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Motives
Behind the Vietnamese Occupation
Western analysts disagree about the exact reasons
behind Vietnam's occupation of Cambodia and its goals in that country. But there
is near unanimous agreement in the West that the reasons put forward by Vietnam
are, in the words of former U.S. Representative to the United Nations Jeane J.
Kirkpatrick, "a transparent deception." 3 Vietnam's Prime Minister
Pham Van Dong, in an interview published last year in Newsweek magazine, said
his government "could not stand by in good conscience and watch the Pol Pot
clique butcher millions of innocent Kampucheans in cold blood."4 The
evidence shows, however, that Vietnam knew of the Khmer Rouge terror for years
prior to the invasion. "Hanoi showed not the slightest concern for the fate
of the Cambodian people while most of the killing was actually going on,"
Morris said. "On the contrary, Vietnamese Communist Party and government
statements were lush in their praise of Pol Pot and his regime." 5
Some believe that Vietnam invaded Cambodia
because it felt threatened by an aggressive and unfriendly Khmer Rouge
government, which launched raids into Vietnam late in 1978. "The first
thing that drives the Vietnamese is their own security concerns," said
Linda Hiebert, co-director of the Center for International Policy's Indochina
Project.6 "They would like to see a very close relationship between the
three countries of Indochina [Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam! because that will
maintain security on many levels - military, economic, et cetera." Arnold
Isaacs, author of Without Honor: Defeat in Vietnam and Cambodia (1983), agreed.
"What is uppermost m the Vietnamese minds is their own security," said
Isaacs, who was a war correspondent for the Baltimore Sun in Indochina in
1972-75 "They feel they should be the dominant power in the region and ...
the governments of Laos and Cambodia should be friendly and not a
threat...."
There may be another factor behind the invasion:
Vietnam's desire to rid Cambodia of a government that was closely aligned with
Vietnam's longtime enemy, China. "The major national security concerns of
Vietnam's present leadership are to successfully weather Chinese pressures and
to consolidate all the nations of Indochina into an alliance structure, said
Southeast Asia expert Carlyle A. Thayer.7 Stanley Karnow, a journal 1st and
former Vietnam war correspondent, agreed with that assessment. The "real
reason" behind the invasion, Karnow wrote in Vietnam: A History, was
Vietnam's "concern that Pol Pot's forces, underwritten by China, intended
to embark on a campaign to annex the Mekong Delta and other parts of Vietnam
that had formally belonged to the Cambodian empire; 'When we look at Cambodia,'
a Vietnamese official in Hanoi told me, 'we see China, China, China.'"8
Some analysts dismiss this argument. Despite centuries of
antagonism between the two countries, they note, China was a strong supporter of
Vietnam in its wars against France, the United States and South Vietnam.
"Without the Chinese the Vietnamese probably couldn't have 'won' the war
against the United States," one expert who asked not to be identified told
Editorial Research Reports. "That nullifies allegations that the Chinese
represent a threat to the Vietnamese." China stopped sending military aid
to the Vietnamese communists when they defeated South Vietnam in 1975, but
continued to support Vietnam economically until June 1978 when Vietnam joined
COMECON, the Soviet-dominated Council for Mutual economic Assistance.
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Box 1. Cambodia or Kampuchea?
Until 1975, the land of the Khmer people in
Southeast Asia had been known as Cambodia. When the Communist Khmer
Rouge took control a decade ago they changed the country's official name
to Democratic Kampuchea. When the Vietnamese overthrew the Khmer
Rouge late in 1979, they installed a new government officially called the
People's Republic of Kampuchea. Today, the forces fighting the
Vietnamese-backed regime are known collectively as the Coalition
Government of Democratic Kampuchea. This is known collectively as
the Coalition Government of Democratic Kampuchea. This is the
government recognized by the United States and most of the non-communist
world.
United States, which does not recognized
the People's Republic of Kampuchea, officially refers to the country as Cambodia.
The non-communist nationalist organizations fighting the Vietnamese-backed
regime also call their country Cambodia expect when acting with the
Khmer Rouge in the coalition government. This report uses the word
Cambodia. |
Until
mid-1978 China was Vietnam's second-biggest benefactor [behind the Soviet
Union]," Morris said. "China showed public signs of hostility toward
Vietnam only after Vietnam began to persecute and drive out its ethnic Chinese
minority in the first months of 1978." 9 In February 1979, only a few weeks
after Vietnam's successful takeover in Cambodia, Chinese troops engaged Vietnam
in a brief but fierce border skirmish which China described as a
"lesson." 10 The two nations have been enemies ever since.
Some
historians believe that the Vietnamese communists had long planned to bring
Cambodia and neighboring Laos under its control (see box, p. 269). "Ever
since they started the Indochmese Communist Party in the 1920s, [the Vietnamese]
have had a goal of being the suzerain over the whole of Indochina," said
Allan Goodman, associate dean of Georgetown University's School of Foreign
Service. Arnold Isaacs agreed. "The Vietnamese regard themselves as
sort of the older brother of the revolution that encompasses all of
Indochina,² he said. ³The attitude goes back to the 1930sŠCertainly the
Vietnamese operated on an assumption that they would be the dominant party. They
have no intention of seeing an unfriendly regime in Laos or Cambodia."
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Box 2. Laos
The
second jewel in Vietnam's Indochina crown is Laos, one of the poorest
countries in the world. Around three million people live in Laos, which is
smaller in size than Oregon. Until the late 19th century Laos was
dominated by its larger and more power- ful neighbors, Thailand and
Vietnam. Then, in 1890, France annexed Laos, and the country remained
under French control until it was granted full independence in 1953 ‹
the same year that France gave Cambodia its independence.
