From The Fall of Saigon to the Invasion of Cambodia ( April 1975-December 1978 )

 From The Fall of Saigon to the Invasion of Cambodia ( April 1975-December 1978 )

April 1975 is a significant month, the high point of the communist era in Indochina. On 17 April, the Khmer Rouge captured Phnom Penh, bringing an end to the fight between the communists and anti-communists (backed by the US particularly after the ouster of Sihanouk in March 1970). On 30 April, Saigon fell to the Vietnamese communists, marking the end of the Second Vietnam War. In December, the Pathet Lao (supported by the Vietnamese communists throughout the civil war in Laos) took full control of Laos. By the end of 1975, the whole of Indochina was communist. Unbeknown to those outside the communist camp, it was also a pivotal point in Vietnam–Cambodia relations as well as Sino-Vietnamese relations, though not yet the nadir. This chapter describes and explains how the relationships further deteriorated from where we left off in Chapter1 from April 1975 culminating in Vietnam's invasion of Cambodia at the end-1978.

Soon after the victories of both the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia and the Vietnamese communists in Vietnam, the Khmer Rouge and their Vietnamese counterparts in May 1975 began fighting over territory. In early May, Khmer Rouge forces launched ‘small-scale but violent attacks’ along their border with southern Vietnam. The Khmer Rouge accused the Vietnamese of refusing to vacate the sanctuaries in Cambodian territory that they established during the Vietnam War. Both sides also briefly fought after the Khmer Rouge took over the Vietnamese Tho Chu (Poulo Panjang) and was subsequently expelled by the Vietnamese. Before that, the Khmer attacked the Vietnamese-controlled island of Phu Quoc. The dispute over their sea border was because the Khmer Rouge did not agree to the interpretation of the 1939 Brevie Line drawn up by France for administrative purpose during the colonial phase of their histories. A June 1976 meeting in Phnom Penh failed to resolve their differences. According to the Vietnamese, agreement was in fact reached to settle the dispute and negotiations began, but they were prematurely terminated by the Khmer Rouge. Pol Pot’s visit to Hanoi (11–14 June 1975) and Le Duan’s visit to Cambodia in late July 1975 did not lead to any improvement in bilateral relations. The border disputes persisted through 1977 and 1978. There is general agreement that while the ‘border dispute is at once secondary and crucial’ to the Vietnam-Cambodia war, it was not the cause of the conflict. As Stephen Heder explained, it is secondary because it is symptomatic of wider disagreements between the two sides and because ‘only a small area is in dispute’. It is crucial because the Khmer Rouge ‘uses it to gauge Vietnamese attitudinal’ and it is also a ‘measurement of the regime’s nationalist credentials’. As Gabriel Kolko noted, the border dispute reflected ‘Phnom Penh’s provocative strategy, with its need for conjuring an external threat’. The Khmer Rouge believed that the Vietnamese were illegally occupying Cambodian territory and the Vietnamese refusal to v

The following episode recounted by Julio Jeldres best encapsulates the Khmer Rouge attitude towards the Vietnamese. Sihanouk attended Vietnam’s first National Day on 2 September 1975, at the invitation of the Vietnamese. When in Hanoi, Prime Minister Pham Van Dong suggested to Sihanouk that the “‘brothers and comrade in arms” from North Vietnam and representatives from the South, Laos and Cambodia should meet over a joint dinner’. Khieu Samphan intervened and said to Dong that they were happy to accept a ‘bipartite dinner’ between Hanoi, the host, and the Cambodian delegation. Khieu Samphan would later tell Sihanouk that ‘we must never fall in the trap prepared by these Viets who wish to dominate and swallow up our Kampuchea by incorporating it in their Indochinese Federation. We must remain very vigilant. This projected quadripartite dinner was a dangerous trap! We must not fall into it.’

According to the Vietnamese side, the Khmer Rouge ignored several requests from Hanoi to sign a friendship treaty (a friendship treaty between the Vietnamese and the Laotians was signed in July 1977). The Khmer Rouge account, however, claimed that it was they who proposed a friendship and non-aggression treaty in June 1975 when Pol Pot led a top-ranking delegation to Hanoi. The Khmer Rouge further accused the Vietnamese of attempting to assassinate their top leadership, including Pol Pot. This would explain the killings of thousands of Cambodians suspected of colluding with the Vietnamese – ‘Khmer bodies with Vietnamese minds’, most notably in the Eastern Zone. All who opposed Pol Pot’s policies on any issue were considered ‘traitorous, part of a Vietnamese plot to dispose of the only group who could defeat Vietnamese designs to establish political control over Kampuchea. As a result, criticism was never evaluated and taken into consideration, it was simply labelled as treason and dealt with accordingly.

Only after Pol Pot, the arch anti-Vietnamese, had eliminated all those who opposed him and consolidated his position did he have the full authority to turn fully against Vietnam. In February 1977, Vietnamese deputy Foreign Minister Hoang Van Loi failed to persuade Cambodia to participate in another Indochina Summit. Relations continued to deteriorate to the point that the Khmer Communist Party Central Committee in June 1977 issued a resolution identifying ‘Vietnam as our enemy number 1, our eternal enemy’.

It is here that we must introduce Hun Sen, then a 25-year-old regimental commander in region 21, Eastern Zone, who would become a major protagonist in our narrative to this day. On the night of 20 June 1977, Hun Sen (along with four comrades) defected to Vietnam. Hun Sen’s June ‘heroic’ escape has since been mythologised in present-day Cambodia. As Kosal Path and Boraden Nhem noted, towards the second half of 1977, Pol Pot’s purge of ‘real and perceived “Vietnamese agents”’ had reached the lower echelons of the Eastern Zone, where Hun Sen was ‘a potential target’. Hun Sen’s defection coincided with Hanoi’s plan to ‘establish an anti-Pol Pot Cambodian revolution in southern Vietnam to take over Cambodia’. Having won the trust of the Vietnamese, Hun Sen (with their support) was able to organise the first army unit."- Unit 125 comprising Cambodian refugees and Khmer Rouge defectors - of the new Cambodian revolution. Unit 125 was the early beginning of the Royal Cambodian Armed Forces (RCAF), and the veterans remain Prime Minister Hun Sen’s most loyal generals today. Hun Sen has always insisted that he is not a communist. He joined the Khmer Rouge not ‘because of any allegiance to communism by any stretch of imagination but instead in response to the then-deposed, but beloved head of state, Prince Sihanouk.’ Indeed, he turned from an ardent supporter to become a ‘fierce opponent’ of the prince only after the Vietnamese invaded Cambodia.

The rapid slide in the relationship was described by Vietnam’s Deputy Foreign Minister Nguyen Co Thach to Wilfred Burchett - ""between 1970 and 1975, the Khmer Rouge considered Vietnam as its ‘Number 1 friend’ (although this author rather doubts this - see Chapter 1). After April 1975, China moved to first place and Vietnam dropped to seventh position. By April 1977, Vietnam had become ‘enemy Number 1’ and China remained its ‘Number 1’ friend. Indeed, according to Sihanouk, Khieu Samphan told him that the Vietnamese had always been the ‘enemy number one’ and ‘American imperialism only occupying second place as far as enemies of Kampuchea were concerned.’

Because the border issues remained unresolved, except for the brief lull between mid-1975 and 1976, the fighting continued, and these grew from skirmishes to increasingly large-scale clashes, particularly from late September 1977. According to Bui Tin, the fighting became progressively more severe, especially after a massacre at Chau Doc on the night of 30 April 1977, which was also the second anniversary of the fall of Saigon. In September 1977, the intensified border conflict coincided with Pol Pot’s highly publicised and triumphant visit to China where he was warmly welcomed by Hua Guofeng, Mao’s successor. At his meeting with Hua, Pol Pot said that he had successfully eliminated all ‘Vietnamese agents.’"

