Cambodia and the International Community: The Quest for Peace, Development, and Democracy

Frederick Z. Brown and David G. Timberman (eds.)

Asia Society

1998

The Burden of Cambodia's Past
by David P. Chandler

 

Introduction

For a historian writing of Cambodia in early 1998 there is little reason for optimism about the country's future. A pessimistic--even alarmist--stance seems justified by recent political events as well as by the persistence of problems, such as Cambodia's runaway birth rate, declining natural resources, short-sighted environmental policies, and failure to enact and enforce effective civil and criminal codes. In addition the last thirty years have been bleak, and for Cambodians the weight of the recent past in particular has been difficult to bear.

Almost twenty years after the end of the Khmer Rouge era (1975–79), Cambodia's society and people continue to suffer from the physical and psychological traumas of that period. In less than four years, over 1.5 million Cambodians died from malnutrition, overwork, misdiagnosed diseases, and executions. The real number will never be known and could easily be higher. The regime's anti-urban, anti-"bourgeois" purges decimated Cambodia's small elite and destroyed the fragile trust that existed among different segments of the population. Its dogmatic, vengeful policies and ham-fisted administration hastened the deaths of hundreds of thousands of men, women, and children. Tens of thousands of others were executed as "class enemies" or "spies." When the regime was driven from power, fear of the Vietnamese, weariness, socialism, and the promise of safety drove half a million survivors to seek asylum overseas. Cambodia's institutions, not robust in the best of times, were smashed or abandoned and had to be rebuilt from scratch.

Progress in the 1980s was extraordinary, considering the magnitude of what had happened and the scarcity of resources available to the new, Vietnamese-sponsored regime, isolated by the quarantine imposed on it by allied nations hostile to Vietnam. At the same time, the new government treated its opponents harshly, and for several years Cambodia was closely monitored by Vietnamese officials. ₁ In the meantime, tens of thousands of Khmer Rouge soldiers, refugees, and dependents were encamped along both sides of the Thai-Cambodian border. They posed a baleful threat to Cambodia, inflicted thousands of casualties on Vietnamese and Cambodian forces sent to oppose them, and were a source of unfocused but severe anxiety for millions of Khmer. The discredited Khmer Rouge and their unrepentant leaders flourished for a decade under the patronage of China, Thailand, and the United States. Calls from smaller nations to bring Pol Pot and his colleagues to justice for their crimes against humanity were repeatedly brushed aside in the interests of realpolitik. Recent calls for a trial of the Khmer Rouge leadership emanating from some of the people who stonewalled the idea for many years may ring a little hollow.

Since the 1970s hundreds of thousands of land mines, strewn across the landscape by the Khmer Rouge and their opponents, have been another source of trauma. The mines have maimed and killed thousands of people. They also have made thousands of hectares of land uncultivable, roads hazardous, and marketing goods a perilous undertaking. The mines continue to cripple and kill dozens of Cambodians every month. Twenty years of internecine warfare have left Cambodia with one of the world's highest numbers of widows as heads of families. The psychic damage of these wars and of the Khmer Rouge era on survivors, certainly of mammoth proportions, can never be assessed.

Cambodia continues to stagger under the weight of a range of fundamental problems that are rooted in the nation's location and history. These problems--which collectively constitute the heavy burden of Cambodia's past--include its physical vulnerability, the deceptive lure of its history, and its volatile political culture, which suffers from a bizarre blend of tyranny and dependence. This chapter will address the sources and major implications of these problems.

 

Cambodia's Historic Vulnerability

At least two of the obstacles to peace and progress in Cambodia--its physical vulnerability and its location between Thailand and Vietnam--are insuperable givens that have affected the country for several hundred years. Cambodia's borders have always made it vulnerable to invasion and accessible to immigrants. Its limited resources--timber, fish, gemstones, and so on--can be exploited relatively easily and quickly. Cambodia's geographic vulnerability, along with the small size of its population, heightens its people's sense of insecurity vis-à-vis their neighbors and restricts Cambodian governments to a cautious, evenhanded foreign policy.

