Cambodian-Vietnamese Relations

 CAMBODIAN-VIETNAMESE RELATIONS

Joseph R. Pouvatchy

Few states in the world have a foreign policy that for decades, even centuries, has been simpler or more uniform than that of Cambodia. Its foreign relations have always been typified by its relationship with neighboring Vietnam, and to a lesser degree with Thailand. Thus, since Cambodia's independence in 1953 and up to 1978–79, all of Phnom Penh's governments have turned alternately toward Paris or Washington. Moscow or Beijing have been concerned only with the relationships of these capitals with Vietnam. Here we see how the more things change, the more they stay the same: whatever the regime in place in Phnom Penh or across the border in Vietnam—be it the Democratic Republic of Vietnam (DRVN) in Hanoi, the Provisional Revolutionary Government of South Vietnam, the Republic of Vietnam in Saigon, or the Socialist Republic of Vietnam—Khmer-Vietnamese relations have always consisted of attempts to settle the problem of Cambodia's territorial integrity, which, to a degree, means negotiating its survival. It has always gone back to the problems of ancient rivalries and border disputes, on land and sea, and from time to time the question of minorities—the Viêt Kiêu in Cambodia or the Khmer Krom in South Vietnam.

A Long Process of Expansion

The dispute that poisons Cambodian-Vietnamese relations is quite old. We know that the Vietnamese people, in their long march in the seventeenth century toward the south and southwest of the Indochinese peninsula, “swallowed up” (to use the Cambodian expression) the land belonging to the Khmers. The capital of Kampuchea Krom called Prey Nokor became Saigon, and about 1840, when the king of Cambodia asked for help from the Vietnamese to thwart Siamese aspirations, the intervention led to an absolute “Vietnamization” of the Khmer kingdom. A sizable population of Vietnamese settled on Cambodian territory, and a Vietnamese or Annamese administrative system was imposed. The Khmers were left to adopt the religious practices, customs, and language of their big neighbor. The Khmer kingdom, or at least one part of it, had been annexed, and the other part fell under the authority of Bangkok.

The French intervention at the end of the nineteenth century had the effect of temporarily slowing the gradual disappearance of the Khmer kingdom. But the French protectorate authorities also shared some of the responsibility for the problems with Vietnam that the Khmer kingdom inherited after its independence. After 1870 France determined the borders of Cochin China, destined ultimately to become a French colony and never again to be under the control of Cambodia. While the border was modified in 1914 in order to give to the Cambodians the famous “parrot’s beak,” the question of the islands in the Gulf of Siam was left pending. The French were also responsible for the growth of the Vietnamese minority in Cambodia. For work in administration and on rubber plantations the French called in Vietnamese laborers. Spreading throughout Cambodia, the Vietnamese monopolized lake and river fishing and small businesses in the cities, much to the detriment of the Khmers, of course.

There is a tendency to believe that during the first Indochinese War (1946–54) there was a common front of all Indochinese peoples against French colonialism. One forgets the ethnic and historic divisions that separate the Cambodians from the Vietnamese. Norodom Sihanouk is quoted as saying: “We fought against the Viêt Minh in 1953/54 as we fought against the Siamese and Annamese who were invading our country in the past centuries and because they wanted to colonize us in place of the French colonists. 

The kingdom of Cambodia achieved independence in 1953 and this opened a new chapter in the history of Cambodian-Vietnamese relations. In fact, the relations were undermined and booby-trapped in 1954 during the Geneva Convention on Indochina. A time bomb was placed in that region because the Geneva Accords imposed the splitting of Vietnam into two states, and this meant (since elections would not take place) that war was inevitable in Vietnam and that this war would finally touch Cambodia. From that time on, Phnom Penh's foreign policy would have but one objective: the delay of this confrontation. For 16 years, and in his own surprising, irritating, and disconcerting way, Prince Norodom Sihanouk employed this policy, ultimately with some success. Actually, Cambodia's foreign policy from 1954 was a rather difficult one: Phnom Penh not only had to deal with the two republics in Vietnam but also to maintain good relations with the North and the South while these two were at war with one another.