"His visit was preceded by a lengthy speech revealing the existence of the CPK and extolling its singular role in the revolutionary struggle. Hanoi tried to get the Chinese to mediate without success. The warm welcome of Pol Pot and Chinese failure to mediate - it is not clear whether it was a case of unwilling or unable - created the impression, in the eyes of the Vietnamese, that Beijing supported the Khmer Rouge actions. According to Soviet sources, the presence of Chinese military personnel training and arming the Khmer Rouge, and building roads and military bases, including an Air Force base in Kampong Chhnang which made it possible for military planes to reach Ho Chi Minh City in half an hour, forced the Vietnamese ‘to think about the real threat to its security rather than about an Indochinese federation.’ In addition, on 18"

"July 1977, a Treaty of Friendship and Cooperation was signed between Vietnam and Laos. Vietnam had thus consolidated its ‘special relationship’ with Laos with little opposition. In the view of Hanoi, if it were not for Beijing’s conspicuous support for the Khmer Rouge, Phnom Penh would have followed the path of Vientiane. China was thus seen as the obstacle preventing the Vietnamese from realising their aspiration of an Indo-China Federation – a repeat of what happened in 1954.

On 30 September 1977, there was a Politburo meeting in Ho Chi Minh City chaired by Le Duan to evaluate the situation. The Politburo came up with two options: (1) facilitate a victory of the ‘healthy’ (meaning pro-Vietnam) forces inside Cambodia; (2) pressure Pol Pot to negotiate in a worsening situation. The opening move to achieve either option was to shift Vietnam’s border war strategy from defensive to offensive. The Vietnamese made one further (and futile) attempt to get the Chinese to intercede with the Khmer Rouge when Le Duan met with the Chinese leadership in Beijing in November. The November meeting also showed up the strains in Sino-Vietnamese relations."

"On 25 December 1977, to the surprise of the Khmer Rouge, Vietnamese forces invaded eastern Cambodia and briefly occupied the territory (in retaliation for the Khmer Rouge attack on Tay Ninh province in September) before withdrawing, much to the dismay of Hun Sen. The fighting along the Cambodia-South Vietnam border has been described as ‘the most serious so far’ when the Vietnamese attacked deep into various parts of the Eastern Zone of Cambodia and withdrew soon after. Pol Pot used the Vietnamese withdrawal (on its own volition) to claim it as ‘the greatest victory in Khmer history.’

It was clearly an exercise of intimidation by the Vietnamese and a warning to the Khmer Rouge. Not to be cowed, Phnom Penh also surprised the Vietnamese by breaking off diplomatic relations on 31 December 1977. The tensions and dispute between the two fraternal communist countries, which had been kept away from the limelight."

"finally became public for the first time. It would be another year before the Vietnamese leadership invaded Kampuchea and took control of Phnom Penh and the country. Sihanouk’s analysis of the Vietnamese ‘blitzkrieg’ is worth highlighting here. While, on the surface, it appeared to be a failure, the Vietnamese gained 150,000 Khmer refugees which helped to ‘furnish the Kampuchean United Front for National Salvation (KUFNS) formed in early December 1978 in Kratie province, near the Vietnam-Cambodia border to overthrow the Pol Pot regime’. Pol Pot’s ‘overweening pride’ proclaiming the ‘Victory of 6 January 1978’ led to ‘serious misjudgments of the enemy’.

Why didn’t the Vietnamese People’s Army go all the way in December 1977, instead stopping twenty-four miles from Phnom Penh and then withdrawing and waiting for another twelve months? One reason was that in 1977-1978, there were some quarters in the party who held the view that ‘the contradictions between the US and China would prevent the formation of an anti-Soviet and anti-Vietnamese alliance’ and as such the anti-Maoists led by Deng Xiaoping in China would eventually choose the Soviet Union (and Vietnam) over the US. These people would need to be convinced or neutralised. Thus, we must now turn to consider the state of Vietnam as well as Cambodia’s relations with China, the Soviet Union, and the US until the end of 1977 before focusing on the critical year 1978."

"Recall from Chapter 1 that Sino-Vietnamese relations, which had never been warm despite all the professions of both countries being as close as 'lips and teeth', turned complicated in July 1971 (coincidentally around the time when relations between the Khmer Rouge and the Vietnamese communists were turning bad) with the" "announcement of President Nixon’s forthcoming visit (to take place before May 1972) to Beijing. 

Compared to the Vietnamese leadership’s visits to China in 1974 (described in Chapter 1), as well as Le Duan’s September 1975 visit, Pol Pot’s visit to Beijing in June 1975 was better received by the Chinese and Mao lavished much praise on Pol Pot and the success of the Khmer Rouge. Pol Pot, on his part, projected himself as an ideological disciple of Mao. In a conversation with Pol Pot on 21 June 1975, Mao Zedong told him: ‘We approve of what you do ... You are basically correct. I am not sure if you have any shortcomings. There are bound to be some and you rectify by yourself’. We now know much more about Sino-Cambodian/Kampuchean relations due to the recent research of Sophie Richardson and Andrew Mertha. In her book, Richardson showed that Beijing ‘was neither ignoring Phnom Penh nor restraining its malignant policies’ and that Beijing was not only aware of the Khmer Rouge leadership’s ‘proclivities toward extreme brutality, but it also in some cases facilitated them’. From her interviews with Chinese diplomats, the reason for the Chinese failure to intervene was ‘a complex mix of beliefs consistent with the Five Principles (of peaceful coexistence)’. Mertha, on the other hand, showed that the Chinese were not always able to influence Khmer Rouge policy decisions even if they wanted to. His study shows ‘an emerging pattern in which Chinese proposals were adopted if they served DK (Democratic Kampuchea) interests but were politely but firmly brushed aside by the Cambodians if they did not’. But most importantly, there is general agreement among scholars that Chinese military aid and assistance to the Khmer Rouge was substantial and wide ranging and that ‘no foreign country was more important to DK than China, particularly when it came to military assistance’. The Chinese feared losing influence in the region after the Vietnam War, and the deterioration in Sino-Vietnamese relations coupled with Hanoi’s closeness to the Soviet Union meant that ‘Beijing was willing to give DK whatever it wanted, as long as it guaranteed China a foothold in Indochina’."

As Qiang  "Zhai also noted, ‘realising the determination and strength of the Khmer Rouge, Chinese leaders had apparently taken the position that if they wanted to maintain their influence over the Vietnamese and the Russians in Cambodia, they must back Pol Pot’.

 Asked how Kampuchea, with 5-6 million people, dared to take on a battle-hardened Vietnam with a population of over fifty million, Nguyen Co Thach countered, ‘why would Israel with a population of 3 million dare to invade Egypt with its population of 35 million? Because the Khmer Rouge are assured they have 800 million Chinese behind them, as Israel has the might of the United States to rely on’. Mertha sums it up well when he wrote, ‘without Chinese support, the DK regime would almost certainly have collapsed’."

"There is quite a sizeable body of writings on Sino-Vietnamese relations. Besides the issues highlighted in Chapter 1, Hanoi and Beijing had disputes over their land and sea boundaries. Beijing was also unhappy with what it saw as Hanoi’s anti-China propaganda and the treatment of Chinese residing in Vietnam. Hanoi was unhappy with the reduction of Chinese economic assistance to Vietnam, particularly post-1975, and was unconvinced that it was due to the 'interference and sabotage by the antiparty “gang of four” and the natural calamities' which had affected the Chinese economy (as explained by the Chinese side), especially so when, during Pol Pot’s June 1975 visit, he was promised more than $1 billion in economic and military assistance. The Vietnamese ‘ever-growing’ aid requests were indeed enormous. Hanoi interpreted the drastic cuts in Chinese aid as ‘Beijing’s attempt to weaken Vietnam and limit its role in the region’, which was not an unreasonable assumption given the common knowledge that China’s leaders would have preferred two separate Vietnams rather than the unified Vietnam achieved in April 1975.