Since the 1780s, if not earlier, Cambodia has been harassed, dominated, protected, exploited, and undermined by Thai or Vietnamese regimes. The involvement of these two countries in Cambodia's affairs intensified in the early nineteenth century as the newly installed dynasties in Bangkok and Hue grew strong, competitive, and ambitious. In the 1830s and 1840s the wars fought between them on Cambodian soil devastated the smaller kingdom and weakened its fragile institutions. Had the French not imposed their protection in 1863, Cambodia might have disappeared as an independent state, with its territory divided into Thai and Vietnamese zones of influence, perhaps by the Mekong. ₂ With French intervention, Thai influence diminished. Vietnamese involvement persisted in another guise. France quarantined Cambodia from Siam and tied the country's export economy to that of southern Vietnam, which the French called Cochin China. Ethnic Vietnamese had greater access than Cambodians to French-language education and occupied favored positions in the protectorate's civil service. "Indochina," made up of three segments of Vietnam plus Laos and Cambodia, was a French concoction dominated by its Vietnamese components. The idea that Vietnam, with independence, might inherit a Vietnamese-controlled federation was pleasing to many Vietnamese nationalists and to the Indochina Communist Party (ICP) founded by Ho Chi Minh in 1930.

For a decade or so, the ICP pursued a purely Vietnamese agenda. Until armed struggle against the French broke out in 1946, very little was done to activate party branches in Laos or Cambodia. As the struggle gathered momentum, the ICP's leaders started to think in Indochinese terms, and Laos and Cambodia became battlefields. Indigenous communist parties were founded by the Vietnamese in both countries in 1951. Statutes for them were drafted in Vietnamese. At the time most Lao and Cambodian cadres were already fluent in the language. Cambodian communists, like the Lao, were told that their struggle was part of a wider international revolution and they would benefit from ongoing Vietnamese guidance. Many young Cambodian recruits enjoyed being empowered in this way. ₃ Cambodian nationalists, on the other hand, were suspicious of Vietnamese intentions and sometimes fanned anti-Vietnamese feelings among fellow Khmer. In altered form the tension between such racially fueled rhetoric and the internationalist, protective agenda that Vietnam fostered among Cambodian radicals engendered the factionalism of the coalition government that existed until July 1997.

Relations with Thailand in the colonial era were insignificant, especially after 1907 when France made Thailand relinquish the provinces of Battambang and Siem Reap, which Cambodia had ceded in the l790s. In 1941, after France's defeat in Europe, the Thai reoccupied most of the lost territory. They were forced to give it up again five years later; but when Cambodia became independent in 1954 Thailand was reluctant to accept that its satellite of the 1840s was now a sovereign state.

In the Norodom Sihanouk era (1941–1970) the Thai government supported several plots for his overthrow. One was led by Sam Rainsy's quixotic father, Sam Sary. Thai support for General Lon Nol, who deposed Sihanouk in 1970, was halfhearted, despite his anti-communist credentials. As good students of realpolitik, the Thai maintained polite relations with the Khmer Rouge. When the Vietnamese invaded Cambodia in 1979, Pol Pot and several thousand Khmer Rouge troops found refuge on Thai soil. The Thai government, by then allied with China, welcomed the newcomers, hoping to please China and destabilize the Vietnamese protectorate in Phnom Penh. Under Sino-Thai patronage, uncontested by the United States, the Khmer Rouge rebuilt its army, attracted international support (e.g., from the United Nations), and waged war against the Vietnamese. In the 1990s the Thai–Khmer Rouge alliance enabled Thai entrepreneurs to exploit Cambodian gem and timber resources worth hundreds of millions of dollars.

With this unsavory, instrumentalist record, it seems likely that Thailand's policies toward Cambodia in the future will have a more harmful impact than any that might be developed by Hanoi. Vietnam's once grandiose political interests in Cambodia seem to have faded along with any dreams the Vietnamese may have had of a socialist grouping of Indochinese states. "Indochina" is dead. Vietnam, like Cambodia, now seems more interested in becoming a good citizen of Southeast Asia, sharing the benefits that may accrue from joining ASEAN. At the same time Vietnamese exploitation of forests in eastern Cambodia and immigration into the country will probably maintain present levels or increase. In the process, ethnic tensions are bound to erupt, intensified by demographic pressures and fanned by irresponsible politicians.