Phnom Penh Between Hanoi and Saigon

After the 1955 Bandung Conference, and on the advice of Chou Enlai and Nehru, Sihanouk opted for a policy of neutrality and in 1956 established diplomatic relations with the Democratic Republic of Vietnam as well as with the Republic of Vietnam. This position of equidistance soon became uncomfortable, if not perilous. First of all, in its relations with Saigon, Phnom Penh faced the problem of the construction of the port of Kompong Som, which was to liberate Cambodia from the necessity of transferring merchandise by way of South Vietnam. There was still the problem of the coastal islands, particularly the island of Koh Tral (called Phu Quôc by the Vietnamese) that the Khmers wanted back. But the position became more serious after 1956 when the Ngô Dinh Diêm regime carried out the liquidation of groups opposed to his policies and even pursued them on the Cambodian side of the border. Another handicap in Phnom Penh–Saigon relations was the Dap Chuon affair in 1959 in which the South Vietnamese, with the help of the CIA, attempted (already!) to overthrow Sihanouk.

 It must be noted that in 1958 the government of Phnom Penh had recognized the People’s Republic of China (PRC). Ngô Dinh Diêm took offense at this new tendency in Cambodian policy and sent his brother Ngô Dinh Nhu to Phnom Penh to get some explanations. Sihanouk, who at this time realized that the PRC was the best guarantee of Cambodian neutrality, did not give up his campaign for closer ties with Beijing. He carried on with his policy and tried, with the Chinese guarantee, to preserve the independence and territorial integrity of his country in the face of a communist Indochina.

The basic essential for the Cambodians, as we know, was to save their country from involvement in the Vietnam War in the short run, and from the appetites of their Vietnamese neighbors in the long run. Sihanouk went to Saigon to try to get recognition of the common borders. He even declared himself ready to give up Cambodia’s historic rights to what had been Cochin China, but the government of Saigon took no action concerning his request. The mission was a failure. In the 1960s the war in Vietnam worsened and finally arrived at Cambodia’s borders. Sihanouk wanted to sound out Hanoi’s and Saigon’s intentions toward his country,saying: “We finally will negotiate with the Vietnamese State—from North to South—whichever will turn out to be the most reasonable in the essential question of recognizing the demarcation of our common frontiers.”³ He wanted assurance as to the protection of Cambodia but Saigon did not respond to his appeals. Phnom Penh then broke off relations with the Republic of Vietnam.

Phnom Penh addressed Hanoi and asked if they would promise to recognize Cambodia’s borders and respect its territorial integrity: “This problem of frontiers . . . will be so vital for us, especially in the future when our neighbors and the final masters in South Vietnam will be the Democratic Republic of Vietnam itself.”⁴ Pham Van Dông, in his usual shrewd way, sent Sihanouk to the party more obviously concerned, the National Liberation Front (NLF) of South Vietnam, which chose not to respond.

It was evident that Sihanouk was under no illusion and knew that in the long run there would be but one Vietnam with Hanoi as its capital. But he had no more affinity for the Vietnamese than for a communist regime. William Shawcross in his book Sideshow writes: “Like most of his compatriots, Sihanouk distrusted and disliked his Vietnamese neighbors. . . . Although he realized that Cambodia would be far more vulnerable to a United Marxist Vietnam than to a divided nation at war, he believed that he had no alternative to reaching an ambiguous modus vivendi with the Communists. In 1965 he allowed them to come across the ill-defined border and build semi-permanent base camps in areas of the eastern provinces of his country.”

Once the Vietnamese revolutionaries were assured of holding a favorable position in the eyes of the Phnom Penh government, a government that had just broken off diplomatic relations with the United States, nothing prevented the DRVN and the NLF of South Vietnam, in 1967, from officially recognizing the borders of Cambodia. In any case, given the reality, what did that mean?

All the while, Sihanouk continued to play the game. Addressing the DRVN and the NLF diplomatic representatives in Phnom Penh on June 14, 1968, the Prince reaffirmed his solidarity with “the true Vietnam, i.e., the one which is fighting in the North to maintain its sovereignty, and in the South to liberate itself from foreign domination and to recover its full sovereignty. . . . Cambodia strongly supports the NLF which is the sole and authentic representative of the South Vietnamese people in its fight against invaders.”

