Tucker Leavitt Foreign Intervention and the Cambodian Genocide

On March 14, 1947, President Harry S. Truman stood before Congress and presented a case concerning the foreign policy and the national security of the United States (Carvin, Truman). At the time, the two far away nations of Turkey and Greece were beset by Communist insurgents, and the countries governments were struggling to resist the uprisings. In his speech, which would later become known as the Truman Doctrine, the President beseeched congress to give aid to these two failing nations, in the form of a lump sum of $400 million, worried that If Greece should fall under the control of an armed minority, the effect-upon its neighbor, Turkey, would be immediate and serious. Confusion and disorder might well spread throughout the entire Middle East (Carvin, Truman).Trumans belief was that because totalitarian regimes such as communism coerced free peoples, they undermine the foundations of international peace and hence the security of the United States (Carvin, Truman). Greece had no one else to turn to, Truman reasoned; Britain would be unable to supply Greece with financial aid after March 31, so it fell to America to assist Greece in its pursuit of freedom from coercion by a Communist minority. Trumans proposed policy won the Republicans who controlled Congress at the time, and shortly after his speech was delivered, the US began supplying the Greeks small and poorly equipped army with financial aid. The Communist insurgents in Greece were effectively contained, largely because of this aid. Henceforth, the Truman Doctrine was viewed as the basis of modern US foreign policy. The US would frequently extend itself to nations worldwide struggling against Communist uprisings in the years following the delivery of Trumans famous speech. During the Cold War era, it was a commonly held belief that the US, as a well-established global superpower, was morally obliged to liberate foreign nations from movements that were perceived by the US as evil. America was not the first in history to take on this responsibility. The explanation Europe gave to justify its colonization of the underdeveloped world was rooted in the belief that it was the white mans duty to elevate savage peoples from their uncivilized way of life to Europes refined, Christianized way of living. The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate the negative consequences of such meddling through a historical illustration of the Cambodian genocide. In 1975, a communist organization known as the Khmer Rouge orchestrated a devastating genocide in the small Southeastern nation of Cambodia. France, by colonizing Cambodia in the late 1800s, and the US, by intervening militarily in Cambodia as part of the Vietnam War, are as much to blame as the Khmer Rouge for this tragedy. While foreign intervention is not necessarily bad in all cases, there are generally harmful consequences resulting from a more powerful state interfering with a less powerful one when the interference is not in the interest of the less powerful state. This was the case with the Cambodia; the US and Frances intervention in Cambodian affairs, this intervention being only in the interest of the US and France, brought about the socioeconomic upheaval that led to the Cambodian genocide. 1. The Genocide In order to understand the arguments made in this paper, one must first have a general understanding of the Cambodian genocide and those who perpetrated it. The Khmer Rouge first emerged as a prominent rebel organization in Cambodia in 1970. Over the next several years after their appearance on the national scene, the Khmer Rouge assisted the North Vietnamese

Army and the Viet Cong in displacing the Cambodian monarchy and seizing control of the country. The insurgents took control of Phnom Penh, Cambodias capital, on April 17, 1975. Communist Vietnam, with direction by China, appointed the Khmer Rouge and their leader, Pol Pot, as the head of the Communist Party of Cambodia, in attempts to promote the spread of communism throughout Asia. Once elevated to power, Pol Pot aimed to create a completely self-contained, agrarian idyll in Cambodia. His utopia had no use for cities or specialized professions, as everyone was to work as a rural laborer. So, the Khmer Rouge evacuated all of Cambodias major cities, including hospitals housing countless disabled war victims, and systematically kidnapped and murdered anyone perceived as a subversive element to their new agrarian order. This included doctors, scientists, engineers, academics, and professionals in all fields, as well as people who spoke a foreign language, wore glasses, or showed overt signs of emotion. Thousands more died from disease or malnutrition due to Cambodias isolation from foreign trade routes. The number of people who died as a result of the Khmer Rouges attempted social reform is generally estimated to be between 1.4 and 2.5 million, roughly a quarter of the countrys total population. The Cambodian Genocide lasted from 1975 to 1979, when a Vietnamese coup ousted the Khmer Rouge. Pol Pot and his following retreated into the jungles surrounding Cambodias western borders, but continued to operate as the National Army of Democratic Kampuchea. Throughout the 1980s, Cambodia was denied a seat in the United Nations general assembly because of its political instability. This punishment was further compounded by harsh economic sanctions imposed by the US in an attempt to starve out the Khmer Rouge. This, combined with the fact that the Khmer Rouge had killed off all of Cambodias doctors, engineers, and specialized professionals, meant that Cambodia was completely unable to obtain the resources and aid necessary for reconstruction. In 1993, Cambodias original monarchy was officially restored, the sanctions were lifted, and Cambodias representation in the United Nations was reinstated, but Cambodia has yet to fully recover from the lasting effects of the genocide. The next several sections of this paper will delve deeper into Cambodian history in order to explain exactly how the Cambodian genocide came about and to elucidate the roles the US and France played in creating conditions in Cambodia suitable for the rise of such randomly brutal governments as the Khmer Rouge. 