The United States and Cambodia, 1969-2000

A Troubled Relationship

Kenton Clymer

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781134341566
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: North American History
• Index: History

Beginning with the restoration of diplomatic relations between the US and Cambodia in 1969, this book is the first to systematically explore the controversial issues and events surrounding the relationship between the two countries in the latter half of the 20th century. It traces how the secret bombing of Cambodia, the coup which overthrew Prince Sihanouk and the American invasion of Cambodia in 1970 led to a brutal civil war. Based on extensive archival research in the United States, Australia and Cambodia, this is the most comprehensive account of the United States' troubled relationship with Cambodia.

1 Richard Nixon and Cambodia

Diplomatic Relations and Bombs

We have reported over recent months the instances of military leaks, particularly from MACV in Saigon, which have apparently been designed to impede the process of resumption of diplomatic relations between the United States and Cambodia.

Report from the Australian Embassy in Washington, D.C., July 1969

American and South Vietnamese forces are entering Cambodia to destroy “the headquarters for the entire communist military operation in South Vietnam.”

President Richard Nixon, speech to the nation, 30 April 1970

It was never our plan to capture COSVN. We didn’t expect it and it would be a stroke of luck if we did.

General John Vogt, 12 May 1970¹

On 21 January 1969 Richard Nixon became President and continued the effort to improve relations with Cambodia. He was excited when on 31 January the new ambassador from Singapore, who was close to Sihanouk, told him that the Cambodian leader had “warm feelings” for him, and Nixon in turn expressed his warm regard for the Cambodian leader.² About the same time William Rogers, the new secretary of state, advised the President that Southeast Asians would view a resumption of relations as indicating that Sihanouk now thought the United States would prevail in Vietnam. An embassy in Phnom Penh would also allow for better intelligence collection. Significantly, Rogers rejected Department of Defense objections (the department feared that a resumption of relations would limit its options in Cambodia) on the grounds that renewed relations would inhibit “only major new military actions of a kind which I do not think we should take in any case.”³ The new National Security Adviser, Henry Kissinger, concurred. The President immediately wrote to Sihanouk that he hoped for progress in resolving differences. Sihanouk quickly let the Americans know that if they restored diplomatic relations, he would not use a border incident as an excuse to break them off again – one of the fears that the Americans had. He even made comments that some interpreted as an invitation to the United States to attack areas of Cambodia where concentrations of Viet Cong were (though Australian Ambassador Noël St. Clair Deschamps, who had represented American interests in Cambodia during the previous four years, thought this misconstrued Sihanouk’s intent).⁴ The lack of an acceptable American declaration recognizing Cambodia’s current borders, Sihanouk indicated, was the sole impediment to renewing relations.

Nixon determined to move ahead. Acting on instructions, Deschamps informed Sihanouk that the United States would issue a border declaration if this would contribute to a lasting improvement in relations. Cambodia would have to understand that border incidents might occur even after the resumption of relations, although the United States would try to avoid them and would consult with the Cambodian government on ways to resolve them.⁵ Although the state department did not anticipate an immediate resumption of diplomatic relations, it is significant that Nixon had set a course toward normalization without first getting concurrence from the Thais and South Vietnamese, whose hostility to any border declaration had not diminished.

When Sihanouk explained that he did not expect all border incidents to cease, nor did he expect the Americans actually to help demarcate the border, important obstacles were removed. As a goodwill gesture Sihanouk quickly released four Americans whose aircraft had recently been shot down.⁶ Also. Cambodian armed forces moved against the Viet Cong, especially in Prey Veng and Svay Rieng Provinces. Along the border, South Vietnamese and Cambodian officials consulted in a friendly manner on how they might deal with the Viet Cong. Therefore, on 2 April Nixon approved the issuance of a border declaration that read: “In conformity with the United Nations Charter, the United States of America recognizes and respects the sovereignty, independence, neutrality, and territorial integrity of the Kingdom of Cambodia within its present frontiers.” Sihanouk was delighted.

Because the Americans saw the border declaration in part as a test of Sihanouk’s attitudes and actions, they did not want to rush toward diplomatic relations. Some problems did in fact emerge. Within two weeks of the American declaration, reports surfaced that Sihanouk was no longer happy with it because certain American officials had let it be known that the border declaration meant very little. Citing published reports to this effect, Sihanouk said that he was rejecting the declaration.⁷ A few days later he raised the level of National Liberation Front (NLF – the Viet Cong) and East Germany representation in Phnom Penh to that of an embassy.