This was a declaration based on Realpolitik. Sihanouk, who felt that he had to treat with care both the North Vietnamese and the revolutionaries in the South, could only consent to their installation in Cambodia where they set up their sanctuaries. Still, Sihanouk remained conscious of the danger that this presence on Cambodian soil represented, and in 1969 in one of the brilliant maneuvers of which he alone has the secret, he revealed to the press a detailed map of the Viêt Công and North Vietnamese bases, and publicly denounced their attempts to “Vietnamize” Cambodia. Throughout that year (1969) Sihanouk had not missed any opportunity to condemn communist “expansionism.” In a series of articles published in local magazines under his direction, Sihanouk dealt at length with the problem of Cambodia after the Vietnam War. “Today’s China, as well as Socialist Vietnam, or other communist powers, would neither be able nor willing to help us in any way to find the solution of the ‘Red Khmers’ rebellion, and especially the solution to infiltrations and occupation of our territory by Viêt Công and Viêt Minh.”⁶ Immediately, the president of the Provisional Revolutionary Government of South Vietnam, Huynh Tân Phat, and the prime minister of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam, Pham Van Dông, reassured Phnom Penh of their good intentions. But Sihanouk, like almost all Khmers, remained skeptical toward the Vietnamese: “We received numerous promises from the Vietnamese Communists in the North and in the South, but we have some reasons to doubt that they will be kept by those who made them.”⁷

It should not be forgotten that it was because of Khmer-Vietnamese relations, and to obtain the diplomatic intervention of China and the Soviet Union, that Sihanouk went to Moscow and Beijing in March 1970, and that during his absence he was overthrown. From this date on, relations between Cambodians and Vietnamese entered a new phase.

The coup was successful only because its fomentors were able to exploit the old anti-Vietnamese feelings of the Khmer population. On March 8 while the prince was still in France on his way to Moscow and Beijing, the Cambodian Army organized anti-Vietnamese demonstrations in Svay Rieng province where most of the sanctuaries were located. Three days later demonstrations were organized in Phnom Penh against the embassies of the Provisional Revolutionary Government of South Vietnam and of the DRVN and these embassies were pillaged. Then in succeeding days it was the turn of the Vietnamese civilian population in Cambodia, and their houses, churches, etc., were destroyed.

In order to destroy Sihanouk’s aura of popularity among the Cambodian population, the new leaders played the Vietnamese card to the maximum. Sihanouk was accused not only of having allowed the Viêt Công to set up camps in Cambodia (even though the Cambodian Army had reaped substantial profits in the process), but he was also accused of having pro-Vietnamese leanings. After all, didn’t his wife Monique have Vietnamese blood? The mission of Lon Nol, the new strong man, was thus to denigrate Sihanouk and to win over the population to his cause. In reawakening the ancient Khmer resentments against the Vietnamese, Lon Nol was hoping to give rise to a new feeling of nationalism among the people, no longer under the stamp of the charismatic personality of Sihanouk but under an anti-Vietnamese banner. This explains why he tried to present all Vietnamese living in Cambodia as communists or sympathizers and therefore enemies of the Khmer people. It was in this climate that the authorities in Phnom Penh set out to arrest Vietnamese civilians and to put them in camps before deporting them to South Vietnam. It was in this climate also that massacres of Vietnamese (for the most part innocent victims) took place.

The Vietnamization of the War

However, in carrying out these actions, Lon Nol placed himself (as had been the situation earlier for Khmer kings in their palace struggles) in a position where he had to ask the Vietnamese of Saigon for assistance. In order to get the Viêt Công out of their sanctuaries, and to protect their own citizens, the South Vietnamese intervened militarily in Cambodia. One result of this was that the Viêt Công and the North Vietnamese left their border positions and moved deeper into Cambodia. A second result was that Cambodia was now occupied by some 40,000 South Vietnamese soldiers—that is, 10,000 more than the entire Cambodian Army. On the other side, after Lon Nol’s ultimatum that they leave Cambodia, the Vietnamese Communist contingent of 50,000 began their counteroffensive. So Cambodia was completely caught up in the turmoil of the Vietnam War. For Lon Nol it was nothing less than a religious war: “The current war in our country is not a war between Sihanouk and the Cambodian people. . . . According to Buddhist religion, there must be a war. A war against the Vietnamese Communists who consider religion their enemy. . . .”