For
the next 20 years Laos was the scene of intermittent civil warfare between
the Royal Lao government and pro-communist Pathet Lao guerrillas, and was
a secondary battlefield in the Vietnam War. In 1965 the United States
launched a massive aerial bombardment of suspected North Vietnamese supply
routes in Laos. The U.S. air war, which continued until the United States
left Vietnam in 1973, is thought to be the longest sustained bombing
campaign in military history.
In
February 1973 the Lao combatants declared a cease-fire, and a coalition
government was formed in April 1974. By late 1975, however, the
Pathet Lao gained control of the country, abolished the monarchy and on
Dec. 2 declared the formation of the People's Democratic Republic of Laos.
The
Pathet Lao have long been subservient to the Vietnamese communists.
Between 40,000 and 45,000 Vietnamese troops are stationed in Laos. Even
though there is a separate Lao government, most of the world regards Laos
as little more than a colony of Vietnam. |
Colonization Debate; Question of Thailand
There
is some evidence that Vietnam's long-range goal is to colonize Cambodia ‹ to
subjugate the Khmer people. Journalist Jack Wheeler, who visited Thailand and
Cambodian in July 1964, said that some 700,000 Vietnamese farmers, fishermen,
merchants, technicians, mechanics and others have been brought into Cambodia as
settlers since the 1978 invasion. The settlers, Wheeler said, have
"appropriated much of the best land" and gained control over
commercial fishing operations in the Tonle Sap (the Great Lake), a large and
bountiful fishing ground in the center of the country.11
A significant number of jobs in urban areas have been taken by Vietnamese
settlers, many
of whom do not speak the Khmer language. "At least half the people in Phnom
Penh who do mechanical work and the trades ... are Vietnamese," a Cambodian
analyst told Editorial Research Reports. "The Vietnamese have taught
Cambodians the Vietnamese language. So colonization is real, no question about
that...."
Vietnam
claims that the settlers are former Vietnamese residents of Cambodia who fled
that nation during the period of anti-Vietnamese sentiment in the 1960s and
1970s. But that appears to tell only part of the story. The settlers include
"what they call 'Old Vietnamese' ‹ people who lived there before the Pol
Pot era ...," said Linda Hiebert. But there also are "New
Vietnamese," who have not previously lived in Cambodia. "These people
are young ‹ often draft resistors from Ho Chi Minh City [formerly Saigon] ‹
or people who simply find it much easier to make a living being small
entrepreneurs inside Cambodia," Hiebert said. "There are apparently
more restrictions on that kind of activity in Vietnam than in Cambodia."
Hiebert, who visited Vietnam and Cambodia in 1984, does not believe that Vietnam
is out to colonize Cambodia.
Vietnam's
long-term goals also might involve Thailand, a staunch U.S. ally that basically
has escaped the last four decades of war and turmoil in neighboring Indochina.
Some believe that if conditions were ripe ‹ if Thailand were politically and
socially unstable, for example, or if Thai communist rebels gained popular
support ‹ then Vietnam might move against Thailand. "I don't think
[Vietnam] has an imminent intention of invading Thailand," said Rep.
Stephen J. Solarz, D-N.Y., chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on
Asian and Pacific Affairs. "But I would not preclude the possibility that
if [the Vietnamese] could consolidate their position in Cambodia, they would
then attempt to support communist revolutionary forces in Thailand, particularly
in the provinces adjacent to Laos that might, with assistance, have a better
prospect of succeeding."
Morris
believes that Vietnamese nationalism is traditionally expansionist and that
"communist revolutionary values" shape Vietnam's foreign policy.
Still, he said, it is unlikely the Vietnamese would try to take Thai territory
because "the Vietnamese army, occupying Laos as well as Cambodia, and
pinned down by China to the north, cannot escalate much further."12 Then,
too, Thailand has a security treaty with the United States. Any large-scale
Vietnamese movement into Thailand risks war with this country, as well as with
China, which has said it would fight to stop Vietnamese expansion outside
Indochina.
Finally,
there are historic factors that buttress the argument that Vietnam has no
interest in expanding its influence beyond Laos and Cambodia. Vietnam's
domination of Cambodia and Laos, Allan Goodman said, "is much more
consistent historically with what the Vietnamese have seen as their patrimony
and their sphere of influence, and is not an 'opening wedge' in an effort to
export their revolution throughout Southeast Asia. They own Indochina and they
want to make sure they do."
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3
Statement before the U.N. General Assembly, Oct. 30, 1984. Kirkpatrick resigned
her post effective March 31.
4
Quoted in Newsweek, May 14, 1984, p. 40.
5
Morris, op. cit., p. 76.
6 The Washington-based Center for International
Policy is a non-profit education and research organization concerned with US
policy in the Third World
7 Carlyle A. Thayer,
³Vietnamese Perspective in International Security² (1984) p.72
8 Stanley Karnow, Vietnam: A
History (1983), p. 45.
9
Morris, op. cit., p. 77.
10
China which supplied the Khmer Rouge rebels with much of their military needs,
has warned that the latest Vietnamese offensive in Cambodia could bring about a
second ³Chinese lesson," but
many Western analysts are skeptical that this will take place
11 Jack
Wheeler, "The Khmer in Cambodia," Reason, February 1985, p. 28.
12
Morris, op.cit., p. 82
Source: Cambodia: A
Nation in Turmoil; by Marc Leepson, (Editorial Research Reports:
Congressional Quarterly Inc., Washington, D.C. April 5, 1985)
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