If Pol Pot was the arch anti-Vietnamese, Deng Xiaoping (who returned to power in mid-1977) had developed a ‘hatred toward the Vietnamese for their ingratitude’, while Le Duan ‘detested China’s “big brother” attitude toward Vietnam’. It is perhaps worth noting." "that Pol Pot detested Vietnam’s ‘big brother attitude’ while the Vietnamese accused the Pol Pot regime as being ungrateful. At the 4th Party Congress of the Vietnamese Worker’s Party in December 1976, the party leadership was purged of almost all the ostensibly pro-China group, the most prominent being Hoang Van Hoan, an old associate of Ho Chi Minh and Vietnam’s first ambassador to China. In February 1977, Beijing informed the Vietnamese that China was unable to provide any new economic aid (although Chinese financial and technical aid to Cambodia was unaffected). It was Beijing’s way of showing displeasure with the conduct and outcome of the 4th Party Congress. China’s ‘punitive’ aid cut and trade policy toward Vietnam inevitably caused Vietnam to turn even more towards the Soviet Union for aid. Sino-Vietnamese relations took a dive and did not recover until the 1990s."

"Having said that, until early 1978, Hanoi remained unwilling to openly side with the Soviet Union in the Sino-Soviet ideological dispute and continued to strike a balance between Moscow and Beijing, at least on the surface. Vietnamese archival documents from the Ministry of Defence, Ministry of Foreign Trade, and Ministry of Foreign Affairs (seen by Kosal Path) revealed that there was an ongoing internal debate at the highest level of the Vietnamese leadership. For a short period, ‘Hanoi’s economics minded leaders succeeded in convincing the Party line, as opposed to the military leaders’ argument for a formal military alliance with the Soviet Union against China, to maintain “restraint” and to recognize the continued relevance and importance of China’s remaining substantial aid to Vietnam’s post-1975 national reconstruction and alleviation of its poverty’.

The Vietnamese communists had their share of disagreements with the Soviets, beginning with the 1954 Geneva Conference. They continued to procrastinate over joining the Russian-led Council for Mutual Economic Assistance (COMECON) despite Soviet ‘measured pressure’. Kosal Path’s research into the Vietnamese archive shows that top Vietnamese diplomats attributed Moscow’s"

"suspension of industrial projects for Vietnam and rejection of Vietnam’s emergency aid request for food and fuel in 1977 to Hanoi’s official refusal to join COMECON and side with the Soviet Union. It can be said that the increasing Sino-Vietnamese animosity played into the hands of the Soviet Union, which seized the opportunity to increase its influence in Vietnam.

Moscow, on the other hand, had very little direct knowledge of the Khmer Rouge and Soviet-Khmer Rouge relations were next to non-existent. Apparently, when Pol Pot reached out to the Soviets in 1966, Moscow had ‘yet to decide on the forms and scale of its participation in the new Indochina war’ and thus did not accord him with the respect he expected and henceforth relations never developed. Apparently, when Phnom Penh fell in April 1975, a Khmer Rouge detachment summarily moved to expel Soviet diplomats from the Soviet embassy and took down the Russian flag. According to Sihanouk, ‘Brezhnev’s representatives never forgave the Khmer Rouge for this’. Between 1975 and 1977, ‘the entire Soviet bloc made a prodigious effort to ingratiate themselves’ with the Khmer Rouge leaders, ‘hoping against hope that their friendliness, however spurious, would win over them’. In his account, Sihanouk was making the point that Moscow had every reason to go along with what the Vietnamese decided with regard to Cambodia."

"We must now turn to the US. There are two points which should be mentioned at the outset. First, as Ted Osius (former US ambassador to Vietnam) reminded us in his memoir, when the Vietnam War ended in April 1975, then US President Gerald Ford 'wanted Congress and the American people to shift their focus from the chaos we (the Americans) had left behind ... Americans didn’t want to hear about Indochina'. For twenty years, reconciliation between the US and Vietnam 'progressed slowly' and only after President Bill Clinton established full diplomatic ties in 1995 did it appear possible for both countries to ‘begin anew’. Second, while the first step in Sino-US rapprochement began with Nixon’s visit to "Beijing in February 1972, ‘significant improvement in relations between China and the United States was far from inevitable’. Both countries only announced on 15 December 1978 that they would establish formal diplomatic relations on 1 January 1979. However, Beijing and Moscow had a common strategic enemy: the United States.

 

"There is no need to engage in the debate regarding whether American policies and actions in Cambodia during the Vietnam War contributed to the growth of the Khmer Rouge. It is, however, indisputable that Washington had a ‘casual disregard for the fate of Laos and Cambodia when compared to the larger strategic prize of southern Vietnam’, while Beijing opposed any discussion on Cambodia in an international forum for fear that an agreement reached in an international conference would necessarily involve Moscow and Hanoi, preferring to be ‘the main broker’. Zhou Enlai made clear to Kissinger during the discussions between Kissinger and Le Duc Tho in Paris that ‘he was the only person that could deliver Sihanouk and the Khmer Rouge’. Under the Ford administration, Washington rarely commented on developments in Cambodia, except in the context of the Indochina refugee problem. During the Carter administration, Cambodia’s self-imposed isolation from the rest of the world made it difficult to assess the true developments in the country. Richard Holbrooke (assistant secretary of state for East Asia and Pacific affairs) confessed that there were ‘limited options available to the administration’. Despite the Carter administration’s focus/emphasis on human rights, little attention was paid to Cambodia. As President Carter explained, while he recognised that ‘the advancement of human rights is a complicated matter that depends upon the particular political context’, the lack of diplomatic relations between the US and Democratic Kampuchea made it difficult for Washington to do much. In the words of Kenton Clymer, ‘the administration’s silence belied its rhetoric about the centrality of human rights to its foreign policy’. Peter Ronay noted that the ‘imperative of improving relations with China’ (which "is a close ally of Democratic Kampuchea) was strongly supported by National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski 'as a means of gaining the upper hand on the Soviets diminished the importance of human rights in Cambodia for the Carter administration. Compared to Sino-American relations, Cambodia – even the genocide there – seemed more like a distraction than anything else.

We now know from US State Department cables (released by WikiLeaks) that Washington was aware of the 'horrific actions' of the Pol Pot regime, with a 21 July 1978 cable from its embassy in Laos estimating that two million people had died at its hands, the US refused overtures from Cambodia’s previous leadership (Lon Nol and others) to challenge the Pol Pot government’s right to represent Cambodia at the United Nations (UN). There was also fear in some US establishment quarters of 'indefinite guerilla warfare' in Cambodia should the Pol Pot regime be toppled. On 21 August 1978, for example, Senator George McGovern (who in the earlier years had opposed Washington’s escalation of the Vietnam War) gave an impassioned speech to the Senate in favor of intervention, invoking the inaction during the European holocaust as an analogy. He called for 'at the very least' the possibility of military action against the Khmer Rouge regime to be tabled at the next UN Security Council meeting. He was berated by Han Hsu (of China’s Liaison Office) during a correspondent lunch held for Chinese reporters two days later, accusing the US of wanting once again to be the world’s policeman. Chinese officials vehemently defended the Khmer Rouge and rejected accusations of atrocities carried out by the regime. In a subsequent cable to its embassies that had relations with Cambodia, the State Department made it clear that while the US abhorred human rights violations in Cambodia, it would not support or condone a unilateral or multilateral intervention by any other power into Cambodia."