Historical relations between Cambodia and its neighbors will not determine Cambodia's future, but there are aftereffects. Many Cambodians believe that Vietnam poses a greater threat to Cambodia than Thailand and suggest that while Thai exploitation is a case of "what you see is what you get" the Vietnamese agenda is deeper and more devious. Evidence for such beliefs is hard to locate but the suspicions remain in force. "The Vietnamese are most dangerous," a Cambodian recently told a friend of mine, "when they are invisible." Military threats to Cambodian sovereignty have diminished but Cambodia will never be militarily strong enough or populous enough to withstand pressures from Vietnamese immigrants and foreign entrepreneurs. In the process, its resources will be wantonly depleted. From an environmental point of view, the prospects for Cambodia's medium term future are bleak.

 

The Misleading Lure of the Past

The lure of the past in Cambodia, a second reason for caution, has often misled many Cambodian leaders, and affects political culture in Cambodia today. The problem stems from colonial times. Beginning in the 1870's, French savants "discovered," mapped and dated hundreds of medieval Cambodian temples and deciphered hundreds of medieval inscriptions written in Sanskrit and Khmer. In the process they constructed a sumptuous, half–forgotten history. Cambodians were informed that their ancestors had built "Angkor" (as indeed they had) and that at one time Cambodia had dominated a large part of mainland Southeast Asia. In the same breath they were told that because of Cambodia's subsequent "decline," they were incapable of governing themselves.

The French claimed that the Khmer lacked the "vigor" of the Vietnamese. Like the Lao, they were seen as "children" who needed ongoing protection; what the Vietnamese "needed" is less clear. In Cambodia, the volatile mixture of bestowed grandeur and bestowed incompetence gave Cambodian nationalism a peculiar, edgy character. Many monks, intellectuals and political figures who found it easier to see themselves as the heirs of Angkor (and thus superior to the supposedly "vigorous" Vietnamese) than as inhabitants of a small Southeast Asian colony that needed to live within its means and to remain at peace with nearby powers.

Sihanouk, Lon Nol, and Pol Pot were prisoners of these illusions. Convinced of Cambodia's incomparability, they assumed that its native grandeur (enhanced by foreign help) could deliver it from the "evil" of Vietnam. All three men embarked on reckless foreign policies that drew on their folie de grandeur. Sihanouk, the most realistic of the three, tried to outwit the Vietnamese; Lon Nol and Pol Pot sought to defeat them in battle. All their scenarios were applauded by obsequious hangers-on and foreign patrons for whom Cambodia played a small but helpful part in the global confrontation in which its foreign patrons were wholeheartedly engaged.

 

Dependence on Foreign Patrons

Another reason for pessimism about Cambodia's future is the perennial dependence of its leaders, until very recently, on foreign powers. Some of the protection imposed by Thailand, Vietnam, and France between the 1790s and 1953 was sought by Cambodia's kings; some of it was thrust upon them. When Cambodia emerged from its colonial cocoon, its leaders, emboldened by what they thought was independence, embarked on a series of relationships with less responsive patrons.

The process of patron seeking began under Sihanouk in 1955, after he abdicated and became a private citizen. Fearful of his neighbors, unsympathetic to the United States, flattered by foreign statesmen, and egged on by his advisers, the prince chose the Soviet bloc and China as Cambodia's new patrons while prudently retaining friendly ties with France and accepting aid from the United States. ₄ Helped by these faraway powers he hoped to outwit so-called U.S. imperialism, meet Cambodia's financial obligations, finesse the Vietnam War, and remove the menace of socialism at home.

The game worked for ten years or so, but it was dangerous to play. It contained elements of tragedy, too, for Sihanouk seems to have been aware, as Lon Nol and Pol Pot were not, that patrons make the rules. In all three cases, as throughout Cambodia's history, no patron was willing to jeopardize national interests on Cambodia's behalf. In 1970, despite Lon Nol's expressions of neutrality, Cambodia was flung head first into the Vietnam War. From then on Sihanouk's patrons dropped away. China plotted to set up a Maoist regime in his place; the Soviet bloc offered him nothing; and France merely proposed political asylum. The Vietnamese communists, supposedly his allies in 1970, soon reneged on the agreements they had made with the prince to honor Cambodia's borders. The behavior of patrons in duress should have been a warning to Lon Nol and later to Pol Pot.

