Cambodia and Vietnam—Ancient Enemies (Published 1978) (2024)

BANGKOK, Thailand, Jan.6—How ever puzzling Cambodia's motivation may be for provoking a major military and diplomatic showdown with Vietnam, its powerful neighbor, there is no doubt that fundamental reasons do exist for confrontation between the two former allies.

When the Khmer empire reached its low point under Burmese and Siamese attacks in the 17th century, Vietnam joined Cambodia's other neighbors in expansionism at Cambodia's e4ense. Only France's arrival on the Indochinese scene in the last century halted the process of dismemberment.

Cambodians never forgave Vietnam for the conquest of the fertile Mekong Delta, the rice basket of the Indochinese peninsula.In Cambodian parlance, the region continued to be called “Kampuchea Khrom,” or Southern Cambodia, at least until the Communist victory in 1975.

A source with recent access to senior Cambodian officials reported that shortly before last Saturday's Cambodian rupture of diplomatic relations, he had been told that in 1976 Vietnam had demanded that Cambodia negotiate border changes in Hanoi's favor, not only on land but in territorial waters surrounding the Vietnamese island of Phu Quoc, which lies off Cambodia.

Border Drawn by France

The long border between Cambodia and Vietnam was drawn by France and favored Vietnam, perhaps because Vietnam's pressure against colonial rule was stronger than Cambodia's, and France hoped to mollify Vietnamese nationalism at Cambodia's expense.

Moreover, Cambodia was only protectorate while the adjoining part of Vietnam was an outright colony and was supposed to be French forever.

The border demarcation left large minorities of both nations on the foreign side of the border.Even when Cambodia and South Vietnam were allied by their mutual dependence on the United States, Cambodian leaders publicly used the word “thmil” to refer to the Vietnamese.Its approximate meaning is “the godless eternal enemy.”

A quasi‐official pogrom against the Vietnamese minority, enthusiastically supported by the Cambodian population and in no way limited to pro‐Communist Vietnamese, was an expression of this deep‐seated ethnic hatred early in the war.

Prince Norodom Sihanouk, the founding father of independent modern Cambodia and nominal leader of the victorious Communist movement, the Khmer Rouge, until the war ended, expressed deep concern in an interview in 1973; at the height of the war, that North Vietnamese troops in the northeastern border areas showed no eagerness to withdraw from Cambodia. Similarly, the leaders in the government of President Lon Nol, who ruled from 1970 to 1975, did not hide their profound ‐misgivings about the South Vietnamese military presence in Cambodia's southeastern border regions.

Vietnam's close links to the Soviet Union and Cambodia's preference for China are also reasons for tension, although it could equally be said that the connections are an expression of the antagonism between the two Southeast Asian neighbors and not of that between their mighty friends.

Cambodia has accused Vietnam of wanting to establish and dominate an Indochinese union, and the charge has considerable credence throughout nonCommunist Southeast Asia, where fear of impending Vietnamese hegemony is expressed across the political spectrum.Similarly, Cambodia's allegation that Vietnam has plotted to overthrow the Government in Phnom Penh, although presented without evidence, not entirely implausible.

But in the fate of Vietnam's preponderance in size—more than 30 million people compared with perhaps 7 million—and its lopsided superiority in quality and quantity of troops and equipment, it remains unfathomable to those familiar with the area why last summer Cambodia decide to stage military raids against border cities in southern Vietnam like Chau Doc and Ha Tien and last November ventur.e a massive raid into Tay Ninh Province, the approach route to Saigon.

Experts here are equally puzzled by Cambodia's subsequent diplomatic tactics.At first, Vietnam adopted a policy of minimal military reaction and even temporarily evacuated civilians from threatened towns.But when Vietnam dropped that policy and showed its superior military might by invading the Parrot's Beak salient jutting into Tay Ninh, Cambodia did not take the hint and negotiate—it decided on diplomatic warfare.

In this diplomatic offensive, a break in relations has been accompanied by the branding of Vietnam as a “fascist aggressor.” Vietnam has been likened to the former Saigon regime and, in the ultimate in opprobrium, to the “United States imperialists.” Cambodia's criticism is continuing while Vietnam has apparently halted its advance into Cambodia, is consolidating its hold and is leaving time for a diplomatic approach.

Today, Vietnam retaliated for Cambodian charges of wanton killing of old and young, rape, pillage and laying waste to Cambodia's, forests and plantations with an accusation that Cambodians had disemboweled Vietnamese.

Analysts here reject the..notion that the conflict is essentially an expression of Soviet‐Chinese rivalry in Southeast Asia.They point out that Vietnam‐conUnties to show restraint while the Soviet Union is exploiting the conflict to denounce China.And China, embarked on a pragmatic good‐neighbor policy in this region, has expressed its hope for a peaceful settlement and has not endorsed the Cambodian contentions.

Some analysts have proposed theory inspired less by evidence than by a desire to find a rational explanation for a mystifying course of events. This theory is that Vietnam may have led Cambodia onto thin ice, which, when it breaks, will result in a Vietnamese “client” government in Phnom Penh.

The Cambodian‐Vietnamese conflict brings discussions of it to musings about the importance of the irrational element in affairs of state.It is sometimes remarked that this element seems to have particular weight in nation that for centuries spent much of its national wealth to build the splendid royal capital of Angkor only to abandon it to the jungle.

It is also said by some that the conflict with Vietnam has been provoked by a regime that, in the name of rebuilding its nation from the bottom up, has chosen a destructive method that they have characterized as “autogenocide.”