2. France and Indochina France colonized the Indochinese Peninsula in 1887. At that time, Cambodias glorious Angkorian Empire had been dead for four hundred years, Cambodia now being no more than a pawn in the power struggles of its aggressive neighbors, Thailand and Vietnam. France soon found that the fabled riches of the Cambodian Khmer had disappeared centuries ago, and so, directed little attention toward Cambodia during the colonial period, preferring to focus on the more promising Vietnam. France did little to help develop the Cambodian economy, its only contribution being the reconstruction of the countrys tax collection system. After this revamp, France proceeded to heavily tax the poor nation. Cambodians paid the highest taxes per capita in all of Indochina, and in 1916, Cambodian villagers in Phnom Penh organized a mass protest to petition the King for a tax reduction. France often favored employing Vietnamese civil servants to manage affairs in Cambodia. This severely frustrated many Cambodians, as they thought it wrong for them to be governed by their historical rivals. France lost control of Indochina to Japanese forces in 1940 as part of World War II. Japan maintained control of the region until its governments surrender in August of 1945, following the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Japans final act in occupation was to order the kings of Indochina to declare independence from

France, in one last attempt to spite its European colonial rival. Ho Chi Minh, a Communist leader in Vietnam took the initiative; when France tried to reassert itself in Indochina after the war, they were met by Hos rebellious Viet Minh, leading to the First Indochina War in September 1945. Before losing the war in 1954, France relinquished control over Cambodia after exhausting negotiations with Cambodian Head of State Norodom Sihanouk, who became Cambodias new king after returning from France. Sihanouk had been appointed to his leadership role by French colonialists at the ripe age of 19 in 1941, primarily for his acquiescence to French colonial policies. He was a controversial political figure; while admirers viewed him as one of the country's great patriots, whose insistence on strict neutrality kept Cambodia out of the maelstrom of war and out of the revolution in neighboring Vietnam (Russel, 13), others criticized his eccentricity, his rigidity, and his intolerance of any political views different from his own. Milton E. Osborne, writing as an Australian expatriate in Phnom Penh during the late 1960s, illustrated the years of Sihanouks rule in terms of unbridled greed and corruption, of a foreign policy inspired more by opportunism than by the desire to preserve national independence, of an economy and a political system that were rapidly coming apart, and of the prince's obsession with making outrageously mediocre films-one of which starred himself and his wife, Princess Monique (Russel, 13). Sihanouk believed he single-handedly won Cambodias independence from France, conveniently ignoring the role played by other nationalist movements such as the Viet Minh. But despite some of his flawed characteristics, Sihanouk did gain genuine rapport with his subjects. Cambodia was eager to follow Sihanouk to independence in 1953, and proceeded through the political tumult that engulfed its geographic region on shaky, newborn legs. If France had not colonized Indochina in the 1800s, the Vietnam War would not have unfolded as it did, and Cambodia would not be in the sorry state its in today. France did not intervene in Cambodia to elevate Cambodias people from their savage way of life, as the French would call it; Frances interest in Indochina stemmed mainly from its colonial rivalry with Britain and its burgeoning empire, and Frances own economic self-interest. To France, Cambodia was merely a buffer zone between its precious and highly profitable colony of Cochin China (Vietnam) and the encroaching pro-British Siam. France felt it appropriate to impose heavy taxes on Cambodia in exchange for small amounts of protection, which hindered the nations already weak agriculture-based economy (Carvin, Cambodia Colonized). The most significant harm France did Cambodia during the colonial period, though, did not actually involve Cambodian affairs. When the French inevitably lost control of Indochina during World War II, they led the region into a state of political uncertainty. Then, when Indochinas short-lived Japanese rulers ordered the Indochinese kings to declare independence from France, inciting the First Indochina War, Cambodia was flung off balance politically, with the eccentric French-appointed Sihanouk as their leader. In this state, Cambodia was unfit to respond to the ambitions of communist Vietnam. Vietnam had not been happy with being colonized. This dissatisfaction led to the uprising of dozens of belligerents in Vietnam during the colonial era. Throughout the late 1800s, Vietnamese revolutionaries led by Phan nh Phng fought against French colonization. Rebellions rose again during and after World War I. Vietnam finally found the independence it so fiercely sought after the First Indochina War when Ho Chi Minh led the Viet Minh to victory. The communists victory in this warranted the attention of the US and led to the Vietnam War. Cambodias instability meant that the war would devastate Cambodias economy, which would in turn give rise to the Khmer Rouge.