It is worth asking in hindsight, however, what else the beleaguered ruler could have done. An alliance with his anti–communist neighbors in the 1960s would have brought Cambodia into the Vietnam War almost at once. A full-blown alliance with the United States would have had the same effect, and one with North Vietnam probably would have provoked a South Vietnamese invasion.

Sihanouk's "neutral" policies, which stemmed from patriotism, vanity, wishful thinking, and wariness, were not as far-fetched or as mercurial as many cold warriors depicted them at the time. The Thais gave the prince no reason to trust them; neither did the warring governments of Vietnam. The United States was unwilling to berate or discourage the anti–Sihanouk policies of its anti–communist allies. Frightened of genuine independence when he was militarily so weak, Sihanouk established networks of dependence through which Cambodia hoped to gain some freedom to maneuver. He compromised his country's sovereignty but did not surrender it. He undermined his neutrality but avoided bloodshed for a while. By 1968, if not sooner, he had run out of room to maneuver.

Dependence also had compromised those who resisted the Sihanouk regime. Those who took a conservative, nationalist perspective, like Sam Sary, Dap Chhuon, and Son Ngoc Thanh, were soon entangled in demeaning alliances with Cambodia's neighbors. Those who hoped to install a socialist regime and eventually did so were held in check by Sihanouk's police and by their indifferent patrons in Hanoi.

When the hapless Lon Nol, came to power in 1970, he was even more dependent. He had an almost mystical faith in the man he called his "personal friend," Richard Nixon, who had written him a few cautiously worded letters of support. Lon Nol believed that Nixon personally could remove the threat of the Vietnamese who he saw as non-Buddhist "unbelievers" and thereby save the Cambodian "race." He also counted on open-ended U.S. military support. In the process he failed to notice that his so-called personal friends were disengaging from the region, never to return, even as they promised their heartfelt, continuing assistance. ₅

Dependency on China dogged the Khmer Rouge leaders after they seized power in April 1975 and sought to escape the party's long-standing subordination to Vietnam. The interplay between communism and nationalism as well as their relation to foreign patronage are such enduring features of Cambodian politics, even today, that the background is worth examining.

In 1954, after the Geneva Peace Conference several thousand resistance fighters and ICP members were evacuated to North Vietnam, pending what their patrons told them would be the collapse of the pro–Western regimes throughout Indochina. Most of the evacuees remained in North Vietnam until 1970. Some stayed even longer. During this time they were nominally led by a veteran Cambodian revolutionary, Son Ngoc Minh, but were not encouraged to develop national policies. Many took Vietnamese revolutionary names, married Vietnamese women, and were seconded to the Vietnamese army.

During the First Indochina War (1946-1954), Vietnamese patronage seemed natural and rewarding to most of these Khmer revolutionaries, and those who took up residence in North Vietnam did so willingly enough. The ones who stayed behind to carry out the political struggle, led by Tou Samouth, were not particularly antagonistic toward Hanoi. For a time, they were optimistic about seizing power. In 1954–55 the collapse of the pro-Western regimes that had just been established in Indochina seemed a distinct possibility to these experienced fighters. The collapse was delayed by U.S. intervention in Laos and Vietnam and by Sihanouk's dexterity, popular appeal, and security apparatus in Cambodia. By 1956 radicals in Cambodia were on the defensive, cut off from their patrons in Hanoi and harassed by Sihanouk's police.

It was at this point that the movement received an infusion of new members returning from university study in France. Several of these men and women--including Saloth Sar (alias Pol Pot), Ieng Sary, and Son Sen--had been drawn toward communism and joined the French Communist Party. When they came home, most of them took up careers in teaching or the civil service and joined the clandestine communist movement. As well-educated, patriotic revolutionaries, they were unwilling to await developments in Indochina or to take guidance from abroad. Political struggle as enjoined by Hanoi offered these ambitious men and women the unpalatable alternatives of inactivity, compromise with Sihanouk's "feudal" regime, or arrest. At the same time, because they lacked weapons, armed struggle was out of the question. ₆

When Tou Samouth died under mysterious circumstances in 1962, Saloth Sar became the leader of Cambodia's small, underground Communist Party. Soon afterward he went into hiding with a handful of colleagues, including Son Sen and Ieng Sary, in "Office l00," a Vietnamese communist military base that shifted back and forth across the Vietnamese-Cambodian border. In the camp, where he lingered for nearly two years, Saloth Sar and several other Khmer Rouge luminaries first encountered hands–on Vietnamese patronage and protection.