Thus from 1970 to 1975 Lon Nol would have to contend, in Cambodia, not only with the North Vietnamese and the Viêt Công, but also with the army and authorities from Saigon. The South Vietnamese troops raised their flag over Neak Luong on the Mekong River and placed advisors in Phnom Penh and the provinces, while their “marines” were patrolling in Phnom Penh where they behaved like forces of occupation. As for the Saigon government, it succeeded in obtaining from Lon Nol guarantees for the Vietnamese minority in Cambodia (those who had stayed and those who were arriving) and signed various cooperation accords with the Cambodian government—a situation strangely like that of Cambodia in the 1980s.

The war on Cambodian soil was not only an affair between Vietnamese and Cambodians. We know that the United States would also contribute to the “Vietnamization” of the war in Cambodia: “To protect our men who are in Vietnam and to guarantee the continued success of our withdrawal and Vietnamization programs, I have concluded that the time has come for action. . . . Our choice is to go to the heart of the trouble. And that means cleaning out major North Vietnamese and Viêt Công occupied territories. . . . In cooperation with the Armed Forces of South Vietnam, attacks are being launched this week against major enemy sanctuaries on the Cambodian-Vietnamese border. . . . This is not an invasion of Cambodia.”⁹ In fact, the Americans did not invade Cambodia. Cambodia had already been invaded.

The presence of South Vietnamese troops and the American intervention in Cambodia had the effect of making Sihanouk, in his Beijing exile, a kind of Red Prince. The very same man who a few weeks earlier had denounced the dangers of the expansionism of North Vietnam and of the NLF of South Vietnam became in May 1970 an ally of Pham Van Dông and of Nguyên Huu Tho during a summit conference of Indochinese peoples. The desire for revenge against those who had overthrown him was certainly a part of this attitude, but it is also certain that Sihanouk thought once again that he could save his country.

Several points should be made about this May 1970 conference in Canton: this summit grouped the “Indochinese peoples”; thus the Khmer-Vietnamese relations were incorporated into a broader context. Once again, the situation looked very similar to what we see now in the 1980s. On the other hand, the two representatives of the Vietnamese revolutionaries reaffirmed their respect for the integrity of Cambodian soil, even while their troops were engaged in fighting there. Let us further note that this conference was under the patronage of Beijing. At the same time Sihanouk announced in China the formation of a National United Front of Kampuchea with his former enemies the Khmer Rouge to fight against the Lon Nol government. During the first years of the 1970s, the Khmer Rouge, with the exception of a few leaders in Beijing, were still operating clandestinely. But even before seizing power in Phnom Penh, they had defined their position with regard to the Vietnamese—a position we would learn about a few years later.

Comrades in Arms

The Khmer Rouge, some of whom were trained in Hanoi, knew the Vietnamese because they had fought along side of them, especially from 1970 to 1975. The Khmer Rouge were wary of the Vietnamese and feared their hegemonic tendencies. Hostile statements quickly led to armed confrontations, especially after 1973 when the accords signed in Paris between Henry Kissinger and Lê Duc Tho ended the war, not only in Vietnam but in all of Indochina, including Cambodia.

The Khmer Rouge entered Phnom Penh on April 17, 1975, a few days before the North Vietnamese entered Saigon in order not to allow the Vietnamese to “liberate” Cambodia. Shortly after taking power, the Khmer Rouge did not hide their hostility toward the Vietnamese. As early as May 1975 there were fights between Cambodians and Vietnamese along the border and on some coastal islands. Vietnamese residents in Cambodia were deported or massacred. As had been the aim of Lon Nol in 1970, this anti-Vietnam uprising was intended to unite the people behind their new leaders.