"As for Vietnam, Hanoi was keen to normalise relations with Washington after the 1973 Paris Peace Agreement, but the situation at the time was not conducive to this. While the American military might have withdrawn from Vietnam, the war had not really ended."

"Soon after the fall of Saigon, Prime Minister Pham Van Dong extended a formal invitation to the US to normalise relations with one precondition: Washington must fulfil its commitment/obligation to provide reconstruction aid to North Vietnam as stated in Article 21 of the 1973 Paris Peace Agreement. The Ford administration, however, was only prepared to discuss normalisation of relations without any preconditions. Aid would only be considered when the American side was satisfied that the Vietnamese were seriously addressing the missing-in-action (MIA) issue which was a high-priority concern in the US. Thus, for the first one and a half years after the fall of Saigon (May 1975-December 1976), the two sides were 'locked into their uncompromising stances'. There was one further reason why the Ford administration was not forthcoming with the Vietnamese: 'Vietnamese-American normalisation would have hampered Kissinger’s geopolitical strategy'. Kissinger’s foremost concern was, and always had been, the balance of US-Soviet relations and the strategic importance of the China factor in the equation. As Steven Hurst put it, 'easing Chinese fears of Soviet-Vietnamese collusion would have reduced the incentive to normalise with the United States on terms acceptable to Washington'."

"The arrival of a new president in the White House appeared to provide both sides with a fresh opportunity to revisit the issue of normalisation of relations. Under the Carter administration, the State Department had a different perspective and approach from that of Kissinger’s. Whereas Kissinger was principally focused on US-Soviet relations and Southeast Asia was to him just a subordinate or an extension of that relationship, the new secretary of state, Cyrus Vance, and Holbrooke placed ASEAN at the core of American policy in Southeast Asia. In the case of Vietnam, they saw it as a country 'trying to find a balance between over-dependence on either the Chinese or the Soviet Union', thus offering 'an opportunity for a new initiative'. It was in America’s interest, Vance believed, to wean Vietnam off its dependence on China and/or the Soviet Union. The Carter administration, however, shared the same position as that of his predecessor that reconstruction aid which the Vietnamese..."

"wanted could only be discussed after the MIA accounting had been satisfactory concluded. This did not appear to be a difficult task since the House Select Committee on Missing Persons in Southeast Asia, which delivered its final report in late 1976, had concluded that there were no American prisoners of war alive in Indochina. The American side was hopeful of a quick agreement. But negotiations in 1977 to bring about normalisation still failed because the Hanoi leadership was insistent that the US was legally bound to provide aid. And as a rebuke to Washington’s refusal to fulfil what the Vietnamese considered to be its legal obligation, Hanoi stubbornly refused to bring the MIA accounting to a closure. The subsequent dropping of words such as ‘precondition’ and ‘legal’ and the apparent delinking of aid, MIA and normalisation were all verbal gymnastics. The bottom line was that the Vietnamese continued to expect American aid, which they badly needed, as a precondition for normalisation. After the failure of the March and May 1977 meetings, there were no more substantial discussions. In his study of the US-Vietnam negotiations during the Carter administration, Steven Hurst concluded that the best opportunity to achieve normalisation was in the first six months of 1977, but the opportunity was missed. In October, Nguyen Co Thach met Holbrooke during the Number National Assembly and both agreed to meet for further talks to find a compromise. Subsequently, Phan Hien and Holbrooke met in Paris from 7 to 10 December 1977 but could not resolve their differences."

                                       III

"We now reach the critical year of 1978. Nobody really knew the military situation or Vietnamese intentions. In early 1978, the British, for example, were sceptical that the Vietnamese would take over the whole or part of Cambodia or install a pro-Vietnamese government, whereas the French were sure that ‘an effectively united Indochina’ was ‘a long-standing Vietnamese ambition’ and they thought there was ‘little that China could do about it’. The Financial Times on 4..." "March 1978 reported that observers speculated that ‘if an offensive comes it must be before the onset of the monsoon at the end of May’.

Tiziano Terzani (local correspondent of Der Spiegel), during a visit to Vietnam in early 1978, found out that several thousand Cambodian refugees in Vietnam were sent back to Cambodia between 1975 and 1976, 'as a gesture of goodwill after their victory in the South', while the Vietnamese claimed that 'they were in ignorance of the fate that awaited these people in Cambodia'. Subsequently, a 'considerable number' of Cambodians were being trained in Vietnam to be used either in the continued fighting against Cambodia or as part of a new group which the Vietnamese hoped would eventually overthrow the Pol Pot regime. According to Terzani, the Cambodians had 'virtually eliminated all those members of the Communist Party who joined before 1960 and therefore might be presumed to have come strongly under Vietnamese influence'."

"In June 1978, those who had been closely following the developments in Indochina noted that the Vietnamese appeared to have come out into the open in offering encouragement for the toppling of the Pol Pot regime. In Cambodia, attempts to organise Pol Pot’s overthrow by a mutiny of the Eastern Zone military forces (allied to Vietnam) ended in a complete disaster for the anti-Pol Pot rebels in June 1978, which led to the Vietnamese to take direct control of ousting the Pol Pot regime. British officials in early July speculated that the ‘next step’ for the Vietnamese ‘might be the settling up of liberated zones in the Eastern region of Cambodia’ and reported that they would be watching for ‘evidence of whether this is happening.’ American officials were also of the view that Hanoi ‘had reached certain decisions in June’ along the following lines: to take vigorous steps to eventually oust the Pol Pot regime – ‘the serious haemorrhage’ caused by the Kampuchean problem must be stopped and therefore opted for ‘a major military, subversive and political effort’, calculating that Beijing was unlikely to intervene directly; to firmly resist Chinese political and economic pressures."

"‘even at the risk of being provocative’; and to join COMECON and move closer to Moscow but ‘offset this with an intensive diplomatic campaign to broaden Vietnam’s political and economic support from non-communist countries’.

Three interviews given by Pol Pot on 17 March 1978 (to a group of Yugoslavian journalists), 12 April 1978 (to the DK Press Agency), and 11 December 1978 (to Xinhua Agency) provide the Khmer Rouge perspective of the developments in 1978. According to Pol Pot, Vietnam had never given up its Indochina Federation plan once it was conceived in 1930. Hanoi’s goal was ‘the elimination of borders to make Kampuchea part of their country’. The objective of Hanoi’s undeclared and large-scale war with Kampuchea after September 1977 was to occupy ‘the eastern part of the Mekong River and the southwest zone’. After Vietnam signed the Treaty of Friendship and Cooperation with the Soviet Union (which Pol Pot described as ‘expansionist Soviet Union and the Warsaw Military Alliance’), Pol Pot noted that ‘in the past, Vietnam always claimed the Vietnam-Kampuchea conflicts were mere border conflict in order to cheat. Now it can cheat no longer. Everyone knows about the war.’"

"Meanwhile, by April 1978, Sino-Vietnamese talks on the border issue had broken down. The worsening of Sino-Vietnamese relations corresponded with the rupture in Vietnam-Kampuchea relations. Chinese public statements in 1978 clearly showed that Beijing's sympathy lay with the Khmer Rouge regime. China suspended all aid to Vietnam at the end of May 1978 and recalled all their specialists in Vietnam on 3 July. Vietnam finally joined COMECON on 29 June. Finally, at the fourth session of the VWP Central Committee meeting in July 1978, a resolution was passed which identified China as Vietnam's primary enemy.

By the summer of 1978, the 'battle-lines' had widened, with Vietnam and the Soviet Union on the one side and Kampuchea and China on the other. Chinese Foreign Minister Huang Hua, in a May 1978 conversation with Brzezinski, succinctly described the Chinese..."

