Eisenhower and Cambodia

Diplomacy, Covert Action, and the Origins of the Second Indochina War

William J. Rust

• Editorial: The University Press of Kentucky
• Año: 2016
• ISBN:
  9780813167459
• Categoría: Politics & International Relations
• Categoría: International Relations

Although most Americans paid little attention to Cambodia during Dwight D. Eisenhower's presidency, the nation's proximity to China and the global ideological struggle with the Soviet Union guaranteed US vigilance throughout Southeast Asia. Cambodia's leader, Norodom Sihanouk, refused to take sides in the Cold War, a policy that disturbed US officials. From 1953 to 1961, his government avoided the political and military crises of neighboring Laos and South Vietnam. However, relations between Cambodia and the United States suffered a blow in 1959 when Sihanouk discovered CIA involvement in a plot to overthrow him. The coup, supported by South Vietnam and Thailand, was a failure that succeeded only in increasing Sihanouk's power and prestige, presenting new foreign policy challenges in the region.

In Eisenhower and Cambodia, William J. Rust examines the United States' efforts to lure Cambodia from neutrality to alliance. He conclusively demonstrates that, as with Laos in 1958 and 1960, covert intervention in the internal political affairs of neutral Cambodia proved to be a counterproductive tactic for advancing the United States' anticommunist goals. Drawing on recently declassified sources, Rust skillfully traces the impact of "plausible deniability" on the formulation and execution of foreign policy. His meticulous study not only reveals a neglected chapter in Cold War history but also illuminates the intellectual and political origins of US strategy in Vietnam and the often-hidden influence of intelligence operations in foreign affairs.

1

“A Shrewd Move”

(1953–1954)

King Norodom Sihanouk’s crusade for Cambodian independence began in March 1953, when he wrote to President Vincent Auriol of France appealing for greater Cambodian autonomy in economic, judicial, and military affairs. In two letters, with six explanatory annexes, Sihanouk declared that French policy was “leading to disaster in Cambodia.” He criticized France for concentrating on the external threat posed by the Viet Minh at a time when the kingdom’s two chief problems were native Khmer Issarak bands and the dwindling political support for the king’s policy of “collaboration with the French.” Son Ngoc Thanh, Sihanouk wrote, was gaining ground with Cambodian elites by portraying the king as “more French than the French themselves.” Hyperbolically claiming that the monarchy was in danger, Sihanouk observed: “There is only one more step to take—and it has already by many of my countrymen in their minds—to see me as a traitor to my country, accepting the role of judas [sic] goat for France.”¹

Auriol and other French officials were unmoved by Sihanouk’s request for greater Cambodian autonomy. In a meeting with the king in Paris, Auriol said that “France could not give any more concessions toward perfecting Cambodian independence at this time.” Such concessions, said French officials, would undermine domestic political support for “the heavy French military effort and financial outlays in Indo-China.” Jean Letourneau, who served as both the cabinet minister for relations with the Associated States and the high commissioner in Indochina, glibly remarked to Sihanouk that the king’s prestige was so great that if he told his subjects “that Cambodia [is] in fact independent, the people would believe him.” Sihanouk, who was revered by the vast majority of Cambodians, replied that “they had believed him to date,” but public opinion “was getting dangerously out of hand due to the effective propaganda of the rebel Son Ngoc Thanh.”²

After his unsuccessful appeal to the French, Sihanouk traveled to Canada, then the United States, which was then financing about 40 percent of France’s war with the Viet Minh. Meeting with Vice President Richard M. Nixon at the Capitol and with Secretary of State John Foster Dulles at Blair House, Sihanouk warned that the situation in Cambodia was “potentially dangerous.” His subjects were “bitterly suspicious” of the French, who should make further concessions to Cambodian independence. Nixon and Dulles were cordial, expressing understanding for the king’s problems and advising him to continue his negotiations with the French. They did not, however, support his demands for greater Cambodian autonomy, arguing that any break in unity between his country and France would only benefit the Vietnamese communists. In his memoirs, Nixon wrote that he found Sihanouk intelligent but vain and flighty: “He appeared to me totally unrealistic about the problems his country faced.”³

The comments from Dulles and Nixon reflected the US consensus emphasizing the power of communist ideology in international relations while paying scant attention to the history, people, and politics of individual countries, in particular those in Asia. In the 1950s and into the 1960s, American officials tended to reduce the complexity of relations within and among nations to a global zero-sum game in which countries were either lost to or won from an international communist conspiracy efficiently directed by the Kremlin. The failure to see the threats posed by the Soviet Union, the People’s Republic of China (PRC), and the Democratic Republic of Vietnam (DRV) as related but distinct phenomena, each with its own dynamics, strengths, and limitations, led American officials to the dubious conclusion that Indochina was strategically significant to US national security.