3. The US and the Vietnam War By the time Cambodia had appeared as an independent nation on the international scene, the Cold War was in full swing. Chinas conversion to communism in 1945 had shocked the US, and by 1953 America had already begun funding local governments in places like Western Europe as a preemptive measure against the spread of communism. The adoption of the Truman doctrine had given rise to other political philosophies and ideas about changing US foreign policy. One of the more prominent of these ideas, the emergent domino theory, was quickly taking hold in the US State Department. The theory essentially held that once communists were given a foothold in a certain region, weaker nations in that region were much more susceptible to communism. It was not long before America directed its attention to the Communist uprising in northern Vietnam. The logic of the domino theory made it easily conceivable that once Vietnam fell, Laos and Cambodia would quickly follow, and soon all of Southeastern Asia would fall into the clutches of the evil communists. King Sihanouk was also very aware of the growing threat in Vietnam. Cambodias army was weak and underdeveloped, and if it came to war, Cambodia would not stand a chance against the combined power of the North Vietnam Army and the Viet Cong. Sihanouk resorted to befriending Ho Chi Minh and the North Vietnamese in a bid to save his country from the violence spreading throughout Indochina. The US was not happy about this; from Americas perspective Cambodia was just a domino waiting to topple, and the State Department didnt want Sihanouk to have anything to do with any Communists. Consequently, the number of Sihanouk critics in the Washington seemed to grow every day (Carvin, The Cold War). As Eisenhowers vice president, Richard Nixon described Sihanouk as flighty and totally unrealistic about the problems his country faced (Shawcross, 75). Sihanouk wanted Cambodia to remain neutral throughout the conflicts between North and South Vietnam, and said as much to US diplomats during and after the Geneva Conference in 1954. Relationships between the US and Cambodia remained tempestuous throughout the 1950s. Still, Sihanouk managed to persuade the US to supply Cambodia with financial aid, balancing the acts of appeasing both the US and North Vietnam. By 1965, North Vietnam Army and Viet Cong guerilla encampments were appearing inside the jungles within the Cambodian border with Vietnam. Sihanouk quietly tolerated this violation of neutrality agreements; Cambodia could not afford to make enemies with North Vietnam. In 1967, increased US operations in Vietnam forced more North Vietnamese troops over the border. Vietnam now had a strong presence in Cambodia, and was beginning to infiltrate Cambodias governmental institutions. The US was now also considering delving into Cambodia, using whatever means necessary to root out the military encampments therein (US State Department). Sihanouk was opposed to this, as it would undoubtedly mean civilian casualties on the Cambodian side. He was able to negotiate recognition of Cambodias neutrality and integrity with President Johnson; however, this policy was abandoned when Nixon took the presidency in January 1969 (Carvin, The Cold War). The USs Operation Breakfast officially began on March 18 of the same year. The exact amount of ordnance dropped on communist bases in Cambodia during the operation was not publicly released by the US State Department until July 5, 1973, nearly three years after the operations end. According to the release, almost 104,000 tons of bombs had been dropped on communist sanctuary areas in Cambodia during the two-year period spanning from 1969 to 1970 (Defense, 1). Cambodias limited infrastructure was devastated during the bombing raids, surprisingly much so for the tonnage of ordnance dropped.