"perspective of the developments in Indochina as a ‘problem of regional hegemony’ (like Pol Pot’s interpretation described earlier): Vietnam’s goal was to dominate Kampuchea and Laos and establish the Indochinese Federation and ‘behind there lies the Soviet Union’ - so, rightly or wrongly, the Chinese saw Moscow as supporting if not directing Vietnamese aspirations. Vietnam had already achieved its dominance over Laos but was encountering difficulties in Cambodia. Vietnamese–Kampuchean tension was ‘more than merely some sporadic skirmishes along the borders’; it was a major conflict which ‘may last for a long time’ as long as Vietnam persisted in realising its goal.

We will return to how Sino-Vietnamese relations led to the Chinese invasion of Vietnam in February 1979 in Chapter 3. For the present, we focus on the developments that led to the Vietnamese invasion of Cambodia in December 1978.

As mentioned earlier, Vietnam–US negotiations till the end of 1977 to normalise relations were unsuccessful. Negotiations continued into 1978. Washington had six conditions for normalisation: (1) a quick resolution of the MIA issue; (2) an end to the refugee flow out of Vietnam; (3) Vietnam would not invade Cambodia (apparently the US was aware of Hanoi’s plan); (4) Vietnam would distance itself from the Soviet Union; (5) there would be no discussion of the Agent Orange issue; and (6) there would be no discussion on reparation."

"In May 1978, Vietnam tried to resuscitate the normalisation discussions by hinting that it would drop its long-held precondition of reconstruction aid. But the Vietnamese vacillated on this until late September 1978 before Nguyen Co Thach finally confirmed this. By this time, the ‘window of opportunity’ was already fast closing, if not already closed. In April 1978, President Carter had given permission to his National Security Adviser Brzeziński to visit Beijing, which he did in May. It was in Carter’s view a ‘very successful’ trip. Like his predecessor, Kissinger, Brzeziński’s priority was the balance of US-Soviet relations and the strategic importance of China in this."

equation. Normalisation of relations with Vietnam was therefore secondary on his agenda. Brzezinski’s view differed from the State Department, but with the support of President Carter he prevailed. Besides Brzezinski, the tensions between Vietnam and Kampuchea, Vietnam’s joining of COMECON and China’s opposition all worked against Vietnam. John Holdridge recalled that in September 1978, about the time that he was assigned to be the national intelligence officer for China, he became aware of ‘the tremendous influence that Vietnam and Cambodia exercised on US-China relations’. After the Vietnamese dropped their precondition, Washington agreed to normalise relations, but in 1979 and not before Sino-US normalisation had taken place. Carter made the decision on 11 October to focus on China. Thus, by mid-October 1978, Hanoi knew that the US’s priority was China and that Vietnam-US normalisation would not happen anytime soon. The Vietnamese were officially informed of the American decision by Bob Oakley (deputy assistant secretary of state) in New York in November 1978. The decision to ‘shelve normalisation indefinitely’, however, was not made until the Vietnamese invasion of Cambodia in December 1978. The invasion was ‘the decisive blow’ to normalisation.

The failure of both Foreign Minister Nguyen Duy Trinh (late 1977 and early 1978) and Prime Minister Pham Van Dong (in September–October 1978) to improve relations with the ASEAN countries (see Chapter 4) compounded Vietnam’s sense of insecurity and reaffirmed the view that the Soviet Union was the only country it could rely on. On 3 November, Vietnam signed the Treaty of Friendship with the Soviet Union, which was notably different from those Moscow signed with the east European countries in one important aspect. In the case of Vietnam, Moscow only committed itself to consultation in the event of an attack or threat of attack on Vietnam. The twenty-five-year Treaty of Friendship and Cooperation between the Soviet Union and Vietnam was ‘the first time that the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) has been able to establish a treaty relationship with any country in the region (Southeast Asia)’. According to Stephen J. Morris, based on his research there is no direct evidence that Moscow instigated or urged the invasion of Kampuchea.

That the Vietnamese would invade Cambodia some time in 1978 or the near future was widely anticipated. As noted earlier, the Americans expected it to happen, and thus one of the six conditions for Vietnam–US normalisation was a commitment from Vietnam not to invade Cambodia. Indeed, in April 1978, Hoang Tung (editor-in-chief of Nhan Dan) disclosed to a group of Swedish journalists that it was ‘difficult for the Vietnamese leadership to stop the Vietnamese army which around the new year started a big offensive against Cambodia and could easily have taken Phnom Penh’. Hoang Tung was referring to the December 1977 military operations. ‘No army wants to fight half a battle,’ he added. Bui Tin recalled that he (then the deputy editor of Nhan Dan) wrote an article in May 1978 on ‘genocide’ committed by the Khmer Rouge, but the editorial board hesitated to publish it. The article was eventually published in August. The decision to invade Cambodia, according to Bui Tin, was not a unanimous one. We now know from Kosal Path’s study of top-level internal Vietnamese documents that ‘from late 1977 to mid-1978 the combined political pressure of the economic crisis at home and failure in foreign and diplomacy abroad compelled Hanoi to reverse its strategy by now subordinating economic development to national defence’. As relations with Cambodia and China deteriorated, the ‘military first’ faction within the leadership gradually took control of the levers of power and would remain influential for much of the 1980s. In August 1978, the Chinese advised Pol Pot to prepare to wage a protracted war. Nayan Chanda recalled that at a routine lunch in Hong Kong, a ‘well-placed Chinese source’ revealed that the Vietnamese were about to invade Cambodia, and ‘when they do the Khmer Rouge will again retreat to the jungle to engage in guerrilla war’. That was precisely the Chinese advice to Pol Pot, although Pol Pot ‘did not agree with the recommendation’. But the ‘Vietnamese blitzkrieg’ forced his hand.

By late November 1978, when the rainy season had ended, most observers expected a large-scale attack of Kampuchea by the Vietnamese, although the precise timing and the nature of the campaign remained unclear. Defence analysts in Singapore, for example, were of the view that Hanoi had two options - an all-out invasion leading to the capture of Phnom Penh and the occupation of Kampuchea or ‘a more prudent military option’, which was to close in on the Khmer Rouge troops deployed along the border and destroy or disperse them without occupying the whole country. The destruction of this army would enable pro-Vietnamese Kampuchean armed forces to occupy Kampuchean territory with relative ease while Pol Pot’s troops were engaged with the Vietnamese army. The first option was likely to provoke a major Chinese military response. No one could predict for certain whether the recently signed defense treaty between the Soviet Union and Vietnam would deter the Chinese. An all-out invasion would also likely damage Hanoi's standing in the Third World. The ASEAN states would view it as ‘naked aggression’ and Japan and the West would be ‘greatly disturbed’ and would be less inclined to give aid to Vietnam.

In the end, Vietnam chose the first option, believing that ‘in two weeks, the world will have forgotten the Kampuchean problem’. With hindsight, they have since admitted that it was a strategic mistake. Although Moscow was aware of the Vietnamese intention to invade Cambodia, the Russians neither goaded the Vietnamese into a war nor discouraged them. Soviet documents revealed that in an October 1978 meeting, the Vietnamese firmly assured Soviet representatives, who were concerned about the Chinese response to the prospective invasion, that ‘China will not have time to dispatch large military units to Phnom Penh to rescue the Kampuchean regime.’

Preparation for the invasion of Kampuchea began in earnest in early December. On 7 December 1978, the People’s Army of Vietnam (PAVN) was given the go-ahead to activate what was called the ‘General Staff’s Combat Readiness Plan for Cambodia’. The Order of Battle comprised 18 divisions, 600 armoured vehicles, 137 aircraft,and as many as 250,000 men. The invasion was scheduled to begin on 4 January 1979, ‘when the terrain was dry and the rice harvest ready’. However, the Khmer Rouge caught wind of the impending invasion and launched a pre-emptive strike across the south-western border of Vietnam on 23 December, which in turn led the Vietnamese to bring forward their plan to 25 December. The Khmer Rouge’s pre-emptive action ‘gave Vietnam a convenient legal excuse to retaliate under international law’.

