom Penh.

  In January 1970, Sihanouk went for his annual cure to southern France. He announced that he would return via Moscow and Peking to plead with the two Communist giants to use their influence with Hanoi to reduce its presence in Cambodia. Just as he was getting ready to start his return journey, there were riots in Phnom Penh against the North Vietnamese. While he was in Moscow, Sihanouk learned on the way to the airport that he had just been deposed by his own national assembly. Deeply stung by what he considered betrayal by his colleagues at home, he flew from Moscow to Peking, where he was embraced by Zhou Enlai and accepted as the legitimate ruler of Cambodia. Sihanouk virulently blamed the United States for his overthrow; in his bitterness he placed himself at the head of the Communist Khmer Rouge, then a tiny organization (whose leaders he had just a short while before sentenced to death for treason), and vowed a war to the finish against his erstwhile associates in Phnom Penh. In the process he all but forfeited his role as a mediator and balance wheel between the factions of his country.

  Conscious that Congressional limitations prevented a clear-cut military outcome, the United States tried hard to find a peaceful political settlement for Cambodia. We offered a cease-fire on at least a half-dozen occasions between 1970 and 1973. After the settlement in Vietnam, we were ready to negotiate with Prince Sihanouk as part of a political structure in Cambodia in which he could play a meaningful role. But if Sihanouk was to reclaim his position as the balance wheel, arbiter, and neutralist leader, this required the survival and participation of the non-Communist forces associated with Lon Nol, though not necessarily of Lon Nol himself. Hanoi never showed the slightest interest in either Sihanouk or a compromise — but China did. As early as June 22, 1972, Zhou Enlai had told me that he did not favor Hanoi’s conquest of either Laos or Cambodia or of a Communist takeover in either country. A negotiated settlement was the right course:

  In solving the Indochina question it is not Vietnam alone — it is still a question of Cambodia and Laos, but they are comparatively easier. Because no matter what happens we can say for certain that elements of the national bourgeoisie will take part in such a government; and we can be sure in Cambodia Prince Sihanouk will be the head of state, and in Laos the King will be the head of state. So if it can be solved through negotiations such an outcome would be a matter of certainty.

  We were in no position to pick up this lead in the middle of a North Vietnamese offensive threatening to engulf Saigon, but in November 1972, I told Chinese Vice Foreign Minister Qiao Guanhua that if there were a cease-fire in Cambodia we would be prepared to have discussions with Sihanouk and that he could play a major role in postwar Cambodia, provided he did not simply act as front man for the Khmer Rouge. “Whoever can best preserve it [Cambodia] as an independent neutral country, is consistent with our policy,” I told Qiao, “and we believe consistent with yours.”

  As 1973 began, we dedicated ourselves to bringing about a cease-fire in Cambodia to follow the cease-fires in Vietnam and Laos. On the day the Paris Agreement was signed, January 27, 1973, the Cambodian government, on our advice, made a bid for peace by halting all offensive military operations and declaring a unilateral cease-fire. Simultaneously, we stopped American air operations. But the Khmer Rouge rejected the cease-fire appeal and launched a new offensive. Reading the tea leaves, my NSC staff at the end of January nevertheless experienced a flurry of hope. A briefing paper prepared for my February visit to China analyzed several statements by Sihanouk, the Khmer Rouge leaders, Hanoi, and China. From this my staff concluded that “a recent series of developments strongly suggests that the other side may soon be seeking negotiations on Cambodia and will positively, if indirectly, respond to Lon Nol’s call for a cessation of offensive military actions.”

  In retrospect this judgment was totally wishful thinking. A careful reading of the statements suggests that whatever desire Sihanouk may have had for conciliation, he was himself a prisoner of the Khmer Rouge and of his own 1970 declaration of total war against the Cambodian government. The official position of the Khmer Rouge was the extreme statement that Sihanouk had issued on March 23, 1970, less than a week after he was deposed. He had called then for dissolution of the Lon Nol government and legislature and for formation of a “Government of National Union,” a “National Liberation Army,” and a “National United Front,” whose essential task was to fight “Am
erican imperialism” at the side of the Vietnamese and Laotian Communists. It was a ringing call for a complete Communist takeover of all of Indochina.

  In the period leading up to the Paris accords, Sihanouk reiterated this maximalist position. And the signs of flexibility afterward, that so raised our hopes, evaporated in the sunlight of closer inspection. In an interview with Agence France Presse (AFP) on January 29, 1973, Sihanouk noted that “our friends” (probably Hanoi and China) had urged his government in exile not to maintain its intransigent stance. He was willing to talk to the United States, he said, but he would never negotiate with Lon Nol and would never accept a solution like that reached for South Vietnam. In any case, he said significantly, the ultimate position would be determined not by him, but by the “Cambodian resistance, which is operating in the interior” — that is to say, the Khmer Rouge. An official four-point statement of January 26, 1973, issued in the name of Sihanouk, his Prime Minister Penn Nouth, and Khmer Rouge leader Khieu Samphan, intransigently reiterated that the solution to the Cambodian problem could be found only on the basis of Sihanouk’s declaration of March 23, 1970 — that is to say, a complete Communist takeover.

  In remarks to journalists in Hanoi on January 31, Sihanouk spoke of willingness to make an “overture” to the United States. Nevertheless, he stressed once again his subordinate role; he had “not yet received the definitive green light for the reevaluation of the GRUNK’sV policy from the leaders of the domestic resistance, the Red Khmers led by GRUNK Deputy Prime Minister and Defense Minister Khieu Samphan, who has the last word.” He could not have made his dependence on the Communists more plain.