In reality, the figures released by the State Department in 1973 were a gross understatement of the actual tonnage of bombs dropped on Cambodia throughout the Vietnam War. The real numbers did not become public until 2000, when President Clinton released extensive air force data on all American bombings of Indochina between 1964 and 1975. The data was intended to assist in the search for unexploded ordnance left behind in Cambodian jungles after the carpet bombing of the region, but many latched onto the information for a different reason. The data revealed that from October 4, 1965, to August 15, 1973, the United States dropped 2,756,941 tons worth of ordnance in 230,516 sorties on 113,716 sites in Cambodia (Owen, 3). These numbers not only showed how much more heavily Cambodia was bombed than was commonly believed, but that bombing raids in Cambodia had begun in as early as 1965, not under Nixons jurisdiction, but under Lyndon Johnsons, with whom Sihanouk had forged neutrality agreements, and almost immediately after the first Communist bases were found in Cambodia. The secrecy with which the US government treated Operation Menu, as the long-term mission in Cambodia was codenamed, was unsettling. The government may have kept the military operation under wraps to avoid further outraging the American public, who had already mounted a significant opposition to the USs involvement in Vietnam. The secrecy may have also merely coincided with the way Nixon and his advisors liked to run things. In his book Sideshow: Kissinger, Nixon, and the Destruction of Cambodia, William Shawcross says that nothing in the academic writings of Henry Kissinger, Nixons National Security Advisor, had suggested that he was concerned to involve the bureaucracies in policy making. To quote Kissinger: "There are twenty thousand people in the State Department and fifty thousand in Defense. They all need each other's clearances in order to move . . . and they all want to do what I'm doing. So the problem becomes: how do you get them to push papers around, spin their wheels, so that you can get your work done?" (Shawcross, 78). During his time in office Kissinger instituted a new bureaucratic system for policy making in the State Department. The system changed the way governmental decisions were made by requiring National Security Study Memorandums (NSSMs) to be filled out by anyone wishing to institute some governmental policy, But it soon became evidentthat one of the purposes of the many NSSMs was to keep the departments occupied and under the illusion that they were participating in the policy-making process while decisions were actually made in the White House. There were no NSSMs to discuss whether Cambodia should be bombed or invaded. Indeed many of those policies that are most characteristic of the Nixon administration's record in foreign policy were subjected to no formal debate at all (Shawcross, 79). The way in which the decision was made to begin seriously carpet bombing Cambodia involved little more than the President assembling his small security council and holding a private meeting. In his personal diaries, H. R. Haldeman, Nixons White House Chief of Staff, wrote this about the decision, made on March 17, 1969: Final decision was made at a meeting in the Oval Office Sunday afternoon, after the church service. Historic day. K[issinger]s Operation Breakfast finally came off at 2:00 PM our time. K really excited, as is P[resident]. And the next day:

Ks Operation Breakfast a great success. He came beaming in with the report, very productive. A lot more secondaries than had been expected. Confirmed early intelligence. Probably no reaction for a few days, if ever (Vietnam 1969, 3. 3/4). Haldemans prediction proved false; the reaction to Operation Breakfast ended up claiming the lives of an estimated 2 million innocent Cambodians. Cambodias networks of rice plantations had been seriously damaged during the bombing raids. Soon, the production of rice in Cambodia came to an abrupt halt. Since rice was Cambodias primary international export, the lack of its production greatly weakened Cambodias economy. In 1973, the nations economy collapsed, and continued violence in the region as part of Vietnams invasion filled Cambodias dilapidated hospitals, already housing numerous victims from the bombing raids, to the brim (Russel, 21). Cambodia was almost completely unable to sustain itself in 1975, when the Khmer Rouge rose to power. Countless historical examples show how socioeconomic ruin leads to the rise of totalitarian regimes. Benito Mussolini, the Fascist dictator of Italy from 1922 to 1943, only came to his position of power because Italy was in such a state of disarray when he happened to make his bid. Hundreds of thousands of Italians near the Austrian border had been left homeless because of heavy fighting along the Italian Front, and Italy getting shortchanged in the Treaty of Versailles meant for dire straits among the Italians. Italy was willing to turn to anyone as their leader, and Mussolinis promises to end Italian suffering and lead Italy to glory made him an attractive candidate (Mines, 3). Mussolinis fascist philosophy never would have taken hold in Italy under more stable circumstances. Similarly, the brutal Khmer Rouge would have never been able to take control of Cambodia if Cambodia had not been in a state of such socioeconomic disarray. And Cambodia would not have been in a state of such socioeconomic disarray if Operation Menu had not compromised its economic infrastructure. The whole reason the US intervened in Indochina was to contain the spread of communism, though dropping nearly 3 million tons of explosives and incendiary bombs on an already weak nation to mitigate the growth of a budding political philosophy may seem a bit extreme. It is difficult to say exactly why the US was so opposed to communism. Trumans argument that totalitarian regimes undermine the foundations of international peace and hence the security of the United States is not enough to rationalize the invasive actions the US took in places like Vietnam and Korea. There had to be some other motive. It may have been that the US was afraid of communism because it differed so greatly from their capitalist way of life. The US largely believed that capitalism, where ones talent and ability determined ones socioeconomic status, was already the ideal economic system, so therefore, communism, being so different from capitalism in that wealth is spread equally amongst the population, must be less than ideal. This was at least the reasoning espoused by the US media during the Cold War. It is more likely though that powerful US corporations and wealthy American leaders wished to exert a certain hegemony over the rest of their society to perpetuate the economic system that has so benefited them at the expense of the poor and working class. Marxist philosopher Antonio Gramsci defines hegemony as a process of moral and intellectual leadership through which dominated or subordinate classes consent to their own domination by ruling classes (Adamson, 1). In the case of anti-communist America, the upper echelons of society (i.e. the rich) were able to convince their subordinates (i.e. the working and middle class), whom they exploited to increase their own wealth, that the USs current economic system was really the best for them, and that communism, which, if instated in the US, would remove the wealthy from their position of

socioeconomic dominance, was bad. This may have been closer to what Truman meant when he said communism threatens the security of the United States. Much like colonial France, the US intervened in Indochina only because it would help the powerful and wealthy remain powerful and wealthy. The USs anti-communist and Frances imperialist philosophies, both of which were rooted in ultimately corrupt principles, led to their destructive interference in the affairs of other nations, which caused the Cambodia genocide. This genocide exemplifies the potential consequences of larger, more powerful nations intervening in the affairs of less powerful nations. These consequences are particularly nasty when the intervention is militaristic. Militaristic intervention, in addition to being economically destructive, leads only to more violence and militaristic action. War begets war, as Barbara Ehrenreich puts it in here paper The Roots of War; violence creates violent environments and violent people, who in turn create more violence. Hence, intervening militaristically in a region leads to continued violence in that region until something is done end the vicious cycle. This is the primary cause of the brutality of the Cambodian genocide; the violence that engulfed Indochina during the First Indochina and Vietnam wars spawned a belligerent organization which killed people counterproductively for arbitrary reasons. In order to avoid such atrocities in the future, the worlds superpowers must learn to avoid such militaristic intervention.

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Dell, Diana J. "French Indochina." VietnamWar.net. N.p., n.d. Web. 2 Dec. 2010. <http://www.vietnamwar.net/FrenchIndochina.htm>. Ehrenreich, Barbara. "The Roots of War." The Progressive Apr. 2003. Print. Mines, Linda. "Italy and the Rise of Mussolini." Mrs. Mine's History Homepage.N.p., - 2000. Web. 15 Jan. 2011. <http://staff.gps.edu/mines/Age%20of%20Anxiety%20%20Rise%20of%20Mussolini.htm>. Owen, Taylor, and Ben Kiernan. "Bombs Over Cambodia." The Walrus Oct. 2006. Web. 4 Dec. 2010. <http://www.walrusmagazine.com/articles/2006.10-history-bombing-cambodia/>. Russell R. Ross, ed. Cambodia: A Country Study. Washington: GPO for the Library of Congress, 1987. Shawcross, William. Sideshow: Kissinger, Nixon, and the Destruction of Cambodia. N.p.: Simon and Schuster, 1997. 75-150. Web. 30 Nov. 2010. <http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Kissinger/Advisor_Sideshow.html>. "US/Cambodia Relations." Nixon Presidential Library and Museum. Nixon Library, 15 Mar. 1969. Web. 2 Dec. 2010. <http://nixon.archives.gov/virtuallibrary/documents/jul10.php#selection>. U.S. State Department, Official Website. U.S. Department of State, 20 Jan. 2001. Web. 21 Nov. 2010. <http://1997-2001.state.gov/>.