In the assessment of Kenneth Conboy, although the Vietnamese military overall conducted an ‘efficient and effective campaign’, the Khmer Rouge ‘put up a tenacious fight while withdrawing, inflicting heavy losses on PAVN armoured units’. The Vietnamese took Phnom Penh on 7 January ‘virtually without a shot and ended the violent reign of the Khmer Rouge’. However, Hanoi’s plan to ‘free’ Sihanouk (who had been kept under house arrest by Pol Pot) so that he could head (and legitimise) a ‘Cambodian liberation front’ backed by the Vietnamese was foiled by Pol Pot, who released the prince on 5 January. Sihanouk left for Beijing the next day. On 10 January 1979, the pro-Vietnamese PRK was established in Phnom Penh with Heng Samrin as the head of state.

It is perhaps worth noting that the Vietnamese invasion was welcomed throughout Cambodia, particularly in the Eastern Zone. As Bunheang Ung recalled,

considering the relentlessness of anti-Vietnamese propaganda under the Khmer Rouge, and that every Kampuchean had learned to see Vietnam as the nation’s historic enemy, the warmth with which the Vietnamese forces were welcomed came as something of a surprise, even to the Vietnamese. But it was a product of circumstances, rather than a national change of heart; it rested not on any real affection for historic enemies, but on the depth of hatred felt for the Khmer Rouge.

Having S. Ngor (of ‘The Killing Fields’ fame) had the same sentiment. ‘Historically, Vietnam was our enemy ... But as far as I am concerned, they were welcome as long as they stayed only a short time. They have hastened the end of the Khmer Rouge .

Better to have them around than the Khmer Rouge. As Jean-Pierre L. Fonteney put it, that the Vietnamese invasion ‘put an end to an intolerable massacre of genocidal proportions in Cambodia is beyond doubt, and for this the world should unquestionably feel indebted to Vietnam’, although one should stress that ‘human rights’ was never the consideration (which is confirmed by all the primary sources that have become available). In his study of humanitarian interventions, Nicholas Wheeler concluded that there is no evidence that Pol Pot’s human rights violations played any part in the Vietnamese decision to invade Cambodia. In his words, ‘Vietnam criticised these only when it became politically convenient to do so, and, had a diplomatic settlement been secured with the DK ... it would have coexisted with its murderous neighbour.’ Sihanouk recalled that until the end of December 1977, when the Pol Pot regime broke off diplomatic relations with Vietnam, Vietnamese state radio and press continually praised the Pol Pot regime. It did not invade Cambodia to save the Cambodians from Pol Pot rather to save itself from the perceived threat from China.

The ‘initial’ euphoria was short-lived, lasting about a year according to Harish and Julia Mehta in their official biography of Hun Sen, ‘when many Cambodians felt that the Vietnamese liberators had turned into occupiers’. Nevertheless, as noted in the Introduction, the question whether it was a ‘liberation’ or ‘invasion’ continues to be debated to this day. Sok Udom Deth argues that one should go ‘beyond the political rhetoric and characterisation of a regime as “liberator” or an “oppressor”’. Jean-Pierre L. Fonteney wondered whether a more ‘understanding’ attitude on the part of the ASEAN states and the major Western countries towards Hanoi’s position and that of the Vietnamese-installed Heng Samrin regime ‘might not have made it possible for the Vietnamese presence to end much sooner’. This is a question we address in Chapter 3.

1 See Black Paper: Facts and Evidences of the Acts of Aggression and Annexation of Vietnam against Kampuchea (Department of Press and Information of the Ministry of Democratic Kampuchea, September 1978, Chapter 6.

2.For a discussion of the ownership of Phu Quoc or Koh Tral (to the Cambodians), see Jeff Mudrick, ‘Cambodia’s impossible dream: Koh Tral’, The Diplomat, 17 June 2014.

3.For details, see Wilfred Burchett, The China Cambodia Vietnam Triangle (London: Zed Press, 1981), pp. 144–147; Thu-huong Nguyen-vo, Khmer-Viet Relations and the Third Indochina Conflict (Jefferson: McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers), pp. 78–80; Julio Jeldres, ‘Cambodia Relations with Vietnam: Historical Mistrust and Vulnerability’, Journal of Greater Mekong Studies, Volume 2, Number 1, February 2020, pp. 69–70; Vietnam-Cambodia Conflict, Report Prepared at the Request of the Subcommittee of Asian and Pacific Affairs Committee of International Relations by the Congressional Research Service, Library of Congress (Washington, DC: US Government Printing Office, 1978), pp. 8–9.

4.Stephen Heder, ‘Origins of the Conflict’, Southeast Asia Chronicle, Number 64, September/October 1978, pp. 17–18.

5.Gabriel Kolko, ‘Avoiding Misconceptions about Indochina’, Journal of Contemporary Asia, Volume 9, Number 1, 1979, p. 117.

6.Stephen Heder, ‘Origins of the Conflict’, Southeast Asia Chronicle, Number 64, September/October 1978, pp. 17–18.

7.‘VN, Kingdom agree major border line segments: PM’, Phnom Penh Post, 22 May 2022.

8.Julio Jeldres, ‘Cambodia Relations with Vietnam: Historical Mistrust and Vulnerability’, Journal of Greater Mekong Studies, Volume 2, Number 1, February 2020, pp. 70–71.

9.In the words of Norodom Sihanouk, ‘the Laotian leadership is more Vietnamese than anything ... The Laotian civil service, public works, economy, are actually headed and staff by Vietnamese.’ See Norodom Sihanouk, War and Hope: The Case for Cambodia (New York: Pantheon Books, 1980), pp. 99–100.

10.Black Paper: Facts and Evidences of the Acts of Aggression and Annexation of Vietnam against Kampuchea (Department of Press and Information of the Ministry of Democratic Kampuchea, September 1978), pp. 75–76.

11.Ben Kiernan, ‘Wild Chickens, Farm Chickens, and Cormorants: Kampuchea’s Eastern Zone under Pol Pot’, in David P. Chandler and Ben Kiernan (eds), Revolution and Its Aftermath in Kampuchea: Eight Essays (Monograph Series No. 25, Yale University Southeast Asia Studies, 1983), p. 138.

12.Martin Stuart-Fox and Bunhaeng Ung, The Murderous Revolution: Bunhaeng Ung’s Life with Death in Pol Pot’s Kampuchea (Bangkok: The Tamarind Press, 1986), pp. 163–164.

13.For details of the escape and subsequent developments in Vietnam, see Kosal Path and Boraden Nhem, ‘Vietnam’s Military and Political Challenges in Cambodia, and the Early Rise of Cambodia’s Strongman, Hun Sen, 1977–79’, TrāNS, www.cambridge.org/core/journals/trans-trans-regional-and-national-studies-of-southeast-asia/article/abs/vietnams-military-and-political-challenges-in-cambodia-and-the-early-rise-of-cambodias-strongman-hun-sen-197779/C08BE412FF295B7C38569FCE7F993A69 (published online on 26 July 2021), accessed on 22 August 2022; Harish C. Mehta and Julie B. Mehta, Strongman: The Extraordinary Life of Hun Sen (Singapore: Marshall Cavendish Editions, 2013), chapter 4.

14.Kosal Path and Boraden Nhem, ‘Vietnam’s Military and Political Challenges in Cambodia, and the Early Rise of Cambodia’s Strongman, Hun Sen, 1977–79’, TrāNS, www.cambridge.org/core/journals/trans-trans-regional-and-national-studies-of-southeast-asia/article/abs/vietnams-military-and-political-challenges-in-cambodia-and-the-early-rise-of-cambodias-strongman-hun-sen-197779/C08BE412FF295B7C38569FCE7F993A69.