Administration officials were inclined to blame the reversal entirely on Sihanouk. He had suddenly come to realize the extent of Vietnamese communist control of northeastern Cambodia and of his powerlessness to do anything about it, they surmised. Therefore he had no choice but to distance himself from the United States again and find a new modus vivendi with Hanoi. Others, like Deschamps (back in Canberra after having been replaced as ambassador) thought it more likely that Sihanouk was playing domestic politics and that the United States should not respond but watch and wait.⁸

Observers in Phnom Penh could not easily explain Sihanouk’s reversal. “There is no one reason or set of reasons generally accepted as explaining rejection of United States declaration,” reported the Australian embassy after surveying both diplomatic and Cambodian opinion.⁹ Deschamps may have been correct that Sihanouk’s complaints about the border declaration were intended mostly for a domestic audience, but as the Americans surmised the Prince may also have been dismayed at how deeply entrenched the Vietnamese were in northeastern Cambodia. He may also have misjudged the prospects for a quick end to the war in Vietnam at the Paris peace talks, and he certainly encountered Chinese and North Vietnamese diplomatic pressure.

Important as these factors may have been, Sihanouk was clearly irritated at the glosses certain Americans put on the declaration, as well as with general American press reporting about Cambodia.¹⁰ Leaks from American officials about the meaninglessness of the declaration were possibly deliberate, intended to derail the reconciliation. “It is a pattern which has occurred frequently in the past, whenever an improvement in U.S.-Cambodian relations has appeared a possibility,” Senator Mike Mansfield (D-MT) wrote to the President.¹¹

Mansfield (and Sihanouk) had genuine cause for concern. As the senator stated, it was a pattern that had occurred frequently in the past. Just when relations were improving, a major border incident or other disruption occurred that threatened to (and sometimes did) thwart efforts at reconciliation. Deschamps also saw this pattern. There was, he recalled, a “hydra-headedness” to American policy. “You’ve got so many institutions involved in foreign affairs, and more or less in rivalry and not always in cooperation.” Asked to respond to the observation that every time there was an important potential breakthrough in efforts to improve relations there was a major bombing incident, he responded, “Exactly … That’s exactly what I mean by hydra-headed. The different institutions were working against each other instead of as a team.”¹²

Elements in the American military establishment – most likely military intelligence officers – disliked this incipient rapprochement, just as they had disliked similar efforts in the past, and it is probable that they tried to derail the improvement. Hard evidence of this is not easy to find. But in addition to assertions by Mansfield and Deschamps, officials in the Australian embassy in Washington, who had close contact with American officials, believed this to be the case. “We have reported over recent months the instances of military leaks, particularly from MACV [Military Assistance Command, Vietnam] in Saigon, which have apparently been designed to impede the process of resumption of diplomatic relations between the United States and Cambodia,” reported an embassy official in July 1969.¹³

The military’s disagreement with efforts to improve relations may explain, at least in part, the several cross-border incursions and bombing raids that took place in March and April. These, as well as published reports that defoliants had been used in Cambodia and that small teams of Americans were covertly going into Cambodia and occasionally kidnapping villagers, would undoubtedly have angered Sihanouk.¹⁴

Potentially the most damaging military leak came on 9 May when William Beecher’s very accurate story about secret B-52 raids on Cambodian territory appeared in the New York Times. Beecher, who had a reputation as a Pentagon ally, was later appointed Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Public Affairs. By some accounts his disclosure of the bombing was intended to help the Nixon administration by showing that it was getting tough.¹⁵ But at the time the Nixon administration was almost apoplectic about the leak, and it is at least equally plausible that military officials in Saigon leaked the story to derail improving relations with Phnom Penh. Beecher himself stated that his information came from military sources, and state department officials believed that, despite the story’s Washington dateline, it was “almost certainly leaked by MACV in Saigon.” As a consequence of the leak, the state department deliberately avoided informing American authorities in Saigon about its most recent effort to assuage Sihanouk. Even before that American message reached Sihanouk, however, two leaks about defoliant usage in Cambodia threatened to vitiate “the chances of this message having any useful effects in Phnom Penh.”¹⁶ A little later Newsweek repeated the charge that the United States was bombing Cambodian territory, and United Press International (UPI) reported that teams of unmarked American helicopters were penetrating up to ten miles inside Cambodia seeking out Vietnamese communist targets.