Summoned to Hanoi for consultations in mid-1965, Saloth Sar was told when he got there--after a four-month trek up the Ho Chi Minh Trail--that his party's agenda was irrelevant, amateurish, and chauvinistic. The Vietnamese document reporting the event noted that Saloth Sar "said nothing" in reply. After lingering for several months in Hanoi, Sar proceeded to Beijing where he was warmly welcomed by party spokesmen who were about to embark on the Cultural Revolution. His appreciative new patrons told him that his notions of independent revolution were more authentic than the wait-and-see policies suggested by Vietnam.

Back in Cambodia Sar secretly maneuvered his followers into a Maoist political position. He was careful to keep his fences mended with Hanoi, knowing that when the time came to embark on armed struggle, his party would need Vietnam's assistance. The opportunity came in 1970 when Sihanouk fell from power. Vietnamese help was crucial in arming the Cambodian communists, training their forces, and destroying Lon Nol's army, but at the end of 1972 the Vietnamese withdrew their troops as part of their peace agreement with the United States.

Sar and his colleagues, who refused to join the cease–fire, felt abandoned and betrayed. By this time, if not before, they shared Lon Nol's racist antipathy toward Vietnam. Instead of attacking Vietnam directly, however, they secretly purged over a thousand "Hanoi Khmer" who had come from Vietnam in 1970 to help them.

The cease-fire meant, in the words of CIA Director William Colby, that Cambodia was now "the only game in town." For the first nine months of 1973 the country was subjected to intense U.S. aerial bombardment. The bombing had the intended effect of digging a trench around the capital and thus postponed a Khmer Rouge victory. (It took the Khmer Rouge two more years to win the war.) But it also inflicted thousands of civilian casualties, intensified the fervor of Khmer Rouge soldiers, and some have argued, hastened the ascent of Sar's faction within the Cambodian Communist Party. Only the last of these effects is subject to debate. ₇ After dropping half a million tons of bombs in a campaign where American lives were not endangered, the U.S. Congress called it off.

In spite of choosing "independence" and "self-mastery" as their mottoes, the Khmer Rouge, when they came to power, could not stand on their own feet--especially after 1977, when Sar, now going by the name Pol Pot, chose to wage war against Vietnam. Once the Khmer Rouge attacks had been launched, the regime needed open-ended Chinese assistance to survive. As previous Cambodian rulers had discovered to their detriment, however, the patronage turned out to be limited and contingent. Pol Pot's regime collapsed when his patrons in Beijing found that the risks of supporting him militarily had become too high. Luckily for the Khmer Rouge, however, China's patronage continued after 1979, with Beijing letting go of its clients only in 1990, in the run-up to the Paris Peace Accords.

In early 1979, in the wake of Vietnam's invasion, Hanoi established a protectorate over Cambodia that shared many characteristics with the French protectorate, including a somewhat altered "civilizing mission" whereby the deserving but "childlike" Cambodians were trained to honor and respect the Vietnamese. Once again, however, foreign patronage proved costly for the patrons, and in 1989 the Vietnamese withdrew. After a transitional period (1990–92) in which Hun Sen rose to power, the Paris Peace Accords ended the era of foreign patronage for Cambodia, but a final flurry of protection--a sort of encore after two centuries of dependency--occurred in 1992–93 under the United Nations Transitional Authority in Cambodia (UNTAC).

In 1993, in the aftermath of the UNTAC-brokered elections, the newly established Cambodian government found itself without a political patron for the first time in centuries, although substantial aid from a range of donors continued to pour into the country. In the mid-1990s the economic dependence of Cambodia's political elites on selected foreign powers, including Thailand, Taiwan, and Malaysia, seems to have replaced political dependence, but the national and political aspects of patronage have become less important. From an ecological and economic point of view, however, the exploitation of Cambodia by outsiders shows no signs of letting up.

 

Political Culture

Cambodia's political future also might be impaired by its enduring political culture. For hundreds of years absolute rulers have confronted factional opponents, and factions have confronted one another, scrambling to serve their own interests in a volatile, high-stakes game. A winner-takes-all political culture based on endemic distrust has impeded the development of a civil society, stifled free expression, encouraged cronyism and violence, and exacerbated people's tendency to distrust and fear those in power. Seen in this light, Cambodia's strong man, Hun Sen, despite his modern trappings, remains very much a traditional political leader.