29.See Wilfred Burchett, The China Cambodia Vietnam Triangle (London: Zed Press, 1981), p. 151.

30.Norodom Sihanouk, War and Hope: The Case for Cambodia (New York: Pantheon Books, 1980), chapter 12, pp. 69–71.

31.Gareth Porter’s interviews with Central Committee member of the VCP, Tran Phuong, 20 January 1981 and with Nguyen Co Thach, 16 November 1978 cited in Gareth Porter, ‘Hanoi’s Strategic Perspective and the Sino-Vietnamese Conflict’, Pacific Affairs, Volume 57, Number 1, Spring 1984, pp. 7–25, nn. 67 and 68.

32.21 June 1975 Conversation Record of Chairman Mao Zedong’s Meeting with Pol Pot, Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Kampuchea, https://digitalarchive.wilsoncenter.org/document/122052.

33.Sophie Richardson, China, Cambodia, and the Five Principles of Peaceful Coexistence (New York: Columbia University Press, 2010); Andrew Mertha, Brothers in Arms: Chinese Aid to the Khmer Rouge, 1975–1979 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2014). See also, John D. Ciociari, ‘China and the Pol Pot regime’, Cold War History, Volume 14, Number 2, 2014, pp. 215–235.

34.Sophie Richardson, China, Cambodia, and the Five Principles of Peaceful Coexistence (New York: Columbia University Press, 2010), pp. 91–92.

35.Andrew Mertha, Brothers in Arms: Chinese Aid to the Khmer Rouge, 1975–1979 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2014), p. 79.

36.Andrew Mertha, Brothers in Arms: Chinese Aid to the Khmer Rouge, 1975–1979 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2014), p. 78.

37.Qiang Zhai, China and the Vietnam Wars, 1950–1975 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2000), pp. 212–213.

38.Wilfred Burchett, The China Cambodia Vietnam Triangle (London: Zed Press, 1981), p. 149. Burchett interviewed Nguyen Co Thach in October 1978.

39.Andrew Mertha, Brothers in Arms: Chinese Aid to the Khmer Rouge, 1975–1979 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2014), p. 15. See also, Roger Faligot, Chinese Spies from Chairman Mao to Xi Jinping (Melbourne: Scribe Press, 2019), pp. 103–104.

40. See Bibliography.

41. All the issues were spelled out in ‘Memorandum Outlining Vice-Premier Li Xiannian’s Talk with Premier Pham Van Dong on 10 June 1977’, United Nations General Assembly and Security Council, A/34/189, S/13255, 18 April 1979.

42.‘Memorandum Outlining Vice-Premier Li Xiannian’s Talk with Premier Pham Van Dong on 10 June 1977’, United Nations General Assembly and Security Council, A/34/189, S/13255, 18 April 1979.

43.Shu Guang Zhang, Beijing’s Economic Statecraft during the Cold War, 1949–1991 (Washington, DC: Woodrow Wilson Center Press, 2014), pp. 258–259.

44.Kosal Path, Sino-Vietnamese Relations, 1950–1978: From Cooperation to Conflict, unpublished PhD thesis, University of Southern California, December 2008, p. 237.

45.Kosal Path, Vietnam’s Strategic Thinking during the Third Indochina War.(Madison: University of wisconsin Press 2020 )

46.Bernard K. Gordon, ‘The Third Indochina Conflict’, Foreign Affairs, Fall 1986, p. 69. Gordon recalled Nguyen Co Thach describing ‘strongly and emotionally’ to him the ingratitude of the Khmer Rouge during his visit to Hanoi in 1980. Other Vietnamese leaders had also described the Khmer Rouge as an ‘ungrateful upstart’.

47.See Ralph Smith, ‘Vietnam’s Fourth Party Congress’, The World Today, Volume 33, Number 5, May 1977, pp. 195–202; Haong Van Hoan, A Drop in the Ocean (Beijing: Foreign Languages Press, 1988), pp. 353–360. Hoan would eventually defect to China in July 1979 where he lived until his death in 1991.

48.Kosal Path, Sino-Vietnamese Relations, 1950–1978: From Cooperation to Conflict, unpublished PhD thesis, University of Southern California, December 2008, p. 238.

49.Kosal Path, Sino-Vietnamese Relations, 1950–1978: From Cooperation to Conflict, unpublished PhD thesis, University of Southern California, December 2008, p. 318; Kosal Path, Vietnam’s Strategic Thinking during the Third Indochina War (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2020), chapter 1.

50.See Lorenz M. Luthi, ‘Beyond Betrayal: Beijing, Moscow and the Paris Negotiations, 1971–1973’, Journal of Cold War Studies, Volume 11, Number 1, Winter 2009, pp. 57–107; Tuong Vu, Vietnam’s Communist Revolution: The Power and Limits of Ideology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017), pp. 210–211.

51.Kosal Path, Vietnam’s Strategic Thinking during the Third Indochina War (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2020), p. 30.

52.Dmitry Mosyakov, The Khmer Rouge and the Vietnamese Communists: A History of Their Relations as Told in the Soviet Archives, https://gsp.yale.edu/sites/default/files/gs15 - the khmer rouge and the vietnamese communists a history of their relations as told in the soviet archives.pdf, pp. 52, 54; Black Paper: Facts and Evidences of the Acts of Aggression and Annexation of Vietnam against Kampuchea (Department of Press and Information of the Ministry of Democratic Kampuchea, September 1978), or Black Paper for short, p. 33.

53.Dmitry Mosyakov, The Khmer Rouge and the Vietnamese Communists: A History of Their Relations as Told in the Soviet Archives, https://gsp.yale.edu/sites/default/files/gs15 - the khmer rouge and the vietnamese communists a history of their relations as told in the soviet archives.pdf, p. 52.

54.Norodom Sihanouk, War and Hope: The Case for Cambodia (New York: Pantheon Books, 1980), pp. 96–98.

55.Ted Osius, Nothing Is Impossible: America’s Reconciliation with Vietnam (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 2022), pp. xxi–xxii.

56.For details, see Foreign Relations of the United States 1977–1980, Volume 13: China (Washington, DC: United States Government Printing Office, 2013), pp. ix–x.

57.Chris A. Connolly, ‘Kissinger, China, Congress, and the Lost Chance for Peace in Cambodia’, Journal of American–East Asian Relations, Volume 17, Number 3, 2009–2010, pp. 205–229.

58.See Peter Ronayne, Never Again? The United States and the Prevention and Punishment of Genocide since the Holocaust (Boulder: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 2001), chapter 2, pp. 62, 68, 71.

59.Kenton Clymer, Troubled Relations: The United States and Cambodia since 1870 (DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 2007), p. 168, see especially chapter 9.

60.Peter Ronayne, Never Again? The United States and the Prevention and Punishment of Genocide since the Holocaust (Boulder: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 2001), p. 73.

61.‘The Pol Pot dilemma’, Phnom Penh Post, 29 May 2015; ‘KR Claims angered China in ’78’, Phnom Penh Post, 1 June 2015.

62.Steven Hurst, The Carter Administration and Vietnam (London: Macmillan Press, 1996), p. 23.

63.Steven Hurst, The Carter Administration and Vietnam (London: Macmillan Press, 1996), p. 24.

64.Cyrus Vance, Hard Choices: Critical Years in America’s Foreign Policy (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1983), p. 450; Steven Hurst, The Carter Administration and Vietnam (London: Macmillan Press, 1996), pp. 25–28.

65.Steven Hurst, The Carter Administration and Vietnam (London: Macmillan Press, 1996), p. 141.