Negotiations did in fact take place in 1975 when Pol Pot visited Hanoi and a Vietnamese delegation came to Phnom Penh, but they failed. A year later discussions about the border broke down completely because, according to the Khmers, the Vietnamese presented a new map “which took away a vast part of Cambodia’s territory.” The situation became so bitter that at the end of 1977 Khieu Samphan, the new head of the Khmer state, broke off diplomatic relations with the Socialist Republic of Vietnam. He declared in 1978: “the number one enemy is not U.S. imperialism, but Vietnam, ready to swallow up Cambodia.”

In January 1978 while the Vietnamese attempted for the first time to intervene militarily in Cambodia in order to overthrow the Khmer Rouge, Pham Van Dông declared that he was ready to meet the Kampuchean leaders and settle the border problem between the two countries, and that as far as the Vietnamese people were concerned, “the independence, the sovereignty, and the territorial integrity of Kampuchea constituted a factor of great importance for the preservation of the independence of Vietnam.”¹¹ The Khmer, however, declared that no discussion could take place until the complete evacuation of Cambodian territory by the Vietnamese.

We now know what course Khmer-Vietnamese relations took: a United Front of National Safety of Kampuchea was set up along the borders by Khmer Rouge fugitives at the end of 1978, and the Vietnamese Army intervened massively and finally successfully in Cambodia. Hanoi then declared: “The Vietnamese people were only exercising their legitimate rights of self-defense, in their forceful opposition to all the acts of aggression, in order to protect their independence, their sovereignty, their territorial integrity, and to maintain the friendship that has existed for a long time between the Kampuchean and the Vietnamese peoples.”

A Special Relationship

Once the Vietnamese intervention in Cambodia was an accomplished fact and a new government was set up in Phnom Penh, relations between the Khmer and Vietnamese took a new direction. On February 18, 1979, in Phnom Penh, Pham Van Dông and Heng Samrin signed a treaty of peace, friendship, and cooperation in which were stated the “traditions of militant solidarity” and “the relations of friendship and fraternal cooperation.” Article 4 is particularly interesting: “the two parties will proceed on negotiations to sign a treaty defining the national boundaries between the two countries on the basis of the current borders and they are resolved to make this border one of peace and lasting friendship between the two countries.”¹³ This border treaty was finally signed in 1983 by Hun Sen and Nguyên Co Thach.

This agreement stressed each country’s territorial integrity and sovereignty. It banned the moving of frontier markers and prohibited border residents of either country from crossing that border in order to “take up residence, farm, collect forest products, hunt, fish or pasture animals.”¹⁴ The fact that such actions were specifically banned, and that the Khmer press saw fit to single them out for particular mention, suggests that they may have been sources of contention for some time. The border question therefore remains hazy. And when Phnom Penh states that it is in control of 19 of the 20 Cambodian provinces, which one is not under its authority? Could it be Svay Rieng on the Vietnamese border?

 

Besides this state of affairs concerning the border, which cannot be of great satisfaction to the government in Phnom Penh, there is the larger problem of the settlement in Cambodia of Vietnamese civilians (not to be confused with the 150,000–200,000 Vietnamese troops). In July 1983 Sihanouk spoke of “hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese who threaten to turn Cambodia into another South Vietnam.”¹⁵ According to the Khmer People’s National Liberation Front and the Khmer Rouge, there are some 600,000–700,000 in the country in contrast to an estimated Cambodian population of less than 6 million. An accord, whose contents have not been made public, was signed in 1984 and stated that Cambodia authorizes Vietnamese to reside in Cambodia as long as they agree to live and work there “honestly.”¹⁶ Concerning this question, the Far Eastern Economic Review wrote: “Despite its show of solidarity with Hanoi over the subject, there were some slight hints in reports surrounding the border agreement that Phnom Penh might be irritated by the movement of Vietnamese back into their country.”¹⁷

A third element that sours the current relations between Cambodians and Vietnamese and which recalls certain aspects of past “Vietnamization” (which some refer to as “colonization”) is the almost omnipresence of so-called Vietnamese advisors in Cambodia—in the administration and the army, in artistic and cultural activities, in the mandatory teaching of the Vietnamese language in schools, and through the encouragement of intermarriages. Even on the economic level the Vietnamese presence is felt; as was the case before 1970, small businesses and fishing are completely in Vietnamese hands. At the Cambodian government level (and undoubtedly at Vietnamese instigation), there are numerous campaigns to “reinforce the militant solidarity and fraternal ties which unite Vietnam and Cambodia,” and “to explain to the population the great victories of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam and the disinterested aid given by the Vietnamese to Cambodia.”