In classical Cambodia power was thought of as a finite, expendable commodity. ₈ The verb "to govern" was the same as the verb "to consume." There were no legal constraints on the conduct of those at the top. Similarly there was no recourse other than flight or rebellion for people who were exploited. The Cambodian legal code, such as it was, was designed to protect the rich and powerful, particularly the king, against crimes of lèse-majesté.

Under the protectorate, the French froze Cambodia's institutions, including the potentially absolute monarchy, in place and did little to develop the rule of law. When Sihanouk took power in 1955, he paid little attention to laws that impeded his power and rode roughshod over Cambodia's constitution. Political prisoners, held without trial, were frequently executed. None of Sihanouk's successors (nor any of their opponents, for that matter) have felt that they owed much to the electorate or that power was something to be shared or balanced in the interests of the country. Instead Lon Nol, Pol Pot, Hun Sen, and Prince Ranariddh have tended to identify the welfare of the nation with themselves and have seen dissent as tantamount to treason.

Over the years most Cambodian politicians and officeholders have focused their attention on neutralizing their enemies. In modern times none has gone so far along these lines as the Khmer Rouge. Following a Maoist model Pol Pot and his colleagues allowed political warfare to direct Cambodian life. The colossal costs of this fiery experiment are still being measured. One of its very few benefits was to make Cambodians aware that politics was something that impinged on their daily lives and demanded participation. Most Khmer had traditionally associated politics with rich people, corruption, and exploitation; they had not had a voice in political decisions or any power over the nation's political life. The depredations of the Khmer Rouge, for one thing, made it easier for people in the 1990s to conceptualize tyranny, lawlessness, and human rights. ₉

Very few Cambodian leaders (Sihanouk in his heyday was an exception) have thought it necessary to be popular, flexible, or responsive. By and large, injustice and government have gone hand in hand. The people's loyalty is supposed to be unquestioning; power is its own reward. No ruler allowed himself to be doubted. Very few have listened to advice, and none before Pol Pot questioned the distribution of power among haves and have-nots. Pol Pot's response to these imbalances was to kill the haves and empower the have-nots while divesting everyone of possessions. That he felt himself uniquely endowed to do so placed him firmly within Cambodian political culture.

The inequities and corruption in Cambodian society under Sihanouk and Lon Nol, combined with the buffeting Cambodia took from the cold war, were enough to draw thousands of Cambodians--especially intellectuals and young, poor peasants--into the ranks of the communist movement, which, when it took power, swiftly became the least responsive, most unaccountable, and least transparent regime in Cambodia's history.

Similarly widespread resentment against government abuses in the early 1990s, rather than the vague and nostalgic programs offered by the opposition, led millions of voters in 1993 to vote against an armed, incumbent regime for the first time in Cambodian history. Ironically the election produced a form of government (i.e., a coalition), which, while ineffective in many instances and inimical to Cambodia's political culture, postponed the outbreak of civil war, made the losing party somewhat more responsive to people's material needs than it had been, and for a time provided a facade of stability sufficient to placate most donor nations. Since the July 1997 coup these positive aspects of coalition government have all but disappeared, and the two most prominent factions have embarked on a confrontation aimed to eliminate the other. Cambodian history seems intent on perpetually repeating itself as a tragicomic farce.

There seems to be a contrast in many Cambodians' minds between politics as practiced and an imagined form of government based on pure-mindedness, detachment, and justice. In precolonial times, the savior was someone thought to be endowed with merit and magical powers. More recently the ideal government leader has usually been construed as someone personable, detached, and incorruptible. In the 1960s Khieu Samphan's reputation for incorruptibility and responsiveness was a major contributor to his sub-rosa popularity among students, intellectuals, and some of the rural poor. During the same period Pol Pot was admired by his students and colleagues--and, if defectors can be believed, was still admired in the 1990s--for his smoothness, patriotism, and kindly manner, which contrasted sharply to the relentless egotism of Cambodians then in power.