Sihanouk was “obviously somewhat disappointed” with Nixon and Dulles’s responses, according to Ambassador Heath, the king’s escort during his Washington meetings. Royal councilor Leng Ngeth characterized Sihanouk’s reaction in harsher terms: the king was “displeased” with the “cool reception” he received in the United States, and he “resented Vice President Nixon’s views” that Cambodia’s immediate concern should be the communist threat rather than independence. In a letter to French officials, Sihanouk wrote that Dulles and Nixon’s comments “showed ignorance” of the situation in Cambodia, where the lack of independence “invites” communism by validating its anticolonial propaganda.⁴

Rebuffed in Paris and Washington, Sihanouk employed a negotiating tactic that became a hallmark of his statecraft: he dispensed with confidential diplomacy and went public with his campaign for greater Cambodian independence. An interview with the New York Times in April 1953 described him as declaring that “unless the French gave his people more independence ‘within the next few months,’ there was real danger that they would rebel against the present regime and become a part of the Communist-led Vietminh movement.” The king observed that most Cambodian troops were under French command; that the country’s judicial system did not apply to foreigners; and that France controlled the kingdom’s imports, exports, and taxes. While calling the struggle against communism essential, Sihanouk said that he might not be able to rally his people against a Viet Minh invasion. “They do not want to die for the French and help them stay here,” he said. What Sihanouk proposed was Cambodian independence within the French Union equivalent to the independence of India and Pakistan within the British Commonwealth.⁵

Commenting to Dulles on the interview, Ambassador Heath wrote: “Thanh’s propaganda has been increasingly effective and has diminished the national support, almost veneration enjoyed by the King. This is probably the principal cause—plus inept French handling—of the anti-French outburst of the King in the interview he gave the New York Times [on] April 19th. Hitherto the King had been reasonable and appreciative of the necessity of French defense of Indochina.”⁶

When his New York Times interview was published, Sihanouk correctly predicted that the French reaction would be “very bad.”⁷ Perhaps no French official was more disturbed by the king’s remarks than Jean Risterucci, the high commissioner in Cambodia. The Cambodian government had protested Risterucci’s appointment in 1952 because of his apparent favoritism toward the Vietnamese in their financial, boundary, and other disagreements with Cambodia and, according to Heath, because of his reputation as a “rather machiavellian [sic] type [of] colonial official.”⁸ Sihanouk had slighted the French diplomat by going over his head and making the case for Cambodian independence directly to senior officials in Paris.

After receiving a French translation of Sihanouk’s interview in the New York Times, Risterucci met with the king’s parents, Prince Norodom Suramarit and Princess Kossamak Nearireak, to denounce their son’s remarks. Risterucci also revealed his knowledge of an even more upsetting document from New York—a coded telegram sent by Sihanouk to his parents ordering resolutions and motions of support from Cambodian government officials, students, and bonzes. Risterucci, claiming that he had obtained a copy of the cable from “a well-meaning Cambodian,” described the telegram as “an invitation to open rebellion against the French.” The king’s parents disagreed with the diplomat’s interpretation of the message, eventually persuading him that “the Palace [is] not planning a revolution but merely building up the King in the eyes of his subjects.”⁹

Major General Paul Girot de Langlade, the French commander in Cambodia, was less sure of palace intentions. A forty-year veteran of the French army, de Langlade cabled General Raoul Salan, the commander of all French forces in Indochina: “Active preparations are underfoot to instigate open rebellion” in Cambodia. According to de Langlade’s informants, “Cambodian army officers, dissidents Issaraks, government functionaries and Buddhist priests are being given orders to stand by for an uprising to take place within fifteen days unless [the] ‘demands of [the] King are granted by the French.’”¹⁰

On April 27, General Salan shared this intelligence with Robert McClintock, the newly appointed US deputy chief of mission (DCM) in Saigon. Salan, preoccupied with the recent Viet Minh invasion of Laos, made two requests of McClintock: (1) ask Secretary Dulles to point out to Sihanouk the “extreme danger of [the] contemplated action” and (2) go to Phnom Penh to investigate the situation. McClintock reported the French allegations to the State Department, and Dulles immediately wrote to the king, who was in Tokyo. Although he did not mention General de Langlade’s accusations, Dulles emphasized “the absolute necessity” of harmonious cooperation between Cambodia and France.¹¹