The leaks, whether intended to disrupt the pending rapprochement or not, slowed the movement but did not derail it. Mansfield played an important role (according to the state department) in convincing Sihanouk not formally to reject the border declaration. Having been assured by Rogers that no responsible American officials had attempted to undermine the border declaration, Mansfield made a speech on the Senate floor praising the administration’s Cambodia policy, condemning “diversionary” interpretations of the border declaration that came from unofficial sources outside of the executive branch, and assuring the Cambodians that the administration stood behind the border declaration.¹⁷ On 22 May, in a further effort to reassure the Cambodians, the United States informed Cambodian officials that there had been no official American statements “contradicting, expanding, or expressing reservations to” the declaration.¹⁸ This satisfied Sihanouk, who was perhaps influenced as well by an increasing number of armed clashes between Cambodian and Vietnamese communist forces, and on 11 June the Cambodian government informed the United States that it was now prepared to resume diplomatic relations.

For reasons that are not entirely clear the United States did not immediately respond to Cambodia’s offer. The Americans may have been mulling over as an alternative interim step sending an American representative to be attached to the Australian embassy. But on 27 June the United States accepted the Cambodian proposal and proposed 2 July as the date for formally resuming relations.¹⁹

There were some nervous moments that the arrangement might unravel when American military officials in Vietnam announced that American artillery and aircraft would attack Vietnamese targets in Cambodia. But Sihanouk overlooked this provocation, and Thay Sok, who was already in the United States where he was attached to the French embassy, immediately took over as Cambodian chargé d’affaires. On 21 July Lloyd M. Rives, who had served previously in Hanoi and Vientiane as well as in Africa, was named American chargé in Phnom Penh. On 15 August Rives reopened the American embassy. After a hiatus of over four years, diplomatic relations had been restored, causing one relieved Australian official to comment, ‘Amen.”²⁰

The Australians, and some in the state department, still feared that provocative leaks from American military sources in Vietnam could derail the improving relations. In fact in July when a story appeared indicating that the United States was preparing claims against Cambodia for damages, the Australian embassy in Washington reported that it was “another MACV leak.” “What else?” wrote an External Affairs official on the telegram. There were in fact many provocations that Sihanouk could have used to reverse course, but he chose to ignore or minimize them and indeed seemed more concerned at Vietnamese communist activity in his country. The Prince did not have high expectations, however. As the Australian embassy put it, Sihanouk’s views were “soberly expressed, without illusions and indicate[d] a rather cool but not unfriendly attitude towards the impending establishment of U.S. diplomatic mission.”²¹

Less than a week after Rives arrived in Phnom Penh, Mansfield came to Cambodia. Sent by Nixon to symbolize the new relationship, Mansfield was received almost as a chief of state. The atmosphere, reported Rives, was “extremely cordial.” In a toast Mansfield said that American military force would be used on the Asian mainland only in the most extreme situations.²² The bilateral relationship, it appeared, had gotten off to a good start.

The United States’ major hope in restoring diplomatic relations was that it could gain an advantage over its enemies in South Vietnam who used Cambodia as a sanctuary and as a transit point for supplies.²³ In this sense, for the Nixon administration Cambodia truly was a “sideshow,” a term journalist William Shawcross made famous.

Even so, to a certain extent there was a confluence of interests. Viet Cong and the North Vietnamese use of Cambodian territory angered Sihanouk. The Cambodian government even published a map of Vietnamese inroads into the country, and armed clashes took place between the Cambodian military and the Vietnamese. At the same time the Americans believed that Sihanouk had made a deal with the Viet Cong allowing them to import arms through the port of Sihanoukville, provided none of the weapons got to the Cambodian communists, the Khmer Rouge. According to one well-placed American, Sihanouk subsequently ordered General Lon Nol not to release Chinese arms to the Viet Cong, but “the Vietnamese … then bribed Nhiek Tioulong to release the arms.”²⁴

All of this illustrates how Sihanouk had to maneuver carefully in a web of conflicting pressures. His larger goal was to ensure his country’s survival, to try to keep it from becoming further enmeshed in the violence in neighboring Vietnam, and to gain international acceptance of his country’s boundaries. To the United States, these were not the primary concerns.

B-52 Attacks

Even as Sihanouk and Nixon were seeking to improve their bilateral relationshi...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Abbreviations used in notes
• Map of Cambodia
• Prologue
• 1. Richard Nixon and Cambodia: diplomatic relations and bombs
• 2. Sticking with Lon Nol
• 3. Dénouement: Gerald Ford, Henry Kissinger, and the fall of Cambodia
• 4. Jimmy Carter, human rights, and Cambodia
• 5. Toward a new beginning
• Conclusion
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index