The relations existing between Hanoi and Phnom Penh since the beginning of the 1980s are, as we have seen, of a rather peculiar nature. Cambodia is tightly linked to Vietnam. We need only note the number of visits by Khmer delegations to Vietnam, visits that seem to be more in the nature of training courses, or even reeducation sessions. We can also note the number of agreements between the two governments in the areas of the economy, culture, technology, and the military that also serve to link the Cambodians to the Vietnamese.

An Indochinese Federation

So, is this a return to square one, back to that period before the establishment of the French protectorate over Cambodia? Today Hanoi dominates the game, a triangular game which has consequences in two other capitals, Phnom Penh and Vientiane. The Socialist Republic of Vietnam mentions it constantly: it is a question of relations between the Indochinese peoples and states. In February 1983 Pham Van Dông, chairman of the Council of Ministers, and Lê Duan, the Communist Party secretary general, met in Vientiane with leading Laotian and Cambodian personalities and signed a joint declaration confirming the official formation of a new entity—Indochina, that old concept of French colonialism. The reason: the need for unity in order for each country to preserve its independence, that is, no independence without solidarity.

Hanoi is not unaware that age-old ethnic prejudices can be an obstacle to this “solidarity.” Thus, the declaration insisted on the need to “combat big-power chauvinism and narrow-minded nationalism” among the three peoples. This meant that Vietnam should take care not to play the big brother role, and that the Laotians and the Khmers should try and squelch their old anti-Vietnamese prejudices.

Let us also note that this 1983 summit (where the key word was “solidarity” of the three Indochinese peoples) is reminiscent of the summit of the Indochinese Peoples held in Canton in 1970. The objective was the same but with this important difference: China has moved from its role as organizer to that of enemy.

Can Sihanouk, who had his place at the Indochinese summit in 1970, still play a role sixteen years later, in the new Indochinese context? In a paradoxical fashion, the very thing many Khmers reproached him for in 1970 would, today, work in his favor, and that is precisely the good relations he once had with the Vietnamese. “I have never been totally anti-Vietnamese, I have always admired this great people, this powerful neighbor,” he wrote from Beijing in 1972. He could be “recuperated” by Heng Samrin and the Vietnamese, in case there is an arrangement, and occupy the honorific role of head of state without any power, like the late Prince Souvanna Phouma in Laos. His charisma is a necessary unifying factor for Khmers, and he seems ready to play that game. Once again, it is obvious that despite his personal ambitions, Sihanouk remains a lucid realist. Did he not say at the end of 1979 that he preferred the survival of Cambodia to the devastation of war? In other words, an arrangement with the Vietnamese means “to refuse war, to treat with the Vietnamese in order to safeguard the Khmer nation.” His various moves in the direction of Pham Van Dông are proof of that, but Beijing is opposed to these policies and Hanoi has not followed up on these feelers. Thus, Sihanouk has agreed to preside over the anti-Vietnamese coalition that groups together the Khmer Rouge, the Kampuchean People’s National Liberation Front, and his own followers. But since the beginning of 1985 this coalition has undergone some rough military treatment at the hands of the Vietnamese troops based in Cambodia.

A military solution to the Cambodian question seems now to be excluded. And it is unrealistic to hope for a pure and simple withdrawal of the Vietnamese from Cambodia. As Pham Van Dông has stated time and again, “the situation is irreversible.” The relations between Khmers and Vietnamese seem to have arrived at a point of no return and are now part of a wider question of the whole of Indochina. We can only hope that in this context the Khmers will not totally lose their identity.

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