McClintock traveled to Phnom Penh, where de Langlade assured him that his intelligence came from “highly placed persons.” Convinced that the king had “run amok,” de Langlade said, “The Cambodians [will] be in for a surprise if they [try] any funny business.” If it appeared that “the King’s Father and Mother had given the order for the uprising,” he said, “they would have their heads chopped off in short order.” De Langlade told chargé Joseph Montllor: “I will warn you so that you will not be there when the blow falls.” Risterucci, whose view of the situation was less dire than de Langlade’s, observed: “The Kingdom is now in the throes of a grave crisis and the King is behaving like a schoolboy.”¹²

Robert D. Murphy, the US ambassador to Japan, personally delivered Dulles’s message to Sihanouk on April 29. In an apparently “amiable mood,” the king said that he was pleased to have the opportunity to explain his point of view. Without complete independence, he said, the Cambodian people had little motivation to fight the Viet Minh and the Khmer Issarak. Although the population was “generally loyal” to the throne, many people would “simply fold their hands” if armed resistance to the French broke out. The king said that it would be unwise for him to return to Cambodia “empty-handed.” According to Murphy, Sihanouk hoped that the “United States would sympathetically support his position.”¹³

That same day Sihanouk’s representatives in Paris released a public statement warning of “the present danger that the Cambodians will revolt against the French authorities.” Intended as a “clarification” of Sihanouk’s comments to the New York Times, the statement reaffirmed that an independent Cambodia would remain within the French Union. It also argued that full autonomy would strengthen the Franco-Cambodian defense against the Viet Minh and attract “the support of nationalist anticommunist rebels.”¹⁴

Georges Bidault, the French foreign affairs minister, criticized Sihanouk as “a weakling driven by fear”—afraid of both the Viet Minh and the Khmer Issarak. A former president and prime minister as well as an architect of French policy in Indochina, Bidault told C. Douglas Dillon, the American ambassador in Paris, that France was willing to change its judicial and economic relations with Cambodia but that ceding any military authority to Sihanouk would be “impossible.” In his report to the State Department, Dillon wrote: “Bidault obviously has no respect for [the] King or for [the] Cambodian people. He says [the] country would long since have been partitioned by Siam and Vietnam if France had not intervened, and only the presence of France will keep [the] country independent.”¹⁵

With French-Cambodian negotiations under way in Paris, Sihanouk returned to Phnom Penh on May 17, clearly satisfied by the results of his unconventional diplomacy. Addressing some fifteen thousand of his subjects, he described his “controversy” with France, summarized his conversations with Nixon and Dulles, and declared his willingness “to sacrifice his life” for Cambodia. Referring indirectly to his interview in the New York Times and to his talks with French and US officials, Sihanouk said: “The affair exploded and came to the attention of the entire world, resulting in [the] displeasure of my two great friends, as you know. One said that he was planning to give me what I wanted, but that I was too impatient, and that I have made insulting remarks which ridicule him before the world. The other said that I am young, that I am not experienced, and that this is the reason for my error.”¹⁶

Sihanouk traveled to Battambang and Siem Reap Provinces on June 6, 1953, to accept the surrender of two leaders of small Khmer Issarak bands. According to the US legation in Phnom Penh, the rebels’ public surrender was a propaganda ploy intended to prove the “success “of the king’s crusade for independence. During this trip, however, Sihanouk learned of the “growing impatience of provincial political and military leaders for action, not words.” US and French officials thought it likely that Sihanouk met with rebel leader Son Ngoc Thanh, who “may have told the King that he will not rally unless independence becomes a fact.”¹⁷

Whether Sihanouk met with Thanh or not, he changed his plans to return to Phnom Penh and crossed over the border into Thailand with a few senior advisers. In a recorded statement broadcast on Phnom Penh radio on June 14, the king said that he had “personally observed [the] fervent desire [of] his people for immediate, full independence” and that the country’s best interest required his travel abroad to “draw attention to [the] aspirations of Cambodians.” Canceling further negotiations with French officials, Sihanouk vowed that he would not return to Cambodia until France agreed to “full and complete independence.”¹⁸

The king’s self-imposed exile was a complete surprise to French off...

Índice

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Map
• List of Abbreviations
• Prologue: “Plausible Denial”
• 1. “A Shrewd Move” (1953–1954)
• 2. “Not a Happy Omen” (1954)
• 3. “Time for Further Maneuvers” (1955)
• 4. “Irresponsible and Mischievous Actions” (1956)
• 5. “Change from the Top” (1956)
• 6. “Many Unpleasant and Difficult Things” (1957–1958)
• 7. “Numerous Reports of Plots” (1958)
• 8. “A Shady Matter” (1958–1959)
• 9. “Stupid Moves” (1959–1960)
• 10. “Getting Along with Sihanouk” (1960)
• 11. “Definite Political Problems” (1960–1961)
• Epilogue: “Forebodings and Potential Opposition”
• Acknowledgments
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index