66.From British Embassy in Hanoi to Foreign and Commonwealth Office, London, ‘SRV/Cambodia’, 27 January 1978, FCO 15/2335.

67.‘Invasion may be Hanoi’s solution’, Financial Times, 4 March 1978, FCO 15/2337.

68.From Government Secretariat, Hong Kong to Foreign and Commonwealth Office, ‘Vietnamese-Cambodian Relations’, 3 April 1978, FCO 15/2337. British Embassy in Hanoi to Foreign and Commonwealth Office, 'Vietnam-Cambodia Relations', 21 April 1978, FCO 15/2338.

69.69 Foreign and Commonwealth Office, London to British Ambassador in Hanoi, 'Vietnam/Cambodia', 5 July 1978, FCO 15/2339.

70.70 Secret report sent to the British 'with compliments of the American Embassy. Date unclear, possibly 8 September 1978, FCO 15/2339.

71.71 For 17 March and 12 April 1978 interviews, see Searching for the Truth, Number 16, April 2001, pp. 2–3; 11 December 1978 interview, see Searching for the Truth, First Quarterly Issue, 2003, pp. 4–6.

72.  See Henry Kissinger, On China (New York: Penguin, 2011), pp. 352–353.

73 Ted Osius, Nothing Is Impossible: America’s Reconciliation with Vietnam (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 2022), pp. 14–15.

74 For details of Vietnam-US relations in the early post-Vietnam war years, see Steven Hurst, The Carter Administration and Vietnam (London: Macmillan Press, 1996) and Cecile Mentry-Monchau, American-Vietnamese Relations in the Wake of the War (Jefferson: McFarland, 2006). See also the memoirs of Jimmy Carter, Zbigniew Brzezinski, Cyrus Vance, John H. Holdridge, and Desaix Anderson.

75 Marvin Kalb and Deborah Kalb, Haunting Legacy: Vietnam and the American Presidency from Ford to Obama (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press, 2011), p. 64.

76 John H. Holdridge, Crossing the Divide: An Insider’s Account of the Normalization of US-China Relations (Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 1997), p. 179.

77 The US and China officially normalized relations on 15 December 1978.

78 Steven Hurst, The Carter Administration and Vietnam (London: Macmillan Press, 1996), p. 144. For the argument that it was ‘vanguard internationalism’ that overrode Vietnamese leaders’ ‘pragmatic sense’ leading to the failure of normalization, see Tuong Vu, Vietnam’s Communist Revolution: The Power and Limits of Ideology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017), pp. 220–221.

79 ‘The Soviet Vietnamese Friendship Treaty’, FCO 15/2436.

80 Stephen J. Morris, Why Vietnam Invaded Cambodia: Political Culture and the Causes of War (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1999), pp. 215–217. See also, British Embassy in Moscow to Foreign and Commonwealth Office, ‘Soviet/Vietnamese Relations’, 11 June 1980, FCO 15/2788.

81 B. E. Shinde, Mao Zedong and the Communist Policies, 1927–1978 (New Delhi: Sangam Books, 1993), p. 113, see especially chapter 4.

82 Bui Tin, Following Ho Chi Minh: Memoirs of a North Vietnamese Colonel (London: Hurst & Company, 1995), p. 117.

83 See Bui Tin, Following Ho Chi Minh: Memoirs of a North Vietnamese Colonel (London: Hurst & Company, 1995); Hoang Van Hoan, A Drop in the Ocean (Beijing: Foreign Languages Press, 1988).

84 Kosal Path, Vietnam’s Strategic Thinking during the Third Indochina War (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2020), p. 50, chapter 2.

85 Nayan Chanda, ‘Vietnam’s invasion of Cambodia, revisited’, The Diplomat, 1 December 2018.

86 R. H. Solomon (ed.), Asian Security in the 1980s: Problems and Policies for a Time of Transition (Cambridge: Oelgeschlager, Gunn & Hain, Publishers, Inc., 1979), chapter 7.

87 K. Mahbubani, ‘The Kampuchean Problem: A Southeast Asian Perspective’, Foreign Affairs, Volume 62, Number 2, 1983–1984, p. 408.

88 See David W. P. Elliot, Changing Worlds: Vietnam’s Transition from Cold War to Globalization (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012), p. xi. For the Southeast Asian response to the invasion, see Ang Cheng Guan, Singapore, ASEAN and the Cambodian Conflict, 1978–1991 (Singapore: NUS Press, 2013).

89 Dmitry Mosyakov, ‘The Khmer Rouge and the Vietnamese Communists: A History of Their Relations as Told in the Soviet Archives’, pp. 70–71, www.isn.ethz.ch/isn/Digital-Library/Publications/Detail/?lng=en&id=46645.

90 For details, see Kenneth Conboy, The Cambodian Wars: Clashing Armies and CIA Covert Operations (Kansas: University of Kansas Press, 2013), chapter 6.

91 Kenneth Conboy, The Cambodian Wars: Clashing Armies and CIA Covert Operations (Kansas: University of Kansas Press, 2013), p. 126.

92 Kenneth Conboy, The Cambodian Wars: Clashing Armies and CIA Covert Operations (Kansas: University of Kansas Press, 2013), p. 129.

93 Nayan Chanda, ‘Vietnam’s invasion of Cambodia, revisited’, The Diplomat, 1 December 2018. See also, Merle L. Pribenow II, ‘A Tale of Five Generals: Vietnam’s Invasion of Cambodia’, The Journal of Military History, Volume 70, Number 2, April 2006; Ben Kiernan (guest editor), ‘Thematic Issue: Conflict and Change in Cambodia’, Critical Asian Studies, Volume 34, Number 4, December 2002, particularly, Yun Shui (author) and Paul Marks (translator), ‘An Account of Chinese Diplomats Accompanying the ...’ Government of Democratic Kampuchea's Move to the Cardamom Muntains.

94 Martin Stuart-Fox and Bunhaeng Ung, The Murderous Revolution: Bunhaeng Ung’s Life with Death in Pol Pot’s Kampuchea (Bangkok: The Tamarind Press, 1986), pp. 170, 173.

95 Haing S. Ngor (with Roger Warner), Surviving the Killing Fields (London: Pan Books, 1989), p. 363.

96 Gary Klintworth, Vietnam’s Intervention in Cambodia in International Law (Canberra: Australian Government Publishing Service, 1989), p. xiv.

97 Nicholas J. Wheeler, Saving Strangers: Humanitarian Intervention in International Society (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), https://academic.oup.com/book/276, p. 105. See Chapter 3.

98 Norodom Sihanouk, War and Hope: The Case for Cambodia (New York: Pantheon Books, 1980), pp. 103–104.

99 Nguyen Co Thach’s conversation with Stephen Solarz, 2 January 1981, recounted by Kishore Mahbubani, ‘Cambodia: Myths and Realities’, Problems of Communism, July–August 1984, p. 70.

100 Harish C. Mehta and Julie B. Mehta, Strongman: The Extraordinary Life of Hun Sen (Singapore: Marshall Cavendish Editions, 2013), p. 128.

101 In their December 1997 interview with Hun Sen, the Mehtas used the word ‘invasion’ which drew ‘an outraged response’ from Hun Sen. See Harish C. Mehta and Julie B. Mehta, Strongman: The Extraordinary Life of Hun Sen (Singapore: Marshall Cavendish Editions, 2013), p. 129.

102 See Sok Udom Deth, The People’s Republic of Kampuchea 1979–1989: A Draconian Savior? MA thesis, Center for International Studies, Ohio University, June 2009.

103 Gary Klintworth, Vietnam’s Intervention in Cambodia in International Law (Canberra: Australian Government Publishing Service, 1989), p. xiv.