 

Conclusion: Future Prospects

Hun Sen's July 1997 coup d'état averted the possibility of civil war but also may have foreclosed the possibilities for pluralism in Cambodian political life. Given the power equation in Cambodia today, there seems little likelihood of increased harmony and compromise on the part of those in power or increased freedom of expression and association for ordinary people. The prospects for a genuinely free and fair election in 1998 are as dim as the prospect that the current regime will feel it necessary to reform to gain the voters' trust. In fact, as the country drifts toward elections, and as it loses the favored position it enjoyed with many donor nations, it seems likely that violent incidents like the March 1997 grenade attack will occur whenever anyone in power, especially Hun Sen, feels threatened. Outbursts of violence against the Vietnamese minority cannot be ruled out, although this is less likely than in the recent past. Finally while it is also possible that the armed forces of the former coalition partners will engage in a full-scale conflict--using surrogates enrolled from the ranks of defecting Khmer Rouge--scattered confrontations are more likely than a full-scale civil war.

Are there any countervailing forces in sight? It is possible that modernization, which is impacting so unevenly on Cambodia today, will provide moderating effects through increased access to information, education, and income for larger segments of the population. There are also signs of restiveness, courage, and resiliency among journalists, workers, and nongovernmental organizations pressing for change in, among others, the fields of human rights, industrial relations, and the rights of women. So far the government's response to these pressures has lurched between violence and indifference, but in spite or because of this nongovernmental organizations, their allies, and the causes they work for are increasingly gaining respect.

Perhaps changes will come about as a result of pressure, discreetly applied, from donor nations, although it is impossible to predict what form this pressure might take, the conditions under which it might be applied, or how Hun Sen and Prince Ranariddh might respond.

There are also grounds for some optimism about Cambodia's future, but not much, in what appears to be the disappearance of the Khmer Rouge as a political or military threat. As this is written, the effects of the Khmer Rouge implosion are impossible to predict, but the disappearance of Pol Pot from the nation's psyche may be that baleful figure's first act of kindness to the Cambodian people.

In the short term, however, it is difficult to see how the men and (much more rarely) women who have profited enormously from Cambodia's violent and autocratic political culture so far, and who cling so tenaciously to power, would be willing to see the culture altered. Still such alterations are urgent from the point of view of delivering equity to the Cambodian people, who are, as so often in the past, poorly governed but stubbornly refuse to be "consumed."

 

Endnotes

Note 1: See Eva Mysliwiec, Punishing the Poor: The International Isolation of Kampuchea (Oxford: Oxfam, 1988), and Michael Vickery, Kampuchea: Politics, Economics and Society (London: Frances Pinter, 1986). Hun Sen, Cambodia's second prime minister, gained power in this period. He is fluent in Vietnamese. Back.

Note 2: For a discussion of this period, see David Chandler, A History of Cambodia, 2d ed. (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1996), pp. 118–32. Back.

Note 3: Author's interviews in Phnom Penh (January–February 1997) with five Cambodians who joined the ICP and spent the period 1954–70 in North Vietnam. Back.

Note 4: For discussions of Cambodia in this period, see Roger Smith, Cambodia's Foreign Policy (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University, 1965), and David Chandler, The Tragedy of Cambodian History (New Haven: Yale University, 1991). Back.

Note 5: For a perceptive political history of the Lon Nol period, see Justin Corfield, Khmers Stand Up! (Clayton, Australia: Monash University, 1995). The best discussion of U.S. policy in that era remains William Shawcross's Sideshow: Kissinger, Nixon and the Destruction of Cambodia (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1979). Back.

Note 6: For a persuasive study of Vietnamese-Cambodian relations between 1946 and 1975, and documentary support for this part of the essay, see Thomas Englebert and Christopher Goscha, Falling Out of Touch (Clayton, Australia: Monash University, 1994). See also Ben Kiernan, How Pol Pot Came to Power (London: Verso, 1985). Back.

Note 7: See William Shawcross, Sideshow, and Ben Kiernan, The Pol Pot Regime (New Haven: Yale University, 1996). Back.

Note 8: For an interesting discussion, see Benedict Anderson, "The Idea of Power in Javanese Culture," in Language and Power (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University, 1990), pp. 17–77. Back.

Note 9: For a discussion of political culture in the UNTAC era, see Steve Heder and Judy Ledgerwood, eds., Propaganda, Politics, and Violence in Cambodia (Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe, 1996), especially pp. 114–83. Back.